The Mystical Positivist: May 2016

Saturday, May 28, 2016

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #224 - 28MAY16

The Mystical Positivist is now a weekly radio show on KOWS-LP 107.3 FM, Occidental, CA. Listen live on Saturday evenings from 4:00 - 6:00pm, PST, via the web at KOWS Live Stream.

This week's podcast features:

A pre-recorded conversation with Brother John Martin Sahajananda, a member and present superior of Shantivanam ashram community in Tamil Nadu, India. This ashram was founded by two French priests Jules Monchanin and Henri Le Saux in 1950. Fr. Bede Griffiths, a Benedictine monk and well-known author, took the leadership of the ashram in 1968. Brother Martin has been very much inspired by the vision of Shantivanam. He was one of the close disciples of Bede Griffiths. His passion is inter-religious dialogue, particularly Hindu-Christian dialogue. He is invited to Europe every year to lead seminars and retreats on the vision of Christianity for our times and on inter-religious harmony. He has written several books, including: You Are the Light – Rediscovering the Eastern Jesus; Truth Has No Boundaries; Fully Human Fully Divine; New Annunciation - A Universal Call to be Virgin Mothers of God; The Ganges and the Jordan Meet: Reincarnation and Resurrection.

More information about Brother John Martin Sahajananda's work can be found at:

Saccidananda Ashram Website: saccidanandaashram.com
Saccidananda Ashram on Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org
Oblates of Shantivanam Website: oblatesofshantivanam.yolasite.com

Saturday, May 21, 2016

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #223 - 21MAY16

The Mystical Positivist is now a weekly radio show on KOWS-LP 107.3 FM, Occidental, CA. Listen live on Saturday evenings from 4:00 - 6:00pm, PST, via the web at KOWS Live Stream.

This week's podcast features:

Our guests in the studio today are Kelsang Chogyop and Kelsang Labsum, both of the Mahakaruna Kadampa Buddhist Center in Penngrove CA. Kelsang Chogyop is a modern Buddhist nun and 13 year practitioner in the New Kadampa Mahayana Buddhist tradition. She is the resident teacher at the Penngrove Mahakaruna Kadampa Buddhist Center. Kelsang Labsum is the Administrative Director of the Penngrove center and has been studying under the guidance of Ven. Geshe Kelsang Gyatso since 2007. He has been ordained since 2012. He demonstrates how a modern Kadampa monk integrates Buddhist wisdom into one's daily life. The main emphasis of New Kadampa Buddhism is to maintain the purity of Buddha's teachings and to make these teachings very practical, accessible, and relevant in the modern world. The New Kadampa Tradition was founded by Ven. Geshe Kelsang Gyatso in 1991. Geshe Kelsang has written 22 books and in each of them he strives to make Buddha's very profound teachings practical and tangible so that anyone, Buddhist to not, can benefit from them, whether by simply learning how to meditate or by studying very closely in a teacher-guided study program.

More information about Kelsang Chogyop and Labsum's work can be found at:

Mahakaruna Kadampa Buddhist Center Website: www.meditateincal.org
Kadampa Buddhism Website: kadampa.org

Saturday, May 14, 2016

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #222 - 14MAY16

The Mystical Positivist is now a weekly radio show on KOWS-LP 107.3 FM, Occidental, CA. Listen live on Saturday evenings from 4:00 - 6:00pm, PST, via the web at KOWS Live Stream.

This week's podcast features:

This week on the Mystical Positivist, hosts Rob Schmidt and Stuart Goodnick speak in the studio with one another on spiritual news and other topics relevant to the show that have been on our minds in recent weeks. Some of the books and topics discussed include:
- An obituary for Zenkei Blanche Hartman Roshi
- Whether spiritual growth requires a teacher or if no teacher is necessary
- The topic of “spiritual children” and what that term might mean

Dr. Robert Schmidt, spiritual director of Tayu Meditation Center, met and began intensive, 24-hour study with Tayu Meditation Center founder Robert Daniel Ennis in 1977. After five remarkable training years, he received ordination as a minister of Tayu, and co-taught with his teacher until Mr. Ennis’ death in 1998. His work with Mr. Ennis included co-writing and publishing a book entitled God Is Gay: An Evolutionary Spiritual Work. Rob succeeded Mr. Ennis as Tayu spiritual director, a post he still holds, in collaboration with yours truly. With Stuart Goodnick and Jim Wilson he co-founded Many Rivers Books & Tea in Sebastopol in Sebastopol, CA, in 2002.

Currently he’s collaborating with practitioners of many spiritual traditions to create the Conscious Family Festival, a community event scheduled for October 2016 in Santa Rosa, CA. Along the way, Rob completed a Ph.D. in anthropological archaeology at UC Berkeley, where he was co-editor with his grad student colleague Barbara Voss of the award-winning Archaeologies of Sexuality, the first academic edited volume to examine the phenomenon of sexuality as a object of knowledge in archaeological contexts.

Stuart Goodnick, the Mystical Positivist, has been a practitioner of Tayu Meditation since 1985 and a Tayu Meditation instructor since 1993. He holds degrees in Physics from Caltech and UCSC, and has been an engineering manager in the electronics and software security industries since 1989. Stuart has also been a student of the shakuhachi (Japanese Bamboo flute) under Master Masayuki Koga since 1996. In recent years Stuart has been applying the principles of spiritual practice and transformation in daily life as a senior executive in both Silicon Valley start-ups and global industrial manufacturers. He co-founded Many Rivers Books & Tea with Robert Schmidt and Jim Wilson in Sebastopol in 2002.

A frequent writer and speaker on spiritual topics, Stuart maintains that rationality is no way the antithesis of deep mystical experience, but is in fact a necessary ally. He is currently working on a compilation of some of his essays and transcriptions of talks to be released later in 2016.

More information about Tayu Meditation Center can be found at:

Many Rivers Books and Tea Website: www.manyriversbooks.com
Tayu Meditation Center Website: www.tayu.org/~tayu/
Old Many Rivers Blog: www.manyriversbooks.com/blog1/

Saturday, May 7, 2016

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #221 - 07MAY16

The Mystical Positivist is now a weekly radio show on KOWS-LP 107.3 FM, Occidental, CA. Listen live on Saturday evenings from 4:00 - 6:00pm, PST, via the web at KOWS Live Stream.

This week's podcast features:

This week Mystical Positivist co-host, Rob Schmidt, is joined in the studio by Albert Flynn DeSilver, author of the forthcoming book called Writing as a Path to Awakening, as well as the autobiographical Beamish Boy. Albert Flynn DeSilver is an author, poet, artist, teacher, speaker, and publisher, born 1968 in Norwalk, Connecticut. In addition to the book titles already mentioned, he is the author of several books of poetry including Letters to Early Street, and Walking Tooth & Cloud. His writing has appeared in more than one hundred literary journals worldwide. He taught for many years as a California Poet in the Schools, and at numerous venues nationwide; from Creedmore Psychiatric Institution, in New York, and San Quentin State Prison, in California, to the British Institute in Paris—from an Alzheimer’s Clinic in Marin County, to The University of California—Davis. He has also taught for many years in the Teen and Family Program at Spirit Rock Meditation Center. In 2008 he was named the very first Poet Laureate of Marin County, California. He is currently the Director of Visiting Angels, a Senior Homecare agency franchise in Santa Rosa, California.

More information about Albert Flynn DeSilver's work can be found at:

Albert FlynnDeSilver's Website: www.albertflynndesilver.com
Albert Flynn DeSilver on Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org

"The Mystical Positivist" Radio Show

The Mystical Positivist is a weekly radio show on KOWS-LP FM 107.3 Occidental, CA, and on the web at KOWS-LP Live Feed, Saturdays from 4 - 6pm PST. Coming up on The Mystical Positivist:

April 20: A pre-recorded conversation with Ken McLeod, Buddhist teacher and author of the newly released book, The Magic of Vajrayana. In this conversation, we plan to explore a compelling quote from Ian McGilchrist's The Matter with Things: If you had set out to destroy the happiness and stability of a people, it would have been hard to improve on our current formula: remove yourself as far as possible from the natural world; repudiate the continuity of your culture; believe you are wise enough to do whatever you happen to want and not only get away with it, but have a right to it—and a right to silence those who disagree; minimise the role played by a common body of belief; actively attack and dismantle every social structure as a potential source of oppression; reject the idea of a transcendent set of values.

One of the more innovative Buddhist teachers today, Ken McLeod is known for his clear explanations, poetic translations, and pragmatic approach to practice. He is one of the first generation of Western teachers in the Tibetan tradition and one of the few to be authorized to transmit the full scope of these teachings to students. In particular, his approach resonates strongly with those whose path lies outside established institutions.

After graduating with a degree in mathematics, Ken cycled across Europe to Istanbul and then continued his journey overland to India. In 1970 he met his principal teacher Kalu Rinpoche at his monastery near Darjeeling. There Ken began a study and practice in Tibetan Buddhism that lasted more than twenty years. He completed the traditional three-year retreat program two times, translated for many teachers, and helped set up Buddhist centers in Canada and the United States. After his teacher's passing, Ken moved away from the hierarchical structures of Asian Buddhism to explore new approaches.

In 1990, he founded Unfettered Mind in Los Angeles. His approach of one-on-one consultations roiled the Buddhist world in the early '90s, but was quickly recognized as a viable way to teach and guide students in the West. He made individual interviews a central feature of the many retreats he taught in California, New Mexico, and British Columbia. Through numerous small groups in Southern California, he developed the materials that became the encyclopedic meditation manual, Wake Up to Your Life.

Now retired from formal teaching, he lives in Northern California where he hikes and writes. His writings and translations include The Great Path of Awakening (1987), Wake Up to Your Life (2001), An Arrow to the Heart (2007), Reflections on Silver River (2014), A Trackless Path (2017), and The Magic of Vajrayana (2022), as well as a corpus of articles and translations in Tricycle and other Buddhist magazines.