The Mystical Positivist: October 2016

Saturday, October 29, 2016

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #239 - 29OCT16

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 conversation in the studio with Ken McLeod, a senior Western translator, author and teacher of Tibetan Buddhism. He received traditional training mainly in the Shangpa and Kagyu lineages through a long association with his principal teacher Kalu Rinpoche, whom he met in 1970. Under Kalu Rinpoche’s guidance McLeod learned the Tibetan language and completed two, traditional three-year retreats (1976-83). In the years that followed, he traveled and worked with Kalu Rinpoche on various projects and became a respected interpreter and translator of Buddhist texts.

After Kalu Rinpoche’s passing in 1989, McLeod established Unfettered Mind in Los Angeles as a place for those whose path lies outside established institutions. In the early ’90 his private practice model of one-on-one consultations on Buddhist practice roiled the Buddhist world, only to become an accepted model for Buddhist teaching in the West. McLeod has always been concerned with translation, including the translation of texts, of rituals, of practices and of teaching methods. Currently his interest is in presenting traditional Buddhist teachers to bring out their mystical basis and orientation. His books include The Great Path of Awakening (1987), Wake Up to Your Life (2001), An Arrow to the Heart (2007), Reflections on Silver River (2014) and most recently A Trackless Path (2016).

More information about Ken McLeod's work and interests can be found at:

Unfettered Mind website: www.unfetteredmind.org
Ken McLeod's Blog: musingsbyken.blogspot.com
Unfettered Mind Podcasts: itunes.apple.com

Saturday, October 22, 2016

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #238 - 22OCT16

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 we feature a pre-recorded conversation with Alexandra Pfohlmann. Alexandra Pfohlmann has over twenty-five years experience in the study and practice of Buddhist philosophy and meditation. For the last fifteen years she has lectured at the Buddhistiche Academie Berlin-Brandenburg and for the last three years she has also served as a meditation teacher at the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig. Now, through workshops and lectures, she offers a range of guidance and perspective for people engaged in spiritual practice. In doing so, she takes a highly individual approach. She writes: "For a long time, I felt that Buddhist practice, and more generally spiritual practice, had to take place within the spheres defined by the great spiritual traditions. While I have a deep respect for these approaches, the circumstances of my life have shown me that at a certain point, one has to embark on one's own path, and it is that transition that interests me in my work with people today."

More information about Alexandra Pfohlmann's work can be found at:

The ReSource Project at the Max Plank Institute: The ReSource Project
Teachers at the ReSource Project: ReSource Project Teachers

Saturday, October 15, 2016

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #237 - 15OCT16

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 show we converse in the studio with Kalia Chan, author of the recently published novel A Treasure of the Heart: A Journey of Satsang, Awakening, and Evolution. In 2003, after sitting with Adyashanti for a couple of years, Kalia Chan experienced a “recognition”. He continued to sit with Adyashanti for another five years. In 2009, the skillful means of Vajrayana awoke an ongoing process of energy and penetrating awareness. A few years ago, another “recognition”, this one brilliant luminosity, occurred in the presence of Ammachi, the “hugging saint.” Kalia currently lives near Sebastopol, California with his cat, Lion.

More information about Kalia Chan's work can be found at:

Treasure of the Heart website: A Treasure of the Heart
Kalia Chan on Facebook: www.facebook.com

Saturday, October 1, 2016

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #236 - 01OCT16

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 about the upcoming Conscious Family Festival happening on Saturday Oct. 8 in Santa Rosa, California. In the second hour, riffing on some of the themes emerging from the first hour, they discuss personal, institutional, and spiritual authority. How do spiritual practitioners identify their own impulses toward bullying others, and toward being complicit in others bullying them?

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
Conscious Family Festival Website: www.consciousfamilyfestival.org
Tayu Meditation Center Website: www.tayu.org/~tayu/
Old Many Rivers Blog: www.manyriversbooks.com/blog1/

"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.