The Mystical Positivist: The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #288

Saturday, April 7, 2018

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #288 - 07APR18

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’s show features a conversation in the studio with Douglass Truth, artist, writer, performer, and more. Douglass writes:

I was born a long time ago in Indiana. I never knew I had any aptitude as a painter until I was in my early 40s, when I started painting pretty much by accident. As far as writing, even in junior high school I started to see myself as a writer. Decades of adventures, crap jobs, amazing jobs, and much wandering led to no marketable product, or even readable material as far as most people were concerned. I told myself I was a slow learner, a late-bloomer, and so on, and I guess I was right.

I come from a family of professionals. I was the youngest, and maybe that gave me license to do whatever I wanted, which was not always an obvious bit of data. So, a lot of wandering and washing dishes and slinging hash and pouring coffee. I did work in Alaska as a surveyor and designer for most of the 70s, but after that I couldn't fake it anymore and I ended up tearing down old buildings around Anchorage with a Jehovah’s Witness named Dwayne. We had a lot of fun, hopped freight trains together but then we started arguing about drugs and such and our relationship soured, and it certainly wasn't one you wanted to engage when around dangerous tools.

Douglass Truth is the creator and performer of the one-person show, An Intimate Evening with Death, Herself, next showing on April 19th at The Marsh (1062 Valencia Street, San Francisco). Tickets are $15.

More information about Douglass Truth's work can be found at:

Douglass Truth's website: www.douglasstruth.com
Death, Herself's website: deathherself.com
Let's ReImagine website: letsreimagine.org
Douglass Truth on YouTube: www.youtube.com

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"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.