The Mystical Positivist: April 2021

Saturday, April 24, 2021

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #380 - 24APR21

Podcast:

This week on the show we feature a pre-recorded conversation with Ji Hyang Padma, author of Field of Blessings: Ritual & Consciousness in the Work of Buddhist Healers. Ji Hyang believes that we are hungry for a direct experience of the sacred in this culture. We try to fill the void with technology, and its “quick fix” of images and information. This leaves us hungry for true connectivity. We don’t need more information. We need more appreciation. Gratitude opens the heart, and gives our life meaning; it becomes a form of spiritual experience that gives us strength. Field of Blessings explores how meaning-making can be approached by deep examination of the stories of our lives, which bridge the gap between the inner world and the outer world, giving shape to our experience. How can these narratives be spoken, written, or embodied? Ritual is the story brought-to-life, and a powerful vehicle for spiritual transformation, for reconnecting people with an embodied wholeness. Ji Hyang Padma shows that Chöd, Medicine Buddha practices, and other Tibetan rituals are used by healers to evoke sacred energies, radical empathy, and to contact deep archetypal realms of the psyche.

Ji Hyang Padma is currently a CPE Chaplain Resident at the University of San Francisco Medical Center, and combines an academic and professional career with her role as a Zen teacher. Ji Hyang has done intensive Zen training and teaching in Asia and North America for 20 years, 15 of these as an ordained nun. She has completed several 90-day intensive retreats in Korea and North America. She also teaches Zen workshops annually at Omega Institute and Esalen Institute. While her practice has been situated within the Korean Zen tradition, she has had the benefit of studying with teachers across a wide spectrum of Buddhist lineages.

Ji Hyang has also served as Director of Spirituality and Education Programs at Wellesley College, and Director and Abbot of Cambridge Zen Center, one of the largest Zen Centers in the country. Additionally, she has served as a meditation teacher at Wellesley College, Harvard University and Boston University. She is gifted at finding an entry-point into practice for people who are just beginning their journey. She is also the author of Living the Season: Zen Practice for Transformative Times.

More information about Ji Hyang Padma's work can be found at:

Mountain Path website: www.mountainpath.org,

Ji Hyang Padma on The Mystical Positivist: On Buddhist Healing,

Ji Hyang Padma on The Mystical Positivist: Living the Season.

Saturday, April 10, 2021

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #379 - 10APR21

Podcast:

This week on the show we feature a pre-recorded conversation with Christopher Pinard, author of Celtic Mythology for Kids: Tales of Selkies, Giants, and the Sea. Chris' interest in folklore and mythology began at a very young age when his mother first read the stories of the Mabinogion, Eddas, the Irish Mythological Cycle, and various collections of folk tales. Over the years, his passion for the subject matter deepened, which resulted in his authorship of articles online and in magazines. His deep interest in folkways is buttressed with an educational background in psychology and history. In our conversation, we cover Chris’ early awakening to the world of mythology, his personal synthesis of a pagan practice based on the Norse and Celtic traditions and deities, and the transformative power of the allegories found in traditional tales.

More information about Chris Pinard's work can be found at:
Chris Pinard on Owlcation website: owlcation.com,
Celtic Mythology for Kids on Amazon.com: www.amazon.com.

Saturday, April 3, 2021

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #378 - 03APR21

Podcast:

This week on the show we feature feature a pre-recorded conversation in which Ken McLeod and Jim Wilson return to continue our discussion from several weeks ago. In this installment we go deep on the question allegorical thinking and the modern mind's difficulty with allegory. Only here will you find the subjects of Star Wars, the Borg from Star Trek, Game of Thrones, the function of feeling in allegorical mentation, abiding peace as a consequence of deep practice, and the challenge of describing Tibetan Deity Practice to a Western Mind weaved together in an engaging conversational quartet.

After learning Tibetan, Ken McLeod translated for his principal teacher, Kalu Rinpoche, and helped to develop Rinpoche’s centers in North America and Europe. In 1985, Kalu Rinpoche authorized Ken to teach and placed him in charge of his Los Angeles center. Faced with the challenges of teaching in a major metropolis, he began exploring different methods and formats for working with students. He moved away from both the teacher-center model and the minister-church model and developed a consultant-client model. Ken is the founder and director of UnfetteredMind.org. He is the author of Wake Up to Your Life: Discovering the Buddhist Path of Attention, The Great Path of Awakening, An Arrow to the Heart, Reflections on Silver River, and his most recent book, A Trackless Path.

Jim Wilson was a monk and abbot under the direction of his teacher Seung Sahn, a Korean Chogye sect Zen master. He served as a Buddhist Prison Chaplain, studied western philosophy, co-founded Many Rivers Books & Tea in Sebastopol, conducts a website devoted to syllabic form Haiku, and has penned and published many books of poetry. In recent years his spiritual practice has centered on the Quaker Christian tradition. In addition to his many poetry volumes, he has published several books on spiritual matters, including On Trusting the Heart, a commentary on a famous poem by the third Zen patriarch, and An Annotated Edition of a Guide to True Peace.

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

Unfettered Mind website: www.unfetteredmind.org,

On Trusting the Heart - A Commentary on the Xin Xin Ming: On Trusting the Heart,

An Annotated Edition of a Guide to True Peace (2nd Edition): Guide to True Peace,

Shaping Words Poetry Website: shapingwords.blogspot.com.

"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.