Join Wisdom

This content is only available to members taking part in our online retreat with B. Alan Wallace.

If you have already joined this retreat, please log in; you’ll then be able to see the contents of this page.
If you are an all-access Annual member who has not joined the retreat, please click here for more information.
If you’re a Plus member or an All-Access monthly member, please first read the restriction requirements listed here and then, if you meet them, upgrade to All-Access annual via your account page and then contact us via our contact page and let us know that you meet the requirements, have upgraded, and would like to join the retreat.
If you have further questions, please contact us via our contact page.

Join Now

Join Wisdom

This content is only available to members taking part in our online retreat with B. Alan Wallace.

If you have already joined this retreat, please log in; you’ll then be able to see the contents of this page.
If you are an all-access Annual member who has not joined the retreat, please click here for more information.
If you’re a Plus member or an All-Access monthly member, please first read the restriction requirements listed here and then, if you meet them, upgrade to All-Access annual via your account page and then contact us via our contact page and let us know that you meet the requirements, have upgraded, and would like to join the retreat.
If you have further questions, please contact us via our contact page.

Join Now

Join Wisdom

This content is only available to members taking part in our online retreat with B. Alan Wallace.

If you have already joined this retreat, please log in; you’ll then be able to see the contents of this page.
If you are an all-access Annual member who has not joined the retreat, please click here for more information.
If you’re a Plus member or an All-Access monthly member, please first read the restriction requirements listed here and then, if you meet them, upgrade to All-Access annual via your account page and then contact us via our contact page and let us know that you meet the requirements, have upgraded, and would like to join the retreat.
If you have further questions, please contact us via our contact page.

Join Now

Mark Van Buren: Your Life Is Meditation (#107)

Posted April 16, 2021

This episode of the Wisdom Podcast features an interview with Mark Van Buren, a mindful living trainer, yoga and meditation instructor, personal trainer, and musician who has been promoting health and wellness for over a decade. He’s the author of A Fool’s Guide to Actual Happiness and Your Life IS Meditation.

Mark discusses:

how it can sometimes feel like everyday life is in opposition to practice, and how we can transform our understanding of this seeming conflict;
the ways in which he applies mindfulness in daily life, including how driving to work can be like working on a koan;
how to turn interactions with difficult people into opportunities for practice;
what it means to experience a “profound okayness”;
and much more.

Correction: In this episode, Mark mentions 10,000 chants; he meant to say 100,000.

About the Interviewee

Mark Van Buren is a Mindful Living Trainer, yoga/meditation instructor, personal trainer, and musician, that has been promoting health and wellness for over a decade. He writes articles on meditation and yoga for My Yoga Online, Gaiam TV and Elephant Journal. He has run dozens of workshops and retreats all over the tri-state area, and has been asked to speak at numerous colleges including Columbia, Montclair State, and Bergen Community. A handful of yoga studios have already opened their doors to his message, allowing him to give talks and run guided meditations and retreats. He has worked extensively with children and adults with autism and other special needs, and even released two solo albums, based on his inward journey through meditation, under the band name “Seeking the Seeker.” Van Buren holds a Bachelor of Arts in religious studies from Montclair State University and two Associate Degrees from Bergen Community College in exercise science and music. He is currently the owner and head instructor of Live Free Yoga Studio in River Edge, NJ.

Previous Episode

John Brehm: The Dharma of Poetry (#106)

Next Episode

Malcolm Smith: Translating the Tantras (#108)

Join Wisdom

This content is only available to members taking part in our online retreat with B. Alan Wallace.

If you have already joined this retreat, please log in; you’ll then be able to see the contents of this page.
If you are an all-access Annual member who has not joined the retreat, please click here for more information.
If you’re a Plus member or an All-Access monthly member, please first read the restriction requirements listed here and then, if you meet them, upgrade to All-Access annual via your account page and then contact us via our contact page and let us know that you meet the requirements, have upgraded, and would like to join the retreat.
If you have further questions, please contact us via our contact page.

Join Now

Wisdom Dharma Chats | Thupten Jinpa – Illuminating the Intent Book Launch

Please enjoy this unedited recording of our Wisdom Dharma Chat book launch with host Daniel Aitken and special guest Thupten Jinpa Langri.

In this episode, we celebrated the launch of Jinpa’s translation Illuminating the Intent: An Exposition of Candrakirti’s Entering the Middle Way.

Topics discussed include:

the significance of this text;
common nihilistic misunderstandings of Nagarjuna’s madhyamaka;
understanding different levels of analysis, including moving beyond the conventional;
developing a deeper understanding of different kinds of thought;
some of Tsongkhapa’s most important ideas and philosophies, including his psychological models;
different schools’ views of truth;
Tsongkhapa’s teachings on realizing emptiness, including that one of the most important challenges for anyone serious about liberation is to examine how we perceive the world;
how to understand meditation on emptiness as an interactive, dynamic exploration;
and much more.

Thupten Jinpa Langri was educated in the classical Tibetan monastic academia and received the highest academic degree of Geshe Lharam (equivalent to a doctorate in divinity). Jinpa also holds a BA in philosophy and a PhD in religious studies, both from the University of Cambridge, England. Since 1985, he has been the principal translator to the Dalai Lama, accompanying him to the United States, Canada, and Europe. He has translated and edited many books by the Dalai Lama, including The World of Tibetan Buddhism, Essence of the Heart Sutra, and the New York Times bestseller Ethics for the New Millennium.

Jinpa has published scholarly articles on various aspects of Tibetan culture, Buddhism, and philosophy, and books such as Songs of Spiritual Experience: Tibetan Poems of Awakening and Insight (co-authored); Self, Reality and Reason in Tibetan Thought; and the definitive biography of Je Tsongkhapa, Buddha in the Land of Snows. He serves on the advisory board of numerous educational and cultural organizations in North America, Europe, and India. He is currently the president and the editor-in-chief of the Institute of Tibetan Classics, a nonprofit educational organization dedicated to translating key Tibetan classics into contemporary languages. And he also currently chairs the Mind and Life Institute and the Compassion Institute.

Click here to learn more about Dharma Chats and find out about our upcoming guests!

The Lamp for Integrating the Practices (Caryāmelāpakapradīpa) by Āryadeva, is a systematic and comprehensive exposition of the most advanced yogas of the Esoteric Community Tantra (Guhyasamāja-tantra) as espoused by the Noble (Nāgārjuna) tradition, an influential school of interpretation within Indian Buddhist mysticism. Equal in authority to Nāgārjuna’s famous Five Stages (Pañcakrama), Āryadeva’s work is perhaps the earliest prose example of the “stages of the mantra path” genre in Sanskrit. Its systematic path exerted immense influence on later Indian and Tibetan traditions, and it is widely cited by masters from all four major lineages of Tibetan Buddhism.

This volume presents the Lamp in a thoroughly annotated English translation. It includes an introductory study discussing the history of the Guhyasamāja and its exegetical traditions, surveying the scriptural and commentarial sources of the Nāgārjuna tradition, and analyzing in detail the contents of the Lamp. The book also features a detailed, trilingual glossary.

Simultaneously presented online for scholars are a version of its Sanskrit original, critically edited from recently identified manuscripts, and a critical edition of the eleventh-century Tibetan translation by Rinchen Zangpo, including notes on readings found in “lost,” alternative translations.

“In this wonderful gem of a book, Andy Rotman offers us a compelling translation of a set of ten Sanskrit Buddhist stories about ‘hungry ghosts’ (preta) taken from the Avadānaśataka (“One Hundred Stories”), an important early Indian anthology of Buddhist narratives. Rotman has brought them into the limelight and shown how important they are for Buddhists and for all of us. Hungry Ghosts will become a standard work on the subject.”
—John Strong, Charles A. Dana Emeritus Professor of Religious and Asian Studies, Bates College

The realm of hungry ghosts is one of the unfortunate realms of rebirth in the Buddhist cycle of existence, and those reborn there are said to have led lives consumed by greed and spite. In one of the earliest sources about hungry ghosts, translated here, hungry ghosts know the error of their ways, and they sometimes appear among humans, like the ghosts that haunt Ebenezer Scrooge, as augurs of what may await. Artistic depictions of the travails of hungry ghosts are found throughout the Buddhist world, and some of the best examples are reproduced and richly described here. Discover how an understanding of the meanness (matsārya) that afflicts hungry ghosts illuminates the human condition, offering insight and inspiring compassion for readers both in ancient times and today.

“Rotman brings new life to old stories about hungry ghosts, and he provides unique insight into their development and their importance even for modern Buddhism. A must-read for students of Buddhist thought and art.”
—Monika Zin, Saxon Academy of Sciences and Humanities, Leipzig University

Tsongkhapa (1357–1419), author of the well-known Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment and guru to the First Dalai Lama, is renowned as perhaps Tibet’s greatest scholar-saint. A dozen years after writing his Great Treatise, he wrote the Middle-Length Treatise on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment, presented here in its first complete English translation.

Less than half the length of the Great Treatise, this work similarly presents a systematic overview of the Buddha’s teachings. Tsongkhapa begins by abridging the longer work, distilling its meditations for quicker integration. After recognizing the rarity of our human existence and the great opportunities it affords, he follows with reflections on impermanence, suffering, and the promise of liberation from our past actions, proceeding then to the path of bodhisattvas, whose universal compassion seeks to free every being from suffering. Tsongkhapa gives especially detailed instructions on śamatha, the deep meditative concentration that is a precondition for the highest insight into the nature of reality. The final and largest section, on that very insight, is unique to this work, particularly Tsongkhapa’s presentation of conventional truth and ultimate truth. Beginners and longtime practitioners alike will cherish the clear guidance from one of Tibet’s great luminaries.

The Wisdom Culture Series, published under the guidance of Lama Zopa Rinpoche, provides English-language readers with key works for the study and cultivation of the Mahayana Buddhist path, especially works of masters within the lineage of Lama Tsongkhapa and the Geluk school of Tibetan Buddhism.

An essential collection of texts and instructions for the practice of the wrathful wisdom deity Yamantaka. With pith instructions from famed siddhas and masters of the Gelug school, The Roar of Thunder offers an unprecedented panoramic perspective on the entire spectrum of Yamantaka practice. Also included in this amazing volume is the extensive sadhana of the Solitary Hero composed by Pabongkha Rinpoche that can be used as a reference to facilitate a more thorough understanding of the commentaries.

The Dechen Ling Practice Series from Wisdom Publications is committed to furthering the vision of David Gonsalez (Venerable Losang Tsering) and the Dechen Ling Press of bringing the sacred literature of Tibet to the West by making available many never-before-translated texts.

“A gorgeous, colorful picture book…this read is equally light and profound.”
—Bonnie Nadzam, Lion’s Roar

“It’s true that we are all different squashes . . . some are bigger and some are smaller . . . some are rounder and some are longer. But even if we are different, we are all connected. We are all growing together. We don’t have to be such squabbling squashes.”

Squabbling Squashes is a story for children of all ages about interconnection and learning to live in harmony amid differences, from a leading light of contemporary Zen—based on a parable from Kosho Uchiyama’s classic bestseller Opening the Hand of Thought.

“An essential teaching for all children, told with delightful, relatable warmth.”
—Sumi Loundon Kim, author Sitting Together: A Family-Centered Curriculum on Mindfulness, Meditation, and Buddhist Teachings

“Super enjoyable to hear, read, and savor for people of all ages, Squabbling Squashes helps our future generations to be aware of a universal mutual tie in society and nature.”
—Kazuaki Tanahashi, author of Painting Peace: Art in a Time of Global Crisis

“An ancient tale cultivating mindfulness today.”
—Lauen Alderfer, author of Mindful Monkey, Happy Panda

Listen to a few remarks from Okumura Roshi.

John Brehm: The Dharma of Poetry (#106)

Posted April 9, 2021

For this episode of the Wisdom Podcast, host Daniel Aitken interviews poet and teacher John Brehm. Wisdom is proud to have published two of John’s books: his collection The Poetry of Impermanence, Mindfulness, and Joy, which came out in 2017, and his 2021 book The Dharma of Poetry.

In this episode we explore the fascinating and profound territory where spirituality and poetry come together, with John as our expert guide. John shares specific practices and ideas that will deepen and enhance your experience of reading poetry, including:

the specific techniques he uses for teaching the integration of poetry and spiritual practice;
how to mindfully read and reflect on your favorite poems, interacting with them on a deeper level;
how to approach poems from a nondual perspective, and how poems in turn can create a nondual experience for the reader;
what a meditative writing process looks like;
what it means to become intimate with a poem;
and much more.

John Brehm is the author of three books of poems—Sea of Faith, Help Is On the Way, and No Day at the Beach—and the associate editor of The Oxford Book of American Poetry. He teaches at the Mountain Writers Series in Portland, Oregon and the Lighthouse Writers Workshop in Denver, Colorado. He also offers a monthly Poetry as Spiritual Practice gathering online and leads mindfulness retreats with his wife, Alice Boyd, that include movement, guided meditation, and mindful poetry discussions.

About the Interviewee

John Brehm is the author of two award-winning books of poems, Help Is On the Way and Sea of Faith, and the associate editor of The Oxford Book of American Poetry. His poems have appeared in Poetry, The Southern Review, New Ohio Review, The Sun, The Gettysburg Review, Gulf Coast, The Writer’s Almanac, The Norton Introduction to Literature, Best American Poetry, and many other journals and anthologies. He lives in Portland, Oregon, and teaches for Literary Arts and Mountain Writers Series in Portland and for the Lighthouse Writers Workshop in Denver, Colorado.

Previous Episode

Michael Imperioli: Acting, Success, and the Buddhist Path (#105)

Next Episode

Mark Van Buren: Your Life Is Meditation (#107)

Join Wisdom

This content is only available to members taking part in our online retreat with B. Alan Wallace.

If you have already joined this retreat, please log in; you’ll then be able to see the contents of this page.
If you are an all-access Annual member who has not joined the retreat, please click here for more information.
If you’re a Plus member or an All-Access monthly member, please first read the restriction requirements listed here and then, if you meet them, upgrade to All-Access annual via your account page and then contact us via our contact page and let us know that you meet the requirements, have upgraded, and would like to join the retreat.
If you have further questions, please contact us via our contact page.

Join Now

Join Wisdom

This content is only available to members taking part in our online retreat with B. Alan Wallace.

If you have already joined this retreat, please log in; you’ll then be able to see the contents of this page.
If you are an all-access Annual member who has not joined the retreat, please click here for more information.
If you’re a Plus member or an All-Access monthly member, please first read the restriction requirements listed here and then, if you meet them, upgrade to All-Access annual via your account page and then contact us via our contact page and let us know that you meet the requirements, have upgraded, and would like to join the retreat.
If you have further questions, please contact us via our contact page.

Join Now

Join Wisdom

This content is only available to members taking part in our online retreat with B. Alan Wallace.

If you have already joined this retreat, please log in; you’ll then be able to see the contents of this page.
If you are an all-access Annual member who has not joined the retreat, please click here for more information.
If you’re a Plus member or an All-Access monthly member, please first read the restriction requirements listed here and then, if you meet them, upgrade to All-Access annual via your account page and then contact us via our contact page and let us know that you meet the requirements, have upgraded, and would like to join the retreat.
If you have further questions, please contact us via our contact page.

Join Now

Join Wisdom

This content is only available to members taking part in our online retreat with B. Alan Wallace.

If you have already joined this retreat, please log in; you’ll then be able to see the contents of this page.
If you are an all-access Annual member who has not joined the retreat, please click here for more information.
If you’re a Plus member or an All-Access monthly member, please first read the restriction requirements listed here and then, if you meet them, upgrade to All-Access annual via your account page and then contact us via our contact page and let us know that you meet the requirements, have upgraded, and would like to join the retreat.
If you have further questions, please contact us via our contact page.

Join Now

Join Wisdom

This content is only available to members taking part in our online retreat with B. Alan Wallace.

If you have already joined this retreat, please log in; you’ll then be able to see the contents of this page.
If you are an all-access Annual member who has not joined the retreat, please click here for more information.
If you’re a Plus member or an All-Access monthly member, please first read the restriction requirements listed here and then, if you meet them, upgrade to All-Access annual via your account page and then contact us via our contact page and let us know that you meet the requirements, have upgraded, and would like to join the retreat.
If you have further questions, please contact us via our contact page.

Join Now

Join Wisdom

This content is only available to members taking part in our online retreat with B. Alan Wallace.

If you have already joined this retreat, please log in; you’ll then be able to see the contents of this page.
If you are an all-access Annual member who has not joined the retreat, please click here for more information.
If you’re a Plus member or an All-Access monthly member, please first read the restriction requirements listed here and then, if you meet them, upgrade to All-Access annual via your account page and then contact us via our contact page and let us know that you meet the requirements, have upgraded, and would like to join the retreat.
If you have further questions, please contact us via our contact page.

Join Now

Join Wisdom

This content is only available to members taking part in our online retreat with B. Alan Wallace.

If you have already joined this retreat, please log in; you’ll then be able to see the contents of this page.
If you are an all-access Annual member who has not joined the retreat, please click here for more information.
If you’re a Plus member or an All-Access monthly member, please first read the restriction requirements listed here and then, if you meet them, upgrade to All-Access annual via your account page and then contact us via our contact page and let us know that you meet the requirements, have upgraded, and would like to join the retreat.
If you have further questions, please contact us via our contact page.

Join Now

Join Wisdom

Join Wisdom

Join Wisdom

Join Wisdom

Mark Van Buren: Your Life Is Meditation (#107)

About the Interviewee

Join Wisdom

Wisdom Dharma Chats | Thupten Jinpa – Illuminating the Intent Book Launch

The Lamp for Integrating the Practices (Caryāmelāpakapradīpa)

Hungry Ghosts

The Middle-Length Treatise on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment

The Roar of Thunder

Squabbling Squashes

John Brehm: The Dharma of Poetry (#106)

About the Interviewee

Join Wisdom

Join Wisdom

Join Wisdom

Join Wisdom

Join Wisdom

Join Wisdom

Join Wisdom