September 19/20, 2023 UPDATE:This course is now available onUdemy.com: https://www.udemy.com/course/progressive-breath-awareness-booster. Even though in a way I got the option I requested of them, I’ve decided since Insight Timer didn’t give notice or choice but made all their courses available only to Plus Members I’ve put the course on Udemy to reach a wider audience of those wanting one off purchases. If anyone wants to do the course outside of these platforms please contact me.
June 27, 2023 UPDATE:Progressive Breath Awareness Booster – New Bonus Mini Coursenow available as an Insight Timer Plus audio free for members. From what I remember, under the older rules, before opening up to all teachers, this mini bonus course is essentially stuff I couldn’t include in the main course because I was limited to 15 minutes per day and had to pitch a detailed plan before starting piecing together production.
The Progressive Breath Awareness Booster course primarily addresses the breath through approaches, observations, perceptions, practice ideas, and with inquiries ranging from simple, commonplace, practical and broad overviews to the bizarre, obscure, esoteric, and minutia. This aim of this course is not to overwhelm, for overthinking, for comparison, or judgement; rather, it primarily intends leveraging cutting edge material to increase and enhance the likelihood of maintaining and prolonging bare awareness of breath for and during breath practices as well as in everyday life.
Since I find being aware of breath (for longer periods) very helpful, yet at the same time quite challenging, the intent to discover new and better ways to deepen and prolong breath awareness brought through most everything in this course to contemplate, meditate with and experience each part piece by piece.
The decision to initially keep private much of the material in this course came when assembling 2020’s Breath: Questions for Contemplation; Perceptions and Practice Ideas which is highly recommended as prerequisite. Since Part One wasn’t designed for Insight Timer’s course format it didn’t make since to use the same title and then tack on a “Part Two” hence the rename Progressive Breath Awareness Booster while also siding with releasing as a course for wider adoption and benefit.
In addition to this public presentation the private portion may be given if working with me, or may be released later. Much of what’s public is aggregated from other public sources while the private includes material I’m unsure of what portion is public and what portion is not.
“Being unsure of what portion is public and what portion is not” mostly means there’s really no simple way to verify what’s considered as new and original for this course hasn’t already been put out there in some shape, form or manner and to what degree of (dis)similarity.
The choice for this type of release also brought up and includes the classic question of whether or not it’s OK to charge for meditation instructions. Below is a portion of my email response to this very consideration (with additions and edits in brackets for retrospective clarity):
. . . I thought and pondered this long and hard while making this course. I even reached out to Insight Timer to request an option for this course to not be sold individually while still making it available to plus members who [more or less] donate to the platform (to support all the free users) and then [plus] members get access to all the courses (amongst other features) and then insight timer in turn more or less donates to teachers if I’m getting all this right.
I made sure nothing included in the course, to my current knowledge, came directly from any Buddhist canon nor directly from any Buddhist teachers (other than a handful of descriptive word choices) as it’s obvious Buddhist teachings are provided freely in the spirit of generosity.
As soon as Insight Timer offers the option to only make this course available to [donating] members I’ll choose that and even better if I will be allowed to mention that anyone interested in this course can contact me directly and get it freely. I surely plan to mention this on my website for the announcement write up for this course too.
. . .
I invite further thoughts, feelings and advice about all this
The female barefoot in the desert image above, as well as the windblown male silhouette for this blog post’s main image were both rejected by Insight Timer. They write, “for courses, we recommend using, clean, warmer, minimalistic, bold, and compelling images that generate positive emotions in our audience.”
And (then) check out the course entirely free for Insight Timer Plus members (currently $60/year which includes a 7-day free trial), or the easy to remember: tinyurl.com/breathcourse. There’s a multiple choice reflective question at the end of each of the five days on Insight Timer with no right or wrong answer as well as a virtual classroom for students to ask (me) questions.
As a bonus, after finishing the course listen to Progressive Breath Awareness Booster – New Bonus Mini Course anInsight Timer Plus Premium Track free for members. From what I remember, under the older rules, before opening up course creation to all teachers, this mini bonus course is essentially stuff I couldn’t include in the main course because I was limited to 15 minutes per day and had to pitch a detailed plan before starting piecing together production.
It’s also currently $19.99 via: https://www.udemy.com/course/progressive-breath-awareness-booster. Even though in a way I got the option I requested of them, I’ve decided since Insight Timer didn’t give notice or choice but made all their courses available only to Plus Members I’ve put the course on Udemy to reach a wider audience of those wanting one off purchases. If anyone wants to do the course outside of these platforms please contact me
Born of necessity for more optimal breath meditation and almost even just being able to use breath as a meditation object nearly at all, I wish the best optimal outcomes to all who come across this course.
In this forty-sixth installment of the ongoing live series with Wendy Nash, we continue our inquiry into meditation practice both on and off the cushion this time keeping on with a kind of 37 theme from last month’s “The 37 Practices of a Bodhisattva” and now to the 37 Factors of Awakening from the Theravada tradition essential to realizing awakening. We will likely just approach some of these in a non-systematic manner to see what insights and wisdom come up from our studies, experiences and practices. As usual we invite questions and comments live, beforehand and after
Overview of the 37 Factors of Enlightenment
The 37 factors of enlightenment in Theravada Buddhism are essential teachings that guide practitioners toward spiritual development and liberation. These factors are categorized into several groups, each contributing to the path of awakening.
Categories of the 37 Factors
Category
Factors Included
1. Four Ways of Attending to Mindfulness
– Mindfulness of the body (kāyānupassanā) – Mindfulness of feelings (vedanānupassanā) – Mindfulness of the mind (cittānupassanā) – Mindfulness of mental objects (dhammanupassanā)
2. Four Right Strivings
– Efforts to prevent unwholesome states – Efforts to abandon unwholesome states – Efforts to develop wholesome states – Efforts to maintain wholesome states
– Mindfulness (sati) – Investigation of the Dhamma (dhamma vicaya) – Energy (viriya) – Joy (pīti) – Tranquility (passaddhi) – Concentration (samādhi) – Equanimity (upekkhā)
7. Noble Eightfold Path
– Right view (sammā diṭṭhi) – Right intention (sammā saṅkappa) – Right speech (sammā vācā) – Right action (sammā kammanta) – Right livelihood (sammā ājīva) – Right effort (sammā vāyāma) – Right mindfulness (sammā sati) – Right concentration (sammā samādhi)
*There’s naturally an ongoing open call for meditation (related) questions for the (roughly) monthly “Meditation Q & A” either by the various social media means listed; integratingpresence[at]protonmail.com or just showing to type/ask live.*
Background
Regular, current and past visitors to Integrating Presence may recall the monthly series “Ask Us Anything” I did with Denny K Miu from August 2020 until January 2022 — partially including and continuing on with Lydia Grace as co-host for awhile until March 2022.
For a fewmonthsthereafter I did various Insight Timer live events exploring potential new directions and/or a continuation of the Ask Us Anything format while weaving in other related teachings to these events.
Then, after chats with meditation coach Wendy Nash, it became clear to start a new collaboration similar to “Ask Us Anything” simply and clearly called “Meditation Q & A” especially due to the original intent of the Ask Us Anything’s being “discussions about meditation and related topics.”
Audio: 37 Factors Of Awakening | “Meditation Q & A With Wendy Nash” #46
In this swapcast recorded near the Istituto Lama Tzong Khapa (ILTK) https://www.iltk.org Venerable Yudrön (Asokā) of https://youtube.com/@echoesandstoriesofdhamma and I talk a little Buddhist philosophy, monastic training, daily mindfulness practice, and navigating the spiritual path followed by an excerpt from a conversation with Venerable Tenzin Pamo who lives at ILTK
Many thanks to Venerable Yudrön for taking the time out to invite me to record, the sharing involved and the editting
0:00 – Introduction & Welcome
02:30 – Life & Practice at ILTK
07:15 – Monastic Training & Community Dynamics
13:40 – Integrating Study & Daily Meditation
20:10 – Working Through Obstacles & Doubts
23:30 – Venerable Tenzin Pamo
Some of the Teachers, Historical Figures, Places, Organizations & Communities Mentioned / Referenced:
Lama Thubten Yeshe (Lama Yeshe – Co-founder of FPMT/ILTK; mentioned for his book When the Chocolate Runs Out)
Lama Zopa Rinpoche (Co-founder of FPMT, ILTK, Kopan Monastery, and Kopan Nunnery)
Ajahn Chah / Thai Forest Masters / Luang Por (Referenced in connection with Cittaviveka / Chithurst Buddhist Monastery and teachers who came from the Thai Forest Tradition)
Dharmakirti (Dharmak in transcript – 7th-century Indian Buddhist philosopher associated with Buddhist logic, epistemology, and valid cognition)
Istituto Lama Tzong Khapa (ILTK) (Pomaia, Tuscany, Italy)
FPMT (Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition)
Audio: Monastic Life, Mind & Meditation With Venerable Yudrön (Asokā)
Timestamps removed from YouTube transcript with no edits via ai:
Hey, wholeness. Welcome. This is Josh of Integrating Presence and today I’m joined by venerable Udrung. Venerable, how’s it going today?
Oh, it’s wonderful. It’s really wonderful. I’m fine. And um in a beautiful spot as well. You can see behind me.
Let me just let me just jump in real quick. We’re going to publish this on both integrating presence and echoes and stories of Dharma. So venerable, why don’t you explain what’s going on here?
I currently am in northern Tuskanyany at um the institut uh established 1976.
Uh the location is stunning. It’s on the
Tescan Hills and it’s a several century old castle refurbished and uh made
adequate for several monastic sana to to be settled here over
the years. Some resident teachers even have passed away already after staying here 27 30 years.
So institut is belongs to the galuk tradition of
Tibetan Buddhism and the idea in the beginning
was born uh by two masters uh lama who’s known because he wrote
this little book called when the chocolate runs out about happiness basically and uh Lama
and Lama both of them Tibetans who had escaped to Nepal
they both passed away. Lazopar passed away two years two almost three years ago in Nepal. He also was the one who
established Copan monastery on the hills of Kathmandu and Copan Nanary also on
the hills of Kathmandu in Nepal. And so the institute is celebrating this year his its 50th anniversary.
So there’s lots of activities and uh it’s a semi monastic and lay
institute. So it’s not a monastery but it functions as partial monastery with the lay community and there are
lots of activities um like secular Actually,
there also is a a teacher here who used to be in the
Thai forest tradition and knows uh Rampo.
It’s very vibrant and obviously it reminds me of how Cheetah
Monastery was established the same year in the UK.
Uh it has a bit of a similar energy inside.
I’ve been here 10 days and I set on a retreat
that also contains some teachings, some essential teachings, online training
and I have been blessed to be integrated in the nuns community.
So, and reconnect with nuns whom I had met in Bhutan last year in November.
It’s been very vibrant, very intense and beautiful and we also been blessed with beautiful weather. So, this is the end
of the summer in Tuskany and the air is very pure. also have recorded a number of interviews with some of the nuns and I found a beautiful community.
Some of them have had incredible uh journeys through the Himalayas.
Also, interestingly, the nuns community uh counts
14 months altogether and four monks in addition four western monks in addition to the the Tibetan teachers.
So there were more nuns [laughter] than monks, but it’s still not a monastery and it’s definitely not a nand.
So it’s been very it’s been wonderful actually to to listen to them and to to listen to their stories. So I will
integrate some of those uh interviews into our conversation as well.
And thanks for taking the time to uh do that. I’m looking forward to to to hearing all these. I mean that’s quite a
lot of work organizing and then you know almost kind of not convincing but you know and then taking the time and
everything like that. Um did you want to say anything about that or Yes. I real Yes. Actually it’s
interesting when we had the our our conversation last time I had this sense that I was sharing a lot. I’m not used to speak about my journey and my myself.
So I I had a suddenly a thought that hm maybe it’s too much of a personal story
and u and then I arrived here and all these nuns and the teachings and I
said said would you be willing to be part of my introduction to a podcast
where I was on conversation with a host who wanted to know about my journey.
Yes, please. [laughter] And I said and they asked then they said why would you like to do it under that format? I said well I I’m probably going
to use that those interviews in different formats but uh because I thought that I was talking
too much about myself but obviously it’s a paradox because the actual podcast what it was was my my journey and they
said but you know you have to remember that the conditions of the western nuns
in particular compared to other nuns in all traditions is is very specific because we need to find homes for
especially when we don’t speak Tibetan if you are in a Tibetan tradition and so people are interested to hear about
these stories and I said well then even more so I want to add some of some of your our story and I will do that it will require
some editing I’ve had interesting stories and and already I had one of my assumptions it’s not necessarily my own
assumption but it’s it’s a general assumptions that tends to to consider that women tend to ordain late later in life compared to
men. And there some of them have uh a full life not just the work but they have a husband and they have children
and then things happen and you know something causes and condition come together and they decide to become
monastics and the next day I met one of the nuns who arrived from India and she’s a tutor for the debating part of
the master program and I realized she ordained here when
she was 23. So she actually is the eldest in terms of years of ordination.
She’s not the eldest because she’s only 43. The eldest is is beyond 70.
But there are nuns here who have been ordained for 18 and 16, 17, 18, 19 years. So it’s a very particular
community. and all my assumptions or the general assumptions were like completely shattered [laughter] in on in many in many aspects. So it’s
it’s been extremely uh important for me to be here at this stage of my journey and at the
same time to hear those stories. The location here is quite stunning.
Yeah, big yeah as I say that’s that’s awesome. and some other synchronicities here. You know, I heard some uh construction in the
background there. Here I am at a public place u to I was just talking to a um a lay gentleman uh out in the Boston area
and he’s a Tibetan Buddhist practitioner and he’s like he wants to integrate or implement this debating culture uh
somehow in the United States and we were just talking how it is kind of the wild west for Dhamma in the United States
[Ai assist:] In this episode of Integrating Presence, I’m joined by Dr. Will Tuttle, author of The World Peace Diet, to explore a side of his life many may not know: his deep roots in Zen Buddhism.
Dr. Tuttle shares his incredible “existential” journey—from being raised in the birthplace of American Transcendentalism to walking across the country with no money in search of a Master. We dive deep into his experiences living at “The Farm” in Tennessee, finding his teacher in a Zen center in Alabama, and eventually traveling to South Korea to live and practice as a Zen monk at Songgwangsa.
In this conversation, we discuss:
The influence of Emerson and Thoreau on his early spiritual path.
The “man with the staff” prophecy and finding his Zen Master.
The rigorous daily life of a monk in a traditional Korean monastery.
The synthesis of meditation and sutra study in the Jogye Order.
The mysterious “relics” (Sarira) found in the ashes of enlightened masters.
How the spiritual landscape of South Korea has shifted over the decades.
You are correct—that was a condensed and polished version formatted for readability, rather than the literal word-for-word transcript.
Here is the complete, exact transcript text verbatim from the original provided audio context. All filler words, stutters, false starts, and exact conversational phrasing are preserved, cleaned of chapter markers, and formatted cleanly with speaker tags and paragraph breaks for WordPress:
Josh: Hey wholeness, welcome. This is Josh of Interklild and Integrating Presence and I’m rejoined by Dr. Will Tuttle. I guess it’s Dr. 2, right? Still.
Will Tuttle: Yes.
Josh: Cool. How’s it going today?
Will Tuttle: Thank you, Josh. It’s going very well and I really appreciate the platform you’re creating and thanks everyone for listening in. Great to be here.
Josh: Well, right on. Yeah. for the the first time we we talked on my other platform and you gave a story of kind of your background, you know, of how you went across the country early on and how it led to so many things from there. So, I’ll link to that in the show notes. So, we have to go back through all that. But I just I wanted to talk more on integrating presence here since it’s more of a Buddhist related platform now. how you how you came to the dharma dharma, you know, how you how what was your like first exposure to it and and just general background and uh we we’ll just jump in there too.
Will Tuttle: Sure. Well, you know, that’s a great question. I I think I was probably in a way first exposed to the dharma through the American transcendentalist. I was born and raised in conquered Massachusetts and I wasn’t that aware of it growing up as a kid but when I went away to college in Maine in the early 1970s I started to read Emerson and thorough and that led to some teachings a little bit into Dowoism Buddhism they were really bringing in fact I found out later thorough had the largest library of Asian books in the in North America Dowism Bavad Gita all these things so they were beginning to integrate these and trying to fit it into the Christian background that they were in and created transcendentalist kind of thinking. So I and then I remember I was at KBY College in Maine. I took a course in meditation that was taught by a a Christian the chaplain actually of the of the chapel. But we learned about Zen, you know, we studied Zen. So I started watching my breath for the first time. I was only maybe I don’t know 19 or 20 years old, something like that. And that was one thing led to another and I started to talk to my family, my younger brother Ed and we decided well actually we discovered this book about uh Ramana Maharshi from India but his practice was very similar to a He said go deeper with the question of who am I? You know what is this being you think you are? You’re not this body you know and so I was introduced to those ideas and I actually loved it. It was like I’ve been raised in a Christian tradition but it it had been like kind of like water on a duck’s back. It never really took for me. I just didn’t quite connect for some reason. But when I heard these teachings, I was like real water. I think I was so thirsty. And so we just decided, and I won’t go into it, but we decided to leave home, walk go to California, walk all the way there with no money. And we ended up walking west to Buffalo and then south over a several month period about 20 miles a day. We ended up at the farm in Tennessee, which was the largest in the world back in 1975. and they were studying basically under Steven Gaskin who was sort of the main founder but he was a student of Suzuki Roshi and and did a lot of work with the Zen Center and Suzuki Roshi at the San Francisco Zen Center and and right when we got there the book the Zen mind beginner’s mind had just come out everybody was reading that book and so we we read it too and it kind of went along with everything that we were thinking and you know or non-thinking I guess and but it was just too focused there on work I mean it was like just hard work, you know, cutting wood for it was January, it was freezing or December. And so we left there and walked farther south to Alabama and we ended up we heard [clears throat] about and we ended up at a Zen center, a Korean Zen center in Husville, Alabama that had been started by uh some people who had connected up with Soyang Bosanim. He was a a Zen master from South Korea. And so we could just practice there. It was so great. We we they gave us a room. My grandmother sent us $10 a week. we could live on back in 1975. You could live on that. And uh we sat from like 6:00 a.m. till 9:00 p.m. every day. We just nobody, you know, we had our and there were some people there that were serious uh students of the dharma and they would help us and teach us certain things. And then it was funny because we had heard when we were at the at the farm that by this kind of a psychic person who said, “I see a man with a staff coming into your life.” And so after about 3 months in in March, this guy from Northern California, a Zen master was going to come and teach there and they showed us a picture of this old man and he was standing there with a staff and we said, “Oh, there he is, you know, the man with the staff.” So he came and so ended up studying with him at Master Gilbert. I also, it’s a long story, but I went I ended up in a Tibetan Buddhist meditation center called Kagur Jordan Kunab in San Francisco. I got out there in I guess it was 1978 maybe and I studied there for a few years. I really love I really liked the Tibetan Buddhist practices and I got pretty deeply into it but I my heart was still with Zen. So I ended up leaving there and studying with my Zen teacher who lived in Oakland. He was in you maybe 80 years old at that point and and I studied with him for the ne till he was about 98 you know for the next almost 20 years. And then during that time I also would studied with Stokang Bosanim from he would come over you know and uh from Korea and then he set it up for me to go over to Slangsa and study there shave my head become a Zen monk for a while there. So that was my introduction into it and it was really mainly I think at that Zen center in Huntsville because we were really into it there and there was classes you know every other night on meditation and and so forth. So that was when we really started reading all the books all the the the and it was and it was both it was Zen but I studied quite a bit of the Terravadan teachings mindfulness practices that are so important Shamata vaposa so forth as the foundational teachings and and then I got into the vajriana in California so I I feel like I have a pretty broad range over the years but but Zen is still sort of my main focus.
In this forty-fifth installment of the ongoing live series with Wendy Nash, we continue our inquiry into meditation practice both on and off the cushion following up this time with a comment Wendy made last month about having memorized and worked with “The 37 Practices of a Bodhisattva” (Gyelse Tokmey Zangpo, 14th century), a classic Tibetan Buddhist text that outlines the mindsets, behaviors, and spiritual training required to cultivate compassion and altruism. So we planned to look at least some of these in the light of formal and daily life practice.
Ai summarizes our talk thus:
Personal Context & Personal Experiences: Wendy shares her history of reciting the 37 practices daily while dealing with a stressful job, separation, and difficult interactions in England. Josh describes his current setting house-sitting in Illinois and recounts a recent cafe encounter where applying loving-kindness helped shift a tense atmosphere.
Interpreting the 37 Practices: The hosts explore the tone of the verses—debating whether they read as absurdly difficult, tongue-in-cheek, or radical inversions of normal human behavior. Verses highlighted include:
Giving away possessions or taking on an attacker’s negative karma without thought of retaliation.
Regarding someone who exposes hidden faults or acts like an enemy as a spiritual friend or child.
Taming one’s own mind with loving-kindness rather than trying to conquer external enemies.
Practicing generosity without expectation of karmic reward.
Mindfulness, Ego, and Relationships: They reflect on how the practices highlight human ego, self-righteousness, and the tendency to identify with insights. They discuss the challenges of managing physical sensations/emotions (vedana) and how intimate relationships and daily life serve as the true training ground for self-awareness.
Conclusion: The hosts conclude that while taking the Bodhisattva path literally feels like a massive, “Sisyfean” task, its core power lies in prompting an internal shift in perception and self-honesty.
Below is a breakdown of the 37 practices via ai conjuring, grouped by their core themes:
Foundational Conditions (Practices 1–9)
Appreciate human birth: Utilize the precious opportunity of this life to study and practice the Dharma.
Abandon attachment and aversion: Leave environments that trigger negative emotional reactions or unhealthy attachments.
Seek solitude: Retreat from distractions to allow inner clarity and spiritual progress to grow.
Impermanence: Realize that money, body, and loved ones will all pass away; let go of mundane fixations.
Avoid bad company: Distance yourself from influences that increase negative emotions and diminish virtues.
Rely on spiritual teachers: Seek guidance from qualified teachers whose qualities inspire peace and discipline.
Take refuge: Put your trust in the Three Jewels (Buddha, Dharma, Sangha) for genuine protection.
Avoid harmful actions: Refrain from unwholesome actions to avoid future suffering.
Seek permanent freedom: Recognize that worldly pleasure is fleeting, and aim for ultimate liberation.
Intention & The Altruistic Mind (Practices 10–11)
Generate Bodhicitta: Direct all spiritual effort toward liberating every sentient being from suffering.
Exchange self for others: Understand that suffering comes from self-cherishing, while happiness comes from cherishing others
Transforming Adversity into the Path (Practices 12–21)
When robbed: Offer your body, wealth, and merit to the person who stole from you.
When attacked: Take upon yourself the harm and negative karma of the attacker.
When insulted: Speak of the other person’s virtues in return.
When exposed or criticized: Respect the critic as a spiritual teacher.
When betrayed: Treat a ungrateful person like a loving parent treats a child.
When humiliated: Bow down to the aggressor with respect.
When destitute or ill: Accept suffering joyfully as a tool to burn off negative karma.
When wealthy or famous: Remain humble and recognize that material success is temporary.
When angry: Tame your own mind rather than trying to conquer external enemies.
When overcome by desire: Let go of addictive objects immediately, as if drinking salt water.
The Six Paramitas / Perfections (Practices 22–30)
Generosity: Give without expecting anything in return.
Ethical conduct: Maintain morality, as you cannot help others if you cannot discipline yourself.
Patience: Treat hostile people as valuable teachers of patience.
Enthusiastic effort: Apply diligence to spiritual training as if your hair were on fire.
Concentration: Cultivate deep meditation (samadhi) to calm the mind.
Wisdom: Realize emptiness—that all phenomena lack inherent, independent existence.
Examine your own flaws: Continually reflect on your own mistakes rather than judging others.
Avoid harsh words: Speak gently, as harsh language disturbs others and damages virtue.
Mindfulness: Keep constant watch over the state of your mind and actions.
Wisdom & Final Integration (Practices 31–37)
Self-reflection: Continuously examine your faults to eliminate them.
Avoid pointing out faults: Never speak ill of another practitioner’s mistakes.
Abandon attachment to offerings: Avoid competing for wealth, status, or praise.
Avoid harsh speech: Refrain from words that cause distress to others.
Apply remedies immediately: Eradicate disturbing emotions the moment they arise.
Maintain continuous mindfulness: Always ask: “What is the state of my mind right now?”
Dedicate merit: Direct all positive energy gained from these practices toward the enlightenment of all beings.
The Thirty-Seven Practices of All the Bodhisattvas
You see that all things are beyond coming and going, Yet still you strive solely for the sake of living beings— To you, my precious guru inseparable from Lord Avalokita, I offer perpetual homage, respectfully, with body, speech and mind.
The perfect buddhas, who are the source of all benefit and joy, Come into being through accomplishing the sacred Dharma. And since this in turn depends on knowing how to practise, I shall now describe the practices of all the buddhas’ heirs.
1. The practice of all the bodhisattvas is to study, reflect and meditate, Tirelessly, both day and night, without ever straying into idleness, In order to free oneself and others from this ocean of saṃsāra, Having gained this supreme vessel—a free, well-favoured human life, so difficult to find.
2. The practice of all the bodhisattvas is to leave behind one’s homeland, Where our attachment to family and friends overwhelms us like a torrent, While our aversion towards enemies rages inside us like a blazing fire, And delusion’s darkness obscures what must be adopted and abandoned.
3. The practice of all the bodhisattvas is to take to solitary places, Avoiding the unwholesome, so that destructive emotions gradually fade away, And, in the absence of distraction, virtuous practice naturally gains strength; Whilst, with awareness clearly focused, we gain conviction in the teachings.
4. The practice of all the bodhisattvas is to renounce this life’s concerns, For friends and relatives, long acquainted, must all go their separate ways; Wealth and prized possessions, painstakingly acquired, must all be left behind; And consciousness, the guest who lodges in the body, must in time depart.
5. The practice of all the bodhisattvas is to avoid destructive friends, In whose company the three poisons of the mind grow stronger, And we engage less and less in study, reflection and meditation, So that love and compassion fade away until they are no more.
6. The practice of all the bodhisattvas is to cherish spiritual friends, By regarding them as even more precious than one’s own body, Since they are the ones who will help to rid us of all our faults, And make our virtues grow ever greater just like the waxing moon.
7. The practice of all the bodhisattvas is to take refuge in the Three Jewels, Since they will never fail to provide protection for all who call upon them, For whom are the ordinary gods of this world ever capable of helping, As long as they themselves are trapped within saṃsāra’s vicious cycle?
8. The practice of all the bodhisattvas is never to commit a harmful act, Even though not to do so might put one’s very life at risk, For the Sage himself has taught how negative actions will ripen Into the manifold miseries of the lower realms, so difficult to endure.
9. The practice of all the bodhisattvas is to strive towards the goal, Which is the supreme state of changeless, everlasting liberation, Since all the happiness of the three realms lasts but a moment, And then is quickly gone, just like dewdrops on blades of grass.
10. The practice of all the bodhisattvas is to arouse bodhicitta, So as to bring freedom to all sentient beings, infinite in number. For how can true happiness ever be found while our mothers, Who have cared for us throughout the ages, endure such pain?
11. The practice of all the bodhisattvas is to make a genuine exchange Of one’s own happiness and well-being for all the sufferings of others. Since all misery comes from seeking happiness for oneself alone, Whilst perfect buddhahood is born from the wish for others’ good.
12. Even if others, in the grips of great desire, should steal, Or encourage others to take away, all the wealth that I possess, To dedicate to them entirely my body, possessions and all my merits From the past, present and future— this is the practice of all the bodhisattvas.
13. Even if others should seek to cut off my head, Though I’ve done them not the slightest wrong, To take upon myself, out of compassion, All the harms they have amassed—this is the practice of all the bodhisattvas.
14. Even if others should declare before the world All manner of unpleasant things about me, To speak only of their qualities in return, With a mind that’s filled with love—this is the practice of all the bodhisattvas.
15. Even if others should expose my hidden faults or deride me When speaking amidst great gatherings of many people, To conceive of them as spiritual friends and to bow Before them in respect—this is the practice of all the bodhisattvas.
16. Even if others whom I have cared for like children of my own Should turn upon me and treat me as an enemy, To regard them only with special fondness and affection, As a mother would her ailing child—this is the practice of all the bodhisattvas.
17. Even if others, equal or inferior to me in status, Should, out of arrogance, disparage me, To honour them, as I would my teacher, By bowing down my head before them—this is the practice of all the bodhisattvas.
18. Even though I may be destitute and despised by all, Beset with terrible illness and plagued by evil spirits, Still to take upon myself all beings’ ills and harmful actions, Without ever losing heart—this is the practice of all the bodhisattvas.
19. Even though I may be famous and revered by all, And as rich as Vaiśravaṇa, the god of wealth himself, To see the futility of all the glory and riches of this world And to remain without conceit—this is the practice of all the bodhisattvas.
20. The practice of all the bodhisattvas is to subdue the mind With the forces of loving kindness and compassion. For unless the real adversary—my own anger—is defeated, Outer enemies, though I may conquer them, will continue to appear.
21. The practice of all the bodhisattvas is to turn away immediately From those things which bring desire and attachment. For the pleasures of the senses are just like salty water: The more we taste of them, the more our thirst increases.
22. The practice of all the bodhisattvas is never to entertain concepts, Which revolve around dualistic notions of perceiver and perceived, In the knowledge that all these appearances are but the mind itself, Whilst mind’s own nature is forever beyond the limitations of ideas.
23. The practice of all the bodhisattvas is to let go of grasping When encountering things one finds pleasant or attractive, Considering them to be like rainbows in the summer skies— Beautiful in appearance, yet in truth devoid of any substance.
24. The practice of all the bodhisattvas is to recognize delusion Whenever one is confronted by adversity or misfortune. For these sufferings are just like the death of a child in a dream, And it’s so exhausting to cling to delusory perceptions as real.
25. The practice of all the bodhisattvas is to give out of generosity, With no hopes of karmic recompense or expectation of reward. For if those who seek awakening must give even their own bodies, What need is there to mention mere outer objects and possessions?
26. The practice of all the bodhisattvas is to observe ethical restraint, Without the slightest intention of continuing in saṃsāric existence. For lacking discipline one will never secure even one’s own well-being, And so any thought of bringing benefit to others would be absurd.
27. The practice of all the bodhisattvas is to cultivate patience, Free from any trace of animosity towards anyone at all, Since any potential source of harm is like a priceless treasure To the bodhisattva who is eager to enjoy a wealth of virtue.
28. The practice of all the bodhisattvas is to strive with enthusiastic diligence— The source of all good qualities—when working for the sake of all who live; Seeing that even śrāvakas and pratyekabuddhas, who labour for themselves alone, Exert themselves as if urgently trying to extinguish fires upon their heads.
29. The practice of all the bodhisattvas is to cultivate concentration, Which utterly transcends the four formless absorptions, In the knowledge that mental afflictions are overcome entirely Through penetrating insight suffused with stable calm.
30. The practice of all the bodhisattvas is to cultivate wisdom, Beyond the three conceptual spheres, alongside skilful means, Since it is not possible to attain the perfect level of awakening Through the other five pāramitās alone, in wisdom’s absence.
31. The practice of all the bodhisattvas is to scrutinize oneself Continually and to rid oneself of faults whenever they appear. For unless one checks carefully to find one’s own confusion, One might appear to be practising Dharma, but act against it.
32. The practice of all the bodhisattvas is never to speak ill Of others who have embarked upon the greater vehicle, For if, under the influence of destructive emotions, I speak of other bodhisattvas’ failings, it is I who am at fault.
33. The practice of all the bodhisattvas is to let go of attachment To the households of benefactors and of family and friends, Since one’s study, reflection and meditation will all diminish When one quarrels and competes for honours and rewards.
34. The practice of all the bodhisattvas is to avoid harsh words, Which others might find unpleasant or distasteful, Since abusive language upsets the minds of others, And thereby undermines a bodhisattva’s conduct.
35. The practice of all the bodhisattvas is to slay attachment And the rest—mind’s afflictions—at once, the very moment they arise, Taking as weapons the remedies held with mindfulness and vigilance. For once the kleshas have become familiar, they’ll be harder to avert.
36. In short, no matter what one might be doing, By examining always the status of one’s mind, With continuous mindfulness and alertness, To bring about the good of others—this is the practice of all the bodhisattvas.
37. The practice of all the bodhisattvas is to dedicate towards enlightenment All the virtue to be gained through making effort in these ways, With wisdom that is purified entirely of the three conceptual spheres, So as to dispel the sufferings of the infinity of beings.
Here I have set down for those who wish to follow the bodhisattva path, Thirty-seven practices to be adopted by all the buddhas’ heirs, Based on what is taught in the sūtras, tantras and treatises, And following the instructions of the great masters of the past.
Since my intellect is only feeble and I have studied but a little, This is not a composition likely to delight the connoisseurs, Yet since I’ve relied upon the sūtras and what the saints have taught I feel these are indeed the genuine trainings of the buddhas’ heirs.
Still, the tremendous waves of activity of the bodhisattvas Are difficult for simple-minded folk like me to comprehend, And I must therefore beg the indulgence of all the perfect saints For any contradictions, irrelevancies or other flaws this may contain.
Through whatever merit has here been gained, may all beings Generate sublime bodhicitta, both relative and absolute, And through this, come to equal Lord Avalokiteśvara, Transcending the extremes of existence and quiescence.
This was composed in Jewel Cave (Rinchen Puk) in Ngulchu by the monk Tokme, a teacher of scripture and reasoning, for his own and others’ benefit.
*There’s naturally an ongoing open call for meditation (related) questions for the (roughly) monthly “Meditation Q & A” either by the various social media means listed; integratingpresence[at]protonmail.com or just showing to type/ask live.*
Background
Regular, current and past visitors to Integrating Presence may recall the monthly series “Ask Us Anything” I did with Denny K Miu from August 2020 until January 2022 — partially including and continuing on with Lydia Grace as co-host for awhile until March 2022.
For a fewmonthsthereafter I did various Insight Timer live events exploring potential new directions and/or a continuation of the Ask Us Anything format while weaving in other related teachings to these events.
Then, after chats with meditation coach Wendy Nash, it became clear to start a new collaboration similar to “Ask Us Anything” simply and clearly called “Meditation Q & A” especially due to the original intent of the Ask Us Anything’s being “discussions about meditation and related topics.”
Audio: 37 Practices Of A Bodhisattva | “Meditation Q & A With Wendy Nash” #45
Full Raw Verbatim Transcript (with timestamps removed via ai and whatever else it did to it:
Hello and welcome everyone. Uh besides this technical challenges, Wendy, how are you? How’s it going?
Well, I had my birthday this week.
Oh, happy late birthday. I don’t know why I missed it. I should should have had this down, but anyway, who who cares?
Better late than never. Okay, so my friend I said, “No presents. No presents. No presents.” cuz I always I’m I hate I hate it when people give me presents because I they give like people give me what they think they should get me rather than what I actually want and you have to know me really well to know me what I want and my partners never get it right like they just never get it right and they’re supposed to be paying attention and they’re rubbish at it. So I just go no presence let’s just not do it. Nonetheless, she did it and it was actually very sweet and she scrimps and saves and she has like she really has a lot of expenses. So for her to send a boat like a box of a box of with a plant and a balloon that would have been a massive massive kind of financial burden for her. Very very sweet. Very sweet.
A that’s cool.
Yeah. So I’m here on Gabby Gabby Country in Queensland. And Josh, you’re in a cafe.
Yeah. You know, I’m I am um housesitting for friends in Eastern Illinois while they go to Death Valley in in uh in the States with their kids. And so there’s no internet out there in my phone plan. It works out there, but barely. So I thought, you know, better better come here and uh do this. And so it it’s kind of fitting for this. usually don’t get into bodhicit sappa practices because I don’t you know I’m not on this path but that’s it’s all about out uh being out and helping people right and saving all beings everywhere. Um so a little little tongue and it but you know kind of um so Wendy why don’t you um you mentioned these 37 practices of abod sappa last time and I I was just looking now and AI messed it up pretty much you know it it it watered it down and and duplicated a lot of stuff. So I put the the regular text in the post too. So what do you want to say about this? Where do you want to start?
So I like the 37 practices of body sata because I a few years ago I was having a miserable time in a job. I was miserable where I was living. I had recently separated. I and the people were just awful at work. Like they were just really awful. And so I actually took to this practice of reciting the 37 practices every morning when I meditated and just to myself and just and I you know I memorized it all. And it was really good cuz when it said like it’s actually very very funny. So the verses are very very funny. So let me just see if I can bring up the verses. And while you’re looking at one, let me um the what I have up here is under the guise of thing transforming adversity into path. When robbed, offer your body, wealth, and merit to the person who stole from you. You know. Yeah. It’s so it’s like okay. Wow. I I’m not there. I I couldn’t imagine doing that when attacked, take upon yourself the harm and negative karma of the attacker, you know. So, it’s kind of tongue and cheek
[Ai assist:] Integrating Presence and Echoes and Stories of Dhamma come together in this special swapcast to speak with Bhante Bhikkhu Subhūti, an American Buddhist monastic based in Sri Lanka.
Now in his 20th vassa, Bhante Subhūti reflects on the journey that brought him from lay life into monastic training, and on what two decades of living the monastic life have taught him about practice, discipline, and the mind.
The conversation also explores aspects of meditation practice, including his experience of developing and sustaining a contemplative practice within the monastic environment. Alongside the formal dimensions of Buddhist practice, Bhante Subhūti shares practical reflections and advice for lay practitioners—how the Dhamma can be integrated into ordinary life, and what can genuinely support spiritual development beyond the meditation cushion.
Chapter Titles (with approximate timestamps):
0:00 – Introduction & Welcome
0:35 – Meeting Bhante Subhūti
1:23 – Early Spiritual Journey & Be Here Now
3:46 – Discovering Buddhism in College
5:00 – Learning Meditation & the Computer Group
8:48 – Leaving Bayer Diagnostics & the Decision to Travel
12:16 – From Tibetan & Mahayana to Theravada & Goenka
16:10 – The Fiji Watch Story: The Turning Point
24:20 – Evacuation, India, and Commitment to Ordination
26:17 – Wat Pah Nanachat & Discovering Pa-Auk
29:29 – Arrival in Myanmar & First Ordination (2001)
34:05 – Visa Crisis & Moving to Sri Lanka (2007)
36:57 – Reordination & Doubts About the Original Ordination
41:12 – Return to Myanmar, Hawaii, and Later Path
44:22 – Current Life: IIT, Master’s Program & Present
53:31 – Concepts, Conventional Truth & Ultimate Reality
1:01:38 – Breath Meditation, Four Elements & Kasinas
Note: if interested in joining Bhante Subhūti’s (roughly every other) Sunday online Dhamma gathering please contact Bhante or other attendees to request to join
Here’s just a outline of a sampling of a portion of the talk:
Josh: I’d like to jump into a key Dhamma topic: concepts. In basic practice, concepts like the body or the breath help us anchor attention. But as practice deepens, we learn that even the “breath” or the “body” are conventional concepts (paññatti), and the practice eventually requires discerning ultimate materiality (rūpa) and mentality (nāma).
Could you talk about the role concepts play in practice, how they can be wholesome (kusala), and where their limitations lie?
Bhante Subhūti: We must distinguish between conventional truth (sammuti-sacca) and ultimate truth (paramattha-sacca).
Even the Buddha used conventional concepts. He referred to himself, called people by their names, and addressed his monks as “Bhikkhus.” He didn’t walk around saying, “Listen closely, ultimate materiality and mentality over there!” He didn’t speak exclusively in terms of kalāpas (subatomic units), cittas, or cetasikas in everyday conversation. In the Sutta pitaka, the Buddha spoke in conventional terms so people could understand. The Abhidhamma provides the detailed “scientific footnotes” underneath those conventional statements.
Think of it like water. Conventionally, we call it “water.” In ultimate chemical reality, it’s H_2O—hydrogen and oxygen molecules. Even a chemist asks for “a glass of water,” not “H_2O.” We need conventional language to communicate.
How Concepts Function in Practice:
Samatha (Concentration): Uses concepts as objects. For example, in mettā (loving-kindness) practice, the object is satta (living beings)—which is a concept. In kasiṇa meditation (like earth or white kasiṇa), you focus on a concept derived from physical form.
Morality (Sīla): Relies on conventional concepts. To break the first precept (killing), there must be the perception of a living being (satta-saññā). In ultimate reality, a body is just shifting physical elements, but morality operates in the realm of conventional awareness.
Vipassanā (Insight): Deals strictly with ultimate realities (paramattha)—discerning physical and mental phenomena, seeing their true characteristics: impermanence (anicca), suffering (dukkha), and non-self (anattā).
The Mistake with Breath Meditation:
Many practitioners confuse ultimate physical sensations with the concept of the breath. When people focus on the breath at the nostrils, they often start focusing on four-element sensations: hardness, heaviness, heat, or movement.
Hardness/Heaviness = Earth element
Heat = Fire element
Pushing/Motion = Air element
When you focus on physical sensations (temperature, pressure, tension), you are focusing on ultimate physical realities, not the concept of the breath.
To illustrate a concept: Imagine standing by a highway watching traffic.
If you look at specific cars—a red Ford F-150, a blue Tesla, a Mazda—you are focusing on specific individual characteristics.
If you step back and simply hold the general concept of “vehicle,” you ignore color, brand, or model, holding only the concept “vehicle.”
In Ānāpānasati (mindfulness of breathing), the breath must be taken as a continuous concept, ignoring individual elemental sensations (heat, pressure). Once the concept is stabilized, it transforms into a light mark (nimitta).
Josh: That’s a brilliant clarification. Could you give us a brief structural overview of the Pa-Auk meditation system, from samatha to vipassanā?
Bhante Subhūti: Pa-Auk Sayadaw did not invent a new system. He took the classic roadmap provided in the Visuddhimagga and the Abhidhammattha-saṅgaha and systematized it into a step-by-step practical curriculum.
Stage 1: Samatha (Developing Concentration)
Ānāpānasati or Kasiṇa: Practitioners begin with a samatha object (such as breath, Earth kasiṇa, White kasiṇa, etc.).
Nimitta & Jhāna: Through sustained focus on the concept, the light/nimitta appears. The practitioner stabilizes the nimitta and enters the four jhānas (absorption states).
40 Samatha Objects: Practitioners master the five masteries of the jhānas and work through various objects among the 40 traditional samatha subjects.
Four Elements Meditation: To transition toward vipassanā, practitioners analyze the physical body through the Four Elements (Earth, Water, Fire, Air).
Discerning Materiality (Rūpa): As concentration deepens, the practitioner breaks down the physical body into subatomic units called rūpa-kalāpas. They discern the specific elemental compositions of the sense doors (eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind-base).
Discerning Mentality (Nāma): The practitioner discerns mental processes (cittas and cetasikas) occurring at the six sense doors during cognitive processes (vīthi).
The practitioner discerns the cause-and-effect relationships between mental and physical states across time.
Using deep concentration, they trace back causes into past lives (typically 4–5 past lives) and forward into potential future lives, directly verifying how past ignorance (avijjā) and craving (taṇhā) produce present existence.
Stage 4: Vipassanā (Insight Practice)
Only after fully discerning ultimate mind, ultimate matter, and their causes does formal vipassanā begin.
The practitioner applies the 40 modes of Insight (anicca, dukkha, anattā) to all physical and mental phenomena of the past, present, and future, internal and external.
This systematic contemplation (sammasana-ñāṇa) leads sequentially through the stages of Insight Knowledge (vipassanā-ñāṇa), culminating in Nibbāna.
Audio: Watch in the Ocean: From Silicon Valley to Ordination in Myanmar & Sri Lanka with Bhante Subhuti
In this transcript Ai removed timestamps as well as most misspellings corrected (names except Ani), technical terms, place names). Light punctuation and minor smoothing for readability while remaining faithful to the spoken content. Speakers clearly labeled.
Josh: Hey, wholeness and welcome. This is Josh of Integrating Presence and I’ll soon be joined by co-host Anie, formerly known as Ahsoka, for this swap cast with her Echoes and Stories of Dharma podcast. We’ll be joined by guest Bhante Subhuti Bhikkhu. We didn’t do a formal introduction in this. You’ll soon learn all you need to know that an introduction would cover. So without further ado, here it is.
Anie: Hello. Good evening, Bhante.
Bhante Subhuti: Good evening. How are you today?
Anie: I’m doing okay.
Bhante Subhuti: Yeah, we just had a lot of chanting and it’s something I do every day. Nearly every day. We just had a sāmanera who we had a special day for because he’s flying out to Myanmar to go to the Pa-Auk study center in Pyin Oo Lwin. So he’s only 12 years old. So we had like a big… a lot of coconut lamps, coconut oil lamps. Yeah, we had maybe 20 of them or something. So it’s good.
Anie: So well, you have had an interesting journey coming from being a computer programmer into becoming a renunciant and homeless, start living with uncertainty and completely different culture as well. You’ve written a book Going for Broke which is available on your website, and there’s a lot of reflection on your journey from starting to take this shift, turnaround in your life. Would you tell us a bit about how you settled in Sri Lanka eventually? Give you as much time as you need.
Bhante Subhuti: Okay. It’s like having your own… I’ll try to give a shorter version. Yeah.
So for me, I got into spirituality probably when I was like 17 or 18. I think about 17. I asked my parents… I asked my mother to buy me a book called Be Here Now. Remember Be Here Now by Ram Dass. And surprisingly, it’s a lot of people’s first spiritual books, at least in my generation. But I really… it was just a little bit of curiosity of what spirituality is and what those… because I was just 17. Especially in the 80s there wasn’t really any spirit… you were really weird if you were into spirituality. And like the Buddhist section in the early 90s in Barnes & Noble… we used to have bookstores if you remember… and the whole Eastern philosophy section was maybe like three feet wide. It was like one shelf and one or two shelves on a bookshelf and that would include like Hindu and Mahayana, Tibetan, and there would be nothing in Theravāda. There’d just be maybe the Majjhima Nikāya or the Dīgha Nikāya and just a few other books. Maybe What the Buddha Taught might have been there and the Dhammapada.
So anyway, when I was in college I took a world religion lecture-hall thing by chance because it was my first year and I was just signing up for any classes that I could get into. And when I learned about Buddhism I thought that Buddhism would be a good religion for me, mostly because I didn’t party when I was in university. I didn’t drink, I didn’t do drugs. And so the rules… there’s only five precepts… and the rules seemed very simple for me. And so then I asked a friend to teach me meditation who used to go to UC Berkeley, which was one of the places you could find spirituality in the late 80s and early 90s. And he came back to a local school that I was going to and I knew his brother. He was like an older brother of a friend of mine and I asked him to teach me meditation and he taught me meditation how to count my breath and the basic… count up to 10 and back to zero. In the Pa-Auk method they say count… or even the Visuddhimagga actually they say count five is too small and 10 is too large so you should usually pick eight because it’s close to the Eightfold Noble Path. So but he taught me how to count the breath and I was just thinking like, should I light a candle? And he’s like, if you want to light a candle you can light a candle. I said, should I light some incense? And he says, if you want to light some incense you can light some incense. And so I did that and it was something that I kept up for a good portion of the remainder of my life actually.
So I learned how to meditate and kept meditating and then I saw some advertisements for meditation on the bulletin board and ended up joining what ended up being like some type of computer cult and teaching meditation. No drugs, no alcohol, but you sort of get high off of meditation. And everyone was like… you go to these parties where you just meditate and have fun and they were really high-vibe parties. They’re really cool and you mingle around and there’s like college students and there’s like other people who are a little older in their 30s or 40s and everyone’s a computer programmer who’s a professional and then later they want you to become a computer programmer as well. And so I was into it and I decided to try it out. It wasn’t my major in university. I was supposed to be a school teacher and back then… it’s not like computers nowadays… not many people had computers and at that time I didn’t have a computer actually. Very few people owned computers. We might have a computer lab. You had to take a test in order to go into the computer lab during that time. You had to prove that you could copy files by typing the commands back then and people were afraid of computers. And being a computer programmer is like you had to be really brave because the computers were not as friendly as they are now. And I ended up graduating with a degree in technology education. It sounds good for someone who’s going to become a computer programmer, but it has nothing to do with computer programming. And there’s another major called educational technology, which is about bringing technology into the classroom. That’s a different major. It’s reverse words.
So after I graduated I joined that thing and then I became a computer professional with a different degree. I ended up fast-tracking into the computer industry and they wanted us to make a lot of money and they told us how to do it and we went direct. My first job was contracting, consulting, and just straight in. And I never had like a full-time corporate job. And we learned how to do that and know our stuff cold and get into the business. And so I decided to leave that group because it was getting more businessy instead of spiritual. It used to be very spiritual. We used to meditate with the teacher. It was like really fun. Incredible experiences actually. And then so I decided to leave after I became a professional for like a year or maybe like a year or so. And then I just went to different jobs.
And my third job was working for Bayer Diagnostics, you know, the aspirin company, the medical pharmaceutical. They’re a chemical company actually. And we were making a blood meter. And the first… I was brought in because the project was late. The human blood project. It counts your red blood cells, your white blood cells, and this other thing called new… new XY. I don’t even know what those are. But we made this machine and then the second phase was an animal blood machine. And the animal blood machine I found out later was used for animal laboratory testing.
So I was a vegetarian at that time and there was one other vegetarian… you know, this type of stuff, you were like a weirdo back then if you were a vegetarian. They didn’t have vegetarian menus at restaurants. You know, I was there to watch Starbucks do soy milk lattes… like when they first started doing them it was like a secret thing that you had to know about. But so yeah, I was a vegetarian. There was one other vegetarian in the whole complex and she told me about this animal laboratory testing thing and I decided that I couldn’t work on the project and that I would leave. And I gave six months notice and I continued to work on the human blood machine. And generally speaking, the code is nearly the same for the animal blood machine except a little bit of a user interface to select which animal’s blood you’re testing. But generally speaking, especially from my end, the sections of the code that I was particularly working on… it was all the same. And so they told me to work on the human machine because I refused to work on the animal phase two project. And so they told me to just continue working on the human blood machine and they would copy my code into the phase two codebase. And eventually I had to leave. They were paying me lots of money and I wasn’t doing much work because most of the development was on phase two. And so they wanted me around because it was medical diagnostic equipment and I could fix my own bugs like in an hour and it might take someone two weeks to do it. So whatever they paid me per week, per hour, whatever, it was a bargain. But eventually I decided to leave and I gave them six months notice. And that was a catalyst for me to go traveling. It was something that I always wanted to do. I thought that because I was a contractor or consultant that I would have long breaks in between jobs because it would be difficult to get a job, but it wasn’t that way. And I just went from one job to the next and my jobs were very long-term actually, even though it was based on short-term hire. Originally it was short-term hires, but they ended up lasting a long time. So I never took a vacation. I barely took any days off. And then I just went all or nothing and I got a backpack and a ticket to go halfway around the world and I was ready for a big journey which I wrote about.
And I should backtrack a couple steps. I did Goenka. When I left that teacher, I started in the Tibetan world because it was closest to like what the teacher was doing. And then I went to the Mahayana world, Chinese Buddhism, Vietnamese Buddhism. And I was doing the teacher training course in a Vietnamese temple. And from there I learned about the White Lotus Sutra. And I learned that it’s okay to lie if you have a good reason. And I was like, this is nonsense. And I completely rejected Mahayana because of that. And at the same time we were assigned a book to summarize and teach. And I had picked The Wings to Awakening by Ajahn Thanissaro. These are the 37 factors of enlightenment called the bodhipakkhiyā dhammā. And it was a good book. And at that time we also had to do a retreat, a 10-day, 7-to-10-day retreat per year as part of this course type thing that I was doing, this teacher training course. And so immediately I became immersed in Theravāda and I rejected Mahayana, Tibetan. And I was just so amazed with the structure of the Theravāda suttas. And being someone who learned about education, we have a saying in the business: say what you’re going to say, say it, say what you said. And if you look at the suttas, you know, the Buddha, he will say, here are the five things of blah blah blah. And then he lists them out and he said, these are the five things, you know, and this is where it leads to. And then you reach Nibbāna. Sādhu, sādhu. So it really grabbed me about how straightforward the teachings were. There was like no mysterious… there was nothing mystical and it was very straightforward, it’s very common sense. And I was like, wow, this is what I should be doing.
And when I did my first Goenka retreat… and a lot of Westerners, now you can have many entrances into Buddhism and spirituality, but one of the main entrance ways back in the 90s, early 90s… actually this was in the late 90s… was to do a Goenka course. It’s one of the only things around. Otherwise you’d have to spend $200–$300 a night doing a Tibetan or doing the IMS classes. Actually they’re about $80 or $100 a night at that time. And so I did the Goenka thing and I really loved it. I just had so much faith in it because on the first night I ate a lot of extra food on the first night and then there’s like a video recording and he’s like, so you ate a lot of food didn’t you? And I was like, how does he read my mind? Then I was like, no, this is a recording. So I was like, he knows human nature. And so then I followed the teachings and I believed that you could do everything in the teachings that what he was teaching. So I had a really great experience there. And I remember on the 10th day they allow you to talk and they do loving-kindness. Everyone’s talking and I just want to stay in this… they give you this like pagoda room or something like that. It was just like when I got there I was like, this is all I need. I just need a little meditation closet and I’ll be okay. And I remember crying on the last day because everyone’s talking and I didn’t want it to end. And I wanted this to be my life.
The Story of the Weaver-Girl — Dhammapada Verse 174 Pesakaradhita Vatthu — [Verse 174: Blind are the people of this world: only a few in this world see clearly (with Insight). Just as only a few birds escape from the net, so also, only a few get to the world of the devas, (and Nibbana).]– https://tipitaka.net/tipitaka/dhp/verseload.php?verse=174
phaistosdiskdecoded.com — Is the Phaistos Disk a Buddhist meditation diagram? ‘The Phaistos Disk is a coded master key with a system of numbers that was used to illustrate a network of knowledge for up to 1,800 years.’
Desire Realm as the Emotional World; 8th jhana as neither sensation nor no sensation — as threshold of perception; avijjā = insentience; Nirodha-samāpatti as the stopping of existence (or awakening from the dream of existence)
Desire Realm as the Emotional World; 8th jhana as neither sensation nor no sensation — as threshold of perception; avijjā = insentience; Nirodha-samāpatti as the stopping of existence (or awakening from the dream of existence)
https://t.co/EUVJPId02c Is the Phaistos Disk a Buddhist meditation diagram? ‘The Phaistos Disk is a coded master key with a system of numbers that was used to illustrate a network of knowledge for up to 1,800 years.’
In this forty-fourth installment of the ongoing live series with Wendy Nash, we continue our inquiry into meditation practice both on and off the cushion this time with Spiritual Friendship or Kalyāṇa-mitta basically meaning “friend of moral beauty” or a “companion on the path of goodness.” What qualifies as this? What are pseudopartners? What is our lived experience with this? Why is this important? How does this relate to meditation?
[Episode note: Even though Wendy has expressed past challenges in UK I’ve found my time there overall of great fruit and great benefit inside and outside the Dhamma and I stay in touch with numerous friends and acquaintances with zero enemies]
Related suttas:
The 7 Qualities of a Good Friend (AN 7.36)
According to the Mitta Sutta, a friend worth associating with is someone who:
Gives what is hard to give (generosity of time, energy, or resources).
Does what is hard to do (helps you out even when it’s highly inconvenient).
Endures what is hard to endure (bears with your bad moods, flaws, or difficult moments).
Reveals their secrets to you (they trust you with their vulnerability).
Keeps your secrets (your private struggles are entirely safe with them).
Doesn’t abandon you in times of trouble (they stick around when life gets messy).
Doesn’t look down on you when you’re down and out (they don’t judge or scorn you when you fail or lose your status).
Ven. Ananda said to the Blessed One, “This is half of the holy life, lord: admirable friendship, admirable companionship, admirable camaraderie “Don’t say that, Ananda. Don’t say that. Admirable friendship, admirable companionship, admirable camaraderie is actually the whole of the holy life…https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn45/sn45.002.than.html
The “Warm-Hearted Friend” in the Sigalovada Sutta (DN 31)
“Householder’s son, you should recognize these four good-hearted friends: the helper, the friend in good times and bad, the counselor, and the one who’s sympathetic.
You can recognize a good-hearted friend who’s a helper on four grounds. They guard you when you’re negligent. They guard your property when you’re negligent. They keep you safe in times of danger. When something needs doing, they provide you with twice the money you need. You can recognize a good-hearted friend who’s a helper on these four grounds.
You can recognize a good-hearted friend who’s the same in good times and bad on four grounds. They tell you secrets. They keep your secrets. They don’t abandon you in times of trouble. They’d even give their life for your welfare. You can recognize a good-hearted friend who’s the same in good times and bad on these four grounds.
You can recognize a good-hearted friend who’s a counselor on four grounds. They keep you from doing bad. They support you in doing good. They teach you what you do not know. They explain the path to heaven. You can recognize a good-hearted friend who’s a counselor on these four grounds.
You can recognize a good-hearted friend who’s sympathetic on four grounds. They don’t delight in your misfortune. They delight in your good fortune. They keep others from criticizing you. They encourage praise of you. You can recognize a good-hearted friend who’s sympathetic on these four grounds.”
The Buddha spoke this matter. Then the Holy One, the Teacher, went on to say:
“A friend who’s a helper, one the same in both pleasure and pain, a friend of good counsel, and one of sympathy;
an astute person understands these four friends for what they are and carefully looks after them, like a mother the child at her breast.
The astute and virtuous shine like a burning flame. They pick up riches as bees roaming round pick up pollen.
And their riches proceed to grow, like a termite mound piling up. In gathering wealth like this, a householder does enough for their family.
And they’d hold on to friends by dividing their wealth in four. One portion is to enjoy. Two parts invest in work. And the fourth should be kept for times of trouble.”
*There’s naturally an ongoing open call for meditation (related) questions for the (roughly) monthly “Meditation Q & A” either by the various social media means listed; integratingpresence[at]protonmail.com or just showing to type/ask live.*
Background
Regular, current and past visitors to Integrating Presence may recall the monthly series “Ask Us Anything” I did with Denny K Miu from August 2020 until January 2022 — partially including and continuing on with Lydia Grace as co-host for awhile until March 2022.
For a fewmonthsthereafter I did various Insight Timer live events exploring potential new directions and/or a continuation of the Ask Us Anything format while weaving in other related teachings to these events.
Then, after chats with meditation coach Wendy Nash, it became clear to start a new collaboration similar to “Ask Us Anything” simply and clearly called “Meditation Q & A” especially due to the original intent of the Ask Us Anything’s being “discussions about meditation and related topics.”
Audio: Spiritual Friendship | “Meditation Q & A With Wendy Nash” #44
Transcript via YouTube(with timestamps removed and cleanups here and there too I suppose via ai or as ai puts it: “the cleaned-up transcript with minor typos, clear misspellings, and obvious miscontextualizations corrected while preserving the original wording and flow”):
Josh: Hey, wholeness. Welcome. This is Josh, Integrating Presence, and joined once again by the intrepid Wendy Nash. Wendy, what’s happening?
Wendy: I’m here on Kabi Kabi country in Queensland, in Caboolture. It’s quite cold. Straight after this, I have to dash out, so I’m a little bit flimsy, but I’m hoping I’m going to keep warm enough [laughter] during our discussion.
Josh: We’ll make it hot and exciting. [laughter] Well, we’ll see. But so tell me about the weather in Australia in the winter. It’s not that cold there for that long, is it? But when it is, nobody’s really prepared for it, and it comes as a shock all the time, or no? How does it work?
Wendy: So Australia is a really big place, so people misunderstand how huge it is. Just to give you a bit of an idea, it’s the same size as the US mainland. If you take off Alaska, then that’s basically the same size as Australia. So to say, “What’s the weather in Australia?” is like saying, “What’s the weather like in the US?” It just depends on where you are.
Where I am is kind of maybe like Miami, where it’s very humid. It’s about maybe 2,000 kilometers south of the Tropic of Capricorn. And so actually the range of temperatures is not particularly variable here. We’re just outside Brisbane [snorts], but it is very humid.
So when it’s really—there’s something called the wet bulb effect, which is that once the relative humidity gets up to like 95 or 100%, you actually can’t perspire anymore. And then if the temperature gets to 35 degrees Celsius, which I don’t know what that is in hot [laughter]—then you actually can’t perspire, and this is sort of an increasing health problem, particularly with all the heat. So you’ll have seen, obviously in Europe and North America, all these heatwaves. So that’s what happens. Even if you’re in front of a fan, it doesn’t make any difference. Trust me, I know because [laughter] I’ve tried it.
Josh: You’ve tried it. What’s it called? A wet bulb effect? Bulb, B-U-L-B. Wet light bulb? Light bulb?
Wendy: Wet bulb effect.
Josh: Okay. Interesting. I haven’t heard of that.
Wendy: Okay.
Josh: Hey, so yeah. Well, [sighs and gasps] it’s hot a lot of places, but at least you have some coldness there, right? Or some coolness now. So, that’s nice, [gasps] I guess. But anyway, okay, we’ll jump right in here, right? It’s time to start. I’ll just read my little blurb here.
In this 44th installment of the ongoing life series with Wendy Nash, we continue our inquiry into meditation practice both on and off the cushion. This time with spiritual friendship, or kalyāṇa-mittatā—it’s a Pali word for what’s translated as spiritual friendship, basically meaning a friend of moral beauty or a companion on the path of goodness. What qualifies as this? What are pseudo-partners? What is our lived experience with this? Why is this important? How does this relate to meditation? This and more live. So join us if you’re not already here, somehow get here and listen, or listen on the replay, which you may be doing, too.
So yeah, spiritual friendship, and this struck me as particularly important because I just came off of two retreats, and everybody [clears throat] should do more retreats. I love retreats and highly suggest them a lot. And at the same time, when we’re doing silent meditation retreats, it does limit our ability to connect as spiritual friends, which—we need this time alone, but then I think we also need this dynamic of spiritual friendship. What say you, Wendy?
You’re not saying anything. You’re on silent retreat.
Wendy: No, I’m not. I was just going, “Can I quickly get this email out?” [laughter] which I need to send.
Josh: Oh, please go ahead. I could talk forever. Go for it. No, seriously. Talk about spiritual friendship.
Wendy: So this is bad behavior on my part, but I’m like madly trying to dash and get this thing out…
Josh: And we can wrap up [laughter] early today, too. You’ve got extra busy stuff, and it’s not like we’re on the clock getting paid or anything. So yeah, there’s no seriousness here that if we don’t need to be, you know what I mean? Like, you’re more than welcome to—you could turn off your camera and I could just talk and you can listen. But seriously, yeah.
Wendy: But no, let’s not do that. So what is a good friend? You know, like a kalyāṇa-mitta. What is that? Huh, [clears throat] I’ve got some guidelines here.
Josh: I’m sure you do.
Wendy: I think it takes many forms. I was at a community building workshop yesterday and it was talking about social capital, and there’s two types of social capital. One is bonding social capital and one is linking social capital. Bonding social capital is the benefit that you gain from being with your friends, with being with people who are alike. The other one is making connections with people you are not like, but still feeling some sort of connection. You wouldn’t maybe have a big discussion with them because it might go really badly [gasps], but nonetheless, you sort of ride your bike or walk or wherever, and you see them and you go, “Hi,” or whatever.
So for good well-being, you need both. You can be poor, you can have any other stuff [clears throat] going on in your life, but if you actually don’t have those two aspects of social capital in your life, you actually don’t have good well-being. This is what he was saying. And you look around at the world today and you go, “Yeah, that’s it.”
So linking back to what is a kalyāṇa-mitta, I think it is both of those. In a way, with the bonding social capital, I think we do need people who support us in our practice. We do need people to have chats with about the dharma, about meditation, to know if we’re on the right track, how we’re going, and just to feel connected to somebody else in this space. And I think also we need to be able to practice with people who are really different, because that’s where the edge is—people who are really different. So that’s what I would say about a kalyāṇa-mitta: one is a place to practice, and one is a place to chat. What do you think?
Due to the size of this chapter this is part 2 of the eleventh chapter “Happiness” (starting with subchapter 11.9 “Happiness and Ethics” to the end of Chapter 11) from the book:
Buddhadhamma: The Laws Of Nature And Their Benefits To Life by Bhikkhu P. A. Payutto (Somdet Phra Buddhaghosacariya)
Brief note: I’m on for almost back to back retreats at IMS and Dhammasukha in July which will likely see little to no internet interactions until near end of July for another Meditation Q & A and to start editing a cohosted swapcast with a monastic guest recorded yesterday.
Playlist of Ajhan Punnadhammo 31 Realms retreat talk and guided meditations
And during the Questions and Answers (which don’t seem to be published as of July 25, 2026) at the end of the talks for the 31 Realms Retreat with Ajahn Punnadhammo I mentioned only few things that the Ajahn wasn’t familiar with and I couldn’t remember where I had heard them. Here are those references via Ai, one a Mahayana recount on spontaneous rebirth out of a hell realm and the other on the Buddha suggesting knowing the 27 lunar mansions or star clusters along the moon’s path across the night sky for survival purposes for wilderness dwelling monks:
You are thinking of a famous Buddhist narrative often recounted in Mahāyāna texts (such as the Sūtra on Repaying the Kindness of the Buddha or the Sūtra of the Wise and the Foolish) about the first time the Buddha awakened the Bodhi-mind (Bodhicitta)—the altruistic mind of enlightenment.
It is also frequently retold by modern Buddhist teachers, such as Thich Nhat Hanh and Lama Zopa Rinpoche.
The Story: Pushing the Fiery Cart in Hell
In a distant past life, long before achieving Buddhahood, the future Shakyamuni Buddha committed negative karma that caused him to be born in one of the hot hell realms (Naraka).
The Suffering: In this hell realm, he and another hell-being were forced by an ox-headed or lion-faced hell guardian to pull an impossibly heavy, flaming iron cart/chariot across scorching ground. The guards relentlessly whipped and stabbed them with iron forks whenever they slowed down.
The Act of Compassion: The future Buddha saw that his companion was physically collapsing, utterly exhausted, and screaming in agony as the guard brutally beat him. Seeing another’s intense suffering, a profound, spontaneous feeling of compassion arose in the future Buddha.
The Sacrifice: He stepped forward and said to the hell guard: “This person is too weak and pitiful. Please let him rest. Put his rope on my shoulders, and I will pull the cart for both of us.”
The Immediate Rebirth: The brutal hell guard became infuriated by this act of mercy and struck the future Buddha in the head/neck with his iron trident or mace, killing him on the spot.
Because his final thought at the moment of death was pure, selfless compassion and a desire to take on another’s suffering (a moment of Bodhicitta), his heavy negative karma was instantly purified. He escaped hundreds of kalpas (eons) of hellish punishment and was immediately reborn in a higher realm (often described as a heavenly realm or human realm).
Why the Story is Famous
In Buddhist philosophy, this story illustrates three major points:
The Power of Mind/Intention (Cetanā): Karma is ultimately rooted in intention. Even in the deepest, darkest states of mind or existence (represented by Hell), a single genuine spark of selflessness and love can radically transform one’s karmic trajectory.
The Birth of the Bodhisattva Vow: It marks the mythic origin point where the future Buddha first planted the seed to become a Bodhisattva—a hero dedicated to freeing all beings from suffering.
No Place is Beyond Compassion: As Thich Nhat Hanh often reflected on this story, it shows that no matter how terrible a situation or environment is, the capacity for compassion is never permanently lost.
In the Theravāda tradition, there is a subtle but very important distinction to make:
A future Buddha (Bodhisatta) can be born in a hell realm, and the Theravāda Jātaka commentary explicitly records that the Bodhisatta spent time in hell in past lives. However, once a Bodhisatta receives a formal, irreversible prediction (Niyata-Vyākaraṇa) from a living Buddha, their spiritual development prevents them from ever falling into the deepest, most absolute forms of hell (such as Avīci).
1. Did the Bodhisatta Ever Go to Hell in Theravāda?
Yes. In the Theravāda Jātaka commentaries, the Bodhisatta experienced the lower realms, including hell (Niraya), during his long journey through saṃsāra:
The Temiya Jātaka (Mūgapakkha Jātaka): Prince Temiya (the Bodhisatta) remembers his past life where he served as a king for 20 years and had to pass judicial sentences. Because of the heavy karma of taking lives/punishing criminals as a ruler, he spent 80,000 years in the Ussada Hell (a hell realm) suffering immense torment. This terror of returning to hell was so profound that in his present life as Temiya, he feigned being mute, deaf, and crippled for 16 years just so his father wouldn’t force him to become king.
The Sanjiva Jātaka: The Bodhisatta explicitly references times in his past lives when unskilful actions led to rebirth in lower realms before his spiritual momentum became unshakeable.
2. The Nuance: The “18 Ineligible States” (Abhabbaṭṭhāna)
You might have heard that a Bodhisatta cannot go to hell. This comes from a specific Theravāda rule established in the commentaries (like the Sutta Nipāta commentary and the Buddhavaṃsa commentary).
Once a Bodhisatta reaches the point of Definite Prediction (Niyata Bodhisatta)—when a past Buddha looks into the future and confirms, “You will become a Buddha named Gautama”—he acquires the 18 Ineligible States (Abhabbaṭṭhāna). From that exact moment onward, he can never be born into:
Avīci Hell (or the Inter-Cosmic Hells / Lokantarika): The deepest, uninterrupted hells reserved for the absolute worst acts.
The Formless Realms (Arūpavacara): Being trapped in pure mind-states with no physical form, where you cannot practice the Perfections (pāramīs) or help beings.
The Unconscious Realm (Asaññasatta): Where there is physical body but no consciousness.
Extreme / Severe Impairments: Born permanently blind, deaf, insane, or as an animal smaller than a quail or larger than an elephant.
3. Why Can’t a Fully Confirmed Bodhisatta Fall into Deep Hell?
In Theravāda philosophy, this protection isn’t a magical shield granted by an outside force; it is the natural law of kammic momentum:
Power of the Ten Perfections (Pāramīs): A confirmed Bodhisatta spends eons relentlessly cultivating Generosity (Dāna), Morality (Sīla), Renunciation (Nekkhamma), Wisdom (Paññā), and Energy (Viriya). This vast reservoir of bright, wholesome karma (kusala-kamma) far outweighs his unwholesome karma.
Inability to Commit Heinous Crimes: A confirmed Bodhisatta is incapable of committing the five Ānantarika-kamma (killing a mother, killing a father, killing an Arahant, drawing the blood of a Buddha, or creating a schism in the Sangha). Since he cannot commit these acts, the karmic doorway to Avīci hell is permanently shut.
Efficiency of the Path: A Bodhisattva’s primary “job” is to mature his pāramīs and help other beings. Spending millions of years incapacitated in the absolute worst hell realms would stall the realization of Buddhahood inefficiently. His refined mental state organically protects him from plunging into the deepest darkness.
The reference you are thinking of comes primarily from the Vinaya Pitaka (specifically the Cullavagga, in the section on duties for forest-dwelling monks, Āraññikavatta), along with supporting mentions in the Sutta Pitaka.
Here is how the requirement came about, what the Buddha specifically instructed, and why.
1. The Vinaya Origin Story (Cullavagga)
In the monastic code, the rule was established after a group of forest-dwelling monks encountered bandits in the wilderness:
The Incident: Bandits traveling through the forest approached the monks and asked them for drinking water, fire, the current cardinal directions (disā), and the positions of the lunar constellations/asterisms (nakkhattapadāni). Because the monks lived purely in meditation and lacked basic wilderness skills, they couldn’t answer. The bandits assumed the monks were impostors or thieves themselves and beat them up.
When the Buddha heard about this, he established a set of practical standards (vatta) for any monk living out under the stars or deep in the wilderness:
The Rule:
“A forest-dwelling monk should learn the lunar mansions (nakkhattapadāni uggahetabbāni)—either all of them or in part.”
“He should be skilled in knowing the cardinal directions (disākusalena bhavitabbaṁ).”
He was also required to keep fire-generating sticks, store drinking water, and carry basic survival gear.
2. Why Did Wilderness Monks Need Star Knowledge?
The term used in Pali is nakkhatta (Sanskrit: Nakshatra), which refers to the 27 lunar mansions or star clusters along the moon’s path across the night sky.
The Buddha prescribed this not for astrology or fortune-telling (which monks were strictly forbidden from practicing), but for three purely practical survival and monastic needs:
Navigation & Wayfinding: Knowing how to orient oneself by the stars prevented monks from becoming lost in dense jungle or open wilderness.
Timekeeping & Calendar: Without clocks, watching the moon’s movement through the nakkhattas allowed monks to anticipate the Uposatha (full/new moon observance days) and track seasonal changes.
Assisting Travelers: Forest monks were expected to be helpful guides to lost travelers, foresters, or pilgrims wandering through the wilderness.
3. A Related Sutta Reference: Warding Off Sleepiness
In the Pacalāyana Sutta (Anguttara Nikaya 7.61), Venerable Mahāmoggallāna was meditating in the forest under the open sky and falling asleep. The Buddha appeared to him and offered a sequence of practical techniques to combat drowsiness.
One of those suggestions was to step outside, look up, and survey the night sky:
“If by doing this you don’t shake off your drowsiness, then look up and examine the major stars and constellations…” — AN 7.61
[Note: Wendy’s audio improves significantly after four minutes]
In this forty-third installment of the ongoing live series with Wendy Nash, we continue our inquiry into meditation practice both on and off the cushion this time with the massive topic of non-harm. Our last Q and A on the five ethical training precepts took some interesting turns. This time we look at what those five are mostly based on: non-harming. This is big and basic yet foundational for meditation practice, wisdom and everyday life with massive range for our inner worlds, the outer world and beyond
(Ai more or less puts this talk thus:) Non-harming is explored as the foundational principle underlying Buddhist ethical precepts, meditation practice, and daily life: how harm manifests internally (self-blame, hurt feelings, “spikiness”) and externally (difficult relationships, power dynamics, manipulation, political rhetoric), emphasizing self-responsibility, honest self-reflection, and skillful communication over blame.
Key themes include:
Recognizing when feedback about ourselves has validity vs. when it reveals something about the other person.
Meditation practices for inquiring into hurt (“What needs to be known here?”).
Handling difficult or manipulative people without escalating harm (referencing – Shantideva’s stick analogy and the Dhammapada).
The value of feedback, emotional availability, and non-defensive communication.
Lojong (mind-training) slogans as practical tools for transforming adversity into awakening.
Forgiveness (releasing resentment without condoning harm), self-compassion, and avoiding martyrdom.
Broader observations on power, paranoia, political division, and reciprocal relationships based on integrity.
The tone is personal, reflective, and conversational, blending everyday examples with Buddhist wisdom.
Chapter Titles (with approximate timestamps):
0:00 Intro & Topic Overview – Welcome, context, and introducing non-harming as the root of ethics.
1:25 Hurt, Blame & Self-Reflection – Wendy on feeling hurt, blaming others, and recognizing one’s own “spikiness” in meditation.
5:06 Two Options When Criticized – Learning about ourselves or about the other person; discernment and responsibility.
8:28 Difficult People & Power Dynamics – Viewer question and discussion on threatening personalities, family/professional conflicts, and the “pinball” of mutual hurts.
11:26 Meditation Inquiry Practice – Wendy’s approach: “What needs to be known here?” and working with thoughts/emotions.
14:14 Communication & Feedback – Asking directly, using “I” statements, emotional availability, and more skillful phrasing (“What I hear you care about is…”).
21:50 Manipulation & Losing Respect – Experiences with inauthentic people, complicity in being “played,” and the pain of dishonesty.
25:55 Overcoming Harm with Non-Harm – Dhammapada quote, taking the initial “hit,” avoiding tit-for-tat escalation (Josh).
28:55 Boss Story & Psychopathic Patterns – Realization of one’s own condescension; paranoia as projected shame; power and fear spirals.
33:42 Wisdom Practices & Forgiveness – Seeking guidance from teachers, blanket forgiveness, self-forgiveness, and releasing ill will.
36:30 Grudges, Drama Triangles & Political Harm – Addiction to grudges, victim-victimizer-hero patterns, political rhetoric, and divide-and-conquer dynamics.
45:16 Lojong Slogans – Mind Training – Detailed discussion of key Lojong principles: use everything as the path, drive all blames into one, tonglen, hold views lightly, etc.
55:40 Cautions & Closing Reflections – Avoiding misinterpretations (martyrdom), compassion guiding rules, and final thoughts on non-harming.
Some resources for a few things mentioned:
Mahayana Precepts (Bodhisattva Precepts)
Mahayana traditions often emphasize the Bodhisattva Precepts (from the Brahma Net Sutra), which include the Three Pure Precepts plus sets of major and minor vows focused on benefiting all beings.
Lojong is a Tibetan Mahayana practice with 59 slogans (organized into 7 points) by Atisha and Chekawa Yeshe Dorje. It focuses on transforming adversity into the path of awakening, compassion, and reducing self-centeredness.
*There’s naturally an ongoing open call for meditation (related) questions for the (roughly) monthly “Meditation Q & A” either by the various social media means listed; integratingpresence[at]protonmail.com or just showing to type/ask live.*
Background
Regular, current and past visitors to Integrating Presence may recall the monthly series “Ask Us Anything” I did with Denny K Miu from August 2020 until January 2022 — partially including and continuing on with Lydia Grace as co-host for awhile until March 2022.
For a fewmonthsthereafter I did various Insight Timer live events exploring potential new directions and/or a continuation of the Ask Us Anything format while weaving in other related teachings to these events.
Then, after chats with meditation coach Wendy Nash, it became clear to start a new collaboration similar to “Ask Us Anything” simply and clearly called “Meditation Q & A” especially due to the original intent of the Ask Us Anything’s being “discussions about meditation and related topics.”
Audio: Non-harm | “Meditation Q & A With Wendy Nash” #43
Full Raw Verbatim Transcript (with timestamps removed via ai):
Hey homelessness, welcome. This is Josh, integrating presence Wendy Nash. What’s going on today?
Well, I’m here on Gubby Gubby country in Queensland in culture. Josh, you’re I think in Colorado at the moment.
No, I’m back from Colorado. Back in Missouri. So, yes, it’s a little confusing. I didn’t change the thing on my website that had mountain time, which is in Colorado. So, I was confused on how long I was going to be there, but back here in Missouri. And so, today
Yeah, today we’ve we’re doing I just might as well just jump right in here.
Um, and it looks like another platform is working at this time. So, I’m just I just started that. So, this is our 43rd installment of our ongoing live series with Wendy Nash here and we we’re going to continue our inquiry into meditation practice both on and off the cushion.
This time with the massive topic of nonharm.
The last Q&A we did was on the uh five ethical training precepts took it took some interesting turns. This time we’ll look at those uh what those five are mostly based on which is nonharming.
This is big and basic yet foundational for meditation practice wisdom and everyday life with a massive range for our inner worlds, the outer world and beyond. So where do we start with this one?
Well, actually, you know how I’ve got this thing at the moment where I’m talking about hurt and ache? Yes. You can hear in my chair.
Oh, no.
Yes. So, this morning I was in my meditation thinking about what because I love um when I’m meditating to think why is it in that situation it doesn’t bother me but in that situation it does.
I like the compare and contrast model because like what is the difference there? And so I think about hurt. Why when do I feel hurt? And I realized this morning because I I kind of get into the blame game. Talk about nonharm. Haha.
Not. So um and what I realized is that I feel hurt. I mean I blame people when I feel hurt. When I feel hurt, it’s because I actually am somehow believing that what they’re saying is true.
I know that’s a bit controversial, but when I feel completely like, well, that has nothing to do with me. They’re just a bit nuts. Then I go, okay. But there is a part of me that realizes that maybe I’m not all squid clean and, you know, all the rest. And I realized that there was a part of me that actually um I was a bit spiky still like I knew I used to be but I it still sits there and I can feel it in some of the way that I’ve interacted with people and and I just got and some comments on Facebook you know you can get there pretty pretty quick and so I was just sorry about mentioning that social media account.
Um, so I was just um reflecting on how the only way to step into that space is well, this is the way that I do it anyway, which is to ask myself in meditation, what needs to be known here? So, I’ve got an identity. I’m hurt. what’s what else is here in the picture?
You know, what am I not seeing about this? And I just went, “Wow, I’m actually quite spiky. Well, you know, I’m not always my best self. What can I say?” But instead of trying to excuse, well, everybody’s not, you know, their best self all the time. I thought, well, I am actually sometimes not my best self. And maybe I agree with them that there is a part of me that doesn’t that sort of deserves to be hurt. Now I’m not being all, you know, you deserve to be treated badly or anything like that. I’m certainly not advocating in that space, but just to recognize that sometimes I can be not my, you know, I’m not being my best self. as well.
Well, that’s this is really I mean this is the nitty-gritty of everyday life.
And before I jump into my response here, um I think we had this last time that it’s it’s just a little bit muddy on the audio, but not too bad. It’s still it’s still um it’s still okay otherwise. Um so sorry to to detract from that, but it’s it’s all good. I will set I will change my u audio settings. I’m just going to go to this venerable’s response that I love surrounding the well first off I will say that that’s my tendency too and see I’m even one of blaming the fact that I’m blaming so that’s my tendency too to go to someone else and say oh it’s on them not me right and then I even want to blame like my my parents or whoever my upbringing and external circumstances for me to be blaming. And so to me, this this speaks to self- responsibility. But the the the way this one venerable put it, um, when someone says something about me, there’s basically two main options. Either we learn something about ourselves and what they’re actually saying has some validity, or we learn about them, what kind of person they are, right? And a lot of times I find what someone says has a lot to do about actually what’s been done to them. And so they’re they’re saying the same thing. But but sometimes it’s totally legitimate and it is about me and it’s a completely valid point. Now you know um then then we come to discernment. That’s why meditation is so in reflection and contemplation is so great because then I can take that in and say okay is there anything to this? like you’re saying from what I remember is basically, you know, like yeah, where is there anything to that? And what do I need to do about it? You know, I was I being a little bit harsh. I like the word spiky. That’s good. You know, like um and yeah, did my words cause harm? And even though I might not have meant that um at least that’s what I tell myself. Was there actually something deeper going on where I wanted to have some kind of harm and I just wasn’t conscious or um maybe I just wasn’t aware of that and I don’t want that to happen. So then I want that feedback if it’s valid and legitimate and helpful to then inform how I go forward because at the root of this like we I mentioned at the beginning harm is kind of the harm and non-harming is the the core of ethical practice. And not to get too political here, but you know, apparently there’s a war going on. And war is big business in America, you know, and there’s all kinds of rhetoric on why it’s okay to harm, how one is in the right to do it, what kind of stories and narratives and imperatives and just, you know, even religious um righteousness because my God said it’s we’re justified in killing, you know, and all manner of craziness. I would just or just ridiculousness about why it’s okay to harm and that’s a radical statement but uh in today’s society but but so be it you know yeah I just going back to your first statement you know venerable who said either it’s about them or it’s about you and I would like to say actually who says it’s binary either or you know these things relationships are dependent arising so there’s nothing to say that both of us aren’t sitting there being hurt and there’s a particular instance, a particular person and M Reed is here on the scene. Hi Josh. Hi Wendy. So good to be here on this topic. Love to have you here. Maybe is there something that you would like to share now? You’re a little bit behind just because of the way the recordings go, but um you’ll catch up quick. Welcome. We put it put your question in now while we’re on this topic and then we’ll come back to you.
But there’s one particular person who I find quite there’s two people in my life. One is in my family and one is in my professional world who are both quite difficult characters and both of them play the power game. Now, I know a lot of powerful people because I deal with politicians and stuff like that, but it’s really interesting when people feel like very quickly threatened by me. Now, I don’t like to think of myself as being threatening, you know, like I’m what 55 kilo woman and I’m 165 cm tall. So I don’t know what that is in the old numbers but um but you know not physically threatening but what I’ve realized is that threat comes in many forms and we have identities about mirror mirror on the wall who’s the somethingest of us all and so I do feel that these two people that I know one is very threatened by the fact that um they want to be the both of them want to be the center of attention actually they want to both of them be the leaders in this space and I’m just doing my thing and I just want to do what I do and I’m happy to collaborate but both of those are solo players and want to be the one who claims the glory they want to be the one who who’s got that But that’s because in their own world they too have wounds and hurts.
But that doesn’t mean to say that when they kind of cut me off or say something mean to me, I don’t say something mean back just in my frustration, in my own hurt.
And so I think it’s like this pinball machine of like bing bing bing bing bing bing bing where you’re ricocheting around your own hurts. So I I often think of Shanti Deva. I don’t know if you’ve read much of Shanti Deva, but I do like this example of the stick, you know, was blaming someone for their bad behavior is like blaming the stick for hitting me, you know, like you can’t. So Emmery says here, “Yeah, I can do harm and not know I do harm. So what is the best approach to this?” Well, so I don’t know if you noticed, but at the beginning, Emmery, I said my approach is when I’m meditating to ask myself, what needs to be known here? Just sort of sit in the middle of this unpleasant feeling because this particular kind of thing where everything gets quite still and I’m going, h, okay, I’m in the zone. What needs to be known here? And I just keep repeating that. And often I’ll put in um things like uh what’s the theme common to all these thoughts or what’s the emotion common to all these thoughts and I find that very helpful. So that’s me.
What about you Josh? What do you say is um what’s the best approach? Well there’s there’s a lot here. Yeah.
Let me let me pick up on uh what you said. Yes. And it’s not as simple as the we either learn something about the other person or we learn something about ourselves. A lot of times that’s particularly helpful if I can’t figure out, oh, is that them or is that me? Is what they’re saying actually about me or what they’re saying is actually shows me where they’re at and what’s been done to them when there’s some kind of confusion or just taking these extra perspectives.
Yeah, it’s not as simple as a binary thing. That’s for sure. I want to ask Wendy before I get to the the question here is did did you ever ask them d I’m curious did you ever ask them directly if if the the people you say that um they they they what was the language you use that they think that you’re um harming them or yeah do did you ever ask them directly or did you just kind of assume that they think that you’re hurtful towards them do you know what I mean or how do you how how did you know how did you find out that how did you come to that assessment.
Integrating Presence 