Podcast Episodes

September 24, 2021

In this episode, Wendy speaks with law professor, author, and meditation teacher, Rhonda Magee. Rhonda’s work has focused on bringing contemplative approaches into the practice of law, and the fight for social justice. This conversation covers many topics, including:

• her path to contemplative practice from roots in the American South;
• mindfulness in the fight for racial justice;
• embracing equanimity when you really want a certain outcome;
• contemplative approaches in law;
• awakening to our interconnectedness;
• challenging the idea of one winner/one loser (the adversarial model in law);
• balancing individual rights with a connected whole;
• restorative justice and collaborative divorce;
• how racism harms us all (including white folks);
• bias, fear and safety in the body;
• how dominator culture cuts us off from our bodies;
• racial capitalism;
• ColorInsight vs. color blindness;
• and the joy that comes from embracing our shared humanity.

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September 10, 2021

We’re back with Season 3 of the show, starting with renowned meditation teacher, author, and creator of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), Jon Kabat-Zinn. This spacious and personal conversation is full of insights on a wide range of topics, including:

• what drew him to meditation;
• his development of and vision for MBSR;
• the mystery of the line between the inside and outside of any system;
• adapting Buddhist practices for Western audiences;
• how mindfulness has been taken up in society, and science as a main driver;
• self and other—moving from “me” to “we”;
• the challenges of repeatability in scientific studies of meditation;
• weaving together art and science;
• and how 50+ years of meditation has changed him.

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August 13, 2021

In this bonus episode, we’re sharing a special presentation from environmentalist, physicist, and eco-feminist Vandana Shiva. This session is from our Summer Research Institute, held in June of this year, entitled The Mind, the Human-Earth Connection, and the Climate Crisis. We’re adding this to the podcast feed because Vandana speaks powerfully about how the mind contributes to so many of the world’s current emergencies, including health, hunger, poverty, climate, extinction, and injustice, exclusion, and inequality. Countering these outcomes of disconnection, Vandana offers Earth Democracy as a worldview, paradigm, and practice based on the recognition that everything is interconnected. She covers a lot of ground, touching on topics such as:

• the intellectual architecture of disconnection;
• the many ramifications of Cartesian dualism;
• the colonialist mindset of conquest and mastery;
• mistaken frameworks that try to dominate nature;
• how dead carbon leads to wars;
• food and our microbiome;
• quantum physics and interconnectedness;
• statistics and updates on the science of climate change;
• the economy of earth care;
• and the power of self-organizing systems within nature to heal ourselves and our world.

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July 9, 2021

In this bonus episode, Wendy speaks with evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson. This episode is being released in conjunction with Mind & Life’s new film, Evolution of the Heart — a short documentary covering conversations between the Dalai Lama, David Sloan Wilson, and social scientist Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela from a 2019 Mind & Life event in Dharamsala, India. The theme of that gathering was Compassion, Interconnection, and Transformation. David’s work extends beyond genetics to include personal and cultural evolution, and sheds light on how we can move forward as a global community. In this conversation, they discuss many topics, including:

• the role of competition, cooperation, and prosocial behavior in human evolution;
• how evolutionary pressure operates at both individual and group levels (multilevel selection);
• the possibility of conscious evolution;
• what it means to be part of a group;
• expanding the notion of the self;
• becoming “bilingual” in scientific and spiritual perspectives;
• the need to create a system of ethics for the whole world;
• and core design principles for creating more egalitarian and compassionate communities. 

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May 21, 2021

In this episode, Wendy speaks with environmentalist Dekila Chungyalpa about her views of nature, the climate crisis, and her unique collaborations with faith leaders. Their conversation covers many topics, including:

• growing up in the Himalayas and being interconnected with nature;
• the dominance of dualistic thinking in the West, and the dangerous separations it creates;
• embracing a framework of interdependence;
• the role of indigenous wisdom in conservation;
• her own experience dealing with eco-anxiety;
• working with faith leaders to move the needle on environmental issues;
• weaving together Buddhist values and activism;
• bridging science and religion;
• and the need for compassion and community in facing the climate crisis.

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