Mindrolling With Raghu Markus

Sharon Salzberg, world renowned author and Buddhist meditation teacher joins us for a discussion on Lovingkindness in the face of adversity.

Do the rich care about the poor? The invisible people as seen by the very visible...the empathy gap and how to close it...

Spontaneous orgasms...“homo economicus”...compassion & neural networks...sex on the beach out of the blue, and a Chrissie Hynde song thrown in...

We're going after the afterlife. Is it consciousness or is it simply legacy? What?

Suffering is grace. Suffering is a nightmare. Can both be true? How in the name of real life do we deal with pure pain? And how do we handle other people’s suffering? Finding the balance...

High Himalayan India R&D: Raghu’s latest yatra.

Lama Tsultrim Allione is our honored guest – she’s great. We concentrate on her truly transformative book “Feeding Your Demons.” The book's core concept/vision: “One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light but by making the darkness conscious.” Yeah, can't argue with that - facing and transforming your shadow self is pretty essential in the liberation process... Check out the Wikipedia entry Here for brief yet solid biographical info about our guest.

Music is a beatific balm to our psyche, suggesting our soul...

Leaning into trauma and loss. Loving impermanence. Well, OK...but easier said than done. The comfort zone of normality-seeking “untrauma” always beckoning enticingly. We talk about the “opportunity” of the willingness to face distress...

The "movie of me"...selfishness out of selflessness?..."irregular thinking"...spiritual practice as success mode?...OK, let's stay positive for a moment...

An R & D on the uses and abuses of meditation...Doing yoga just to look cool...Finally cutting through the thoughts and finding your heart through proper practice.

Following guitarist extraordinaire/dharma communicator David Nichtern’s quick turn from the music studio to the Buddhist pure land  – prajna, rigpa and recording...

R & D opine about the commercial business of so-called enlightenment plus they offer some words about how to not go nuts if your work is oppressing and depressing you. How do you stay positive when your job kinda sucks?

Dr. Judith Orloff, Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry UCLA, defines “Emotional Freedom” as the capacity to give and receive love, what it is to be a true empath and what mirror neurons are all about...R&D listen...

“Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity” (Simone Weil) “By this definition, our relationship to the world, and to one another, and to ourselves are becoming increasingly miserly.” (Jonathan Safran Foer) Do we communicate more and love less? Are we hard wired for connection or isolation? R & D do their due diligence on all of this...

Magical, mystical, mysterious, mellifluous music from the legendary Triloka World Music catalog. Enjoy the music and banter from Raghu and David.

Can right wingers be Buddhists?  What is the military-industrial-media complex? Can we resist without rage? How can we avoid harming another heart? 

Bob Dylan - born half a year before Pearl Harbor with his word fugues of our future always old/forever young – he rocked a rotten society...what rocks youth now...our 2013 parallel universe...getting the charge, the message, without needing a drug or a guru...a 9/11 first responder’s love tale...

A little music, a Mad Man, slight madness and some sanity ranging from Pema Chodron to Richard Nixon with entertainment by Malian angel Rokia Traoré.  Podcast gets into music as transportation; sixties/now parallels; “shmoos”; stealing chocolate; “learning to stay”; not chasing thoughts; and service/social activism. Plus “what have we really got out of years of practice?”  

The Mindrolling twins dig into the world of free form radio with Tom Lopez aka Meatball Fulton - a pioneer of the genre from back in the 60’s. Tom talks about his relationship with Don Van Vliet aka Captain Beefheart who was a compadre of Frank Zappa and wrote and performed incredibly bizarre yet transcendent music. In fact the New York Times called it “the strange uncle of post-punk”. Also featured are a few vignettes of highly evocative radio plays Tom has produced.