43.7K
Downloads
404
Episodes
Wide-ranging talks on all things relating to spirituality, meditation, yoga, current affairs, politics and philosophy. contact me via info AT peteyates.uk.
Episodes
Friday Jul 21, 2017
Friday Jul 21, 2017
An introduction to Nietzsche's thought in which I discuss Nietzsche's "great task" and his ludic, artistic method of persuing it. I touch on Nietzsche's anti-Platonism, anti-systematic approach to philosophy, notions of life-affirmation and life-negation amongst other things. The shifting concept of the will to power is elucidated, showing its various guises. [Free. 32 minutes.]
Thursday Jun 01, 2017
Thursday Jun 01, 2017
This podcast deals with Chapters 6, 7 and 8 of the Tao Te Ching. Themes covered include breath and the pulsation of the universe, poetry and the attempt to eff the ineffable, up and down mysticisms and letting be, water and flow, the sage, confucianism, politics, desires and political manipulation, maternal nurturing, compassion and strategies for living, etc. [Free. 40 minutes.]
Thursday Apr 20, 2017
Thursday Apr 20, 2017
In this podcast, we engage with Chapters 2 and 3 of The Tao Te Ching. Themes include language and opposites, the pregnancy of emptyness, past, present and future times, human character and the nature of a sage, social organisation and meditation. [Free. 43 minutes.]
Monday Apr 10, 2017
Monday Apr 10, 2017
In this podcast, we comment on the first chapter of Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching. Though it is very short, this chapter covers an immense amount of ground, including the paradoxical nature of talk about the ineffable, the creativity of nothingness and the character of 'the sage'. We intend to comment on the entire text over time. [Free. 41 minutes.]
Friday Jan 27, 2017
Friday Jan 27, 2017
Inspired by Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, I consider things, connections, processes, language, metaphoricity, information and detective work [amongst other things]. Dramatis personae: Heraclitus, Parmenides, Buddha, Plato, Aristotle, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein. [Free. 23 minutes.]
Tuesday May 17, 2016
Tuesday May 17, 2016
Here, somewhat belatedly, is the final part of Chaos and Cosmos, a talk given at Parkdale in 2015. The main thrust of this part of the talk is to abstract the practicalities implicit in the discourse thus far for practitioners of meditation and creativity. We also hear about Taliesin's shit-or-bust attempt to win the high priestess.
Sunday Dec 06, 2015
Sunday Dec 06, 2015
This is a rant against war and the culture of the war machine. It starts off with the presupposition that every sane person desires a peaceful world, now and for future generations. It then ranges quite wide, describing the military industrial complex in terms of its costs relative to those of creating and maintaining peace, arguing against the notion that war is 'natural' and attempting to expose the ideological character of most of the media discourses around current and past conflicts. It concludes that peace must be given a chance. [Free. 39 minutes.]
Sunday Oct 11, 2015
Sunday Oct 11, 2015
In this, the third of four episodes of Chaos and Cosmos, we discuss the process nature of reality and how this impacts on boundaries. We entertain the idea that the dancing and insubstantial nature of boundaires is interpreted for practical reasons and to a large extent through language, which projects a stasis onto the flux of existence by valuing some lines in the swirl of stuff over others. Our sense of separate identity is just such an interpretation made under the yolk of grammar and socialisation. This can be glimpsed in an investigative meditation but is rendered obscure by cultivation in the name of morality, spirituality and/or particularity. There's audience participation. The previous two episodes are still here - you might have to scroll down! [51 minutes. Free.]
Monday Aug 31, 2015
Monday Aug 31, 2015
In this seond part of four, the theme of the coincidence and mutual dependence of opposites comes to the fore. This is a theme central to the world-views of our three sages: Buddha, Lao Tzu and Heraclitus. Amongst particular opposites discussed are oneness and multiplicity, chaos and cosmos, high and low, nirvana and samsara and more. The discussion also considers language, human suffering and flourishing, interconnectedness and strategies for living.