Heart Yoga Radio

ON THE BODY [PART FIVE]: SEX, NATURE, CULTURE & ENLIGHTENMENT

As always this is wide-ranging. We discuss the nature of sexual arousal, sexual practices and the ideas people have about sex, attempting as we go to free ourselves from the conceptual straight-jacket imposed by the popular binary nature-culture. This naturally {!} leads to a consideration of sexual taboos and the transgression of them in Dionysiac/Tantric orgies and a fleeting analysis of the emancipatory potential of raw joy - ananda. We find it useful to identify two recognizable modes of consciousness aroused by sex. In one, fantasy is intensified. In the other fantasy is attenuated and 'immediate' sensations take over. [Free. 53 minutes.]

HUMAN INTERACTIONS: POWER DIFFERENTIALS, MASTER-SLAVE LIVED EXPERIENCE, OPEN RECEPTIVITY TO THE OTHER

In this podcast, I start by considering the nature of a compliment. This opens the door onto all the questions that human interactions give rise to and I sketch out some of them. In particular, I consider mutual recognition and the distorting effect that power differentials have on it. I relate this to the nature of the ego in the psychoanalytic sense and suggest how things could be better. Contemplation of the Other in Patanjali's spare style is, I suggest, emancipatory and not difficult, though elusive. Rumi, amongst others, made this very point. [Free. 18 minutes.]

CHAOS AND COSMOS PART THREE

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.]

WHO AM I (1) - OVERVIEW

This is the first of a series of seven episodes entitled Who Am I? It gives an overview of the various perspectives we entertain in the following six episodes. We planned six episodes and say as much throughout the series. But when the time came, we realised we needed a final episode in which to get to the nitty-gritty of lived experience. [20 minutes. Free.]

WHO AM I? (4) - ZEN KOAN

In this podcast, the fourth in the series Who Am I?, the question is seen as a zen koan which blows the fuses of the apparatus of reason revealing the already-everywhere-always-present Buddha Nature in the proccess. [21 minutes. Free.]

WHO AM I? (7) - LIVED EXPERIENCE

In this podcast, the seventh and last in the series Who Am I?, Anna and I reflect on our own lived experiences of engaging with the most far-reaching conundrum [23 minutes. Free.]

METAPHORS, JAM ROLY-POLY, THE VERTICAL AXIS & FLATLAND

Anna says that this is a bed-time story. I think it is philosophical comedy. I'm pretty certain sombody somewhere will hear this and get twice as enlightened as Buddy Guy. You can hear the wind and somebody with a megaphone in the distance. Nietzsche looms large as a trenchant critic of the various Platonisms. Meanwhile, this ordinary world is the Buddha heaven, if only we can see it. Hierarchical metaphysics mystify this at the same time as they turn earth into hell with their hierarchical cast systems and vicious patriarchy. Yet still, it's not all surface. The horizontal metaphor is shit too. Convolutions innit?! [18 minutes. Free.]

EVERYTHING HAPPENS FOR A REASON? REALLY?

This short podcast takes a swipe at the current platitude that 'everything happens for a reason', characterising it a an escapist notion. [9 minutes. Free.]

CHAOS AND COSMOS PART 2

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.

FREEDOM

In this podcast we consider the inner freedom promised by yoga and meditative disciples in general. The discussion touches on vedanta, the yoga sutra, existentialism, slavery, and more. The core point is that the moment we commit to yoga, we necessarily embrace our ineluctable freedom. [47 minute. Free.]