Episodes

Tuesday Jul 21, 2020
LAO TZU 24
Tuesday Jul 21, 2020
Tuesday Jul 21, 2020
In this podcast, we reflect on Chapter 37 of the Tao Te Ching. In this chapter, Lao Tzu once again attempts to characterise the Tao. From a fresh perspective, he describes the Tao as the ultimate exemplar of wu-wei, (non-doing), and recommends that people, including leaders, emulate it in this respect. He then describes the character of a person who has managed this elusive meditative task. We relate this to a criticism of consumerism which, though careful with desire, nevertheless eschews asceticism. [Free. 12 minutes.]

Sunday May 31, 2020
LAO TZU 20
Sunday May 31, 2020
Sunday May 31, 2020
In this episode of our Lao Tzu series, we explore themes of judgement, desire, non-violence, and longevity: all in the light of Lao Tzu's meditation 'method' of aligning with the Tao. [Free. 24 minutes.]

Saturday Jan 25, 2020
THE YOGI AND THE COMMISSAR: REVOLUTION?
Saturday Jan 25, 2020
Saturday Jan 25, 2020
In this podcast I question the nature of revolution, particularly as to its ultimate ground, which for some should be consciousness, and for others, the power structures of society, particularly materialistically understood. I outline the thought that both must be involved as it is found in the ongoing historical conversation. This includes Freudian Marxism, and the existentialism of Simone de Beauvoir, who gives us the figures of the yogi and the commissar to imagine. [Free. 28 minutes.]

Saturday Jan 25, 2020
RESILIENCE: INTERVIEW WITH GODFREY DEVEREUX
Saturday Jan 25, 2020
Saturday Jan 25, 2020
In this interview renowned Yoga Teacher Godfrey Devereux about a recent turn his work has taken. Godfrey has dropped the language surrounding contemporary Yoga to talk instead about resilience and how it is a consequence of a certain meditative self-enquiry. I ask Godfrey to elucidate this and particularly in the context of impending ecological catastrophe. I give my own take on these matters which is more inclined to speak up for activism. Listen to the following podcast, The Yogi and the Commissar, in which I explore some of the themes that emerged and in the light of Simone de Beauvoir's existentialism. [Free. 32 minutes.]
![DESIRE & ULTIMATES [YES & NO 7]](https://pbcdn1.podbean.com/imglogo/image-logo/771447/hyradiologobig2_300x300.png)
Sunday Oct 20, 2019
DESIRE & ULTIMATES [YES & NO 7]
Sunday Oct 20, 2019
Sunday Oct 20, 2019
This podcast was recorded earlier this year in February [2019]. It continues with considerations of the matter of desire, in this case focusing on our appetite for achievement. I suggest that our 'spiritual endeavours' almost inevitably fall into the same pattern as our ordinary acquisitiveness and can have a self-defeating tendency. I recommend a light touch with these drives and indicate what this approach opens up. [Free. 17 minutes.]
![DESIRE & THE FUTURE [YES & NO 6]](https://pbcdn1.podbean.com/imglogo/image-logo/771447/hyradiologobig2_300x300.png)
Sunday Jun 09, 2019
DESIRE & THE FUTURE [YES & NO 6]
Sunday Jun 09, 2019
Sunday Jun 09, 2019
This podcast, recorded in November 2018, continues with commentary on the Songs of No and Yes, and explores the theme of desire further. As well as asking if determinism universally applies, I ask what would be the existential consequences if it did. I conclude that metaphysical issues, like free will - determinism are probably undecidable, and, in this case, of no existential consequence. The upshot for meditation practitioners is that they are well-advised to be engaged with the world and to make efforts to make a future of flourishing for self and others, rather than repudiating creativity, politics and altruism because "what will be, will be." (If such is their bent.) The practice of letting be with bright awareness, I argue, should be understood as applicable to all aspects of lived experience, including the active, creative and passive. The role of determinism in the scientific method is briefly considered. [Free. 18 minutes.]
![DESIRE, ACTION, TIME [YES & NO 5]](https://pbcdn1.podbean.com/imglogo/image-logo/771447/hyradiologobig2_300x300.png)
Sunday May 26, 2019
DESIRE, ACTION, TIME [YES & NO 5]
Sunday May 26, 2019
Sunday May 26, 2019
In this podcast, I continue to explore the matter of human desire. I relate it to our embeddedness in time, to suffering and to our motivations to act. [Free. 26 minutes.]
![DESIRING TRUTH [YES & NO 4]](https://pbcdn1.podbean.com/imglogo/image-logo/771447/hyradiologobig2_300x300.png)
Saturday Feb 16, 2019
DESIRING TRUTH [YES & NO 4]
Saturday Feb 16, 2019
Saturday Feb 16, 2019
This podcast is a commentary on the poem Desiring Truth from Songs of No and Yes. The poem outlines the enormous philosophical difficulties encountered in the quest for the truth about truth and contrasts them with the ease with which we employ our ordinary, common sense, adequationist notion of truth very effectively in everyday life. In the commentary, I draw on Patanjali's account of truth and knowledge in the Yoga Sutra, finding nothing problematic in our ordinary truth telling whilst suggesting that our various encounters with the ineffable, samadhi, have a valuable but unstateable truth content. I also note Patanjali's method of uncompromising truthfulness as an approach to the ineffable as encountered in the microcosm in the practice of self-study. [Free. 28 minutes.]
![EMBRACING THE HUMAN [YES & NO 3]](https://pbcdn1.podbean.com/imglogo/image-logo/771447/hyradiologobig2_300x300.png)
Monday Dec 31, 2018
EMBRACING THE HUMAN [YES & NO 3]
Monday Dec 31, 2018
Monday Dec 31, 2018
In this podcast, I elucidate Embracing the Human, one of the Songs of No and Yes. The discourse mostly takes the form of a recommendation against espousing asceticism and passive nihilism in the name of 'spirituality'. [Free. 27 minutes.]
![EXPERIENCE [NO & YES 2]](https://pbcdn1.podbean.com/imglogo/image-logo/771447/hyradiologobig2_300x300.png)
Monday Dec 10, 2018
EXPERIENCE [NO & YES 2]
Monday Dec 10, 2018
Monday Dec 10, 2018
This podcast is the second in the series Songs of No and Yes. It revisits the theme of the previous one, that of sitting meditation. The perspective is a little different and there is a strong 'no', or sealing off of escape routes which we are likely to attempt when the rawness of sitting is encountered. It also repudiates metaphysical speculation, grand-narratives, and other such hubris, seeking to point towards the ineffable rather than attempt to 'eff' it. [Free. 17 minutes.]