Focusing on curiosity, patience, and self-compassion, Cortland Dahl joins Raghu to go over his new book, A Meditator’s Guide to Buddhism.
Pick up a copy of A Meditator’s Guide to Buddhism HERE
This week, Cortland and Raghu discuss:
- The mystical practice of making aspirations
- Tuning into ourselves and trusting ourselves
- Learning through our relationships
- Recognizing that the next Buddha is the sangha
- Nurturing sparks of inspiration through practice
- How meeting teachers helps us realize our own inner depth
- Why curiosity can move us along the spiritual path
- Patience, creating space, and being vs. doing
- Self-compassion in a world of chaos and uncertainty
- Discomfort as a zone of growth
- Expanding our motivations for doing our practice
- Seeing the awakened nature in everyone and everything
Raghu recommends checking out the books Why We Meditate, Blazing Splendor, and In love with the World to expand upon this podcast’s conversations.
“We have no clue of this depth and richness that is inside of us. How we stumble through life completely oblivious to these amazing qualities of mind and somehow we just haven’t learned to see it. Then, you meet a teacher and it gets cracked open a little bit and you start getting a glimpse just by being in their orbit.” – Cortland Dahl
About Cortland Dahl:
Cortland Dahl is a Buddhist scholar and translator, author, meditation teacher, and a collaborator on various scientific studies. After receiving a Master’s Degree in Buddhist Studies, he lived for eight years in India and Nepal, where he spent long periods in solitary retreat in the Himalayan foothills and taught courses on Buddhism, meditation, and Tibetan language at Kathmandu University’s Center for Buddhist Studies and at the Tergar Institute, which he co-founded in 2007. He went on to study at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he was mentored by the renowned neuroscientist Dr. Richard Davidson and received a Ph.D. in Mind, Brain, and Contemplative Science, the first ever degree of its kind awarded by the university. Cortland’s current work focuses on studying the psychological and neural mechanisms of different families of meditation practice. He is also the creator of the Healthy Minds program, a well-being training program that integrates insights from scientific research with a comprehensive path of contemplative training. Keep up with Cortland HERE or check out his books HERE.