The fourth installment in this series on doubt continues to explore an enlightened vision of practice in the 21st century. It explores the call to practice, honesty, doubt’s place and epistemic humility. Text version here. Matthew O'Connell is a life coach and the host of the The Imperfect Buddha podcast. You can find The Imperfect Buddha on Facebook and Twitter (@imperfectbuddha). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to this Great feast conversation. Philosophy Professor at Seattle University, Soto Zen Priest, Sangha leader, and Dharma teacher, Jason M. Wirth is the author of Nietzsche and other Buddhas: Philosophy after Comparative Philosophy (Indiana UP, 2019), Engaging Dogen’s Zen and Mountains, and Rivers, and the Great Earth, both from 2017. In a rare and deep conversation, we discuss whether Nietzsche is a Buddha, the problem of ideology and Buddhist identities, advice from Gramsci on good...

Today I talk with Peter Salmon, author of An Event, Perhaps; an intellectual biography of Jacques Derrida. Our conversation was rich: We tackle Derrida and Buddhism, Derrida and the culture wars, Derrida and practice. Foucault gets a mention, as does Heidegger, as does spiritual enlightenment, mindfulness and spirituality. Our conversation was incomplete. We made plans. This is now the first part of a two part conversation. The second helping is going to be even more Budhistsy. Matthew...

In the third part of this series on Doubt, we head off to the Great Feast. Come along and dine with the Buddha, your favourite philosophers, and any other great mind you have a penchant for. You won’t regret it. Matthew O'Connell is a life coach and the host of the The Imperfect Buddha podcast. You can find The Imperfect Buddha on Facebook and Twitter (@imperfectbuddha). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

“Doubt is an uncomfortable condition, but certainty is a ridiculous one.” Voltaire You know too much, yet understand too little. And it’s the same for me, and everyone you and I happen to know. And, so it begins. What follows are a series of posts and audio-casts that respond to this living human condition, bringing together practice materials from non-Buddhism, post-traditional approaches to Buddhism, and the work of Peter Sloterdjik. Each post represents a visit to the Great Feast and...

In this episode, returning guest Daniel Ingram comes on to discuss a range of fascinating questions concerning practice. We explore coming through the pandemic, the impact of long-term relationships on practice, first Buddhist books, hardcore Dharma practice, how life might have been different without practice, suffering and karma and Daniel’s new project, The Emergent Phenomenology Research Consortium. Matthew O'Connell is a life coach and the host of the The Imperfect Buddha podcast. You...

Stef Aupers is professor of media culture in the Institute for Media Studies at the University of KU Leuven in the Netherlands. As a cultural sociologist, he studies the role of cultural meaning in the production, textual representation and consumption of media. Stef has published widely in international journals on the topics of religion, modern myth, conspiracy theories and the way these cultures are mediatized. We discuss the fascinating phenomenon of conspirituality, which refers to the...

“Doubt is an uncomfortable condition, but certainty is a ridiculous one.” Voltaire You know too much, yet understand too little. And it’s the same for me, and everyone you and I happen to know. And, so it begins. What follows are a series of posts and audio-casts that respond to this living human condition, bringing together practice materials from non-Buddhism, post-traditional approaches to Buddhism, and the work of Peter Sloterdjik. Each post represents a visit to the Great Feast and...

In the practising life, choices must be made. Those choices occur at all levels from big picture views of the world, a whole life, and society, to the everyday choice of how to be in the world, how to act, and what to commit to. In this three part series on Secular Buddhism, we find figures who have made a specific choice to stick with Buddhism and attempt to change it. Winton Higgins notes that there are two lines that characterise the loose network of groups and individuals who identify as...

Take a trip to the Great Feast in this first in a series of posts on the practising life. Non-Buddhism meets post-traditional slants on practice, whilst tackling complexity, doubt, and ecological thought. Practise questions and suggestions are woven throughout as a response to all you who desire practical things and have asked for them. This might just be a revolution in rethinking meditation and the practising life. An audio read. Original text located here. Matthew O'Connell is a life...

Today I speak to Stephen Batchelor, figurehead for Secular Buddhism, well known author, and Scot. I present the lovely man some of the critique aimed at his work in the book Secularizing Buddhism, and from my previous interview with Richard K. Payne. We also discuss some of his intellectual influences, touch on phenomenology, Gianni Vattimo, and whether Stephen is fixated on the past in his relationship with early Buddhism. Stephen was game throughout for what turned out to be a constructive...

From immanent Buddhism to cruel optimism, from secular subjectivity to the unconscious material running through your personal practice, today's episode features a returning guest in the figure of Richard K. Payne who is here to discuss his latest work and the contributions made by many great authors thinking deeply and critically about contemporary Buddhism. Published by Shambhala Publications, Secularizing Buddhism was released on the 3rd August, so if you like what you hear, why not...

Something like a provocation, something of an introduction; this audio-cast presents a recent piece of work over at the Imperfect Buddha site on non-practice for all those interested in how to apply the non- to the practising life. Built on Complex world, Complex Practice and prior to a series on applied practice, this is the audio version of an elaboration of the opening shots of a revolutionary practice. See what you think, do the warm up and get ready for the main meal. Background music...

Tina Rassmussen is one of our first meditation teachers on in a long while. Well, being a practice based series, this was inevitable. Tina was co-author of a book on jhana states and concentration that I have had on my shelf for a long time. Concentration is not the topic of our conversation, however. Here are some of the themes we explored; • Compatibility issues between neo-Advaita and Buddhism • Generational conceptions of practice; from Boomers to Millennials • The need to evolve our...

Who will think on Buddhism? Who has the chops to do so? What does it mean to place Buddhism in a configuration of contemplation alongside other thought and one’s personal experience of living a life in some way intimate with Buddhism as practice, as culture, as being and becoming? Although this season of the podcast is practice focussed, this does not mean a return to the warm bosom of feeling, perception and awareness minus thought. The mind demands expression. We are thinking, feeling,...

Down the country path we stroll for another practice episode, this time with our regular guest Glenn Wallis. We go through the personal questions I've been posing to all the guests this season, but we also make time to talk about the non-buddhism practice group, Incite events, and Glenn's new book An Anarchist Manifesto. The episode has a written primer that you may find stimulating. Matthew O'Connell is a life coach and the host of the The Imperfect Buddha podcast. You can find The Imperfect...

And so it goes on. This is our second episode in the new practice series. In the meantime, I had something of an allergic reaction to social media, and the internet more broadly. Despite a pretty disciplined relationship with digital life, I had something akin to an epiphany mid-January and realised that in my own way I had got caught up in maintaining what I am increasingly thinking of as the synthetic real. The digital life is seductive in ways that are not always easy to identify and like...

Asian and Buddhist and living in America: Does any of that matter? Those focussed in on practice and not much else regarding Buddhism might proclaim a resounding no. Others, all too aware of the tendency of western practitioners to ignore culture, and Buddhism beyond the meditation cushion might instead bellow forth with a resounding yes! Whatever your take, today’s guest Chenxing Han has written a book that fills a gap in our collective understanding, and appreciation of the role of Asians...

Happy New Year to one and all and welcome to this new season (proper) of the Imperfect Buddha Podcast. Focussed on practice, this season engages Buddhist teachers, long-term practitioners, and creative innovators engaged in the practising life. Interspersed with regular interviews, this practice focussed season finally gets the podcast off of the couch and responding to the long stream of listeners calling for a practice focus. Our first guest is meditation teacher, artist and author, George...

Santiago Zabala was once described as a most ignorant philosopher by the American philosopher Brian Leiter: An interesting take that one will need to interpret for themselves in listening to this conversation on fake news, the role of interpretation, freedom, and being at large. Santiago is not at all ignorant, of course, and might be better understood as a pluralistic thinker in the stream of European philosophy, thus accompanying living thinkers such as Slavoj Zizek, and Simon Critchley;...

This episode involves a conversation with the Tibetologist Sam van Schaik. Sam wrote his original PHd thesis on Dzogchen and the work of Jigme Lingpa and has been involved in the International Dunhuang Project at the British Library, where he currently works, and also teaches at the SOAS University in London. He also happened to write one of my favourite books on Tibet, called appropriately, Tibet: A History. Well-written, entertaining and informative, Sam’s overview of the history of the...

In an attempt to make more sense of non-Philosophy, and therefore non-Buddhism, I interview Irish philosopher and academic John O Maoilearca, the author of All Thoughts Are Equal, an exceptionally accessible introduction to the work of that pesky French philosopher Francois Laruelle, who we’ve been name dropping on the podcast for quite some time. Laruelle's work navigates an interesting paradox. On the one hand it can be incredibly straightforward, perhaps more so for those who have not been...

"How do animals think? What does it mean to be at large? What is Buddhist Magic or even Tibetan Zen? These are questions posed by the three guests to follow in a rather lovely triad of interviews and conversations for the Imperfect Buddha Podcast; each one unique and diverse, each with a European guest, each tackling a topic that has long interested me: from non-Philosophy to Freedom in our age, from seeing Tibet without the romanticism, to the role of interpretation as a fundamental facet of...

Rethinking Practice at the Great Feast @INCITE Seminars Saturday, July 25th, 10am-2pm EST / 4-8pm Europe /3pm-7pm UK. Online via Zoom. Come and join us on the 25th at Incite Seminars for an original workshop on Buddhism at the Great Feast for Incite Seminars. Pay what you can and dive into this experimental event online through Zoom. Description below. Western Buddhism and spirituality more broadly provide us with a rich menu of practices, messages and visions of the human condition and what...

Ok, I went and did something a little bit different. I spoke directly to the time we live in. It may work. It may not. This is the first in a short series of audio articles. You can read the text version if you prefer over at the Imperfect Buddha site. It steers a path towards the practising life through the tumultuous times we inhabit...in stages. This is the preamble...and this is the intro to the it from the site; "And so it begins. This is clearly the preamble, but to what? A short series...