Jessica Morey returns, just in time to keep Cara Lai and I from burning this disco down. In honor of her re-emergence, we dive butt first into the big work. Is letting your child “cry it out” good medicine, or is that just what our robot overlords have programmed us to believe? How do we… Continue reading Season 2, Episode Seven: “I Walk the Spiral; You Walk the Line: Owning Your Path So As Not to Get Owned By It.”

Jessica Morey offers us a meditation on identifying, being with, and caring for our needs, starting from the fundament–our own bodies. What cues and clues may hide in flesh and bone waiting to be known; waiting to guide us towards exploring which of our needs have been met, and which remain unmet?

In today’s episode, we begin our series on when—if ever—is the appropriate time to try to make your baby Buddhist. But first, we discuss the joys and travails of traveling with the infant set. Next we ask, Are the deepest aspects of dhamma practice really available to anyone, or is there a platinum tier for… Continue reading Season 2, Episode Six: “When, How and Whether to Foist the Dharma Upon Your Children, Part I: ‘Sometimes Daddy Needs to Kill.'”

In this guided practice, Cara recognizes that the normal out of their mind, out of their breath, and out of their depth parent might not have time for what we think of as a formal sitting meditation practice. So what if, Cara asks, we could scrape the very gunk of life off the surface of… Continue reading Meditation: Who even has time to meditate?

In today’s episode, we begin by discussing the subtle art of preparing dhamma talks for meditation retreats. Later, we ask, Do humans have an instinctual orientation towards compassion, kindness, and love—or do we only get there by pushing past our darker impulses?  Still later, we explore exactly how much we should trust our children, and… Continue reading Season 2, Episode Five: “Resting Buddha Face.”

Jess leads us in a riff on “metta” or “loving-kindness” practice, in which we are invited to imagine an ideal mother figure, as a way of calling forth the ideal maternal qualities that may be hiding in our own minds and hearts. Then, we use those qualities to establish a secure base for how we… Continue reading Meditation: An especially safe space.

In today’s episode, I seem to have no idea what I’m getting myself into when I ask Jess and Cara to comment on whether my son’s insistence that I speak to him through a monkey-shaped hand-puppet is a peculiarity capable of  revealing any dhamma-adjacent truths. Before long, we’ve delved into a doctrinal debate about whether or… Continue reading Season 2, Episode Four: “Talk, Monkey!”

Jess gifts us with a meditation especially designed for parents, who may already feel like they’re figure-skating on the edge of a razor blade, and don’t need their meditation practice to be one more veldt they have to hack through. Hell, this meditation is one you can even do in bed, or wherever you happen… Continue reading Meditation: A place to rest the mind.

Today’s episode is a conversational free-for-all; or maybe a conversation in freefall? Jess and I crack open a veritable candy-sack of topics related to the dhamma of parenting. How do our children alert us when we’re not being mindful enough? What are the things we’re letting ourselves let go of, in hopes of becoming better parents?… Continue reading Season 2, Episode Three: “The Toilet-Mat Tantra.”

Jess offers a meditation on learning to love this giant impermanent thing called parenting.