In a fantastical poem about the future, Tishani Doshi explores the present. She imagines a future where agriculture, forestry, and cultivation are things of the past, distant memories learned by humans existing on other planets, or on intergalactic spaceships. That distant future is reflecting on how it should have learned from the grass, abundant, generous, ... Show More
Yesterday
W.S. Merwin — For The Anniversary of My Death
W.S. Merwin’s “For The Anniversary of My Death” is a slim, precise poem — just 13 lines made up of 84 words — about the very weightiest of subjects, one’s future death. With it, Merwin has crafted an elegant vessel, a small and sturdy container to hold some of life’s big question ... Show More
15m 17s
Jan 12
Kimblerly Blaeser - my journal records the vestiture of doppelgangers
Words can’t quite fully capture the activity, oddity, and awe that is everywhere around us, but poet Kimberly Blaeser makes a gorgeous attempt in her poem “my journal records the vestiture of doppelgangers.” The three stanzas overflow with an exuberance of colorful creatures — fr ... Show More
20m 8s
Apr 2021
Arnika Fuhrmann, "Teardrops of Time: Buddhist Aesthetics in the Poetry of Angkarn Kallayanapong" (SUNY Press, 2020)
Angkarn Kallayanapong (1926-2012) was arguably Thailand’s most famous poet of the modern period. His career spanned the era from the 1940s to the 1980s when Thai society was fundamentally transformed by rapid economic development and the process of globalization. His poetry is a ... Show More
47m 12s
Aug 2022
Living in Not-Knowing with Jenny Beal and Rachna Chowla: Openness and Spontaneity
<p>In this Living in Not-Knowing podcast with Jenny Beal, Rachna Chowla describes her spiritual journey from a traditional Vedanta school, via the Buddhist tradition of the Dalai Lama and the poetry of Rumi, to arrive at the Direct Path teaching of Rupert Spira and Francis Lucill ... Show More
56m 35s
May 2022
David Whyte — Seeking Language Large Enough
It has ever and always been true, David Whyte reminds us, that so much of human experience is a conversation between loss and celebration. This conversational nature of reality — indeed, this drama of vitality — is something we have all been shown, willing or unwilling, in these ... Show More
50m 34s
Mar 2023
Ioannis Gaitanidis, "Spirituality and Alternativity in Contemporary Japan: Beyond Religion?" (Bloomsbury, 2022)
Ioannis Gaitanidis' book Spirituality and Alternativity in Contemporary Japan: Beyond Religion? (Bloomsbury, 2022) critically examines the spirituality phenomenon in contemporary Japan by looking at the main actors involved in the discourse: spiritual therapists as practitioners, ... Show More
49m 33s