Podcast

Episode 54 - How can I create more space?

How can I manage my life in such as a way that I feel comfortable and settled in the experiences that I am engaging in? Part of the answer is looking at taking care of yourself, being realistic and maintaining a balance at every level. Many people feel overwhelmed because they bring too much into their life – it is crowded out and there is no spaciousness. Rather than looking at how can I cope with this, look at how can I create more space?

Episode 53 - Being Volitional or Functional

The Buddha talked about beings being volitional (driven by personal will) or functional (performing their function seamlessly in an awakened state). It does not matter what the function is. The transition from adolescence to adulthood is when we find out who we actually are by performing our function and not thinking we are special. A skilful human being moves like a stick through water and does not leave that much of a trace, contributing in some way that goes unnoticed. There are countless ways of being of service and performing your function.

Episode 52 - The Experience Brings the Fruit

The experience is what has a transformative effect in meditation. Seeing something we have not seen before can create a paradigm shift which helps us transform our suffering. Peak experiences are not the cessation of suffering. The real testament is the refinement of character which means you are not afflicted by what happens to you.  

Episode 51 - The Ground for Happiness

The Buddha was not interested in teaching the momentary cessation of suffering but finding a pathway to cut off at the root the habit of bringing ourselves to suffering. When he was a prince twenty-five centuries ago, he came to the conclusion that there is no happiness to be found in the pursuit of pleasure alone. After he renounced his worldly life and went forth, he also found that practicing austerity practices alone does not cut off the causes of suffering. When he became enlightened, he came to see the absolute truth of the conditioned process of life beyond the appearance of things. 

Episode 50 - Ending our Sense of Separation

We may not have recognised it but somewhere inside us is a longing for a sense of deep connection to what we are part of. We try to do meet this through ideas but this is not the same as being totally present. We need to turn up fully to our experience rather than get lost in thinking about it all and meditation is a process of gradually bringing to an end our sense of separation.  

Episode 49 - The Complex Idea of Ourselves

With more mindfulness, you can see what you are bringing to this moment from the past. When you witness this without a sense of self, you see things much for how they really are rather than what you think they are. We can bring a more objective perspective and open the door to some of the charge we are carrying.

Episode 48 - The Eightfold Noble Path

The goal of meditation is to free ourselves from suffering of the affliction we experience in our life. To see clearly what life is, we have to polish the lens that we look through.  Understanding comes from insight rather than studying or intellectual reflection.  The eightfold noble path leads to liberation through insight.  As soon as you see what this is, you free yourself.  The liberation is in the seeing. In order to see, we have to pay wise attention.

Episode 47 - Flavour of a Complete Experience

What did the Buddha say was the cause of suffering? You might think that attachment is the cause of our suffering, but attachment itself is caused by ignorance. If we saw what life truly is, we would not suffer.  Our ignorance is the illusion of self.   When we are absorbed in what we are doing, our sense of self fades. The arising of the sense of me in the middle of my experience is what creates the sense of separation.  

Episode 46 - Good Luck, Bad Luck, Who Knows

You don’t know what you are going to get in life – good luck or bad luck, who knows?  Sometimes life goes your way and sometimes it does not.  It does not matter what you get, it matters how you meet each experience with a clear mind.  Burgs goes onto to discuss karma and consciousness and asks what do you know to be true?  The views we cling to are highly predictable on account of the way our mind works and our conditioning.  The “wisdom of the idiot” acknowledges that we know nothing and are open to life as it is – rather than rigidly clinging to our views.  

Episode 45 - Can't We Flourish All of the Time?

Sometimes the conditions are not present for us to be flourishing and we are either struggling or coping. The maturing of our insight ensures we can make more skilful life decisions, so that our expectations are realistic and in tune with the karmic forces that are underpinning our lives. There will be times when we are supported karmically, and times when we are challenged. If you get a sense of what is going on in the background, you can time your decisions appropriately, and act when the energy is right.  

Episode 44 - What Disturbs our Serenity?

What causes disturbances in our meditation once we have established serenity and are not throwing any more pebbles into the pond of our mind?  It’s our old stock of unwholesome mental states which shake our heart base. This happens because our field of perception opens and negative mental states reveal themselves which are below the threshold of our normal awareness. We know these mental states are just below the surface but usually distract ourselves from feeling them - maintaining a more limited level of consciousness.

Episode 43 - What Do You Want?

Are you looking to learn to meditate or realise the path out of suffering?  Your welfare in the here and now is dependent on the accumulation of merit in the past.  If you are practicing to enhance your welfare for now and in the future, this is realised through virtue and how you conduct yourself.  The Buddha taught the path of the causal cessation of suffering which might not be everyone’s aspirations.  Whatever your aspirations, it is clear that we need to change significantly the way we live our lives and take full accountability for our choices.

Episode 42 - Vitality, Karma and Attitude

Following on from the last episode, Burgs explores the themes of vitality, karma and stress.  The quality of your mind has a very significant impact on the quality of your life – much more so than what you eat, for example.  When you are meditating, it is the attitude you bring to it which can bring the most coherence and transformation.  When its not going well, rather than worrying, it is an opportunity to find a strength of character that you would not normally bring to the things that you do.   

Episode 41 - How the Mind Impacts Health?

What is the mechanism by which the state of our mind impacts our health?  There are four causes for the arising of material states; temperature, nutriment, consciousness and karma / action energy.  It is the subtle materiality (consciousness and karma) which allows life to be expressed through us in all its extraordinary ways.  In meditation, we can refine our karma and what prompts us to act. In doing so, we refine the quality of the way we function.  By developing our physical and mental constitution, we can develop our capacity to take on challenges without being destabilised.  

Episode 40 - Your Connection to the Divine

We have tendency in a materialistic culture to take the Dharma into our mind at an intellectual level but we have to put the Buddha’s teachings into the context of the deeply spiritual culture within which he taught. Through practice, we recognise that this is a profoundly conscious universe and we are all deeply connected to each other. Meditation helps us to connect to the sacred nature of life beyond an intellectual understanding.

Episode 39 - A Loving Surrender

Happiness arises when you chose to accept yourself to be what you are without any judgement.  It’s important to find a sense of loving kindness for yourself.  This is what will help you to let go.   It is a loving surrender, free from aversion, and finding forgiveness for yourself and others. On the path, love and insight need to mature in equal measure; generating a wholesome quality to our mind.

Episode 38 - Vitality of Your Spirit

There is a current of vital force running through you. Vitality is partly generated from the volition or desire that we bring to our actions. There is also the vitality of our spirit – the current of life that is driving you which is not personal. When you shut down, you choke the spirit that makes your feel alive. To be fully, powerfully alive is to reclaim every aspect of yourself with full consciousness and authenticity, so that the current of life is pouring through you. This podcast directly follows the last episode (no.37 – Reclaim Your Consciousness).

Episode 37 - Reclaim Your Consciousness

Your soul is something that is inherent in you and is deeply conditioned by everything you have experienced.  It feels like something that is fundamentally “me” which we can break down and dismantle.  We might experience a fractured or broken part of our soul which we are disconnected from.  The way to fill that hole is to be with the experiences in the past that we were unwilling to be with. This is the doorway to our awakening and the route to reclaiming our consciousness. 

Episode 36 - Refinement of Character

The 10 paramis are qualities of our character identified by the Buddha that act as wholesome support to our mind on the path out of suffering. Once these qualities come to perfection in us, we make very swift progress. Burgs explores each one of the paramis: generosity, virtue, truthfulness, renunciation, patience, vitality / energy, determination, lovingkindness, wisdom and equanimity.

Episode 35 - A Devotional Attitude

The Dharma is a transmission of an experience of reality which frees us from suffering. It is about the transformation of our hearts, not our ideas. A devotional attitude helps us to get beyond ourselves and our limiting ideas of who we think we are. When we surmount our pride, our heart opens and we can come into resonance with a higher consciousness.

Episode 34 - Finding Peace Within Yourself

When we are deeply moved by something, such as music, art or nature, it switches on a faculty of consciousness that does not involve the mind. It works at a spontaneous level - arising directly through awareness at a non-conceptual level. We are transported beyond ourselves where the sense of “me” stops arising. When we clearly see the mechanism behind this process and touch what is truly sacred, we can find a peace within ourselves.

Episode 33 - Yoga of Sleep and Dreaming

Sleep lies at the centre of our lives but we often miss its importance. In some ways, it can be seen as a doorway to the greatest of all spiritual awakenings – resting deeply in the clear light of awareness (even though we tend not to be conscious of it). Dreaming can be seen as unpackaging our karmic tendencies – similar to the vipassana process – that can be accepted rather than rejected. If you can be with your biggest disturbances in the night, and let them go with equanimity, it can be a transformative practice.

Episode 32 - Discovering Your True Potential

Meditation can be a way of life rather than a pallative for stress. There is a significant gap between what we can currently experience at a conscious level and what our true potential is. The spirit of the yogi is a gradual process towards unifying yourself with your experience and ending the sense of seperation, representing one of the greatest and highest endeavors there is.

Episode 31 - The Warrior’s Path

There is a huge disparity between the way we live as human beings and the way we are designed to engage with our experience consciously. The only way we cope is by shutting down so that we cant feel what we are doing to it. We need to wake up to what a human being really is and make changes in our lives to build our spiritual capacity. To do this, we must first transform our character before we transform spiritually. It's a warrior's path.

Episode 30 - Your Journey Home

What do our little human lives amount to?  We all have to make choices in relation to the challenges in front of us. Many unwise choices are made due to the belief that there is no intelligent process behind our lives. Our path out of suffering is our way home and a deep connection to the intelligence which holds us. 

Episode 29 - Shifting our Attitude to Life: The Big Humility Pill

In this interview, Burgs suggests that we are at a threshold in human history where it is crucial we make the right decisions in our lives and create a critical mass for change. This time is calling for us to find the best qualities of what it is to be human and become the species that starts to give back. Burgs talks about the courage to step into the unknown, unlearning the culture of consumerism, finding meaning over hopelessness and how to become a net contributor.

Episode 28 - A Vision for a Positive World

In this meditation, we create in our heart a vision for the world as we would like to see it. If we cannot imagine the world we dream of, then it’s not going to happen. What are you going to change? Where are you going to find courage? What would you like to see happen in your life and in the world around you? We all want to see the world be a beautiful place, it’s what we long for. May we all do our little bit and what is in our heart.

Episode 27 - Dropping Things that Worry You

Are you able to switch off and drop the things that worry you? How can you be a more relaxed person and get into a deeply settled state? You might have tried yoga or meditation but perhaps have not made an agreement with yourself to actually be more relaxed. Burgs explores letting go our sense of control, trusting the power of life, dialling out of stress, changing our habit patterns and reconfiguring our relationship with time.

Episode 26 - Finding Meaning in Your Life

We can often feel that something is missing in our lives and run around looking for something that will give us meaning. That search can go on for our whole life. However, when we get in touch with the deepest part of our heart we know that there is nothing lacking. That is why we must do whatever we can to overcome numbness, reclaim our capacity to feel and nourish our connection to the sacred. When you end your numbness, your quest for meaning in your life will be over and you will understand what you came here for.

Episode 25 - What is Going to be Important This Year?

The choices we make this year are going to determine the direction of our lives and the lives of future generations. Life has changed dramatically in the last two years. It will never be the same again. But how will it be different? How can the choices we make lead to the growth in humanity? And what is the direction you want to take in your life? Now is the time to put conviction behind your beliefs.

Episode 24 - Seeing for Ourselves the Universal Truths of Life

Life is an extraordinary mystery and the deeper existential questions are not answered sufficiently by science. Through deep yogic practice we can polish the mind and as this lens becomes more and more refined, fundamental spiritual truths are revealed in stages. The Buddha asks us not to subscribe to views but to see for ourselves what is true through practice. Dharma is a living universal truth – the way of things – and by seeing this we can live life skilfully. Burgs tells the story of the Ox Herder – which Illustrates the journey we go through as we learn to clear the dust from our eyes and start to see the dharma for ourselves.

Episode 23 - Coping with Covid: Reflections and Guidance

If we test positive for covid-19, we are cast into a journey which we know can go a number of ways. Burgs shares his experience of having the virus with the impact not just on the physical body but also the subtle energetic body. By undertaking a digital detox and resting, he found that the virus was causing absolute turbulence in his body, and yet his mind was in a deep state of peace. The experience reinforces the importance of holding our own space and finding stillness in a storm. It is an invitation to let go which is similar to a deep vipassana practice if you can be with what arises – such as your deepest fears. This can be very healing.

Episode 22 - Delighting in What You Have to Give

Giving back starts with each one of us doing the inner work to realise our reals needs are far less than what our perceived needs are. Living simply is not a sacrifice but a relief. And this opens our heart so that we feel more connected to the people around us and all of life. Delight in what you have to give and find peace in your life. From little acorns come mighty oaks. If you keep walking in the right direction, you cant fail.

Episode 21 - Why is Now the Time to Give Back?

We are living in the most important time in history. We are being asked to bring about a total paradigm shift in what it means to be a human being. How can we be the generation to turn it all around? How can we give back more than we take out? We are using up our good fortune and the only way to accumulate it again is to create merit and give something back – both for ourselves, the planet and future generations.

Episode 20 - Finding Acceptance: Forgiveness, Grief and Love

Why do we find it so hard to accept certain things? When we find it challenging to accept something, it is usually wrapped up in our idea of ourselves and how we think the world should be. A big part of acceptance is yielding on our position and to the way things are. Experiencing grief can be a healthy response to losing someone we love and can also be unhealthy – how can we love unconditionally without attachment that is bound up in fear, control and insecurity?

Episode 19 - Overcoming Our Deepest Fears

Keeping fear packaged up inside us ties up a lot of our energy. It takes courage to turn this into something positive. What lies behind the fear we are holding onto? At the deepest part of ourselves is the fear of our existential annihilation. We can overcome this by gradually developing a relationship with what remains when our ego passes; the love which is the ground of our being.

Episode 18 - The Joy of Simplicity

Upholding a complex life that is both expensive and difficult to mange vexes us to the point that we don’t experience joy.  The path out of suffering is a gradual path of negotiation with ourselves, looking at which the degree to which we are attached to things that cause suffering and our willingness to let these go. If we are in conflict with letting go, then we are not ready to do so. It is a choiceless process relating to our level of understanding and our longing for simplicity.

Episode 17 - Life Story of the Buddha Part 2

Following the Buddha's enlightenment, a great Brahma asks the Buddha to teach others the path out of suffering. This leads to the Buddha's first teaching and the turning of the wheel of Dharma which has existed to this day. The truth lies within each and every single one of us waiting for us to discover it for ourselves. What are you going to do with your time here?

Episode 16 - Life Story of the Buddha Part 1

Burgs tells the early life story of the Buddha. Born as a prince, Siddhattha Gotama was destined to become either a great monach or a great spiritual leader. Leaving his palace in his late twenties, he encounters human suffering and the very next day renouces the life of sensual pleasures to live the life of a wandering ascetic. He learns from the greatest teachers of the age, followed by undertaking austere practices, before finding the middle way and reaching his goal of the causal cessation of suffering on a May full moon.

Episode 15 - Are you Living in a State of Stress?

Our culture is built on the idea that we should always be challenging ourselves to achieve more and we drive ourselves to our limit for long periods of time. The result is that we can live our lives in an over-stimulated state for years and we are never deeply at rest. This can have a huge impact on our health and wellbeing. Our nervous system can be in a coping state the entire time, always pushing to get more out of ourselves rather than raising our capacity. To get the most out of life, we should ask ourselves what can we come by from a state of ease and comfort?

Episode 14 - What Determines the Quality of your Life?

There are many offerings out there promising quick fixes and instant transformation. Yet the journey to free ourselves from suffering is a gradual process where we let go layers of conditioning in stages. This podcast explores how it is consciousness which is the greatest conditioning factor in our life and transforming this is a progressive path.

Episode 13 - The Courage to Do What is Being Asked of Us

We are currently at an axis point where we are being asked to let go the persuit of our creations and feel more alive. Can we find the courage to do what is being asked of us and stand up for the freedoms of future generations, just as past generations have done?

Episode 12 - Healthy Grief and Living Fearlessly

Burgs explores how we always have the choice to make our suffering the making of us, no matter how painful it might be.

"Healthy grief" is honouring our separation and a true state of love, as opposed to "unhealthy grief" which is not willing to accept the way things are.

Grief is a process that can open us up more completely to life and does not need to shut down our capacity to love. In this way, we can live with a sense of gratitude and appreciative joy, rather than fear.

Episode 11 - Relationships: Love as an Act of Generosity

Burgs explores the nature of love we have with a partner.

He examines how attachment can smother our love and how fear only shrinks the heart.

Healthy relationships require sacrifice and hard work.

We should seek to love people unconditionally for who they are rather than expect more than is reasonable.

Episode 10 - Self-Love: Feeling Love and Acceptance for Who You Are

In this episode, Burgs explores what we mean by loving kindness and that if we are going to love others, we must first find love for ourselves.

It includes a meditation with reflections on self-love, acceptance and healing our relationship with ourselves.

Episode 9 - Seeing Truth In Our Experience

In this podcast Burgs investigates how we can enter deeply into our experience so that the innate truth it contains reveals itself, beyond our limiting thoughts and ideas.

The podcast journey's into this state of presence where we learn to rest within the experience so it reflects perfectly its true nature.

From this state we can see clearly into our life and are prompted act according to its deep innate wisdom that always shows us what it is we need to do.

Episode 8 - What Does It Mean To Let Go Part 2

This podcast is an edited version of Burgs' radio show through YouTube livestream on Sunday 24th May 2020. The topic of discussion is Letting Go - What does it mean to let go?

The episode continues to explores the various aspects of letting go, whether it be in our lives or on the cushion whilst meditating. A number of audience led questions are answered during the show which helps explore the theme of the evening.

Burgs also touches upon subjects like loneliness and familial responsibilities.

Episode 7 - What Does It Mean To Let Go Part 1

This podcast is an edited version of Burgs' radio show through YouTube livestream on Friday 22nd May 2020. The topic of discussion is Letting Go - What does it mean to let go?

The episode explores the various aspects of letting go, whether it be in our lives or on the cushion whilst meditating.

A number of audience led questions are answered during the show which helps explore the theme of the evening.

Episode 6 - Letting Go - Finding Forgiveness & Healing Past Wounds

This podcast is an edited version of Burgs' new radio show through YouTube livestream on Saturday 9th May 2020.

The topic of discussion is forgiveness.

The episode explores some of the harder areas in our lives where we might find it hard to find forgiveness for others, as well as ourselves.

Episode 5 - Rite of Passage

In this podcast Burgs investigates the notion that when we actually see how consciousness functions, we start to engage with the spiritual path as a rite of passage; a rite of passage out of spiritual adolescence where we feel we may be owed something by life to a point where our perspective deepens into a state of spiritual maturity where we see we are responsible for our own wellbeing and the wellbeing of the planet upon which all life depends.

Episode 4 - Safe Guarding Our Consciousness Part Two

This episode continues an interview with Burgs where he discusses why and how we could approach looking after our consciousness.

The interview discusses why many people are currently feeling so disconnected and confused about what to do in the face of the climate emergency and great social upheaval, and looks at how to develop a new attitude to life and to our minds in this time of great uncertainty.

Episode 3 - Safe Guarding Our Consciousness Part One

This episode is an interview with Burgs where he discusses why and how we could approach looking after our consciousness.

The interview discusses why many people are currently feeling so disconnected and confused about what to do in the face of the climate emergency and great social upheaval, and looks at how to develop a new attitude to life and to our minds in this time of great uncertainty.

Episode 2 - The Give Back Generation

In this podcast, Burgs introduces and discusses the notion of what he calls the Give Back Generation. This is an attitude and way of being that seeks to encourage us to think of our lives in terms of being net contributors to life and to our planet so that by the end of our lives we have put back more than we have taken out at all levels.

The group discussion looks at the various aspects of this way of being.

Episode 1 - The Long Out Breath

In this podcast, the first in the series from The Art of Meditation, meditation teacher Burgs sits with a panel of his students to discuss how me might respond to what is happening globally, from the climate emergency to the need for rapid social change.

The podcast looks at how we might develop a new attitude to these global challenges and seeks positive and practical solutions in the face of much global uncertainty in this extraordinary period in history.