35 Robert Forman on Enlightenment, Mysticism, Pure Consciousness, and Yogic Flying

This week, you lucky listeners get two episodes for the price of one! Unusually for the podcast, we recorded two episodes back-to-back in just two days and for this reason they are kin, intimately connected, and shall go forth into the world as such. Each one shares the same intro, but don’t panic, it’s relatively short. Both conversations were less structured than usual. I did have questions, but allowed both conversations more space to evolve and flow, and there may even be a bit of rambling on both sides from time to time, but never enough to bore: We are exploring new creative spaces after all! Our two guests are at opposite ends of the career spectrum and their interests and concerns mirror generational shifts towards contemplative practices. Zachery Walsh is finishing up a Ph.D. programme, while Robert Forman has retired from teaching Religious Studies at University. Robert Foreman isn’t a typical guess for the podcast. Much of our work has been critical of Western spirituality and explorative of more philosophically leaning themes and aimed towards constructing divergent ways of imagining Buddhism, spirituality, contemplation, and notions of path tradition and outcomes. Robert spent much of his career exploring themes that have come up on our podcast episodes uniting his spiritual bent with academic writing on topics including mysticism non-duality pure consciousness and even ending up in a debate with Stephen T. Katz on whether mystical experience is socially constructed, or an innate universal capacity. Robert is a long-term practitioner of TM, that’s transcendental meditation, and we start off our discussion by talking about this controversial practice. We get into a range of topics covering his interests and non-academic writings including his recent “Enlightenment ain’t what it’s cracked up to be.” I do my best to lead the conversation towards more academic topics, but I’m only partially successful. I hope that the attempts to do so make for an interesting conversation all the same, and it must be said that Robert is game throughout our chat and generous with his time. Either way, our conversation remains loosely connected to the academic theme we have this year. My conversation with Zack Walsh was quite different, but not necessarily devoid of the personal or traces of Mystical enquiry, although perhaps he or I would use slightly different language to refer to such. Zach is currently working in the Institute for advanced Sustainability Studies in Germany exploring the relationship between contemplative practices and ecology. He has written some great work that resonates with many of my own concerns, insightful critiques of mindfulness and meditation culture using a variety of lenses that deserve wider attention, and has more recently developed what he calls the Contemplative Commons, which becomes a central topic of our discussion. We also look at the interplay of social justice, activism and contemplative practices, future directions for the development of spirituality firmly grounded in the imminent world, Metamodernism, and transcendence, and we even get into discussing modern day China, and there is film reference to boot. Enjoy this tandem cycle through different lives and minds as the Imperfect Buddha Podcast continues its journey onwards through destinations unknown. Music for these episodes is provided by the Bristol-based artist Hundred Strong, this time in collaboration with Cali Phoenix, a singer from Scotland. Check out her work on the usual sites including Bandcamp and her latest album Voices.

Matthew O'Connell a life coach and the host of the The Imperfect Buddha podcast. You can find The Imperfect Buddha on Facebook and Twitter (@imperfectbuddha).

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