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© Evan Neff
Description
Where my favorite novels intersect with Buddhist Psychology and my every day life.
11 Episodes
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Greetings!
A simple morning meditation practice by setting an intention for the day.
Here I contemplate fantasy and imagination, living in the world in child-like openness and wonder.
St. Augustine asked: But God, my Joy, what proceeded my life? was I indeed anywhere, or anybody? I play with this question asked by Augustine. I wonder where I came from and who brought me here through the lens of Bolaño's literature.
I'm trying to figure out how to cultivate being present and how to acknowledge the mystery of life that surrounds me everywhere I go!
~
I also highly recommend the works of Roberto Bolaño. His novels "The Savage Detectives" and "2666," any of his novellas, or his short stories ("Sensini" is fantastic). Google him, explore him, read him!
The first 15 minutes of this episode is a reflection of my spiritual journey while sitting along the East River. The audio is poor, but it's the myth of my beginning of meditation and seeking something greater than myself.
You can skip it if you'd like and go to 14:40, where I discuss Rumi, longing to return to the mystery of life I felt as a child, and reciting some of my favorite lines of poetry from Rumi.
An ancient Tantric Text reads:
"the mind is that which creates both imprisonment and liberation, confusion and awakening, so it is essential to know this king which generates all our experience"
I explore this quote using the unnamed narrator in Rachel Kushner's "The Flamethrowers"
Other questions I explore: How can I develop a new kind of living relationship with what I experience, or How can I understand my life more fully and authentically? How can I learn to open and surrender to life, to God? What does it mean to wake up? What does it mean to see things with openawareness? How can we give ourselves permission to see things as they really are?
Tomorrow or the next life -- we never know.
One day we will have to let go of our physical body, our likes + dislikes, our jobs, our creative abilities.
and we don't know what comes next or when that day will be. AND it doesn't have to be frightening. We can choose to honor ourselves, take up space, let ourselves do what we like (and like what we do)
Inspired by Sally Rooney's Normal People
Questions discussed:
How do I want others to perceive me and
What do I not want others to see?
Can I really give and receive love?
How can I trust who I am when I've done harmful things in the past to hurt others?
Whatever you experience today, meet in with the heart of a buddha. When we say yes to life, to whatever it is we are experiencing, we recognize our wholeness and begin to live deeply in lovingkindness.
To quote Oliva Rodrigo, I miss the days when I was young and naive and didn't realize that nothing lasts forever, nothing stays the same, and that imma die one day.
Can we learn from that Quack (extremely whack) Dorian Gray? Does death and the loss of beauty of to be scary and ugly?
What does Buddhism say about impermanence?
It's all there in the title. Listen if you miss sitting inside a cozy coffee shop :(
an absolute masterpiece, city of night is a story all about what happens when you over identify with the voice in your head and who society tells you to be, which results in keeping one from loving, being authentic, and living a peaceful life.
Connecting feelings of self-doubt to the literature of J.D. Salinger.
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