The Innercraft Podcast

In this episode, Venerable Sangye Khadro, author of How to Meditate: A Practical Guide, and Buddhist nun offers an introduction to the different types of meditation taught and practiced in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. This is a great talk particularly for beginners and those new to meditation practice.

In this episode, I’m joined by GuruViking aka Steve James, host of the Guru Viking Podcast and creator of the Movement Koan Method. Steve has extensive experience in elite athletic performance, contemplative and spiritual disciplines, extreme outdoor survival, the arts, and human behavior. In this conversation, Steve and I talk about life in general, and how meditation fits in it. We discuss his goals and learnings in The Guru Viking Podcast, Steve’s upbringing and how he got started in meditation, his approach towards spiritual practice, the intersection between meditation, music and movement practices, The Movement Koan Method, and more.

Knowing ourselves is the reason why we are here on Earth, and this is our first and main duty; to see the hindrance of our mechanical personality, the sequel of the idealized images we create of ourselves. Only then we can liberate the colorful naked and unique beauty of our real selves. Only then we can experience true freedom. - Shaykh Burhanuddin

In this talk, Tina provides an overview of the 7 Factors and how they can be used in our practice. She also describes in more detail the first factor of Mindfulness, which balances the other 6. Tina is a meditation teacher who leads retreats and offers spiritual guidance and mentoring to practitioners worldwide. Her mission as a teacher is to foster awakening and its embodiment in worldly life, through the application of authentic, rigorous Buddhist and modern practices. Tina learned to meditate in 1976, at age 13. In her late twenties, after many years of practice in Buddhist and modern non-dual traditions, she undertook an intensive year-long solo retreat during which a profound awakening to Reality occurred. Some years after that, Tina attended a retreat with Burmese meditation master Ven. Pa Auk Sayadaw, who ordained her as a Buddhist nun and later, authorized her to teach. During the retreat, Tina became the first Western woman to complete the entire Samatha path in this lineage. Tina also took refuge with Tsoknyi Rinpoche, a Tibetan Dzogchen teacher, and was initiated into the Nyingma lineage.

In this interview, Shaykh Burhanuddin talks about the main goals, principles, and practices of the Sufi path, his relationship with his master, what Sufi meditation retreats look like, and the importance of consistent spiritual practice. He also talks about some of the main challenges present in the spiritual path and gives advice on how to overcome them. Shaykh Burhanuddin is a contemporary mystic of ancient tradition, called onto the Sufi path at a young age. In his teaching, Shaykh Burhanuddin combines methods from his Sufi Tradition with contemporary knowledge of psychology. He started the practice at 10 with Yoga, and between the ages of 14-18 practiced meditation under the guidance of the 16th Karmapa Rangjung Rigpe Dorje, within the Karma Kagyu lineage of Tibetan Buddhism. At 18, Shaykh Burhanuddin met with the grandmaster of the Naqshbandi Sufi Order, one of the most ancient and authoritative of the many existing Sufi Orders, Mawlana Shaykh Nazim al Haqqani ar Rabbani, and went through the classic dervish training under the direct guidance of the Master. He received a direct transmission of the Naqshbandi Sufi Order. Shaykh Burhanuddin is the author of three books, a musician and the founder of the Dervish Orchestra.