077: Lama Surya Das

This week we talk to Lama Surya Das about looking beyond ourselves

Lama Surya Das is one of the foremost Western Buddhist meditation teachers and scholars, one of the main interpreters of Tibetan Buddhism in the West, and a leading spokesperson for the emerging American Buddhism. The Dalai Lama affectionately calls him “The Western Lama.”

Surya has spent over forty five years studying Zen, vipassana, yoga, and Tibetan Buddhism with the great masters of Asia, including the Dalai Lama’s own teachers, and has twice completed the traditional three-year meditation cloistered retreat at his teacher’s Tibetan monastery.

Surya Das has been featured in numerous publications and major media, including ABC, CNN, MSNBC, NPR, The Washington Post, One segment of the ABC-TV sitcom Dharma & Greg was based on his life (“Leonard’s Return”). Surya has appeared on Politically Correct with Bill Maher, and twice on The Colbert Report.

Surya is the author of thirteen books, his latest is called Make Me One With Everything: Buddhist Meditations to Awaken from the Illusion of Separation.

In This Interview Surya and I Discuss…

The One You Feed parable.
The Concept of Inter-Meditation.
The Us vs.Them problem.
Furthering a collective awakening versus only individual awakening.
The process of gazing meditation.
Co-meditating with nature.
Being with things instead of against them.
Inter-meditation is the antithesis of spiritual narcissism.
The spiritual life is about every step along the way, not just the sacred places.
Inter-meditation is the process of paying attention to what is around us as well as within us.
Approaches to opening our heart.
How to love first, and see second.
Making the journey from the head to the heart.
How we need more than intellectual knowledge.
Thinking of mindfulness as more than just mental activity.
How fools seek wisdom from afar but the wise look under their own feet.
How we need each other to awaken and become enlightened.
How the path is right below our feet.
The Middle Way- Buddha’s greatest teaching.
Not seeing people as all good or all bad.
How too much of a good thing can be a problem.
His greatest challenges.
How much of the knowledge that is passed down is very questionable.
How we know so much but understand so little.
Not becoming simple-minded in the pursuit of simplicity.
The joys of our dogs.
Working with Ben and Jerry on ice cream flavors.