Claralynn Nunamaker grew up in Chicago. She first encountered Chinese philosophy when at university and particularly resonated with the Dao De Jing. She studied Chinese and spent some time in China before moving to moving to Ukiah, California, home of the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas Chan Buddhist monastery. It’s there that she became a practising Buddhist. Soon she became involved in the Theravada Forest sangha in northern California and her interest moved her to learn the Pali language in order to read the early Buddhist sutras in their original language. Over the years she has extensively studied and taught Marshall Rosenberg’s system of non-violent communication, which she sees as the embodied practice of right speech. Today she aligns with early Buddhist teachings and is deeply influenced by Ayya Khema and her main teacher, Leigh Brasington. Claralynn serves as Director for the Scottish charity Friends of Early Buddhist Teachings and chair of Sakyadhita UK. Her website is crnunamaker.com.

In this interview, Claralynn insightfully explains the practice of non-violent communication (NVC) and its foundation in the universal attitudes of kindness, compassion, and empathy. Her view is that NVC gives us the tools to transform the aspiration of right speech into reality through clear learnable techniques and principles. Something we all need I’d say! The concept of a troublesome buddha finds its equivalent in the ‘enemy image’ in NVC. Through various personal examples, she explores the power of avoiding falling into the trap of simply describing the enemy image (ahh wasn’t that a big scary dog?) - thus giving it power - to identifying and describing our feelings and needs (I can see you’re scared and want to feel safe). This shift into connecting to the need that’s not being met, she says, allows us to draw alongside the difficult people we meet and see their Buddha nature.

This podcast is sponsored by Zen Minded – an online lifestyle store offering you the very best of Japanese craft, incense & other Zen-inspired home-goods. Check it out at www.zenminded.uk
We’re also sponsored by BetterHelp. BetterHelp offers convenient and affordable therapy online, helping match you with the right therapist from their network. They’ve extended an offer of 10% off your first month of therapy if you sign up via https://betterhelp.com/zenatthesharpend

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Steve grew up in a Christian family on the Shetland Islands (off the northern coast of Scotland) and was very involved in church growing up. This provided the foundation for a life-long interest in spiritual investigation, philosophy, world mysticism, and body-awareness realms of practice. He has an interest in extreme outdoor survival, and works closely with the well-known therapist Michaela Boehm. Steve teaches a wide range of movement and meditation practices and works with leading figures to develop their performance and interpersonal skills. He also presents the popular Guru Viking Podcast, specialising in in-depth interviews with leaders and teachers in the world of meditation, spirituality, and self development.

In this interview touching on Steve’s broad experience and wisdom for dealing with difficult people, he highlights the Buddha’s teaching on the ‘Eight Worldly Winds’ (pleasure and pain, gain and loss, praise and blame, fame and disrepute). The Buddha taught that we suffer because we cling to the positive ‘winds’ (pleasure, gain, etc) and resist the negative ones. In dealing with challenging situations, Steve has found these to serve as a very helpful antidote to sense of shock or injustice of a difficult encounter. He has observed that wise people don’t celebrate a given situation, but instead take a more equanimous attitude. One such example is a story relating to the famous Zen master Hakuin that Steve has often meditated on and draws deep inspiration from:

Zen master Hakuin was praised by his neighbors as one living a pure life. A beautiful Japanese girl whose parents owned a food store lived near him. Suddenly, without any warning, her parents discovered she was with child. This made her parents angry. She would not confess who the man was, but after much harassment at last named Hakuin. In great anger the parent went to the master. "Is that so?" was all he would say.

After the child was born it was brought to Hakuin. By this time he had lost his reputation, which did not trouble him, but he took very good care of the child. He obtained milk from his neighbors and everything else he needed.

A year later the girl-mother could stand it no longer. She told her parents the truth – the real father of the child was a young man who worked in the fishmarket.
The mother and father of the girl at once went to Hakuin to ask forgiveness, to apologize at length, and to get the child back. Hakuin was willing. In yielding the child, all he said was: "Is that so?"

– “Is that so?”, from “Zen Flesh Zen Bones” translated by Paul Reps

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DEALING WITH DIFFICULT PEOPLE RETREAT
11-14 July 2024, Derbyshire, UK
https://zenways.org/event/dealing-with-difficult-people-retreat/
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This podcast is sponsored by Zen Minded – an online lifestyle store offering you the very best of Japanese craft, incense & other Zen-inspired home-goods. Check it out at www.zenminded.uk
We’re also sponsored by BetterHelp. BetterHelp offers convenient and affordable therapy online, helping match you with the right therapist from their network. They’ve extended an offer of 10% off your first month of therapy if you sign up via https://betterhelp.com/zenatthesharpend

If you liked this podcast, consider:

• Sharing it via social media
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www.markwestmoquette.co.uk

Charlie Morley is a bestselling author and teacher of lucid dreaming, shadow integration and Mindfulness of Dream & Sleep. Since early childhood, Charlie has been fascinated by lucid dreaming. His interest in Buddhism was piqued after reading “The Art of Happiness” by the Dalai Lama on a long flight when he was just 16, and just a few years later he took refuge in Karma Kagyu tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. After being instructed in the Buddhist practice of lucid dreaming by Lama Yeshe Rimpoche, he began giving workshops and teaching widely.

In this interview, Charlie discusses in depth the encounters he’s had with the most difficult person in his life - himself! In a lucid dream, he explains, you literally meet personified versions of your own psychological states. The negative (wounded, suffering) aspects are known as your shadow self. The lucid dreaming practice he teaches takes the view that meeting these so-called ‘demons’ offers you the opportunity of transforming them - for turning them into helpers or angels (i.e. troublesome buddhas). Charlie describes that when we recognise that, within a dream, all is pure potentiality and empty of inherent existence, all fear dissolves. We can then learn to face our deepest pain demons in the dream state and come to terms with them, hug them - and eventually let ourselves be eaten by them… This lays down the neural pathways that help us do that in waking life - to deal with the troublesome buddhas of our daily life.

This podcast is sponsored by Zen Minded – an online lifestyle store offering you the very best of Japanese craft, incense & other Zen-inspired home-goods. Check it out at www.zenminded.uk
We’re also sponsored by BetterHelp. BetterHelp offers convenient and affordable therapy online, helping match you with the right therapist from their network. They’ve extended an offer of 10% off your first month of therapy if you sign up via https://betterhelp.com/zenatthesharpend

If you liked this podcast, consider:

• Sharing it via social media
• Signing up to my email list

www.markwestmoquette.co.uk