Teaching Meditation

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In this conversation with Upali, Monica Anutes traces the path from her first day-long sit to teaching in Rob Burbea's lineage. They then land on confidence: how it grows not from one dramatic insight but from noticing freedom again and again in small moments, and how much of it is borrowed — from teachers, from books, from sangha — before it becomes your own. Along the way: why emptiness and compassion aren't opposites, what dependent arising looks like in a hard morning, and Monica's work bringing Seeing That Frees into Portuguese.

https://www.monicaantunes.com/en/about

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Upali interviews Monica Heiser, a teacher in the insight lineage Mindfulness in Daily Life (MIDL). Monica is one of the few guests we've had on the show who is a fulltime school teacher, so she and Upali talk about how this informs her pedagogy. She and Upali talk about effort and overeffort in practice, and how this can lead to big distractions such as lust for jhanas, and they contrast this with the positive feedback loop of wellbeing that comes from balanced practice. You can read more about Monica at https://monicaheiser.com/meditation-awakening/ and more about the lineage at https://midlmeditation.com/

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Lysha Smith is a senior teacher in the lineage of SN Goenka, running the Dhamma Dhara center in Massachusetts. The conversation touches on a number of issues, including

• How they manage to keep their courses free of charge
• Why they're so "unhip"? (We think we're the first big Dharma podcast to do an episode on Goenka)
• Do Goenka retreats cause serious mental health side effects at a higher rate than other traditions, or is it just the sample bias (way, way more people do their retreats than others)?
• How is the lineage evolving?

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Meditation teacher and attachment theory expert George Haas talks about the effects of insecure attachment, as well as how combining meditation with other modalities can cause a permanent shift in attachment style. See mettagroup.org for more information.

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Leigh tells us the story of how he became a jhana teacher, and we learn the thrilling story of the life of Ayya Khema, his teacher. He tells us about jhana being an endangered species, and then he tells us about his newest book: Love, Compassion, Joy, Equanimity, which includes the concept of self-Mudita. The middle section is Leigh focusing on his search for a successor to make sure that jhana retreats continue.

For more about Leigh Brasington, head over here.

The Teachers Leigh Recommends in the Podcast

https://www.buddhistinquiry.org/person/mary-aubry/

https://heathersundberg.com/

https://southerndharma.org/teachers/1587/meagan-chambers/

https://www.cheltenhamzen.co.uk/

https://rockymountaininsight.org/dharma-talks-lucinda-green/

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In this episode of Teaching Meditation, Upali interviews longtime student-turned-teacher Robin Moisson to explore his journey from an early crisis of meaning in engineering school to intensive retreats in Southeast Asian monasteries, and ultimately back to teaching in the West. They discuss navigating cultural barriers in traditional settings, discovering pragmatic Dharma, and Robin’s path from full-time to part-time teaching as he balances financial reality with practice and teaching.

Learn more about Robin, in English or French, at https://robinmoisson.com/

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Upali interviews Boaz about the relational meditation practices he's been doing, including relational qi gong. Their conversation then pivots to the role Boaz sees meditation practice holding in healing and altering societies. Boaz will be speaking at a conference Dec 5 - 7, 2025, and you can find more information at this link. Boaz's newest paper is over here.

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Professor Steven Haberlin is a professor at the University of Central Florida. In this episode, you'll hear him talk about teaching small amounts of meditation to very large amounts of people. Steven tells us about the benefits of this style of teaching, as well as what risks there are. The episode then focuses on research he's been doing on technological adjuncts to meditation and the use of meditation apps. The research forms part of his new book, Meta-Meditation for Mental Health: How Neuroscience, Virtual Reality, and AI are Changing Practice and How You Can Benefit.

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Upali interviews Anusheh, who began practicing The Mind Illuminated in order to improve her anxiety. While it did help, it was a more convoluted path than she had been expecting. One topic she and Upali talk about is the idea that striving is actually helpful, in that it causes you to burn out enough that you stop doing it, which is the route to good practice. Anusheh also talks about the transition from lusting after enlightenment -- "future happiness" -- with the focusing on what happiness could look like in the present moment.

"Rejecting your experience right now takes a lot of energy!"

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Stephen Zerfas, founder of the Jhana startup Jhourney (get it?), covers a wide range of topics in today's interview. He and Tucker talk about the relationship of the jhanas to the rest of the path, how Stephen has succeeded in getting so much publicity, and how the larger Dharma community has responded to a tech startup teaching meditation retreats.

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Upali interviews Yuri, a Ukranian-British meditator. Yuri talks about how difficult his first retreat was, and how permanently his life changed following this. He then goes into how much better he became as a father as a result of his meditation practice. Later, Upali asks Yuri about what it was like when his country was attacked while his family was still there, and what impact his practice had on his ability to cope with this.

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Upali interviews Tucker in this episode. In a wide-ranging conversation, they touch on:

• Many of us look for self esteem to pretty much everyone we meet, or to no one at all, rather than in a sane place.
• Doing what you'd like to do, and being in community, are opposite stances. How do we balance these?
• Tucker talks about Sanity & Sainthood, both the name of his book and what he sees as the two goals of dharma practice and psychotherapy. This is distinguished from the point of practice being to get and keep an awesome feeling.

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Kacee is the first in a series Upali will do with guests who are longtime students, rather than teachers, of meditation. Kacee talks about a number of changes over her years as a practitioner, including her view of what to do when practice makes you feel worse, her view on integrating parts work into her meditation practice, and she deals with the inner critic.

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Dharma teacher North Burn has been on a meditation retreat for most of the last twenty years. He teaches a 3-month retreat each spring in California. Tucker talks with North about choosing a monastic life rather than dating, marriage, and a career. North opens up about his relationship with his own teacher, including a period where their relationship was temporarily severed, and what this was like for him.

For more information about North, head to https://boundlessness.org/ or contact team@boundless.org.

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Marianne Bentzen is a psychotherapist and trainer in neuroaffective development psychology. She is the author of a number of books including Neuroaffective Meditation: A Practical Guide to Lifelong Brain Development, Emotional Growth, and Healing Trauma. Marianne talks about her path to becoming a meditation teacher as a psychotherapist and how to connect with heartfulness and playfulness in teaching. She also defines trauma, explains its parallels with deep meditative states, and points toward how support might begin for practitioners with trauma.

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Dr. Daniel Ingram is a retired emergency medicine doctor who is the author of two versions of the book Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha. His current projects are the Emergent Phenomenology Research Consortium and a charity called the Emergence Benefactors. Daniel discusses the way in which he became a dharma teacher, where he actually began by working with the most advanced practitioners, and he discusses a number of areas in which he has "stepped on minefields" and created controversy.

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Guest Julianna Raye joins Tucker to describe the Unified Mindfulness teacher training system. This is the second in our series on some of the larger teacher training programs; Vidyamala Burch's episode was the first.

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Vince Horn, meditation teacher and co-founder of Buddhist Geeks, talks with Upali about his path of transmission and training in Dharma Teaching. He also explores transparency in Dana, Dharma and Sangha in the world of Web 3.0, and the power of social meditative techniques aka Multiplayer Meditation.

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Shaila Catherine rejoins us on the program. We discuss several ancient practices, including the asubha practice (sometimes called "foulness of the body") and what the Buddha calls "crushing mind with mind," and how these practices do and don't work for modern students. Shaila also describes her own process for finding a teacher once one is already a teacher. She has just written a new book called Beyond Distraction: Five Practical Ways to Focus the Mind, so our conversation veers as well into helping students who are struggling with distracted minds.

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Lopön Chandra Easton is a Westerner who grew up in the Vajrayana Buddhist tradition. She did nine years of preparatory (ngondro) practices and spent 5 - 10 years training to be a teacher. She is a lineage holder under Lama Tsultrim Allione, author of the book Feeding Your Demons. She is currently on the Tara Mandala Board of Directors and the Tara Mandala Bay Area coordinating committee, through which she teaches and organizes events in the Bay Area. To learn about Chandra and connect with her, head to https://chandraeaston.com/.

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