Saturday, November 25, 2017

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #278 - 25NOV17

The Mystical Positivist is now a weekly radio show on KOWS-LP 107.3 FM, Occidental, CA. Listen live on Saturday evenings from 4:00 - 6:00pm, PST, via the web at KOWS Live Stream.
This week's podcast features:
  • This week on the Mystical Positivist, hosts Rob Schmidt and Stuart Goodnick reflect upon themes that have come up in some of their conversations with recent guests including the distinction between an ontological and epistemological interpretation of the Projection-Only school of Buddhism, whether the book Single White Monk with its raw descriptions of monks breaking the rules actually pushes away potential practitioners, spiritual teacher sex scandals in the 20th/21st century and the associated Dharma sex panics, plus more.

    Dr. Robert Schmidt, spiritual director of Tayu Meditation Center, met and began intensive, 24-hour study with Tayu Meditation Center founder Robert Daniel Ennis in 1977. After five remarkable training years, he received ordination as a minister of Tayu, and co-taught with his teacher until Mr. Ennis’ death in 1998. His work with Mr. Ennis included co-writing and publishing a book entitled God Is Gay: An Evolutionary Spiritual Work. Rob succeeded Mr. Ennis as Tayu spiritual director, a post he still holds, in collaboration with yours truly. With Stuart Goodnick and Jim Wilson he co-founded Many Rivers Books & Tea in Sebastopol in Sebastopol, CA, in 2002.

    Currently he is collaborating with Stuart Goodnick on an edited volume of talks and writings of Tayu Meditation founder, Robert Daniel Ennis. Along the way, Rob completed a Ph.D. in anthropological archaeology at UC Berkeley, where he was co-editor with his grad student colleague Barbara Voss of the award-winning Archaeologies of Sexuality, the first academic edited volume to examine the phenomenon of sexuality as a object of knowledge in archaeological contexts

    Stuart Goodnick, the Mystical Positivist, has been a practitioner of Tayu Meditation since 1985 and a Tayu Meditation instructor since 1993. He holds degrees in Physics from Caltech and UCSC, and has been an engineering manager in the industrial motion control and software security industries since 1989. Stuart has also been a student of the shakuhachi (Japanese Bamboo flute) under Master Masayuki Koga since 1996. In recent years Stuart has been applying the principles of spiritual practice and transformation in daily life as a senior executive in both Silicon Valley start-ups and global industrial manufacturers. He co-founded Many Rivers Books & Tea with Robert Schmidt and Jim Wilson in Sebastopol in 2002.

    A frequent writer and speaker on spiritual topics, Stuart maintains that rationality is no way the antithesis of deep mystical experience, but is in fact a necessary ally. He is currently working on a compilation of some of his essays and transcriptions of talks to be released later in 2018.
More information about Tayu Meditation Center can be found at:

Saturday, November 18, 2017

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #277 - 18NOV17

The Mystical Positivist is now a weekly radio show on KOWS-LP 107.3 FM, Occidental, CA. Listen live on Saturday evenings from 4:00 - 6:00pm, PST, via the web at KOWS Live Stream.
This week's podcast features:
  • This week we feature a pre-recorded conversation with Shozan Jack Haubner, author of the recently published book Single White Monk: Tales of Death, Failure, and Bad Sex (Although Not Necessarily in that Order). The Shambhala publisher information describes the book like this:

    Think the life of a Zen monk is all serenity, peace, and austerity? Think again. Here, Shozan Jack Haubner gives an often-hilarious, always-candid account of what it’s really like behind those monastery walls. Haubner’s adventures include memories of his dysfunctional Midwestern family that drove him ultimately to declare, “I think I should be a monk!” to a madcap account of the night he got stoned and snuck out of the monastery, alongside more sobering accounts such as his life-threatening brush with illness, the profound impact of a dear friend’s death, and reflections on the controversy that rocked his Zen community. That he finds timeless wisdom in both the tragic and the absurd is a tribute to Haubner's gifts as a writer and humorist, and to his clear insights into the nature of self and what the practice of Zen is all about.

    A former monk in the Rinzai Zen tradition, Shozan Jack Haubner is also the author of Zen Confidential: Confessions of a Wayward Monk, published by Shambhala. His writings have earned him a Pushcart Prize, and his essays have appeared in periodicals including Buddhadharma, Tricycle, and The Sun.

More information about Shozan Jack Haubner's work can be found at:

Saturday, November 11, 2017

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #276 - 11NOV17

The Mystical Positivist is now a weekly radio show on KOWS-LP 107.3 FM, Occidental, CA. Listen live on Saturday evenings from 4:00 - 6:00pm, PST, via the web at KOWS Live Stream.
This week's podcast features:
  • This week on the show we speak by telephone with Ben Connelly, a Soto Zen priest and dharma heir in the Katagiri lineage. He is a professional musician, and also teaches mindfulness in a wide variety of secular contexts, including police and corporate training, correctional facilities, and addiction recovery and wellness groups. He is based at the Minnesota Zen Meditation Center in Minneapolis, and travels to teach across the United States. He is the author of Inside the Grass Hut: Living Shitou’s Classic Zen Poem, and more recently Inside Vasubandhu’s Yogacara: A Practitioner’s Guide, the subject of our discussion today
More information about Ben Connelly's work can be found at: