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PODCAST

From the Pure Land Podcast

Impermanence is a core concept of Buddhism, so we understand that our lives can end in the next moment. But it took me 78 years of life and roughly four decades of practicing Buddhism to realize that I"m already in the Pure Land. Come join me there. melpine.substack.com

religion & spirituality buddhism

All Episodes

4:53

Oneness

From the Pure Land Podcast ·

2025/03/18

In my March 10 interview with Jordan Bates, he mentioned this quotation from Carl Sagan, the brilliant scientist and communicator:If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.It’s one of the coolest things I’ve ever heard about the interconnectedness of everything—what Buddhism calls dependent origination. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it.My former teacher, the Vietnamese Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh, often said:I think the word interbe should be in

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47:07

For Something Completely Different, an Interview of Me

From the Pure Land Podcast ·

2025/03/15

Since Kenna Day entered my life as my son’s partner, I’ve enjoyed conversations with her, especially the probing questions she asks and the topics she raises on life, writing, and literature. So, I had the brainstorm of asking her to interview me for a video podcast. She accepted, and we both enjoyed doing it. We hope you enjoy watching or listening to it.We did have some technical problems. Because I failed to push a button when I should have, the sound of Kenna’s voice had issues until I

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54:44

Jordan Bates on What's Next for Religion

From the Pure Land Podcast ·

2025/03/10

* What’s ahead for spirituality in the West?* What happens to us after we die?* Is reality real?* Are stories real?* What is reality anyway?* What is Buddhist emptiness?* What is Direct Heart-Opened Experience?* Are “magic mushrooms” an opening to transcendence?* Is there a suprapersonal God?Jordan Bates and I answer those questions and more…Just kidding! We don’t answer them, but we have fun dancing around them (and more) in this 55-minute video. We hope you have fun watching it.Jordan’s Substack

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45:43

Tara Mandala and Its Unique Social Network

From the Pure Land Podcast ·

2025/03/04

It was a joy this morning to spend 45 minutes interviewing Tara Mandala Executive Director Cady Allione and Chögé Lisa Erickson about that worldwide organization, which was created by Lama Tsultrim Allione, who traveled to Nepal and India in 1967 hoping to learn to paint mandalas and ended up with that and much more. She was one of the early pioneers in bringing Buddhism to the West.While Lama Tsultrim is on a solitary retreat, Cady and Lisa spoke with me about Tara Mandala, some of its programs,

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26:49

Meditating with Machig

From the Pure Land Podcast ·

2025/02/24

The essence of my practice is connecting with my pure mind, or my Buddha Nature. Teachers in the Dzogchen and Mahamudra traditions have pointed the way for me. If you are unfamiliar with the terms, there’s no need to distinguish between these slightly different ways to reach that inherent Buddha Nature. Just find the teacher you’re comfortable with to help guide you.Machig Labdrön (1055-1149) founded several lineages in the Mahamudra Chöd tradition. Chöd literally means cutting through. As a

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22:03

Book Peek Free: How I Came to Know I'm a Buddhist

From the Pure Land Podcast ·

2025/02/02

My flow of blog posts has slowed because I’ve been finalizing my book proposal. I’ll have it ready for my chosen publisher by Wednesday. To keep my subscribers and podcast listeners supplied with a steady flow of my words of wisdom, I’m making today’s release of a draft book chunk free to all.My experience in the writing, editing, and publishing universe confirms my belief in impermanence. Everything I plan and write now is tentative. It’s a long way from final (if anything ever is). Today’s release

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52:55

The Tergar Bus Will Pick You Up Anywhere Along the Way

From the Pure Land Podcast ·

2025/01/28

I had the pleasure today of interviewing Beth Korczynski, director of philanthropy for Tergar International, Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche’s worldwide organization. Tergar’s reach extends worldwide, so it’s accessible to almost anyone at any level of experience in meditation and spiritual practice.Beth and I discussed:* Tergar’s culture of openness and transparency. The ethics of transparency.* The Anytime Anywhere Meditation program, which can help with meditation for people with any religious

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13:15

Updates on Science and Poetry

From the Pure Land Podcast ·

2025/01/14

Maybe impermanence works faster in science than in poetry. I learned recently that the initial singularity model for what led to the Big Bang is already outdated. Who knew? It will take a lot longer, though, for poetry about it to be outdated. A case in point is Marie Howe’s poem Singularity, which I mentioned in a previous post and recite in this podcast.Meanwhile, modern visionaries are combining philosophy with science, especially quantum physics and artificial intelligence, to grope for models

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15:56

What If You Really Are a Buddha, Here and Now?

From the Pure Land Podcast ·

2025/01/07

What about fully claiming that Buddha within you? So many of us think we’re not yet there; we have more work to do before fully realizing our Buddhahood. We go from teacher to teacher, each telling us we fail to grok it because it’s so easy. Maybe there’s one more book to read, or another thousand hours of meditation practice will get us there.I’m not knocking books and meditation practice. The proverbial God knows I’ve read plenty of books and meditated for many hours, but there’s no “there” to get

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18:25

A Funny Thing Happened on My Way to Death

From the Pure Land Podcast ·

2024/12/31

Live your life fully. And use every moment, every opportunity, in a way that is beneficial for oneself and for others. If we live every moment the same, in a positive, peaceful, and kind way, then death is also another moment—the same. So there’s no difference. —Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche, as quoted in Andrew Holecek’s book Preparing to Die: Practical Advice and Spiritual Wisdom from the Tibetan Buddhist Tradition. This From the Pure Land Post can be listened to on a podcast app or RSS feed. It can be

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20:57

Words Create Words, Reality Is Silent

From the Pure Land Podcast ·

2024/12/26

Be careful.The moment you start talking you create a verbal universe, a universe of words, ideas, concepts and abstractions, interwoven and interdependent, most wonderfully generating, supporting and explaining each other, and yet all without essence or substance, mere creations of the mind.Words create words, reality is silent.— Nisargadatta MaharajBillions and billions of words have been spoken and written to help guide people toward a state that can’t be described in words—enlightenment. Billions

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15:48

The Eight Worldly Winds

From the Pure Land Podcast ·

2024/12/17

Often, in Buddhist texts, the “eight worldly concerns” make their appearance. This verse, for example, is part of my daily practice:I will learn to keep all these practices Untainted by thoughts of the eight worldly concerns. May I recognize all things as like illusions, And, without attachment, gain freedom from bondage.What are the concerns that taint daily life? The Buddha lists them in Lokavipatti Sutta. As translated by Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu, the sutta begins:Monks, these eight worldly conditions

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21:42

You're a Being, Not a Bee-ing

From the Pure Land Podcast ·

2024/12/10

We have to learn the art of stopping—stopping our thinking, our habit energies, our forgetfulness, the strong emotions that rule us. —Thich Nhat Hanh (1926-2022)That’s a good subject to talk with your chiropractor about when you’re lying facedown on her adjustment table in an office adjoining a shopping complex as the December holidays approach—the art of stopping. It’s what happened to me yesterday.I had already decided that, because of the hectic season, my next podcast would be a guided

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18:43

Considering Peter Singer on Giving Tuesday

From the Pure Land Podcast ·

2024/12/02

Many of us have mixed emotions about special days—those days designated for us all to feel and act in a certain way. The goal of From the Pure Land is to spur and encourage you on whatever path feels right for you. In that spirit, to explore aspects of generosity, I thought I’d present the ideas of Australian moral philosopher Peter Singer from a pro and con standpoint—food for thought on Giving Tuesday Eve.You may be familiar with Singer because of his best-known book and his website, both called

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18:43

Curmudgeonly Thoughts about Thanksgiving

From the Pure Land Podcast ·

2024/11/25

I find it curious that every year, Americans slaughter 50 million turkeys to express their gratitude. —Bhante GunaratanaI chose that quotation not because I believe everyone should abstain from eating turkey but rather to question how we express gratitude. This blog post and podcast are intended to raise questions for contemplation. Answers—if there are such things—are up to the individual.The idea for this post came when I was meditating in one room, and my wife listened to a dharma talk in

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29:24

A Meditation on the Four Thoughts

From the Pure Land Podcast ·

2024/11/18

When I launched From the Pure Land as a blog almost six months ago, I was comfortable writing but not public speaking. My mild cognitive impairment (MCI) resulted in too many pauses for me to grasp and say the word I was looking for, and sometimes, the word I spoke was not the one I intended.As it turned out, the more I exercised my writing neuronic connections, the more the speaking connections improved. I still speak slowly and make mistakes, but I felt ready to start podcasting, which is easy to

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9:20

Doctrine, Discipline, and Gnosis

From the Pure Land Podcast ·

2024/11/13

Just as the ocean has a gradual shelf, a gradual slope, a gradual inclination, with a sudden drop-off only after a long stretch; in the same way this Dhamma and Vinaya has a gradual training, a gradual performance, a gradual practice, with a penetration to gnosis only after a long stretch. —From the Uposatha Sutta translated by Thanissaro BhikkhuThe quotation above will serve as the entry point for our second From the Pure Land Back to Basics post. The first one also came after a period when I had

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7:14

Some Quotations for November 6, 2024

From the Pure Land Podcast ·

2024/11/06

My wife, Carol, had outpatient knee replacement surgery yesterday, Election Day, so we both went to sleep around 11 p.m. East Coast U.S. time. At 3 a.m., after I awoke and got a pain pill for her, I checked the election returns and decided to write and record a quick post and podcast with quotations about all of us and the world being perfect as we are because causes and conditions produced us. We and the world could be no different than who and what we are.And just as people accept what comes and

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10:01

A Talk on the Nature of Mind

From the Pure Land Podcast ·

2024/10/30

Today’s podcast and post is about “the clear and empty nature of the mind,” which you may hear referred to as rigpa or simply as nature of mind. Resting in the nature of mind is the heart of my Buddhist practice. As long as I can find that state and remain in it, I can handle any situation along the path—usually in a joyful way but always with kindness and compassion for myself and others.I kid you not. I believe that peace of mind is available to every one of us.Learning to find and rest in your

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33:06

10 Days to the November 5 Bardo

From the Pure Land Podcast ·

2024/10/27

Below is a lightly edited version of the transcript, which isn’t perfect. I advise listening to the recording. [I also made a big mistake in the recording. I’m 78 years old; not 87. And I meant to mention an article by Andrew Holecek about the bardos. The idea is that some of the preparation for the death bardos can help with life’s bardos. Here’s the link to the article.]Welcome to an episode of the From the Pure Land podcast. I'm Mel Pine.I just took a little breath, a deep breath, and suggest

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