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PODCAST

Kitchen Sink Dharma

How ancient teachings help us to navigate modern life. Every two weeks a new episode offers 15 minutes of sanity, drawing from early Buddhist teachings, designed to wake you up from your stress and misery. It can be hard to believe that doing something as simple as practising mindfulness will free us, but it will. Don’t imagine that there are secret teachings out there somewhere that you need to go and find. The answer is much closer to home. You’ll find it right here in this very moment. It’s

religion & spirituality buddhism

All Episodes

11:16

Making space

Kitchen Sink Dharma ·

2025/01/29

Waking up requires us to make some space, to find somewhere safe and quiet in our lives to explore. We need some stability from which to practise.

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11:52

You have everything

Kitchen Sink Dharma ·

2025/01/15

If we can broaden our concept of practice so that it’s not just about finding time to sit once a day, it changes everything. We find that in every moment that we’re fully present to life with our hearts open, there’s nothing missing. We have everything we need. Awakening doesn’t require perfect conditions. It only requires a willingness to practise, to cultivate, to open up to that possibility.

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12:07

The brittleness of perfection

Kitchen Sink Dharma ·

2025/01/01

It's possible to see the path as a process of refinement, of perfecting even, but it’s a good idea to leave our perfectionist tendencies behind if we can. We can train ourselves, get to know ourselves, explore our inner lives and cultivate peace, all of which will help us. But there's not even an ounce of happiness to be had from trying to create a perfect self.

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18:25

We long for nice things

Kitchen Sink Dharma ·

2024/12/18

A great deal of our mental bandwidth is taken up with craving. We don’t recognise how much it organises our lives. It externalises happiness and makes us perpetually restless, a hostage to conditions. One skilful way of responding to craving when it arises is simply to bring it into awareness. We can then start to question it and understand it better. This is a recording of a talk for Insight North East from May 2024.

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12:14

It is with much embarrassment

Kitchen Sink Dharma ·

2024/12/04

Our inner struggles often go on longer than they need to, but eventually they fade. Like everything, they’re impermanent. Our clinging and reacting can’t be sustained indefinitely. The ability to notice that, to watch our reactivity fade, is a powerful practice. We can’t always observe it arising because we’re too caught up in it, but we can notice its fading.

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12:10

Old teachings new values

Kitchen Sink Dharma ·

2024/11/20

According to the Therigatha, the verses of the elder nuns, the Buddha showed concern and respect for women when no-one else did. Since then, Buddhist lineages have tended to view men as being spiritually superior to women. Masculine energies and modes of practice have taken precedence over feminine ones. Despite this, many people are now actively working for change and exploring how they can restore the balance.

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12:08

Skill in means

Kitchen Sink Dharma ·

2024/11/06

It’s helpful every so often to ask ourselves what we’re doing and why we’re doing it. What habits are we reinforcing and what kind of life are we building for ourselves? What it is that we’re cultivating? And if we have a spiritual practice of any kind, maybe to ask ourselves whether that practice is helping us to respond to our world more skilfully. The Buddha’s teachings encourage us to hold our practice lightly. To apply what we’ve learned in a practical way, not to encumber ourselves with

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12:18

There is a middle path

Kitchen Sink Dharma ·

2024/10/23

Often the path requires us to embrace apparent contradictions. Some of our practice has to be understood from different perspectives, depending on how we’re going to apply it. Training ourselves to stay with the opposites helps us keep our minds pliable and open. It counteracts our tendency to fit everything we hear into our existing world view.

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12:12

Fearless and loving

Kitchen Sink Dharma ·

2024/10/09

One way to practise fearlessness and a more open, receptive relationship with our world is through the Brahmaviharas, also known as the heart practices. These four qualities of friendliness, compassion, joy, and equanimity describe our potential for emotional and psychological freedom. They’re capacities that already exist in us. By cultivating them, we’re making them our natural home.

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10:39

Ananda's grief

Kitchen Sink Dharma ·

2024/09/25

The Buddha's disciple Ananda appears throughout the early scriptures as someone who was faithful, humble and above all, human. In many ways, he wasn't the perfect monk. There are occasions when his sensitivity and his expressions of grief seem at odds with the Buddha's teachings on non-attachment and impermanence. His honesty makes him an excellent role model. It’s easy to get uptight and self-absorbed about our practice. If we can be completely honest about our imperfection, our complete lack of

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11:57

Every corner of the room

Kitchen Sink Dharma ·

2024/09/11

There are parts of ourselves that we choose not to share with the world, patterns and beliefs that we don’t want to acknowledge, even to ourselves. If you ever notice yourself reacting or becoming lost in rumination, there’s an opportunity to learn about yourself. It might be time to shift your attention from the outside world back inside.

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10:24

A river not a toaster

Kitchen Sink Dharma ·

2024/08/28

In our meditation practice we’re not trying to rise above the raw and messy. We’re not trying to transcend our humanness. We’re practising opening to our tenderness, our vulnerability, our sensitivity, our insubstantial nature.

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17:59

There's just experience

Kitchen Sink Dharma ·

2024/08/14

Our experience of body and mind is constantly changing. That means our sense of self keeps changing. There’s nothing solid to hang on to. Our need for security means we spend a lot of time and energy trying to hang on anyway, and that clinging generates a lot of our suffering and dissatisfaction. With practice, we start to see just how insubstantial the sense of self really is. We see that it’s just part of the flow of experience.

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11:49

Faith and doubt

Kitchen Sink Dharma ·

2024/07/31

The Pali word ‘saddhā’ is often translated as ‘faith’, but a better translation might be ‘trust’ or ‘confidence’. Saddhā conveys a willingness to engage in and commit to practice. There’s no need for belief in a higher power or a deity because saddhā is grounded in direct personal experience.

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16:38

Movement meditation

Kitchen Sink Dharma ·

2024/07/17

Just as we can bring mindfulness to the body in stillness, we can bring it to the body in movement. With movement meditation, we’re practising away from the traditional mode of just sitting still. Feelings in the body and feelings in the mind are intimately connected. Awareness of one supports awareness of the other. Movement in one supports movement in the other.

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12:22

Holding patterns

Kitchen Sink Dharma ·

2024/07/03

Whatever feelings we refuse to accept will simply keep agitating us until we accept them. Purification happens when we stop, listen to the body and allow feelings to be just as they are. If we keep doing that, over and over again, the habits of reactivity and clinging are gradually eradicated.

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14:42

The factors of awakening

Kitchen Sink Dharma ·

2024/06/19

One of the reasons we practise meditation is to train ourselves to handle all of the ups and downs, from the smallest irritations to the greatest sorrows in our lives. The teachings on the seven factors of awakening, which can be seen as a map of the territory, describe a series of steps that lead us to a place of steadiness and resilience.

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16:10

Feelings and intuitions

Kitchen Sink Dharma ·

2024/06/12

The unconscious mind is incredibly powerful. It has the capacity to process information more quickly and more efficiently than our conscious mind. But it can be prone to errors and biases. Emotional resistance clouds our intuitive wisdom. We’re more likely to be misled by feelings if we’re putting a lot of energy into our sense of self. Knowing a little about how the mind works helps us to see more clearly. This is a recording of a talk given to Insight North East in June 24.

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11:52

A bundle of energy

Kitchen Sink Dharma ·

2024/06/05

When we meditate, we find out things about ourselves, like how easily we’re distracted. Sometimes when we have difficulty concentrating, we’re simply unwilling to accept what’s happening right now. What’s really going on is avoidance. By sensing into the energy in the body, we’re tuning in to the present moment. We’re saying ‘this is what’s happening, right now, and it’s fine’.

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11:14

Gratitude

Kitchen Sink Dharma ·

2024/05/29

As humans we have a natural negativity bias. We’re acutely sensitive to things that upset or trouble us. Our capacity for gratitude and appreciation counteracts this. Acknowledging the good in our lives supports our sense of wellbeing and makes us less prone to depression.

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