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PODCAST

The Road Home with Ethan Nichtern

The Road Home podcast with author and teacher is Ethan Nichtern is a contemporary exploration of Buddhist teachings and conversation with thought leaders interested in Psychology, Art, Culture, and Politics through the lens of mindfulness practice. Since 2002, Ethan has taught meditation and Buddhist psychology classes and workshops around the United States and online. He is the author of multiple books, including The Road Home: A Contemporary Exploration of The Buddhist Path. He is currently the

religion & spirituality buddhism

All Episodes

47:28

Ep. 157 - How Am I (Really?) Doing: The Power of...

The Road Home with Ethan Nichtern ·

2025/10/29

Drawing on concepts from his latest book, Confidence, Ethan explores how it is that our self-assessment can be so off the mark so frequently, especially when it comes to seeing our progress along a long-term path like meditation, or the deeper journey of spiritual and psychological . Why is it so hard assess our traits, and to see our strengths as well as our stuck places, clearly? How can we overcome our negativity bias and meet the inner critic more skillfully in everyday life. What does it mean

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37:48

Ep. 156 - The Myth of (Conditional) Freedom

The Road Home with Ethan Nichtern ·

2025/10/21

Ethan is back with a solo episode to discuss the Buddhist experience of liberation and (moksha) and how we can glimpse an experience it in our awareness and meditation practice. He also discusses the related question of the collapsing American mythology of “freedom.” In the discussion, he highlights several categories of freedom, first “conditional” freedom versus “unconditional” freedom. Then he discusses individual, or personal freedom versus “collective” freedom. Please support the podcast via

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57:44

Ep. 155 - What Should a Teacher Say? with Francesca...

The Road Home with Ethan Nichtern ·

2025/09/22

Ethan is joined by friend and yoga teacher Francesca Cervero to talk about becoming a teacher as a livelihood, the duty of the teacher when it comes to building community in a post-pandemic world, and how to be clear and open with students about the ethical teachings of Buddhism and yoga in a world of chaos, violence and oppression. Francesca Cervero (she/her) has been a full time yoga and meditation teacher since 2005 and offers private and group yoga classes as well as yoga teacher mentoring and

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51:06

Ep. 154 - How Do I Know If I’m Enlightened?

The Road Home with Ethan Nichtern ·

2025/09/09

In this episode, Ethan discusses the crucial question of “enlightenment,” better translated as “awakening.” What does this word mean? What doesn’t it mean? How would we know if we were really there? Is awakening a big deal? And most importantly, how can we glimpse it, or notice the glimpses we are already having of our awakening, and build off of those powerful moments with confidence in our development? Please support the podcast via Substack and subscribe for free or with small monthly

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56:48

Ep. 153 - You Won’t Heal Until You Love It : Inside...

The Road Home with Ethan Nichtern ·

2025/08/26

16 months ago, yoga/meditation/sound teacher Reggie Hubbard had a near-death experience, a major stroke. He visits the podcast to describe the experience of his "neurological storm" and the path of collapse and healing that he's been on ever since, and how it has profoundly affected his views as a practitioner, teacher, and his views of the neurological storm that the United States and the world is currently experiencing. If there's such a thing as a "must-listen" episode of this podcast, this it

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55:37

Ep. 152 - Crucial Questions: What Is The Bodhisattva...

The Road Home with Ethan Nichtern ·

2025/08/13

Ethan discusses three reasons we take vows and make commitments from a Buddhist perspective, and gives special emphasis to The Bodhisattva Vow, where we commit to not only pursue our own path of liberation and awakening, but also vow to work for the benefit of all beings, to the limits of space, until all beings are awake. It is a commitment to the collective liberation of all beings. Of course, this is impossible (at least in our lifetimes), so why would we agree to do it? Using the classic

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01:01:38

Ep. 151 - Buddhist Geeks, 21st Century Practice, and...

The Road Home with Ethan Nichtern ·

2025/08/06

Ethan welcomes Buddhist Geeks Co-Founder, teacher, and Palestinian-American Dharma teacher Vince Fakhoury Horn. They discuss the rise of "podcast dharma" in the early 21st century, Vince's path to teaching meditation, Vince's experience of his Palestinian heritage, why it's hard to get Dharma teachers to speak out about the genocide in Gaza, The Buddhist practice of Mohsen Mahdawi, and the complex legacy of Chogyam Trungpa and Tibetan refugees in relation to the Palestinian experience. Vince

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46:57

Ep. 150 - The Virtues of Boredom (The Most Boring...

The Road Home with Ethan Nichtern ·

2025/07/30

This is the 150th episode of The Road Home Podcast! Yay, Big Deal! But, it’s—as always—also a conversation about the Dharma, and the mind, and how to work with your own experience. And your mind, especially during meditation, can be boring. Very boring. So why is boredom such a difficult, yet important—and creative—experience? What do we do about boredom in meditation practice, as well as boredom in daily life? Using a teaching on working with boredom in three stages, along with teachings from

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47:54

Ep. 149 - The Whole World Is Gold To Me: Tantra and...

The Road Home with Ethan Nichtern ·

2025/07/21

(This episode of The Road Home is dedicated to the memory of Joanna Macy—founder of the Eco-Dharma and Deep Ecology Movements—who passed this weekend at the age of 96) On this episode, a follow-up to episode 148, Ethan explores wealth and generosity from a tantric perspective. If you could take the view, for just one moment, that you, your perceptions, and your world were all perfect in being exactly what they were, how would that change your experience of yourself, your resources, and your

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56:54

Ep. 148 - No More Billionaires - Wealth, Livelihood...

The Road Home with Ethan Nichtern ·

2025/07/14

What is generosity (“dana” in the Buddhist languages), and how does it relate to our experience of wealth, our consumption, our labor, and our shared values as a society? How can we work with our craving for always have more like one of those a metal claw machines in a video game arcade, leaving us unable to live in the practice of Dana, or "fluid exchange" with our experience? Similarly, how do we create a society that acknowledges the sacredness of labor and the social benefits of collective

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01:00:22

Ep. 147 - Don’t Stop Believing - Faith and Awareness...

The Road Home with Ethan Nichtern ·

2025/06/26

How we work with our minds in the spaces between collapse and rebirth (those uncomfortable gaps in life as well as the huge “gap” after death) hold the key to creating futures that do not replicate the stuckness and suffering of our past. This is true both personally and collectively. As always, with recent world events in mind, we discuss the six bardos of classic Tibetan Buddhism, as well as the three qualities we need to effectively navigate the space between the death of what was and the birth

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46:41

Ep. 146 - The Dissonance of 2025

The Road Home with Ethan Nichtern ·

2025/06/11

Ethan visits a recurrent conversation he’s been having with his students, his friends, and within his own mind: the dissonance between feeling like your personal life and close community are in basically good places, while simultaneously raising your gaze to see the immense suffering and chaos of the world. How can we hold those two and find our compassion and skillful means? Framing thoughts around the massive ICE raids that are tearing families apart, followed by the subsequent mass protests in

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43:29

Ep. 145 - Always Meditate on Whatever Provokes...

The Road Home with Ethan Nichtern ·

2025/05/23

What is resentment? Why is it so corrosive? How can we work with our resentments? How can we overcome a victim mentality while still protecting ourselves, protecting others, and protecting truth? In this solo episode, Ethan uses a classic Tantric Buddhist contemplative slogan from the Lojong mind training tradition that translates as either “Always meditate on whatever provokes resentment” or “stay close to your resentment.” Enjoy the listen! Ethan’s most recent book, Confidence: Holding

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38:08

Ep. 144 - Microdosing Grief and The Practice of...

The Road Home with Ethan Nichtern ·

2025/05/15

In a spontaneous episode, Ethan discusses grief and loss while processing multiple events. At a recent compassion meditation retreat, colleague and friend René Fay gave a presentation where she discussed the need to “Microdose Grief,” to take it in little by little so that we can honor the small moments of loss to develop familiarity with the experience when the big waves come. Through remembering the life and the recent death of a dharma friend, Ethan explores a famous buddhist quote about

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56:26

Ep. 143 - Meditations for Mortals with Oliver Burkeman

The Road Home with Ethan Nichtern ·

2025/05/09

How can we embrace the limitations of time and the certainty of death and create real fulfillment that thrives on an honest assessment of our human predicament? These are the questions at the heart of this episode. Ethan welcomes back bestselling author and journalist Oliver Burkeman for a discussion of finitude, death, limitations, productivity, and dueling concepts of the meaning of meditation. Oliver Burkeman is the author of Meditations for Mortals: Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and

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38:49

Ep. 142 - The White Lotus, The God Realm and...

The Road Home with Ethan Nichtern ·

2025/04/30

In this episode, Ethan does what at least 40 people have asked him to do (special shout-out to Michele S. in Iowa who convinced him to devote a whole podcast episode to it!) - share his thoughts, as a Buddhist, on Season 3 of the Max streaming series The White Lotus. To do so, he explains three different ways to look at the concept of “Dharma Art,” along with a discussion of the three realms. He also ponders why pop culture seems to so rarely depict the act of meditation itself with any experiential

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43:10

Ep. 141 - Strong Back, Soft Front: The Posture of...

The Road Home with Ethan Nichtern ·

2025/04/21

In this episode, Ethan links a crucial set of instructions from mindfulness meditation teachers of the past regarding how we carry our posture to what it means to show up in this world at a time of chaos. He discusses the instructions on mindfulness meditation from the “warrior” tradition of enlightened society, as well as decoding the qualities of the instruction to maintain a “strong back, and a soft front.” Please support the podcast via Substack and subscribe for free or with small monthly

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38:38

Ep. 140 - Equanimity Feels Different on a Roller Coaster

The Road Home with Ethan Nichtern ·

2025/04/07

After tariffs were broadly imposed by the current American regime (including, apparently on uninhabited islands populated mostly by penguins) causing a nearly unprecedented crash of the stock market, and after attending the lovely and unexpectedly massive protest marches that took place on April 5, Ethan ponders how to deal with extreme states of mind with a world on a roller coaster marked by fear and greed. The key, he says, is to be able to differentiate between arising mental emotions and the

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51:34

Ep. 139 - A Buddhist View of A.I. (It Ain't Great...)

The Road Home with Ethan Nichtern ·

2025/03/28

In light of revelations about the theft of countless authors' work by one A.I. company (guess which one), Ethan finally talks about a topic he's been requested to cover for a while: Buddhist views on artificial intelligence. He begins by positioning the conversation within the frame of View and Intention, asking the question of what "technology" is and why and how we even want it to progress, along with proposing the sacredness of human labor, wisdom and creativity as a basic Buddhist principle, as

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49:46

Ep. 138 - Torched Teslas, Fart Noises, And Right...

The Road Home with Ethan Nichtern ·

2025/03/21

Ethan delves further into right action during a time of protest and chaos, using the recent examples of Tesla cars and cybertrucks being set on fire as a launching point. In The Power of Choice episode, he looked into the five precepts as guidelines for empowered and skillful action. In this episode, he looks into actions of mind as our guide: whether our actions are furthering our fixation on the three poisons of greed, hatred and delusion, or whether they are helping us liberate from those

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