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Had to change the playlist link because the stuff I collected up to listen to at some point was really awful, not going to do for you what I had in mind.
Teach me to just slap it together and put it up before I'm sure of what I'm thinking I'm doing.
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I just spent a couple hours half-listening to him a few weeks ago and, though I do detect some of that manly sophistry trying to creep in like it did with Alan Watts, it strikes me that, overall, this guy knows his nuts and bolts and does not suck at this as much as one might assume at first glance.
So I'm collecting some of his uploads and letting you know he's there. If you're starting out, or thinking about starting out, people like this can be very helpful to you, even if they aren't even this good, because it's really hard to figure out what's going on when you are brand new.
You find your head swimming with all the terminology, the allusions to various Sanskrit names that actually stand for things once you've been studying awhile, looking things up in your Buddhist dictionary or googling madly for words you don't know how to spell, or are spelled something like five different ways anyway. It starts out being pretty much of a mess for most Westerners, and I even suspect English-speaking Westerners most of all.
You need to start listening to dharma talks to start having the questions that start leading you to points of entry in the little cosmos of variations on the Buddhist theme. Maybe you need to kind of wallow in this confusion for even a year, maybe more, before something starts singing to you and you can't stand but to disappear in after it.
I'm pretty sure Maha is relatively safe for beginners. It's a damn jungle of outright charlatans out there, so you actually might not know how nice it is not to ruin it for yourself before you've even gotten started.
Yes, yes, it's karma that dictates who gets the goods and who's left in the agony of pantomime for the rest of their lives, but, dammit, I'm partial to you, and wish for the best.
always and any time....
