Tom Fox Contemplation/Meditation Series Podcasts

Tom Fox, former Editor and Publisher of the progressive magazine National Catholic Reporter, is currently conducting a series of audio interviews with spiritual seekers and guides who come from many different traditions and backgrounds. NCRCafe.org is making them available in Adobe Flash streaming audio format at two speeds: hi-speed and (with lower audio quality) dialup. Episodes are also available for download as 128 kbps MP3 files. Links to additional podcasts will be added to this page as new interviews become available.

Unlocking the joy in living
Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche, the author of The Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret & Science of Happiness, is a highly venerated teacher and master of the Karma Kagyu lineage of Tibetan Buddhism. He was born in Nepal in 1975. Rinpoche has devoted his life to the study, practice and teaching of the Buddha dharma. He is also practiced in the details of modern culture and science.

Episode 1: From mental breakdown to mental breakthrough (24 min.)
Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche allowed scientists at the University of Wisconsin to measure his brain activity as he meditated. He tells Tom Fox that the scientists discovered that the part of his brain responsible for happiness was 700 times more developed than that part of the brain in the average person. Rinpoche also describes how he used meditation to overcome incapacitating panic attacks.

Episode 2: Some practical guides (16 min.)
Rinpoche gives Tom Fox some practical guidelines and tips for deepening meditation. People make what is quite easy too difficult, he says.

'I wanted a faith that was deeper': Jesuit Priest and Zen Master
Jesuit Fr. Robert E. Kennedy is an American Catholic priest and a Zen master (roshi). "I have never felt that I was a Buddhist. I have always felt that I am Catholic and a Jesuit," Kennedy tells Tom Fox. "But I wanted a faith that was deeper, that was rooted in my experience, that was not a theory that could be blown away with a change in culture." Ordained a priest in Japan in 1965, Jesuit Fr. Robert E. Kennedy was installed as a Zen teacher in 1991 and was given the title Roshi in 1997. Kennedy studied Zen with Yamada Roshi in Japan, Maezumi Roshi in Los Angeles and Bernard Glassman Roshi in New York. He teaches in the theology department of Saint Peter's College in Jersey City, N.J. In addition to his work at the college, he is a practicing psychotherapist. He is the author of two books, Zen Spirit, Christian Spirit and Zen Gifts to Christians.

Tom Fox interviews Copthorne Macdonald on wisdom. Clicking this link will take you to the NCRCafe.org page where you can listen to the podcast's three episodes:

Episode 1: How two paths became one (12 min.)
Many books deal with the transformation of the world at large and many others deal with personal transformation. Copthorne Macdonald's books, interviewer Tom Fox notes, asks the reader to consider both paths and combines both. The author explains how he came to deal with both paths together.

Episode 2: The expansion of compassion (30 min.)
Macdonald explores with Tom Fox what he calls “deep understanding,” an expanded practical understanding of what our human situation is. He says it brings together these two elements: inner growth and the outer understanding.

Episode 3: Tips for transformation (16 min.)
Whether we like it our not, Macdonald tells Fox, humans are the agents of evolution. “Human actions dominate the evolution processes. Our actions affect life for the whole world. A lot of this as been very, very negative,” Macdonald says, “but we can make it positive if we raise our level of conscious and devote our lives to making the situation better.”

Copthorne Macdonald is a writer, independent scholar, and an advocate of societal transformation. He has taught meditation, conducted personal growth workshops and tends to The Wisdom Page, a Web-based compilation of wisdom-related resources. His interests include personal spirituality, the nature of reality (including consciousness and mind), the development of wisdom, and global (social/political/economic) transformation.

Tom Fox interviews Benedictine Brother David Steindl-Rast. Clicking this link will take you to the NCRCafe.org page where you can listen to the podcast's three episodes:

Episode 1: Gratitude and the Web of Being (13 min.)
"Gratitude is a real practice, as valid as yoga or Zen meditation or Sufi dancing -- if you take it seriously," Br. Steindl-Rast tells Tom Fox. Gratitude, he said, "starts with surprise. We deprive ourselves so much by not allowing ourselves to be surprised."

Episode 2: Our Notion of God
Steindl-Rast tells Fox: The monotheistic notion of God that we have inherited, the notion that God is separated from us, that God gives us gifts and demands certain things of us and punishes us when we don't live up to the standards, this God is lost for most people and is fast disappearing. Because, he said, deep down in our hearts we know God is not separate from us.

Episode 3: Imagine a world
"Imagine a world in which people would face the situation that we are in and ask the question: "Isn't there something we can do?' " Steindl-Rast said. "Surely we could do something if enough people were asking the question."

Concerning David Steindl-Rast: "After twelve years of monastic training and studies in philosophy and theology, Brother David was sent by his abbot to participate in Buddhist-Christian dialogue, for which he received Vatican approval in 1967. His Zen teachers were Hakkuun Yasutani Roshi, Soen Nakagawa Roshi, Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, and Eido Shimano Roshi. He co-founded the Center for Spiritual Studies in 1968 and received the 1975 Martin Buber Award for his achievements in building bridges between religious traditions." (Taken from a more complete biography that appears on the Gratefulness.org web site.)

Centering Prayer: Uniquely, powerfully Christian meditation; Tom Fox interviews Rev. Cynthia Bourgeaults. Clicking this link will take you to the NCRCafe.org page where you can listen to the podcast's two episodes:

Episode 1: The confirmation of silence (20 min.)
God doesn't have a preference for silent prayer, Bourgeault tells interviewer Tom Fox, but she says God's job of entering us is made easier if we are comfortable with ourselves. "Where we usually hide from ourselves is in our noise," she says. Silence disarms people so they can't hide in their personalities. And if everyone is doing it -- being silent -- it allows everyone to open up their being and learn to sit in their own skins.

Episode 2: Heart-broken Christians (20 min.)
Bourgeault says she works a lot with "heart-broken Christians." When these people, who were raised Christian, were young, typically in their late teen years, began to ask precocious spiritual questions, they didn't get the answers that would feed their souls. "They were turned off by overly rigid or dogmatic or guilt inducing put offs. And they left. Many have taken very adventurous, sincere -- sometimes admirable -- journeys into other faith traditions," Bourgeault tells interviewer Tom Fox. "But they always had the hunger to come home."

The Rev. Cynthia Bourgeaults is the principal teacher and advisor to the Contemplative Society. She is also a retreat and conference leader, teacher of prayer, writer on the spiritual life, and Episcopal priest. Cynthia is committed to the recovery of the Christian contemplative path and has worked closely with Fr. Thomas Keating as a teacher of Centering Prayer, Fr. Bruno Barnhart, and other Christian contemplative masters, as well as in Sufism and the Christian inner traditions.

The spiritual and scientific seek the mystical
Beatrice Bruteau -- contemporary Christian contemplative, passionate scientist, and philosopher -- speaks about the creative impulse behind the evolutionary design of the universe. She has the unusual distinction of having deeply studied the work of both Teilhard de Chardin and Sri Aurobindo -- the 20th century's great spiritual evolutionary pioneers -- and has published several books exploring their visionary work.

Awakening people to something inside them, Tom Fox talks with Fr. Thomas Berry
Passionist Fr. Thomas Berry's classic work, Dream of the Earth, published in 1988, helped awaken people both to the magnitude of our ecological crisis and to its essential spiritual component. Berry stands out as one of the most important prophets of the 20th century. His teachings have inspired a generation's thinking about humankind's place in the Earth community and the universe.

Now 92, Berry lives not far from where he was born, in a retirement community, in Greensboro, N.C., and he has just released a new book, Evening Thoughts.

Plotting a course for survival, Ervin Laszlo speaks with Tom Fox
Ervin Laszlo is a Hungarian philosopher of science and a systems theorist. Alarmed by the scale of global environmental degradation and ever growing conflicts around the world, he founded the Club of Budapest to bring together artists, theologians, scientists and thinkers committed to “create and implement holistic solutions to problems that face the entire human family.” We have but a short time to save humanity, he tells Tom Fox.

A life-long pursuit of the spirit
Hameed Ali, born in Kuwait, was working on his Ph.D. in physics when he reached a turning point in his life that led him into inquiring into the psychological and spiritual aspects of human nature. His three-decade seach for spirit continues. Ali tells Tom Fox that people want to return to their spiritual roots and that "there are two directions people are taking." One is the fundamentalist direction. The other is direction of direct experience..

Engaged Wisdom: Strength for the work of seeking justice
"James Conlon is director of the Sophia Canter in Culture and Spirituality, a wisdom school celebrating Earth, art and spirit, located at Holy Names University in Oakland, Calif. In these interviews Conlon talks about what he calls "engaged wisdom," saying that if we gain that zest for life, that enthusiasm and soul strength which are activated in us by the experience of wonder, beauty and belonging, then we can do the strenuous and great work of seeking justice for all and living in harmony with the earth." The interviewer is Rich Heffern.

Science, fear, God, and the mystical
"Beatrice Bruteau -- contemporary Christian contemplative, passionate scientist, and philosopher -- speaks about the creative impulse behind the evolutionary design of the universe. She has the unusual distinction of having deeply studied the work of both Teilhard de Chardin and Sri Aurobindo -- the 20th century's great spiritual evolutionary pioneers -- and has published several books exploring their visionary work."

The gift of contemplation
"Trappist Fr. Thomas Keating speaks on the ancient and modern origins of contemplative prayer, which he calls Centering Prayer, and its place in our lives. He sees contemplative prayer as a gift from God, allowing us to open to the Spirit in a deeper and much needed way." "It is through the practice of silence that we begin to be vulnerable to the true Self," he tells Tom Fox.
Episode 1: Rediscovering the tradition
Episode 2: Consenting to the invitation to transformation
Episode 3: Encountering the silence
Episode 4: The need for renewal

Our Hunger for Wisdom
"A lot of people when they write about mysticism, they look at that experience as the end, the goal of the spiritual life," Fr.Bruno Barnhart tells Tom Fox. "But I think it's more like the beginning. You go from there. Something is put into you which takes the rest of your life to work it out, to express it, to incarnate it, to make it real in the world."
Episode 1: Sapiential hunger, hunger for wisdom
Episode 2: The paradox of wisdom

Finding the Holy in the Ordinary
"I found myself at the Catholic Worker almost by accident, attracted there not really by the Catholicism," Robert Ellsberg tells Tom Fox, "but by the example of Dorothy Day."
Episode 1: Learning from Dorothy Day
Episode 2: Being holy, being happy