Emerge: Making Sense of What's Next Daniel Thorson

Soryu Forall is the founder and head-teacher of the Monastic Academy. 

Soryu has a decade of intensive monastic training, a degree in Economics from Williams College, and extensive experience in social and environmental justice. He was ordained in 1998 at Sogen Temple under the tutelage of the Zen Master Shodo Harada.

The day this recording goes live I'll be beginning an 80(ish) day silent solo retreat here on the land of the Monastic Academy. By the end of this episode,  I hope you'll understand why I would do such a thing.

We discuss:

How awakening enables us to be of true service in times of crisis

How easy it is to fool ourselves about the depth of our experience and insight

Soryu’s personal crisis upon learning of the Japanese Zen traditions participation in the atrocities of World War Two

A vision of awakening that is adequate to the meta-crisis

Whether it makes sense to disconnect Waking Up, Growing Up, and Cleaning Up

Does awakening make us more ethical? Better at making decisions? 

The difference between ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ enlightenment according to the Buddhist eightfold path

What kind of monsters ‘wrong’ enlightenment creates

Why transformative practices disconnected from ethical training is so dangerous

How the cultural assumptions of liberalism, humanism, and materialism distort our understanding of what awakening is

How your aspiration creates your understanding of the path

Why it’s necessary to do these practices in community

Soryu’s definition of awakening

And more!

🧘‍♂️🧘‍♀️

Monastic Academy Podcast

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Andrew J Taggart is a practical philosopher, Zen Buddhist, and entrepreneur. Recently Andrew wrote an article called 'Psychotechnologies of Self-Transformation' that led me to reach out to him and schedule a conversation.

This episode was recorded a few months ago, but it occurs to me as exactly the right time to release it. If you are feeling panicked about the Corona Virus, I'd encourage you to slow down, get a hot cup of tea (or go for a walk outside) and enjoy this warm-spirited philosophical conversation.

We inquire about:

Why aren't human beings kinder to each other, let alone to all sentient beings?

Is liberalism, humanism, and nihilism at the root of the meta-crisis?

How social media requires a self-enclosed narcissistic humanism to function

How do we move beyond humanism into a new cosmological sense of being?

Is it possible to install new modes of being in time to confront the planetary challenges facing us?

The necessity of existential openings as a portal to self-inquiry

Whether we need to administer 'gentle shocks' to help people enter into spiritual crisis as quickly as possible

How can we help ensure that instances of emergency and crisis can touch the heart and open the spirit?

How do we precipitate mass existential opening?

How do we help others encounter the truths of their heart?

What Andrew has learned about having skillful philosophical conversations

The importance of becoming sensitive in conversation to what Andrew calls 'existential weight'

Why we must change our lives according to our existential truths, and the consequences of not doing so

What is an adequate new definition of the human being that supports the emergence of a broadly contemplative culture

Does wisdom arise from awakening, or does awakening arise from wisdom?

What are the most important virtues to be cultivated now, in this time between worlds?



Andrew's Home on the Internet




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Jonathan Reams works at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), serves as Editor-in Chief of Integral Review, and is a co-founder of the Center for Transformative Leadership and of the European Center for Leadership Practice. He brings awareness based leadership development practices to his work, focusing on how the inner workings of human nature can develop leadership capacities for today’s complex challenges.

His recent research and practice has focused on subjects such as; the impact of Immunity to Change based coaching, theoretical foundations of resistance to change, the integration of psychological and cognitive skill based assessments and the use of narrative based tools combined with developmentally informed reflection prompts for scaling development.

We inquire into:

What do we mean when we talk about human development?

Why are there so many different models of adult development?

Are higher stages of adult development all one thing or are there many different types of maturity?

The various types of developmental models and the key differences between them

How do we develop as moral and ethical beings?

How does seeing the 'virtual' nature of the self help us become more mature and wise humans?

And more! Enjoy. ❤️



Check out http://jonathanreams.com/ to see more about Jonathan's work and writing.


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In this episode, I'm speaking with Mark Feenstra. Mark is co-founding a consulting and training ecosystem and incubator, called New Mainstream, which focuses on large scale change that starts with ourselves and the possibility of a new mainstream. Mark is also in the process of founding a land-based community to ground the possibility of actualizing a new mainstream, initially in Golden Bay, New Zealand. 

Over the last year or so I’ve been lucky enough to have a number of conversations with Mark. He, as much as anyone I’ve encountered, really lives the sort of inquiry that I’ve been attempting to embody on this show. Every time I speak with Mark I feel like I’m falling into some wormhole of understanding and coherence. Mark has an amazing ability to bring these topics down to earth without sacrificing the ambiguity and playfulness that is the lifeblood of beautiful conversation.  

We talk about: 

Shifting from a Game A to Game B mental operating system 

The fractal nature of the meta-crisis and how it lives within each of us 

What integrity really means (and whether a crisis of integrity at the heart of the meta-crisis) 

Whether the split between individual transformation and systems transformation is an artifact of Game A consciousness 

Why attempting to fix or heal the crisis is a red herring Integrity as an emergent property of coming into relationship with wholeness 

How noticing the lack of integrity is a proximal cause of integrity 

The relationship between integrity and omni-win decision making 

And the beautiful impossibility of true omni-win decision making  



Monastic Academy Awakened Leadership Bootcamp


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On this episode I'm joined once again by meditation teacher and author Rob Burbea. For this conversation Jamie Bristow and I talk with Rob about his approach to emptiness, and how it can be a route beyond postmodern nihilism and into a vibrant and sacred participation in the world.
We talk about:

An overview of the ‘ways of looking’ approach to emptiness, 
the participatory nature of perception & the world, 
how perception gets fabricated through our participation, 
the limitations of a purely cognitive deconstruction ala postmodernism, 
how Rob would define emptiness if asked about it at a cocktail party, 
How emptiness reveals a path beyond post-modernity, 
how hidden commitments limit our ability to explore perspectives, 
the unavoidability of participation and the impossibility of neutrality, 
the middle way between existence and non-existence, how this approach to emptiness offers a way forward in a ‘post-truth’ world, 
how your experience right now is constellated by your way of seeing (whether you know it or not), 
and the necessity of practice to realize the deeper dimensions of emptiness.

Seeing that Frees [Amazon]
Rob on the Deconstructing Yourself Podcast
2009 Emptiness Retreat Dharma Talks

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