Pandemic Zen Paul Gerstein, MD
-
- Religion & Spirituality
An experimental podcast exploring the healing and life-sustaining potential of Zen insight, meditation and mindfulness in a modern world of existential challenges to health, happiness and our very survival.
Credits:
Recorded by:
Paul Gerstein, MD
Podcast channel creation and website design:
James Kieffer, Kieffer Consulting, LLC
Intro music:
Dancing for the Answers, Nick Mulvey
-
At the End of Time
Talk to Zen retreat group on how to approach the "end" of everything. We discuss koan #29 from the Hekigan Roku: "It will be gone with the other."
-
An Invisible Shield
This is a Zen lecture (teisho) to a virtual retreat group. We start with a TV commercial from the 1950s and progress to the strange "preliminary koan" called, The Duck in the Bottle.
-
Zen lecture: ”Lotus Leaves”
In this episode, Paul gives a teisho (Zen lecture) on a koan from The Blue Cliff Record (a Tang and Sung dynasty collection of 100 teaching stories).
Recorded by: Paul Gerstein, MD
Intro music: Dancing for the Answers by Nick Mulvey
Ending music: Kerosene Hat by Cracker
-
Hopeless and Fearless
In this episode, we discuss the rapidly worsening pandemic in the U.S. and the troubling opposition by many to proven mitigation efforts. We examine the famous statement by Milarepa, an 11th century Tibetan master: “Abandon hope and fear.” Finally, a teaching story from The Blue Cliff Record points to a way out of struggling against painful difficulties of everyday life.
-
Observation vs Belief
In this episode, Paul starts with a brief bio of his training in both medicine and Zen followed by a deep dive into facts and fictions regarding COVID-19. The contrast between blind beliefs and careful observation highlights how the scientific method and mindfulness practice counters the false narratives of anti-science, political propaganda in the setting of an alarmingly worsening pandemic.
Paul Gerstein, MD -
Something's Happening Here
The release of a cellphone video of the killing of an African American jogger, followed by one of a Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd, leads to a world-wide explosion of outrage over racism and police brutality.