PODCAST · religion
Meaningness Podcast
by David Chapman
🚞 Trains of thought 💭 captured as sound🎙️; monologues on diverse ⁉️ topics, and conversations 👥 too! meaningness.substack.com
Episodes
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Creating conduits between the visionary realm and the actual world
Transcript Introduction [00:00] Most of this podcast is a recording from a retreat Charlie Awbery and I led a month ago. I’m adding a short introduction here now, to provide background context, so you can understand more of what we presented then. So first, tantra is the branch of Buddhism...
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Meaning: lost, or muddled by metaphysics?
John Vervaeke’s Meaning Crisis and my Meaningness address similar issues in similar frameworks. Yet there seem significant differences! Andrew Conner pinpointed some in his insightful essay “Is the ‘meaning crisis’ a real loss?” Coincidentally, he was visiting Charlie Awbery and me at the time…
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You can just bless things
Transcript You can bless things. It’s easy! You can do this! You just go around blessing things. You don’t need a clerical collar, you don’t need a fancy hat (although the hat might help). This is a non-denominational practice. It’s not particularly religious; you can be of any religion, or no...
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You can’t sell enlightenment
Transcript (ish) Dzogchen is the branch of Buddhism that I’m most influenced by; that I love most. It’s extraordinarily compelling and exciting and beautiful. It’s in some sense the basis of pretty nearly everything that I write. It has several serious problems, though. One is that you can’t sell...
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The unaltered state
Many people in the West pursue meditation in order to experience altered states. Meditation is sometimes considered a safer alternative to taking psychoactive drugs, with roughly similar effects. The jhanas are altered states of consciousness, for example. Buddhist tantra also produces diverse...
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Personal experiences of sacredness & community
A facilitated discussion of how the participants find sacredness in the actual world—and in community. This Vajrayana Q&A session is an Evolving Ground online discussion I co-hosted with Jared Janes. You can get some sense of the eG style here. We don’t go in for “dharma talks,” much less…
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Dzogchen Street Preacher #0: Kadag
“Dzogchen Street Preacher” is the overall title for a series of performance pieces I planned in 2009. This extremely brief one, “Kadag,” was meant to introduce the whole thing. I was on the verge of recording them when there was a mundane emergency that took all my time for a year. When I had the...
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Maps of Meaningness
Before controversy and fame, Jordan Peterson was a psychologist theorizing myth and meaning. Jake Orthwein points out striking similarities in Peterson’s work and David’s. Along with them, fundamental disagreements: partly due to Peterson bringing a Christian perspective, and Chapman a Vajrayana...
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What's the connection between gender and meta-rationality?
Rationality is stereotypically masculine. What about meta-rationality? Transcript: Charlie: What’s the connection between gender and meta-rationality? David: I had never thought to ask that! The systematic mode of being, or the rational mode of being, is male-coded, or masculine-coded....
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Priests and Kings
The common civilizational pattern of a separate priesthood and aristocracy casts light on current political dysfunction. This video follows “Nobility and virtue are distinct sorts of goodness.” You might want to watch that one first, if you haven’t already. These are the first two in a series on...
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Nobility and virtue are distinct sorts of goodness
Nobility is the wise and just use of power. Nobility is not moral virtue. They are not in conflict; they may correlate, but they don't always coincide. Nobility is the proper matter of politics. Transcript Sermonette Nobility is the dark matter of society. The pull of dark matter holds galaxies...
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What is stage five (like)?
A visual, kinesthetic, embodied experience 𐡸 A fish-eye lens and a magnifying glass 𐡸 The little clicker wheel 𐡸 Nurturing a plot of woodland 𐡸 Becoming the space, unstuck in time 𐡸 Freed up to play Like most of my posts, this one is free. I do paywall some as a reminder that I deeply...
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Stage five is nothing special
A nine-minute radio sermonette. I think I may be doing a bunch of these. Subscribe to get all of them! Possibly I’ll create one every day or two! And maybe you don’t want that many emails? So I could post these as Substack Notes, and collect them into emailed posts, sent once a week maximum? What...
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Fivefold confidence
Emptiness, form, and the Big Bang 𐡸 How understanding creates students 𐡸 Buddhism outside institutions This short video explains two stanzas from the Evolving Ground invocation liturgy. The first is an origin myth, and the second explains the prerequisites for successful Buddhist teaching. Each...
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This is it!
A seven-minute radio sermonette. Transcript This is it! We’re actually here. I’m here in this room you can see behind me maybe, if you’re watching, not listening. You can hear my voice. I’m in a place. I’m in this world. You’re in a place. You’re in a room, you’re out walking, you’re driving in a...
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Rigpa and ethical nihilism
Rigpa is Dzogchen’s word roughly equivalent to “enlightenment.” But what is rigpa, actually? And what does it imply for ethics? A conversation with Varun Godbole. This is a clip from the monthly Q&A I host for Evolving Ground, a community for contemporary Vajrayana practice. Participation in the...
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The incomparable value of being wrong
What is learning math good for? — Robert Kegan and “meaning-making” — Existentialism’s error — Narcissism and tyranny — How can we avoid radical relativism? — My experience of teaching This is the video from my January 2025 monthly AMA (“Ask Me Anything”). As a cine auteur, for previous AMA...
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When the proof comes as white light and angels
The felt experience of mathematics — witchcraft and black magic — “Shut up, kid!” — what is a real number? — shocked and embarrassed — clouds all the way down — a choir of angels singing — painting Cthulhu’s third eye on the walls of our mathematics and science departments Video from a monthly…
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Myth, adult developmental stages, and entrepreneurship
How thoughts work — goddesses at the origin of philosophy — inspiration in adult development — how myths transform society and culture — Spock and Jimi Hendrix — entrepreneurship, purpose, and value Video from a monthly live Ask-Me-Anything! How to participate next time, and more info:...
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Vajrayana, Ultraspeaking, and adult stage transitions
Following our earlier conversation about Ultraspeaking and Vajrayana, we add adult developmental stage theory to the mix: three transformational frameworks in synergy. We recorded this when Charlie was in Berlin on a Chinese martial arts retreat. Charlie had had been away from home for more than…
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Ask Me Anything! October 2024 edition
“What do you think you’re doing? And, um, why?” This is a recording of a Substack live video AMA (“ask me anything”) session I hosted two days ago. Around fifty people attended! I enjoyed it, and hope everyone else did too. We had a preliminary discussion in the subscriber chat, which was very...
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Why Tibetan bureaucrats replaced battlemages with monks
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit meaningness.substack.com This video is for paying subscribers only. There’s a brief “teaser” for free subscribers that ends in in a cliff-hanger. This comes in the “too much fun!” category of paid posts. Military use of Buddhist Tantra...
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Ultraspeaking and Vajrayana are like peanut butter and jelly because...?
Ultraspeaking trains you in confident, effective speaking; and is also a path for spontaneous personal transformation. Vajrayana trains you in confident, effective action; and is also a path for spontaneous personal transformation. We find them startlingly similar, although one offers courses in…
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How understanding Vajrayana theory boosts Vajrayana practice
The point of Vajrayana is to change your way of being. It has effective methods for that, but they are weird and complicated and difficult, and there are a vast number of them. It can be overwhelming. It's difficult to know where to start, and traditional approaches and curricula may not suit…
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Can enlightenment (or the complete stance) end suffering?
There’s a wrong idea about the end of suffering. Probably wrong. I mean, maybe some people don’t suffer. I don’t know anybody like that. Spiritual suffering is unnecessary, though. I have the recipe for eliminating it, and it works. An audio recording of my long answer to a question, in a live…
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Transmitting ways of being, without dominance ploys
We both aim to transmit ways of being. That demands a different mode than conventional teaching, which explains facts, concepts, theories, and procedures. David attempts to transmit meta-rationality—not a theory or method, but a way of being, namely “actually caring for the concrete situation,...
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Wearing human bone ornaments
Content note: Traditional religious artworks featuring nudity, death imagery, and body horror. Possibly not safe for work, or life. The video includes those as illustrations. Without them, listening to the audio alone may be difficult to understand. Watch full-screen for maximum impact. Context,...
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Buddhism, cybernetics, and cognitive science
I discuss the intellectual history of interactions between Buddhism and cognitive science, prompted by a blog discussion of doubts about modern meditation systems. There’s not many intellectually interesting people in the world, and they all talk to each other. They’re in very different fields,...
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Lineage and learning, with Max Langenkamp
Max and I discussed the nature of lineages, and why they are so important for learning through apprenticeship. I went into detail about my participation in multiple lineages of artificial intelligence research (0:33), developmental psychology (5:41), Vajrayana Buddhism (9:18), meta-rationality in...
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Steam engine, startup, podcast, leaf devil
This is about my self. It's about how I relate to it—to my self. I've gotten somewhat better at that, over many years. You may have a self too, in which case my experience may be interesting. This is an unusually personal, and unusually concrete, piece. That is motivated by reader feedback. I did…
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Learning Kindness Skills
Welcome to the first episode of the Meaningness podcast! It is about how to learn to be kind. I want to be kinder than I am. Maybe you do too. Good intentions are not enough, I think. My spouse Charlie Awbery offers suggestions. Charlie will teach some methods relevant to this podcast in a…
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
🚞 Trains of thought 💭 captured as sound🎙️; monologues on diverse ⁉️ topics, and conversations 👥 too!
meaningness.substack.com
HOSTED BY
David Chapman
CATEGORIES
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Meaningness Podcast have?
Meaningness Podcast currently has 31 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Meaningness Podcast about?
🚞 Trains of thought 💭 captured as sound🎙️; monologues on diverse ⁉️ topics, and conversations 👥 too! meaningness.substack.com
How often does Meaningness Podcast release new episodes?
Meaningness Podcast has 31 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
Where can I listen to Meaningness Podcast?
You can listen to Meaningness Podcast on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts Meaningness Podcast?
Meaningness Podcast is created and hosted by David Chapman.
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