The Windhorse Publications Podcast – Details, episodes & analysis

What if your struggles could become tools for awakening? What if a few short slogans could reshape how you meet life’s challenges?

In this episode, Dhammamegha speaks with Dhirananda and Viryabodhi, authors of Train Your Mind: Tibetan Exercises in Wisdom and Compassion — a fresh, practical guide to the ancient Tibetan Buddhist practice of Lojong. Together, they explore how mind-training slogans like “Don’t expect applause”, “At this crucial time, practise the essentials”, and “Blame it all on the one culprit” offer pithy, powerful ways to meet life with clarity and courage.

We dive into the transformative power of these teachings — and the Tonglen meditation that often accompanies them — to discover how to work with our minds amid the messiness of real life. Whether you’re navigating relationship tensions, inner critics, or a busy modern life, this conversation is an invitation to practise wise compassion in the heart of it all.

Plus: hear how a Swedish-language book became a Windhorse English edition, and what keeps these authors inspired after decades of practice.

Dhammamegha speaks to Bodhidasa in Sydney, Australia, about his upcoming book Approaching Enlightenment: A Guidebook for Buddhist Ritual. The conversation covers:

• Bodhidasa as a practitioner, teacher, and self-declared geek. We’ll hear about his interests in magic, games, popular culture, and literature, and how these are part of his practice and the book.
• How ritual, archetypes, and myth enable a connection with transpersonal and enlightened qualities and potentials.
• Different approaches to Buddhist practice - from ascetic and austere approaches on the one hand, to those drawn to objects, worldly activities, and emotions of devotion, joy, and integration.
• Cultural tensions between secular life and ritual practices, and the Buddhist tradition’s own relationships with ritual—as a fetter and as a path.
• How ritual opens us up to something inconvenient—the possibility that there is more in you and others than the limits we impose.
• Bodhidasa’s own integration of elements of ritual into his day—through offering, worship, going for refuge, confession, and rejoicing.

Useful Links:

PUJA: The Triratna Book of Buddhist Devotional Texts.

Creative Symbols of Tantric Buddhism is available in Volume 13 of the Complete Works of Sangharakshita

FutureDharma Fund.

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A lot of life is spent online these days. It is the medium for news, entertainment, work, debate and perspective, music, keeping up with friends, dating, and, for some, pornography.

In this podcast episode, Dhammamegha speaks with new author Prajnaketu about his upcoming book Cyberloka: A Buddhist guide to digital life. Prajnaketu wants to open up ways of thinking and talking about our digital lives that draw on the teachings of the Buddha. 

We talk about hyper-availability and how to go mindfully into our digital lives, leaving space for depth. We discuss super-stimulation and in particular the use of porn and other potentially addictive sources of pleasure online. And we hear about how to have better conversations online, including how to disagree more skilfully.

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Links: 

Order Cyberloka online from your nearest independent bookshop or: 

Buy Cyberloka (Europe)

Buy Cyberloka (US & Canada)

About Prajnaketu

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It’s always good news when one of our books starts selling well. But in this case, the popularity of Eight Step Recovery: Using the Buddha’s Teachings to Overcome Addiction points to the rise of compulsive and addictive behaviour and thought over lockdown and beyond. Dhammamegha sat down to talk with the book’s co-author, Valerie Mason-John (Buddhist Order name Vimalasara). 

Perhaps you’re aware of compulsion in yourself or others? In this podcast, Vimalasara and Dhammamegha talk about ‘stinking thinking’ and the difficult and beautiful path to sobriety of thoughts and feelings, putting something positive and wholesome at the centre of our lives. 

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Links: 

Order Eight Step Recovery online from your nearest independent bookshop or: 

Buy Eight Step Recovery (Europe)

Buy Eight Step Recovery (US & Canada)

Audio book edition

About Vimalasara and her website

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In this episode, Dhammamegha interviews Nagapriya, author of the forthcoming book: The Promise of a Sacred World: Shinran’s Teaching of Other Power. It is due out in early September 2022. 

Nagapriya encountered the writings of the Japanese Pure Land teacher Shinran at a point of crisis in his own spiritual life. After a decade of enthusiastic striving towards enlightenment, Nagapriya came up against the limits of self-directed practice. In that moment, Shinran and Other Power opened a different way of thinking about enlightenment and a life in the Dharma. 

I thoroughly enjoyed speaking with Nagapriya about his life and practice. In this generous and spacious interview – I found him warm and deeply thoughtful about what it means to be a Buddhist. Through reflection, mythic and poetic thinking, Nagapriya explores Shinran’s existential liberation, and the nature of connection, openness and encounter with something beyond the known self. 

Subscribe to our newsletter to get notified about the book’s release and launches

Links: 

Order online from your nearest independent bookshop or: 

Buy The Promise of the Sacred World (Europe)

Buy The Promise of the Sacred World (US & Canada)

About Nagapriya 

FutureDharma Fund

Follow Windhorse Publications on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.

In February this year, we published a memoir by a man diagnosed with life-threatening prostate cancer. The book is called Entertaining Cancer the Buddhist Way. That man is Devamitra, and his book covers his remarkable story of working with his mental states through diagnosis, treatment and recovery.

In this podcast Dhammamegha interviews Devamitra to learn more about the man behind the cancer journey, and finds out what conditioned his strength of character, and his Buddhist practice.

After a period of remission, Devamitra’s cancer has returned, and in this forthright and often unexpected conversation he talks about facing uncertainty, death and the beauty and love that can come from meeting ill health fully. It’s a longer listen than usual, so sit back and enjoy.

Trigger warning: This podcast deals with difficult topics such as cancer and death. Please be advised before listening.

Useful Links: 

Buy Entertaining Cancer (Europe)

Buy Entertaining Cancer (US & Canada)

Prostate Cancer UK

London Buddhist Centre

FutureDharma Fund

Follow Windhorse Publications on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.

In this episode, scholar-monk Bhikkhu Anālayo continues the conversation with Dhammamegha about two mindfulness books published by Windhorse Publications in 2019. 

The conversation covers the crucial question of the place of mindfulness of others in meditation, the importance of sangha or community, and the relationship between what happens on the cushion and our ways of being in the world. 

Getting closer to some of our collective challenges, Bhikkhu Anālayo talks about climate change and the Six Element Practice. We then move onto Bhikkhu Anālayo’s concerns about the dangers of going too far in deconstructing truth and morality in current culture, particularly in the USA, as well as the overemphasis of subjectivity. 

Links: 

About Bhikkhu Anālayo and Windhorse Publications 

https://www.windhorsepublications.com/product-category/authors/analayo/

https://www.buddhistinquiry.org/teacher/bhikkhu-analayo/

www.windhorsepublications.com

Links to audio resources: 

Elements meditation

Mindfully Facing Climate Change interview

Where to purchase the books:

Introducing Mindfulness: Buddhist Background and Practical Exercises

UK & Europe

US & Canada

Mindfulness in Early Buddhism: Characteristics and Functions

UK & Europe

US & Canada

Mindfully Facing Climate Change

UK & Europe

US & Canada 

Superiority Conceit in Buddhist Traditions: A Historical Perspective

UK & Europe

US & Canada

In this episode of the new Windhorse Publications podcast, scholar-monk Bhikkhu Anālayo talks to Dhammamegha about two books we published in 2019, written for mindfulness practitioners interested in the Buddhist background to mindfulness. 

Along the way he talks about bare mindfulness and how it differs from mindfulness in the context of the Buddhist path. The interview covers the basic function of monitoring and acceptance to protect the mind, and the wisdom part of mindfulness practice. Anālayo talks about the importance of getting into the body and working with conditions as they are, opening the heart and bringing it all on the path.

Finally, our guest talks about studying early Buddhism – imagining the Buddha, how close we can get to imagining the historical Buddha, and the importance of relying on the Dharma.

Links for this episode:

Bhikkhu Anālayo's bio: https://www.windhorsepublications.com/product-category/authors/analayo/

Barre Center for Buddhist Studies: https://www.buddhistinquiry.org/

Where to purchase the books:

Introducing Mindfulness: Buddhist Background and Practical Exercises.

Europe - https://www.windhorsepublications.com/product/introducing-mindfulness-paperback/

US & Canada - https://bookshop.org/a/5803/9781911407577

Mindfulness in Early Buddhism: Characteristics and Functions.

Europe - https://www.windhorsepublications.com/product/mindfulness-in-early-buddhism-characteristics-and-functions-paperback/

US & Canada - https://bookshop.org/a/5803/9781911407553

Today, Dhammamegha speaks with award winning author and speaker Valerie (Vimalasara) Mason John about their soon-to-be-released pocketbook First Aid Kit for the Mind: Breaking the Cycle of Habitual Behaviours.

We hear about Vimalasara’s life and writing, and the deep well of experience through trauma and addiction recovery and mindfulness. They speak from the heart about all the tools to connect what you already have to live more embodied, skilful and free. These tools are all laid out in this small, illustrated, easy-to-use guide to healing the mind.

Order First Aid Kit for the Mind online, from your nearest independent bookshop or: 

Buy First Aid Kit for the Mind (Europe)

Buy First Aid Kit for the Mind (US & Canada)

Find out more about Valerie (Vimalasara) Mason-John.

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In this episode, Dhammamegha speaks with Cindy Rasicot - the author of a new book This Fresh Existence: Heart Teachings from Bhikkhuni Dhammananda. Cindy speaks about meeting her teacher Venerable Dhammananda, and responding to her challenging message of kindness and forgiveness rather than anger and hatred. The podcast conversation covers what it is like to be a student and disciple, different ways of practice in Asian and convert American Buddhism, and the radical transformation that can come with the healing practice of the medicine Buddha.

Links: 

Order This Fresh Existence online, from your nearest independent bookshop or: 

Buy This Fresh Existence (Europe)

Buy This Fresh Existence (US & Canada)

Find out more about Cindy Rasicot and Venerable Dhammananda’s Monastery.

FutureDharma Fund

Follow Windhorse Publications on Instagram, Facebook, X (formerly Twitter) and TikTok. Subscribe to our newsletter.