There are many public debates about “free speech” in terms of limiting “hate speech” that includes insults, hostility, or slander against others, especially “vulnerable others.” In this podcast we discuss how speech (the ways we speak to ourselves and others) plays a central role in ceding or avoiding war and chaos. We will compare “free speech,” as defended in the US Constitution, with Right Speech as promoted in the Eightfold Noble Path of the Buddhist practice. Right Speech is divided into four components: abstaining from false speech, abstaining from slanderous speech, abstaining from harsh (divisive) speed, and abstaining from idle chatter. Speech and the written word are immensely powerful in creating wisdom or destruction. In this podcast, we will talk about how to develop and discern our speech so that we can engage in non-hatred at all times, opening the door to a humane treatment of others and ourselves.
In part two of this episode, we will talk about the theory offered by contemporary cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman to explain why our natural...
What is death? Is it a flat-lining on the EEG in which the brain goes quiet? Is it cardiac arrest, the stopping of the...
In Part 2, Polly Young-Eisendrath, Ph.D. and Eleanor Johnson talk especially about the two great categories of human emotions — primary emotions (that we...