Show Notes
Originally posted on the Unraveling Religion podcast, Joel David Lesses lassoed Rich Grego and Lisa Carley into a conversation recorded weaving threads through time and space and love, itself.
This conversation meanders among these three old, dear friends, and touches on nihilism, dissolution, and romanticism, Dharma decay and Dharma renewal, changes and transformations.
Is there room for Hope in the world today?
Optimism?
Does the state of the world allow a falling away so that things might improve, a sense something better might come.
What does Enlightenment look like?
What does Enlightenment feel like?
Rich, Lisa, and Joel explore aspects of the existential path requiring courage and bravery, and the conversation deconstructs aspects of the work required to build a strong existential or spiritual foundation.
They continue to examine challenging and evolving social constructs, darkness versus light, mission and meaning and purpose, how do we find mission, meaning, and purpose?
Asking 'how' versus asking 'why?'
Fundamentally, what makes us feel we are far from where we should be, what makes us feel we are far from 'home.'
Lisa, Rich, and Joel explore knowing the 'why' and knowing the 'big picture' versus being in the flow of life.
The talk continues in the examination of life asking 'What is being asked of me?
What do I need to learn about this situation?
What do I need to perceive in this situation?'
Also, asking questions of life, and responding to life's obstacles in a way that challenges our mental health and our existential paradigm, and the relationship to reconstructing ourselves, Phoenix like, after allowing ourselves to 'fall apart.'
Deeper into the conversation, the topic of the Existential Abyss and Kierkegaard and Nietzsche and Heidegger, and looking at 'being true to [oneself] in the deepest possible sense.'
The talk opens to the complexities and wonders of being human.
The existentially reassembling ourselves and its relationship to mental health and mental health distress.
Lisa, Rich, and Joel examine the secret to the existential delimma and how to resolve it.
The answer, 'service.'
Also, surfing and meditation and the story of Reb Zusha, a Hasidic Master.
A Jewish Kabbalistic look at death, judgment, and Heavenly Decrees, ultimately who judges us?
Does human life have spiritual veils and what do they hide?
Also discussed is American Zen Buddhism and the two most influential books in American Zen 'Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind' and 'The Three Pillars of Zen.'
From Zen Mind, Beginner Mind, 'The basic teaching of Buddhism is the teaching of transcency or change' and 'That everything changes is the basic truth for each existence.'
What actually determines the quality of our life: is it what we receive from others, or what we give to others?
What is our relationship to Death?
What are we forced to let go of in life and what returns to us in the future?
These explorations build into a final poem Lisa wrote and reads.
Biographies:
Richard Grego is Professor of philosophy and cultural history at FSCJ. His research interests focus on cross cultural themes in religion and science— including philosophy of mind, comparative world religions/world civilizations, and the metaphysical - theological implications of theoretical physics and cosmology. His publications have included studies in the history- philosophy of science and conceptions of nature in the history of western philosophy, as well as cross-cultural perspectives on mind/ consciousness in western philosophy - psychology and the neo-Vedanta Hindu tradition. Prior to his academic career, he was a criminal investigator-polygraph examiner for the Florida Office of the Public Defender and in the private sector Instructor at the Criminal Justice Institute and International Academy of Polygraph Science in Florida, and national Academic Director of the Criminal Defense Investigation Training Council.
Born in Buffalo, NY, Joel David Lesses has lived in Nepal and Israel, along with hosting Unraveling Religion is a poet expressing the landscape of our existence, capturing the mystical elements of our human being. World religion, poetry, spirituality, meditation, encompassing the makeup of our mind and life. The crux of his own personal journey are the manifestation of questions and answers to his personal koan “What is the matter with me?” which reveals the individual and universal aspects of our inherent and potent creativity. Everything is flux. Everything is poetry. Other passions include the intersection of poetry, spirituality, science and phenomenology shared and disparate in the human experience, and transformative power of self inquiry and introspection through contemplative and meditative practices with a belief that the fundamental transformation of individuals and our collective comes through barreling inward, relentlessly, the question, "Who am I?" or "What am I" or "What is the matter with me?" the latter being his question which after years of examination, shattered a false sense of self, the work of integration of that experience being an ongoing work in progress.
