Guru Viking Podcast

In this episode I am joined by Leigh Brasington, Buddhist meditation teacher to discuss his new book ‘Dependent Origination and Emptiness: SODAPI’. Leigh lifts the lid on his writing process, including how he overcame severe writer’s block to complete the book that his students had been asking for years, and shares his reasoning for making the book free. Leigh reveals why he considers the dependent origination to be at the heart of the Buddha’s teaching, and traces different interpretations of the doctrine throughout the Buddhist literature. Leigh draws on the works of Nagarjuna to discuss emptiness, and levels a critique of the teaching of reincarnation which he calls an ‘immortality project’. Leigh explains why he translates ‘dukkha’ as the hippy slang word ‘bummer’, how he came up with the acronym SODAPI - Streams of Dependently Arising Phenomena Interacting, and offers medium and long term strategy advice for how to practice this powerful method to achieve the liberation of promised in Buddhism. …