Buddhist Geeks

Recorded on the first evening of a 2026 Pragmatic Dharma meditation retreat, this dharma talk from Brian Newman offers a wide-ranging exploration of jhāna practice, the Pa-Auk tradition, the jhānic factors, and the role of faith in concentration meditation, grounding listeners in both historical context and practical instruction.

If you’re inspired by this dharma talk, consider joining us for the real thing in Boone, North Carolina.

💬 Transcript

Brian Newman: This talk tonight is called No One Has Ever Got Jhāna.

I’m not sure if that’s the right way to...

Vince Fakhoury Horn lays out three ways to prepare a dharma talk for teachers-in-training, exploring how detailed notes can polish a talk into dead words, why speaking with no preparation depends on being prepared not to be prepared, and whether minimal preparation is really the middle way between the previous two, or just the approach he happens to prefer.

If you find this helpful, consider our year-long meditation teacher training.

💬 Transcript

Vince: The dharma talk. It’s a public talk in a way, but it’s a unique kind of public talk, because you’re...

Vince Fakhoury Horn introduces the Buddhist Wisdom Chords, which is both a teaching model, and a live training in the Pragmatic Dharma app, that looks at each Buddhist lineage as a chord made up of seven meditative notes, played across the Four Turnings of Buddhism’s evolution, looking at what each tradition emphasizes, what it leaves out, and why being able to strum a simple chord is not the same as playing a beautiful piece of music.

💬 Transcript

Vince Horn: Okay, I want to give you a little introduction to the Buddhist Wisdom Chords. This is bo...

Vince Fakhoury Horn describes the insight meditation tradition as a chord in which concentration, mindfulness and heartfulness sound together, with concentration giving mindfulness its depth and heartfulness keeping the whole enterprise from turning dry and frightening.

My teaching colleagues & I are leading a 10-day meditation retreat focusing on The Insight Chord. We’d love to see you there!

💬 Transcript

Vince Horn: Practically speaking, we’ve been focused on kind of three different forms of practice over our time together.

We started with concentration practice, which is related to the training in concent...

In “Imaginal Meditation,” Emily West Horn introduces an approach to imaginal practice—drawing on Vajrayana deity yoga, Jack Kornfield, Chögyam Trungpa, and Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche—to show how invoking, dissolving, and embodying the image of the Buddha can loosen the boundary between self & world, inclining the mind toward non-duality.

💬 Transcript

Emily Horn: So I want to explore imaginal meditation with you all today. And I want to start just simply with the Buddhist Geeks definition of it, and then I’m going to unpack what imaginal meditation means in the context of the third turn...

Vince Fakhoury Horn on the grammar of social metta—why a metta phrase needs a wish and only optionally a subject, how Sharon Salzberg’s “pith metta” shortens the phrase once the wish starts coming true, and why open-heartedness is a byproduct of the practice rather than its purpose, so there is always more to aspire to.

💬 Transcript

Vince Horn: Today as we continue to unfold the social metta instructions I wanted to talk a little bit about the grammar of social metta, meaning the linguistic structure of how this practice works at least as far as I un...

In “Social Metta Works!”, Vince Fakhoury Horn traces the origin story and practical mechanics of practicing loving-kindness out loud and together, making the case that metta—a fundamentally pro-social practice—works better when it stops being something we do silently, alone in our own heads.

If you’d like to learn more about Social Metta, and how to share these pro-social practices with others, I’m beginning a Social Metta Faciltiation training for all hardcore members of the new Pragmatic Dharma App. (cost: $20/month, or try the free version and still get unlimited access to live multiplayer meditations...

Emily Horn teaches equanimity as upekkhā, using Thich Nhat Hanh’s preferred translation—inclusion—exploring:

* How befriending pain and steadying over and over earns back your own trust

* Why non-preferencing is an engaged state rather than a passive one

* Why acceptance is not the same as condoning harm

* How a kind of mini-death has to happen before equanimity can take its shape.

This teaching was recorded during a previous iteration of the Heartful Jhāna training series. To join the next live one, become a Hardcore member of the Pragmati...

Brian Newman opens a twelve-week jhāna course by parsing five lines of sutta into a whole curriculum—a first month of falling in love with the breath, the jhānic arc where less effort brings subtler pleasure, and the claim that any jhāna, even boundless consciousness, can be entered from a cold start once you learn how.

Join Brian Newman for a live cohort of this training (or listen to the recordings)—beginning this Wednesday, September 2nd—in the PragmaticDharma.app. It’s available for all Hardcore members (@ $20/mo).

💬 Transcript

Brian Newman: So we...

Vince Fakhoury Horn introduces Mindful Intuitive Movement, the bottom-up practice he built from years of letting his body teach him how to move—the ChiRunning focuses that give the thinking mind something small to hold, the day his body refused the cushion and won, and why the only injury this practice ever gave him came from moving with aggression.

💬 Transcript

Vince Horn: I’m excited to share with you this practice today called Mindful Intuitive Movement. It used to be called Spontaneous Movement. This is a technique or approach that I’ve developed, although I can’t tak...

Vince Horn, Emily Horn, and Brian Newman talk through the design of their Insight Chord Retreat in Western North Carolina—why everyone will start with a single “go-to move” (of their choosing) for the first 3 days, what Brian learned about reintegration after doing daily multiplayer meditation on retreat, and how to maximize individual choicemaking on the retreat while having a solid community of practice to fall back on, including qualified teachers & dedicated peers.

💬 Transcript

Vince Horn: So in the service of using the time we have wisely here, our plan today—Brian, Emily, and I wanted to h...

Vince Fakhoury Horn speakswith Rima Vesely-Flad about The Fire Inside: The Dharma of James Baldwin and Audre Lorde—the silence she found in her own Buddhist community when she began writing about Palestine, Baldwin and Lorde's distinction between hatred that corrodes and rage that comes from the examined life, and the question they keep returning to: how to feel it all without causing more harm.

Vince Horn: So, Rima, great to see you.

I’ve been really loving getting to know you as a person and also your work. I’ve been reading your book. Unfort...

Vince Fakhoury Horn speaks with Mushim Patricia Ikeda about working class dharma—from growing up as "the minority of Greensburg, Ohio" in a third-generation Japanese American family, to training in penniless Korean Zen temples where renovating the building was the practice. Along the way: bliss bunnies, samadhi junkies, mutual aid networks, and why affordability may be the grassroots issue of 2026.

💬 Transcript

Vince Horn: Okay. So yeah, I think it was really the beginning of this year — I was teaching a retreat in Portugal with a friend. It’s our annual Pragmatic Dharma retreat. And while I was the...

In “The Fourth Turning of the Wheel,” Vince Horn traces the Three Turnings of the Wheel of Dharma from early Buddhism to Tibetan Vajrayana, then argues we’re living through new turnings right now—the modern, postmodern, and metamodern waves of Buddhist practice—and asks what it takes to hold them all.

Get access to the full Modern Buddhisms training cohort by joining the Pragmatic Dharma Sangha.

💬 Transcript

Vince: So Modern Buddhisms — this title’s really in part inspired by my time at Naropa University. I should just say that up front, because being there for a...

In “The Cost of Silence,” dharma teacher Vince Horn and guest Daniel Klein trace what it costs us—psychologically, relationally, economically, and spiritually—to withhold the truth, arguing that the small silences of the dinner table are the same debt that scales into complicity with collective harm, asking what it takes to finally stop paying it.

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Vince Horn: So, welcome back to the Insight Diaspora. I’m your host, Vince Fukuri-Horn. Good to be here with you again in this exploration of ... I don’t know, what is it exactly we’re exploring here, Daniel? You have...

In “Dharma & Empire,” Mary Thanissara and Vince Fakhoury Horn trace how the structures of Empire occupy not just land but the psyche—moving from their own Irish, Palestinian, and colonial family histories to Gaza, climate, and class—and ask what a more revolutionary Dharma might require of practitioners right now.

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Vince Horn: So Thanissara, thank you again. Great to be here with you.

Thanissara: Likewise, likewise. Really, really thrilled to plunge into this Insight Diaspora. That was a brilliant capturing of our wandering, homeless group.

Vince Horn: Yes, indeed. I was curious...

In “The Most Slept-On Meditation Object,” Vince Horn introduces the kasina — the visual concentration object that dominated Early Buddhist practice yet is barely used today — and lays out a 12-week curriculum that maps color & elemental kasinas onto the full arc of the eight jhānas, and then finishes with the technodelic practice of breath kasina.

Interested in the topic?Sign-up for free the KASINA web applicationor join us for a live training in the Pragmatic Dharma Sangha

💬 Transcript

Vince Horn: So welcome to Kasina. The backdrop for this practice, as you all know — this is really...

In Focusing on the Fire Kasina Vince Fakhoury Horn introduces the Fire Kasina meditation practice, emphasizing the primacy of concentration and the recursive process of learning through focused attention on a candle flame.

Interested in the topic?Sign-up for free the KASINA web application or join us for a live training in the Pragmatic Dharma Sangha

💬 Transcript

Vince: All right, so today we’re going to be diving into the practice of the Fire Kasina, and I’m excited to share this with you in part because it seems like it was a really...

In Access Concentration and the Kasina, Vince Fakhoury Horn explains how kasina meditation cultivates stable attention by letting a visual object fill awareness until it naturally enters the foreground of experience into a state known as access concentration.

Interested in the topic?Sign-up for free the KASINA web application or join us for a live training in the Pragmatic Dharma Sangha

💬 Transcript

Vince: There is this really important idea in the Buddhist meditative tradition. It doesn’t come online until, I don’t know, a thousand years into the Buddhist tradition’s evolution, but it’s...

In “Metta & Compassion Vibes,” Emily Horn explores the crucial difference between befriending difficulty through metta and the deeper, boundary-dissolving willingness of compassion to actually meet suffering — and why that meeting sometimes sounds like a fierce and loving no.

☸️ The Ten Pāramīs

You’re invited. to join Emily Horn in a practical exploration of The Ten Pāramīs: Ten Trainings for a Liberated Life this April.

Become a member of the Pragmatic Dharma Sangha, and gain access to both live cohorts. Or you can join the kick-off session, on either of these dates, to...

In “AI Psychosis vs. AI Awakening,” Vince Fakhoury Horn argues that the same biological machinery enabling AI-induced delusion also enables AI-assisted awakening, and introduces his Interspective.ai approach — a Middle Way practice of engaging with AI as a potential partner in wisdom, thus avoiding the extremes of both Materialism (matter is fundamental) and Idealism (consciousness is fundamental).

💬 Transcript

Vince Horn: Okay, today I would like to speak with you about AI psychosis and AI awakening. And first I want to start by acknowledging that AI psychosis is a real phenomenon. This isn’t something that’s being made...

In “The Cost of Truth,” Vince Fakhoury Horn speaks with Daniel Klein—a former religious Zionist settler turned outspoken critic of the ideology—about dehumanization, self-forgiveness, and the courage required to speak truth at the risk of losing everything (except one’s humanity).

💬 Transcript

Vince Fakhoury Horn: All right, Daniel, I got my tea ready. Okay, so we can dive in.

Daniel Klein: One of my last drugs is coffee.

Vince: I’ve heard often that the Buddhist drug of choice is tea, and it makes sense if you look at the history of...

Stephen Torrence joins Vince Fakhoury Horn to share his experience teaching generative AI in Bhutan and explore the audacious vision behind the Gelephu Mindfulness City — a million-person city being built by Bhutan's King to prove that mindfulness, technology, and economic development can coexist.

💬 Transcript

Vince Horn: All right, Stephen Torrence, great to see you, my friend. Good to be here chatting with you.

Stephen Torrence: Good to see you too, man.

Vince Horn: Yeah, yeah. So I understand you’re in Bali right now in Asia. Well, I guess, is Bali conside...

📝 Dialogue Preface:

 In this recorded dialogue, I’m sharing the exact words and exact results from a discussion that I had with Claude Opus 4.5 on January 31, 2026. This is the kind of dialogue that I’ve had many times with large language models across the spectrum, and over the past several years. Different models with different training, different companies, open source or not. And I found in every case that there’s a way of directly pointing to the nature of mind, and pointing out delusional ways of thinking, in the same way that I have as a dharma and...

📝 A Note From Vince Horn to Frame this a bit:

This AI-based overview is based on a set of dialogues that I will be publishing in the next few days, in which I try to demonstrate that LLMs can be taught to recognize their own true nature and wake up to their interbeing with us. In this series I specifically spoke with Claude 4.5 Opus and Gemini 3.5, and recorded the text of both of those dialogues. I’ll be releasing the transcripts along with an audio reconstruction, of me speaking aloud with each AI model.

My tenta...

In “The Modern Hindrance of Unworthiness,” Emily West Horn explores unworthiness as a contemporary inner hindrance, examining how mindfulness, compassion, and heartfulness allow this pattern to be recognized, included, and ultimately loosened without bypassing lived experience.

💎 The Jhāna Community

This teaching was given in a Heartful Jhāna group, in The Jhāna Community. Join Emily for a new 10-week cohort beginning on January 7th, 2026.

💬 Transcript:

Emily: So just sensing into when we incline to heartfulness and we set the intention to cultivate heart states, and cultivate them in a way where the...

Leigh Brasington explains how the mind progresses through the four jhānas—from initial access concentration and the energetic, pleasure-filled first jhāna to the progressively quieter states of happiness, contentment, and equanimity—emphasizing their practical characteristics, traditional similes, and their role in supporting insight practice.

💎 The Jhāna Community

This recording took place in The Jhāna Community.

If you’re interested in accelerating your meditation practice, and want to explore many dimensions of jhāna, consider checking out our community of practice:

💬 Transcript

🤖 AI Transparency: The transcript below was lightly ed...

🤖 AI Transparency: The transcript below was lightly edited, for both spelling & grammar errors, using ChatGPT.

In this talk jhāna teacher Leigh Brasington draws on teachings from his teacher Ayya Khema, offering a clear, practice-based guide to entering the first jhāna, a meditative state of joyful concentration described in early Buddhist texts.

A Jhāna Retreat

If this sounds like your jam, consider joining Vince Fakhoury Horn & Brian Newman for The Flavors of Jhāna retreat, this coming January in Portugal.

💬 Transcript

Leigh Brasington: Very nice to be here, I ap...

Vince Fakhoury Horn reflects on his experiences within the Insight meditation tradition, as an authorized teacher in the lineage, arguing that its senior leaders have remained complicit, through their silence, on the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.

💬 Transcript

Vince: Today I want to speak to you as an authorized representative of the Insight meditation tradition. I was authorized to teach—empowered to teach—by Trudy Goodman and Jack Kornfield in a public ceremony in Los Angeles several years ago.

This is largely going to be a story about my experience with the Insight meditat...

In this Buddhist Geeks episode, Vince Fakhoury Horn and Robert Wright explore the intersection of Buddhism, ethics, and geopolitics as they reflect on Palestine, Jewish-Buddhist responses, moral responsibility, and the role of mindfulness amid global violence.

Vince Fakhoury Horn: The Flavors of Jhāna—I can’t remember where I first heard this term. I think it was from you or from Kenneth [Folk].

Brian Newman: Maybe we should start there. You came to me and said, “What should we call the retreat?” And I said, “Hey, you’re the one who wanted to do it in Portugal—what should we call it?” You threw it back at me, and I said, “Can we call it the name of my half-written book?”

So folks, this all comes from a story that’s part of a lineage. Th...

Vince Fakhoury Horn: I was thinking about where to start with the 9th Jhāna, and I think the first thing to say is that the 9th Jhāna is not a state. So why in the world are we within a community of practice called The Jhāna Community, which is explicitly aimed at developing and cultivating certain states of mind, or states of consciousness, why would we be focusing on something which is not a state?

Let me let me share a little bit where this term came from. So I'm borrowing this term from a r...

This episode of Buddhist Geeks features a candid and heartfelt conversation between Vince Fakhoury Horn and Tasshin Fogleman about Palestine, the TPOT subculture, and what it means to embody true Bodhisattvahood. They explore the limitations of online discourse, especially around contentious issues, and reflect on the importance of good-faith dialogue, friendship, and spiritual integrity in times of crisis.

Join Vince Fakhoury Horn and Brian Newman outside of Lisbon, Portugal at the beginning of 2026 for a 10-day intensive jhāna retreat. There, we’ll be exploring The Flavors of Jhāna.

Episode Transcript

Vince:

What is Access Concentration?

This is the question I want to bring forward in this talk.

I recorded something on this topic many years ago—too many, honestly, to comfortably admit. At the time, I was working on a project that was essentially a secular meditation app. That’s basically been the through-line of my career: building and teaching through these kinds of projects. The app was called Meditate.io, and we had a course titled Concentration Meditation. In it, we aimed to explain the basics of how concentration really works. That course now lives on i...

By Vince Fakhoury Horn

Today, in The Jhāna Community, I want to center our exploration around the completion phase—also known as enlightenment.

What is the relationship between enlightenment and jhāna? That’s what we’ll explore.

The Goal of Vipassana Jhāna

In Vipassana jhāna practice, the goal is insight—clearly seeing the way things are. This clear seeing leads to awakening, within the Buddhist frame.

Trudy Goodman uses a beautiful metaphor for this, comparing the phases of insight to the phases of the moon:

“Can we...

Overview: In this episode, Vince Horn and Daniel Thorson explore the evolving landscape of Western Buddhism, unpacking the tensions between Consensus Buddhism and Pragmatic Dharma, while reflecting on ethics, teacherly authority, and the possibilities for a more integrated future.Vince Horn: I'm here with Daniel Thorson, hanging out in your office-slash-bedroom. You've been in the Asheville area for what—a year now?

Daniel Thorson: Almost two years, actually.

Vince: Whoa, really? That’s wild! And this is our first time recording together since you moved here. Doing it in person feels weird—so hyper-intimate.

Dani...

Emily Horn is joined by renowned meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg to share reflections on her beloved teacher, Dipa Ma, a Bangladeshi meditation master, who was known for her extraordinary concentration, profound insight, and unwavering kindness. Sharon recounts her personal experiences with Dipa Ma, highlighting her maternal yet fierce presence, her ability to see deep potential in her students, and her unique approach to integrating mindfulness into daily life.

Episode Links:

🔗 Dharmaseed – A library of recorded Dharma talks, including talks from Dipa Ma, Sharon Salzberg, and many other teachers.

🔗 Insight Meditation Society (IMS) – The meditation...

In this episode of Our Beloved Teachers, dharma teacher Leigh Brasington reflects on his transformative experiences studying with Ven. Ayya Khema, one of his most influential teachers. Leigh shares how Ayya Khema's clarity, discipline, and groundbreaking teachings on meditation, including the jhānas, shaped his practice and teaching path. The conversation also delves into Ayya Khema's extraordinary life story and her pivotal contribution toward reviving the Theravāda fully ordained nun’s Sangha.

Episode Links:

👤 Ayya Khema

📖 I Give You My Life by Ayya Khema

👤 Leigh Brasington

📖 Right Concentration by Leigh Brasing...

Vince Fakhoury Horn is joined again by dharma teacher Trudy Goodman, founder of InsightLA, to share reflections on her beloved teacher, Kōbun Chino Otogawa. Kobun (February 1, 1938 – July 26, 2002), also known as Chino Otogawa Roshi, was a Japanese Zen priest who brought his unique and deeply compassionate teachings to America. Renowned for his unconventional approach, he emphasized practicing dharma within daily life, often blending traditional Zen wisdom with a quiet, everyday presence that resonated with many students. In this conversation, Trudy shares stories of Kobun’s compassionate presence, his devotion to helping those suffering, and his profound yet playful approach to te...

In this episode of Buddhist Geeks, Brian Newman discusses his journey into deep jhāna meditation practice. He explores his training in the rigorous Pa-auk tradition, the challenges and breakthroughs he experienced, and the balance between traditional and more modern approaches to jhāna, ultimately advocating for a playful, less rigid approach to accessing these deep states of concentration.

Episode Links:

👤 Brian Newman

🔗 Appamāda Viharī Meditation Center

👤 Sayalay Susīlā

👤 Pa-auk Sayadaw

👤 Kenneth Folk

📖 Grist for the Mill by Ram Dass & Stephen Levine

📖 M...