The Road Home with Ethan Nichtern

Latest Episodes:

Ep. 144 - Microdosing Grief and The Practice of Saying Goodbye May 15, 2025

Show notes

In a spontaneous episode, Ethan discusses grief and loss while processing multiple events. At a recent compassion meditation retreat, colleague and friend René Fay gave a presentation where she discussed the need to "Microdose Grief," to take it in little by little so that we can honor the small moments of loss to develop familiarity with the experience when the big waves come. Through remembering the life and the recent death of a dharma friend, Ethan explores a famous buddhist quote about impermanence ("The Cup Is Already Broken") and explores how grief can be used as a tool for popping our hearts and minds outside of the confines of linear time, into the spontaneous presence and open-heartedness of what the Zen masters call "Being Time."

This episode of The Road Home is dedicated to the memory of Ralph De La Rosa, who was a friend (and a guest on the podcast) who passed away suddenly on May 10, 2025. Ralph was a dharma teacher and trauma therapist, as well as the author of three books which each explored Internal Family Systems and Somatic Therapy in relation to Tantric Buddhist thought: Outshining Trauma, Don't Tell Me To Relax, and Monkey is the Messenger. For resources for processing Ralph's passing, you can follow the information posted in the youtube video, or reach out to Ralph's assistant, Amanda Ludwig. Visit Ethan's Substack for the show notes that include the prophetic and poignant last Dharma talk that Ralph gave the day before he/they passed away.

Support The Road Home:

Please support the podcast via Substack and subscribe for free or with small monthly contributions. Paid subscribers will receive occasional extras like guided meditations, extra podcast episodes and more! The Meditation Group starts up again on May 15th, and a special podcast/meditation on "Intuition" will be released to paid subscribers this Friday, May 2nd. You can also subscribe to The Road Home podcast wherever you get your pods (Apple, Spotify,Ethan's Website, etc).

Check out all the cool offerings at our podcast sponsor Dharma Moon, including the Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Training program beginning June 13th, 2025. Free video courses co-taught by Ethan and others, such as The Three Marks of Existence, are also available for download.

Ep. 143 - Meditations for Mortals with Oliver Burkeman May 09, 2025

Show notes

How can we embrace the limitations of time and the certainty of death and create real fulfillment that thrives on an honest assessment of our human predicament? These are the questions at the heart of this episode. Ethan welcomes back bestselling author and journalist Oliver Burkeman for a discussion of finitude, death, limitations, productivity, and dueling concepts of the meaning of meditation.

Oliver Burkeman is the author of Meditations for Mortals: Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts, and the bestselling Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals, is now available. Oliver wrote a long-running weekly column on psychology for The Guardian, "This Column Will Change Your Life," and his work has also appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Psychologies, and New Philosopher. Learn more about him at oliverburkeman.com, and subscribe to his regular newsletter, The Imperfectionist.

Ep. 142 - The White Lotus, The God Realm and Pop-Culture Dharma Apr 30, 2025

Show notes

In this episode, Ethan does what at least 40 people have asked him to do (special shout-out to Michele S. in Iowa who convinced him to devote a whole podcast episode to it!) - share his thoughts, as a Buddhist, on Season 3 of the Max streaming series The White Lotus. To do so, he explains three different ways to look at the concept of "Dharma Art," along with a discussion of the three realms. He also ponders why pop culture seems to so rarely depict the act of meditation itself with any experiential accuracy. Note: a few moderate spoilers (though not major ones) are in the podcast, but the first twenty minutes primarily concern Dharma Art and The "God Realm."

Please support the podcast via Substack and subscribe for free or with small monthly contributions. Paid subscribers will receive occasional extras like guided meditations, extra podcast episodes and more! The Meditation Group starts up again on May 8th, and a special podcast/meditation on "Intuition" will be released to paid subscribers this Friday, May 2nd. You can also subscribe to The Road Home podcast wherever you get your pods (Apple, Spotify, Ethan's Website, etc).

Check out all the cool offerings at our podcast sponsor Dharma Moon. Free video courses co-taught by Ethan and others, such as The Three Marks of Existence, are also available for download.

Ep. 141 - Strong Back, Soft Front: The Posture of Meditation is The Posture of Courage Apr 21, 2025

Show notes

In this episode, Ethan links a crucial set of instructions from mindfulness meditation teachers of the past regarding how we carry our posture to what it means to show up in this world at a time of chaos. He discusses the instructions on mindfulness meditation from the "warrior" tradition of enlightened society, as well as decoding the qualities of the instruction to maintain a "strong back, and a soft front."

Check out all the cool offerings at our podcast sponsor Dharma Moon. Free video courses co-taught by Ethan and others, such as The Three Marks of Existence, are also available for download.

Ep. 140 - Equanimity Feels Different on a Roller Coaster Apr 07, 2025

Show notes

After tariffs were broadly imposed by the current American regime (including, apparently on uninhabited islands populated mostly by penguins) causing a nearly unprecedented crash of the stock market, and after attending the lovely and unexpectedly massive protest marches that took place on April 5, Ethan ponders how to deal with extreme states of mind with a world on a roller coaster marked by fear and greed. The key, he says, is to be able to differentiate between arising mental emotions and the awareness that contains and welcomes them, and then to continuously generate compassion for all human beings. He offers two simple questions we can each ask ourselves when we encounter intense states of mind as humanity's roller coaster ride become increasingly topsy turvy—and perhaps increasingly hopeful—in the months ahead.

Check out all the cool offerings at our sponsor Dharma Moon. Free video courses, such as The Three Marks of Existence, are also available for download.

Notes:

To find further explanation of the eight worldly winds, check out Ethan's latest book Confidence: Holding Your Seat Through Life's Eight Worldly Winds or the adapted essay in Lion's Roar Magazine.

Ep. 139 - A Buddhist View of A.I. (It Ain't Great...) Mar 28, 2025

Show notes

In light of revelations about the theft of countless authors' work by one A.I. company (guess which one), Ethan finally talks about a topic he's been requested to cover for a while: Buddhist views on artificial intelligence. He begins by positioning the conversation within the frame of View and Intention, asking the question of what "technology" is and why and how we even want it to progress, along with proposing the sacredness of human labor, wisdom and creativity as a basic Buddhist principle, as well as a principle of right livelihood. He also includes a Buddhist understanding of the meaning of consciousness, and why AI might never meet the standard.

Check out all the cool offerings at our sponsor Dharma Moon. Free video courses, such as The Three Marks of Existence, are also available for download.

Notes:

To see some of the energy usage date on artificial intelligence, see this link

To see which author's works have been pirated, see The Atlantic's list here.

To read about The "Suzuki Roshi" Chatbot, read here.

An alternate translation of Suzuki Roshi's famed quote to his students is:

"Each of you is perfect the way you are ... and you can use a little improvement."

Ep. 138 - Torched Teslas, Fart Noises, And Right Action Against The Oligarchy Mar 21, 2025

Show notes

Ethan delves further into right action during a time of protest and chaos, using the recent examples of Tesla cars and cybertrucks being set on fire as a launching point. In The Power of Choice episode, he looked into the five precepts as guidelines for empowered and skillful action. In this episode, he looks into actions of mind as our guide: whether our actions are furthering our fixation on the three poisons of greed, hatred and delusion, or whether they are helping us liberate from those confused mentalities. Can we set samsara on fire instead?

Ethan also makes a bad dad joke about using Tesla technology to make fart noises happen on a meditation retreat when our mind wanders or we need to wake up.

Check out all the cool offerings at our sponsor Dharma Moon, including the Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Training, starting March 21 (this week!). Free video courses, such as The Three Marks of Existence, are also available for download.

Ep. 137 - People-Pleasing: A Buddhist View Mar 13, 2025

Show notes

Ethan delves into the Bodhisattva teachings on happiness, benefitting beings, and "idiot compassion," or what happens when compassion becomes an ego construction. How do we tell the difference between helping others in a nourishing way, on the one hand, and doing things for others that we really don't want to do that leave us burnt out and resentful? And what do you do if no one thanks you for the amazing charcuterie plate you made for them?

Check out all the cool offerings at our sponsor Dharma Moon, including the Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Training, starting March 21 (next week!). Free video courses, such as The Three Marks of Existence, are also available for download.

Ep. 136 - The Heart Sutra, Groundlessness, Joy, and Crumbling Patriarchy with Susan Piver Mar 07, 2025

Show notes

Ethan welcomes bestselling author and Dharma teacher Susan Piver for a discussion of the groundlessness of our current world framed through her new book Inexplicable Joy: On The Heart Sutra. If you'd like to read a translation of this classic Buddhist text, you can find that on Ethan's Substack.

Susan Piver is the New York Times bestselling author of many books, including The Four Noble Truths of Love: Buddhist Wisdom for Modern Relationships and The Buddhist Enneagram: Nine Paths to Warriorship. Her most recent book is Inexplicable Joy: On the Heart Sutra. Susan has been a student of Buddhism since 1993, graduated from a Buddhist seminary in 2004 and began to teach meditation in 2005. In 2014, she founded The Open Heart Project, an online dharma center with nearly 20000 members.

Check out all the cool offerings at our sponsor Dharma Moon, including the Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Training, starting March 21. Free video courses, such as The Three Marks of Existence, are also available for download.

Ep. 135 - The Three Lords of Materialism Feb 26, 2025

Show notes

Ethan discusses the classic origins of the worldview of "Materialism," as well a framework developed by the Tibetan teacher Chogyam Trungpa called "The Three Lords of Materialism" for looking at how we can notice our tendency to chase peak experiences in the arenas of the physical world, intellectual experience, and of course, our spiritual paths.

Check out all the cool offerings at our sponsor Dharma Moon, including the Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Training, starting March 21. Free courses, such as The Three Marks of Existence, are also available for download. Also check out free upcoming events with Professor Robert Thurman and David Nichtern on March 4th!

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