Being with Being
Philosophy, contemplative practice, and the physics of nature's flow — for finding your own way. For those who don't need the added pressure of another's way, but are curious about ways of understanding, perceiving, and living that mesh with each other — and that only you can make your own.
Each episode is a complete live recording — typically around two hours — opening with a 15-30 minute inquiry into the session's theme, moving into an hour-long guided practice, and closing with comments and discussion. These explorations grew from years of my own searching — trying to fit into practices that promised relief, never quite finding home in any tradition, and stumbling upon a rational basis for getting traction on ways I don't have to try.
As your fellow explorer, I'm Mackenzie Hawkins — researcher in philosophy of physics, contemplative practitioner, and co-author of several books with physicist and Tai Chi Master Dr. Wonchull Park. Drawing from his nowflow philosophy, these series-based explorations use philosophy and physics as ways of understanding and perceiving what's here already.
Not ways to follow, but ways that might help you find your own — for anyone looking to explore beyond the pressures we put on ourselves.
Episodes
45 episodes
A Tantalizing Solution to All Suffering: If Only - No Time, No Problem?
So today we are into the second meaning of No Time, No Problem, which is: Is there some way where, if there's not this sense of time, then for us as human beings, there's no problem? In the sense of freedom from suffering. Maybe of the kind of ...
No Trying to Lop Off: The Past, Present, Future Story - No Time, No Problem?
In the first half of this series, we did a big long detour into the physics, so that we could approach what various people say as beneficial and helpful — seeing them as options that can be consistent, rationally, with what we know from physics...
Permission to Be Simply Nowflow: Nothing Left Out - No Time, No Problem?
So much of this series has been on the side of: is it really not a problem in physics if there is no such thing as this fundamental time dimension or even a background spacetime container in which change happens?It seems to me that where...
Do I Have to Be a Spacetime Worm? - No Time, No Problem?
At some level there’s the mathematics that everyone agrees on and everyone can use. But what does this mean in terms of time and spacetime?Something I’d like to reflect on before we dive in is that there is this very human tendency—very,...
Innumerable Clocks, Innumerable Times - No Time, No Problem?
When we look at the clock and think it is telling us THE time, then there’s the time, this abstract time that’s passing us by, and then there’s this clock. We almost don’t even think of that as a relationship. It’s almost like the abstract time...
Being Time: Reclaiming Flow for Being - No Time, No Problem?
So I'll begin with a passage where Dogen says: "Although you never measure the length or brevity of the twelve hours, their swiftness or slowness, you still call them the twelve hours. As evidence of their going and coming is obvious, you do no...
Setting Time Aside: Changing Spatial Relations - No Time, No Problem?
Today we’re actually going to start really slow. You might feel like this is the preliminary warm-up, and you can skip ahead if you’re super eager to get to the juiciness of time—because we’re actually not going to meditate or talk about time t...
The Great Together Interdependent Arising Party - Simply Settle Series
Typically, there are those things on one list of what is nice and pleasant and spiritual or “good meditation.” And then there’s the other list. And there’s a feeling that what we need is to take what’s over here and change it to what’s over the...
Not Toward, but Is-ward in Meditation Practice - Simply Settle Series
Patrul Rinpoche nails us with his list of the many flavors of doing in meditation — drawing the mind outward, inward, spacing out, chasing thoughts, blocking their arising, anticipating them like a cat anticipating a mouse, squeezing and starin...
Still Laid Down Reality? The Altogetherness of Perception Itself - Simply Settle Series
What’s so truly amazing as a sentient being, a human being, is that the flows that make up us, the flows that help give rise to our own unique experiences and feelings and perceptions, and even mental activity and mind — are flows that carry co...
Laying Down to Reality: Nature’s Flow - Simply Settle Series
What’s it like to simply settle into that there is space? To simply settle into that there is the flow of change? The space and the flow of change don’t need our tweaking. They don’t need our adjusting. It’s just the way of nature. And we can s...
Laying Down to Reality: Nature’s Togetherness - Simply Settle Series
Once we get the feel of laying down to the ground, “the ground” can become many things. It doesn’t have to just stay as the most obvious thing, the ground. Our torso acts like the ground upon which our shoulders rest. Whatever layer of our spin...
A Tangible Metaphor: Lay Down to the Ground - Simply Settle Series
In this opening session we explore what these two words, “simply settle,” can mean at the most tangible level — hands simply settling into the support of a lap, body simply settling into the support of the earth. And what it’s like when we noti...
What if the Mystery Is Already Untouched? Beyond Just Stuff
I'm feeling kind of feisty today. Take it all with a grain of salt. But one thing I do feel feisty about is this idea that mystery -- and a realm of unknowing -- is in danger. That it's fragile. That if we know too much, or science says somethi...
What if Observer and Observed Are Inseparable? Beyond Just Stuff
Today we will be getting into another level of juicy. This is where some people really, really go to town -- with quantum mechanics, interpretations around consciousness. There's even someone who tends to make claims that if there wasn't consci...
Can a Thud into "Mundane Physics" Be Grace-ful? Beyond Just Stuff Series
So that was kind of the sexy science, the fancy physics experiments. And today, with a glorious thud, we're going to go into some of the most well-established -- you could have a yawn already -- the most well-established, long-standing, across ...
What Happens with "Permission" to Not Know? Beyond Just Stuff Series
Quantum physics had its 100th anniversary -- and do we know what it actually means any more than 100 years ago? Open question for sure. But part of this exploration is actually inquiring into the effects that a scientific story, scientific know...
What if "Science Says" We're Mostly Space? Beyond Just Stuff Series
Our perception is a map -- it's always a map -- and it can be informed by our understanding, it can be tinted by our expectations. Some of what this exploration is about is to see what it's like to actually feel what we feel, rather than what w...
What's Beneath the "Cartoon" of Expectations? Beyond Just Stuff Series
This series of adventures really comes out of a curiosity of mine that goes back to when I was in grade school. I would love to read these science books -- there was even at this mall a store called the Learning Smith, and that's where I discov...
While Feeling, Doing: Whole Loop, Whole Being in Action - Taoist Alchemy in Nature's Flow Series
For me to be speaking right now, for me to make a gesture with my hand, for me to click the mouse button and fix my tech at the beginning of this session — all of that is coming from this integrity of this loop that includes both feeling and do...
Free-Falling into Fineness: Taoist Alchemy and the Practically Infinite - Taoist Alchemy in Nature's Flow Series
It can kind of feel experientially like we're free-falling. Free-falling into the unknown. Because there's no limit to how finely we can feel this fine free flow of our body, even just our physical body.On this next in-breath, in this ne...
Jing, Qi, Shen: Being the Mountain and the Subtlest Flow - Taoist Alchemy in Nature's Flow Series
It's probably helpful just to introduce some terms here — not as another thing to learn, but as holding places. These words can become holding places that we then associate with a certain level of fine feeling, nuanced feeling within ourselves....
Flow Down, Flow Up: One Seamless Event - Taoist Alchemy in Nature's Flow Series
I was not personally struck by lightning — glad I gave the forewarning. I did lose internet, I did lose power, and now I'm back and we can practice together. This is truly one of the favorite parts of my day, so I didn't want to miss it....
Qi Down Grounding: Not Looking Down, Being There - Taoist Alchemy in Nature's Flow Series
When we're more activated, even just thinking really hard, there can be this sense of being more in our head — more kind of bunched up. There's usually plenty, plenty up there already, and instead we lack feeling that presence includes all of o...
Qi Flow: It's Flows All the Way Down - Taoist Alchemy in Nature's Flow Series
Full disclosure: I have some emotional release happening in my diaphragm as I come on today. So this is just what I need. And it's not necessary that you have any strong emotion in your system at the moment — but this will give us a way of seei...