Category: Lectures

Making the Most of Your Life: Lama Yeshe

In Lama Yeshe’s and Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s first trip to Europe they offered a weekend seminar based on their famous month-long Kopan meditation courses. Preceded by Lama Yeshe’s lecture on meditation at Kensington Town Hall, these teachings at Royal Holloway College, Surrey, encompass the entire Buddhist path to enlightenment. Please also visit us at http://www.LamaYeshe.com

Steve Jobs’ 2005 Stanford Commencement Address

Drawing from some of the most pivotal points in his life, Steve Jobs, chief executive officer and co-founder of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, urged graduates to pursue their dreams and see the opportunities in life’s setbacks — including death itself — at the university’s 114th Commencement on June 12, 2005. Transcript of Steve Jobs’ address: http://news-service.stanford.edu…

Andy Karr – “Into the Mirror”

The modern world has been incredibly successful at producing material wealth, scientific knowledge, and technological innovation. But all these advances have not led to corresponding improvements in our psychological well-being, social harmony, spiritual wealth, or the health of this planet. With his upcoming book titled Into the Mirror, Andy shows that remedies for these problems can be found within the profound insights of Mahayana Buddhism. Andy Karr doesn’t like to talk about himself very much, but he does talk and write about Buddhist teachings, particularly the profound paths of the Mahayana and Mahamudra. He is the author of Contemplating Reality, an experiential guide to Buddhist philosophy (Shambhala Publications, 2007) and co-author of The Practice of Contemplative Photography: Seeing the world with fresh eyes (Shambhala Publications, 2011). His latest book, Into The Mirror: A buddhist journey through mind, matter, and the nature of reality will be published by Shambhala in May, 2023. He spoke with students at RYI and online participants on the 20th February 2023.

The Accident of Unconsciousness | Forrest Landry | TEDxCardiffbytheSea

Considers the meaning and uniqueness of life on earth, in regards to the basis and design of action and choice, on both personal and community levels. Defines a realistic, as distinct from virtual, consideration of the nature and role of a foundational ethics as applied in interpersonal situations, and how this leads to healthier, thriving, outcomes. Forrest Landry a philosopher, founder, writer, researcher, scientist, engineer, and craftsman. He has a unique set of skills in large scale systems design and worked on many software projects in the business and government sectors. His most original and insightful work is in the area of metaphysics – the study of what is, what is the nature of being, what is the nature of knowing, and by what means we make good choices. His foundational work “The Immanent Metaphysics” reflects a decades long effort to restore legitimacy to the practice of metaphysics and construct a rigorous, coherent and precise statement of Ethics.

Matter and Desire with Andreas Weber

Could it be that our planet is not suffering primarily from a financial crisis, or even an ecological one, but from a critical lack of love? Andreas Weber asks a radical and challenging question. In speaking of love and of eroticism, Weber is not referring to sentimental feelings, but to a new basis for ontology itself, based on a mix of cutting-edge biological findings and philosophical insights. A German biologist and eco-philosopher, Weber delves deep into the continuity and connections between our bodies and those of all living beings. In this talk he will discuss his new book Matter and Desire: An Erotic Ecology. Written in the tradition of John Muir and Rachel Carson, the book weaves personal narrative and lyrical descriptions with a discussion of ecology and psychology, offering a new—and necessary—way to move through nature to ultimately achieve a heightened sense of self-awareness. The book is part of Weber’s larger project of developing an eco-philosophy—or as Weber calls it, a “biopoetics”—for the Anthropocene.

Gross National Happiness Conference Panel One: How do you govern for Happiness?

How do you measure and govern for happiness? Harvard Divinity School hosted an international conference on April 13, 2019, inspired by the Gross National Happiness policies of the Kingdom of Bhutan. During this conference, academics, practitioners, politicians, corporate leaders and spiritual leaders sought answers to the question of universal happiness. This panel covered the Bhutanese statecraft on Economics and the Spirit of GNH. Panelists included Dasho Karma Tshiteem, Professor Sophus Reinert, Professor Wolfgang Drechsler, and Professor John Helliwell.

What’s eating the universe? – with Paul Davies

What are the unexplained riddles of the universe? Award-winning physicist Paul Davies talks you through the strange enigmas that have preoccupied cosmologists from ancient Greece to the present day.

Laying bare the audacious research that has led us to mind-bending solutions, Paul will tell you how we might begin to approach the greatest outstanding enigmas of all. Paul Davies is a theoretical physicist, cosmologist, astrobiologist and best-selling science author. He has published about 30 books and hundreds of research papers and review articles across a range of scientific fields. He is also well-known as a media personality and science populariser in several countries. His research interests have focused mainly on quantum gravity, early universe cosmology, the theory of quantum black holes and the nature of time. He has also made important contributions to the field of astrobiology, and was an early advocate of the theory that life on Earth may have originated on Mars. For several years he has also been running a major cancer research project, and developed a new theory of cancer based on tracing its deep evolutionary origins. Among his many awards are the 1995 Templeton Prize, the Faraday Prize from The Royal Society, the Kelvin Medal and Prize from the Institute of Physics, the Robinson Cosmology Prize and the Bicentenary Medal of Chile. He was made a member of the Order of Australia in the 2007 Queen’s birthday honours list and the asteroid 6870 Pauldavies is named after him.

This talk was filmed at the Royal Institution on 21 September 2021.

THE INCONCEIVABLE REALM A visual introduction to Mahayana Buddhist Cosmology, with MC Owens

Buddhist cosmology is typically divided into two traditions, an early, abhidharma system, which has many similarities to traditional Indian cosmology, and a later Mahayana system that, while in dialogue with both those systems, is a unique tradition unto itself, with a truly inconceivable cosmology.

On January 31, 2020, M.C. Owens gave a visual presentation for the SFDC called Escape from Samsara ( • Escape from Samsa… ), introducing the original Buddhist view of the cosmos and general understandings about Time & Space within the Buddhist tradition. The Inconceivable Realm expands upon these ideas and goes into depth exploring one of the primary concepts of Mahayana Buddhist cosmology, the Trisāhasra-mahāsāhasra-lokadhātu (‘Three Thousand, Great Thousand World-System’) – the billion-fold holographic multiverse

Cellular Immortality, a New Theory of Senescence and Rejuvenation

Rupert proposed a new hypothesis of cellular rejuvenation in an article in Nature in 1974, and in 2023 published a review article entitled ‘Cellular Senescence, Rejuvenation and Potential Immortality’ in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, summarising results of recent research, which support his hypothesis. In this talk he gives an overview of this hypothesis, which applies to cells of all kinds, including bacteria and yeasts as well as plants and animals, and he shows how it sheds new light on the nature of stem cells. In mammals, embryonic stem cells have a special property that enables them to divide indefinitely without senescing and Rupert suggests that cancerous transformations involve the hijacking of this embryonic stem cell system. He suggests ways in which this hypothesis could be tested, and shows how it could lead to new approaches in cancer therapy – by blocking the rejuvenative system that cancers have acquired. If this system were inhibited, then cancer cells might senesce like most other somatic cells and become less virulent.

This is one of six talks on potential breakthroughs in the sciences. The full series, together with course materials, including relevant chapters from Rupert’s books and scientific papers, are available for a reduced price of £35 (as of June 30, 2023).