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Good Buddhist teachers on YouTube
Jeroen
Luminous beings are we, not this crude matterNetherlands Veteran
I was wondering if people had any advice about who to watch and listen to. I've enjoyed some of Thich Nhat Hanh's teachings, but have found Ajahn Brahm on two viewings to be a little too new-age peace-and-happiness. Who should I explore next?
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There are videos from Ajahn Chah from thai forest tradition.
I have adopted Ven Chodron as a teacher of mine (Tibetan Buddhism). Her monastery has their own YouTube channel
https://m.youtube.com/user/sravastiabbey
For the sake of completeness, Thich Nhat Hanh's community Plum Village are also on YouTube as a single user, plumvillageonline. Quite a few TNH talks are available from other sources though.
@Kerome here are a couple of links podcast you could try....
http://dharmaseed.org/talks/
http://www.audiodharma.org/
Also
Shunryu Suzuki "Zen Mind Beginner's Mind"
I found Thanissaro Bhikkhu to be good as well. For me it seems like the voice carries to a certain extent the energy of the person, and his style is interesting, short talks on various subjects brought in a very restful, meditative manner.
I like Chan Master Sheng Yen. https://www.youtube.com/user/DDMTV05
He's a Chinese Chan Master speaking to a Chinese sangha, with English subtitles, but it's all still very good.
The Dalai Lama has video teachings online, I think they are also on You Tube.
http://www.dalailama.com/webcasts/category/1
The Karmapa too
http://kagyuoffice.org/webcast/
Have you watched the video series from Thich Nhat Hanh's Israeli-Palestinian retreat? Sums up his teachings quite well (although he talks a lot about God, which might not be everyone's cup of tea):
Here is one of a few listen to.
I wonder if there are playlists for Dharma Talks.
Here is the YouTube channel of the Bhavana Society, the Therevadan forest monastery founded and led by the 88-year-old Bhante Gunaratana, author of "Mindfulness in Plain English" and many other Pali Canon-based books: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjUZp1wSbSNkxP7SspfCf5w
Here is the audio site of noted Buddhist lay teacher and Buddhist translator Gil Fronsdal: http://www.audiodharma.org/teacher/1/
My favorites are Mooji and Pema Chodron.
Jetsun Khandro gives some fantastic teachings,talks. Some of her stuff is on YouTube.
I found this recently and highly recommend it.
At the risk of going totally off the popular end of the scale, I have now discovered Mindah Lee-Kumar, who runs a site and YouTube channel called "The Enthusiastic Buddhist". It's a bit Oprah, but it's also really practical and quite in-depth. And she was a Buddhist nun for three years.
There was a video on the 4 Great Efforts which didn't quite recite the sutra, but it gave a whole bunch of related, practical information about how to get rid of negative states and encourage positive states. So on first acquaintance, not all that bad.
Yes, @Shoshin introduced her to us a while ago... I subscribe to her site on Facebook... you accurately describe her, but strip away the 'Oprah' bit and she's actually quite good.
I'm a fan of The Empty Gate web casts on youtube. Good stuff. Thich Nhat Hahn is, to me, Buddhism Lite. He's a popular guy, and therein is the problem. But, to each their own.
I think there is a scale, some people prefer heavyweight teachings going into sutra's in depth, others like slightly lighter and still others like the Dalai Lama.
For me it matters if someone is a good speaker. Some people are really hard to follow or like the Karmapa end up using translators and that means that listening becomes an effort. I prefer to listen casually, and so a good, clear voice which emotes well really helps me.
I found Ajahn Sumedho to be quite interesting, he was one of Ajahn Chah's students and became an abbot in the Thai Forest Tradition in the UK. He is retired now but some of his dharma talks are on YouTube.
Also Thay Phap Dang has spoken in a few lectures at Plum Village and I have to say he is one of the better public speakers there.
I'm continuing my quest for good and inspiring dharma teachers on YouTube...
below thread has some url links in it:
http://newbuddhist.com/discussion/20243/thank-you-and-useful-internet-urls
Moderator note: Thread above no longer exists. OP advised.
Two I listen to regularly are:
Lama Shenpen Hookham of The Awakened Heart Sangha:
https://www.youtube.com/user/AHSHermitage
and
Reggie Ray of Dharma Ocean:
https://www.youtube.com/user/DharmaOceanTeachings
Both wonderful teachers with grounding in Tibetan Buddhism, with a wealth of insight and knowledge
I like Shinzen Young (self outed 'enlightened being') Mooji (not Buddhist but enlightened as far as I can tell) and enlightened boing puppetji and friends ...
I wish there were more of these 'casual Buddhists' on YT.
And for those interested in Thich Nhat Hanh, I found a channel called ""SourceOfLightMon" that has plenty of his talks!
I find Ajahn Brahm (another student of Ajahn Chah) to be an especially engaging teacher. Though trained in Thailand, he's a native of the UK and his teachings are easy to follow. He has a more casual, gentle approach that particularly appeals to me.
https://www.youtube.com/user/BuddhistSocietyWA
Ajahn Brahm is great, lovely sense of humour. He reminds me a bit of Ade Edmondson!
What tradition to you follow @Kerome ?
I will make a quite statement about Ajahn Brahm. His normal friday night talks can seem less "Buddhisty", but without those talks I would of never gotten to where I am today in my practice, and actually they aren't as "new agey" as they appear. Now years later being a monastic, they don't really do much for me anymore, I stopped watching his friday night talks close to two years ago, but I feel much gratitude for them, because they were what I needed at the time.
Plus if you watch his sutta discussion videos, he pretty much knows his stuff, he is a legit monk in my book, if a little unorthodox.
If you are into Theravada, I second the Ajahn Chah suggestions.
also https://youtube.com/user/dhammanet
and https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVqY9QaSQrREO1V3N4MisjA
are good Theravada based channels with multiple monastics.
The centre that I attend is Tibetan Buddhist of the Gelug school, but I have a lot of Theravadan sympathies, it just makes sense to me to study the words of the Buddha first, and to keep a lot of the later contributions as separate.
I do find it interesting how the Three Turnings of the Wheel are taught in Tibetan Buddhism.
IMO this is mostly rhetoric, like "My school is bigger than yours!", and "My school is bigger and faster!"
Yeah, the Third Turning of the Wheel is tied to the concept of Buddha-nature, and if you look at the Wikipedia page you notice how fragmented the positions of all the different schools are on this point. Whether that is truly an argument about "which school is better" or just a philosophical difference in interpretation of the lore is hard to say. It certainly begs the question, how does it affect practice?
It's worth remembering that a lot of Buddhist schools were heavily influenced by other cultures and religions. And people love to re-invent the Wheel!
I am an ex-member (relapsed) of the fourth turning/way, which is not yet available, nor likely to be until Maitriya AI [enlightened Metta Ray AI] arrives. We are as far removed from dharma as possible, too radical and we might be taken seriously ...
Maitriya is another English gentleman of course.
I've also been listening to more of Ajahn Chah's student Ajahn Sumedho, who retired not long ago, and his successor Ajahn Amaro. They are very down-to-earth, but good for finding new ways into appreciating the basic teachings, so far anyway.
I came across this channel called 1983dukkha which features a lot of talks by them and others like Bhikkhu Bodhi, it's been very good though I can't seem to link it from my iPad.
Here... Allow me....
1983Dukkha is a pretty good channel, I've watched videos from them a few years now.