Welcome to Dharma PhD! Conversations about the science, philosophy, and culture of Mindfulness and Secular Buddhism.

We're excited to be christening this podcast with a series of six talks by John Peacock: "Buddhism Before the Theravada". Today is Part 1.

The blog post that accompanies this episode is here.

John Peacock's original talk is hosted on AudioDharma.org, the entire series (of which this is the first) is here: www.audiodharma.org/series/207/talk/2602/.

The transcript of Peacock's talk is available on the Dharma PhD website: https://dharmaphd.com/2020/07/18/john-peacock-buddhism-before-the-theravada-part-1-2011-09-03/

Bodhi College, of which you'll be hearing more: bodhi-college.org/

If you actually want to know more than I do about John Peacock, a great place to start is his bio on the Bodhi College website: bodhi-college.org/mission-statement/core-teachers/

The book by Douglas Hofstadter I referred to is Surfaces and Essences. It's amazing, both as text and audiobook: smile.amazon.com/Surfaces-Essence…duckgo-ffab-b-20

And, finally, a moment of errata: Theravadan monks have 227 rules and nuns have 311. I do not believe that the words "monk" and "nun" are the best translations for the words "bhikkhu" and "bhikkhuni", but that won't surprise anyone who listens to this talk.

May you be well!