By Vincent Horn

Over at Buddhist Geeks, we were very lucky to have interviewed one of our favorite philosophers a few weeks ago, Ken Wilber. Today, the 1st part of our discussion with him is live on Buddhist Geeks. It’s entitled “The Meditative Maps: Happy Mornings and Dark Nights.”

In all honesty, I think this is one of the best interviews we’ve done on Buddhist Geeks as we had a very clear idea of the questions we wanted to ask, and Ken’s answers were extremely lucid. He gave an overview (as is his style) of the various maps that one find’s in the Buddhist tradition, including the one’s from the Visuddhimagga, the 10 Zen oxherding pictures, and the Annutarayoga Tantra. The descriptions were great, as were the connections he made between the maps. Finally we discussed the Dark Night(s), which I think is one of the most important, and under-discussed, elements of the spiritual path. He shared two meanings of the Dark Night, one having to do with being plunged into new territory that is amazing and new, and then having that territory disappear. The other had to do with dis-identifying with an entire level of experience, and having to loosen one’s grasping and clinging to the experiences of that realm as they acclimate to a new baseline level of experience (ex. from gross to subtle).

All in all, I found his understand of this subject matter to be without match. It’s clear that he is both a brilliant thinker and synthesizer, as well as a very realized practitioner. The combination is definitely worth checking out.