In this episode, Qapel (Doug Duncan) asks you to imagine you’re a newspaper reporter asking the simplest questions: What is Buddhism? What is it for? What are we actually doing when we practice?
This talk, originally given as a public presentation, takes those questions seriously and offers a surprising answer: Buddhism looks like a religion, but at its heart it’s actually a tool for studying of the mind.
Along the way, Qapel explores:
- Why Buddhism is better understood as a science or technology of mind than as a belief system
- The difference between “Mind” (capital M) and “mind” (small m), and what it means to study the thing you’re studying with
- Three qualities of Mind: spacious, clear, and aware
- Why suffering comes from clinging and aversion to the objects of mind (pizza included), not from Mind itself
- Cause and effect, and why some of our deepest patterns were set before we knew there was a “me”
- A practical look at the 90-second wave of emotion, and what happens when we feed it
Funny, down-to-earth, and a little provocative, this episode sets the stage for everything that follows in Dharma If You Dare. No background in Buddhism needed, just curiosity.
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This episode was created from a talk given in Kyoto, Japan, in Nov. 2008. Part 1 of 3. It was remastered in October 2026.
