Mary Stancavage
396 episodes listed below
Buddhist practice for life as it is.
Undefended Dharma with Mary Stancavage is a measured series of Dharma talks rooted in Buddhist practice and everyday friction. It turns teachings on equanimity, patience, bodhicitta, breath, grief, and reactivity into usable reflections for daily life.
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Undefended Dharma with Mary Stancavage is a long-running collection of Dharma talks shaped by practice, not performance. The talks are intimate and plainspoken. They often begin with something immediate: a retreat phrase, a wall at the Mizell Center, a week of personal deaths, a scattered mind, a story about the one that gets fed. From there, the teaching opens slowly. A phrase such as “right now it’s like this” becomes a way to look at resistance, shame, fear, and the old mental stories that keep tightening around experience. The show is comfortable with Buddhist language. Samadhi, dukkha, bodhicitta, the Four Noble Truths, the Eightfold Path, equanimity, and breath-body awareness all appear as living practices rather than abstract terms. The effect is grounded. Teachings are tested against jobs that feel wrong, arguments that linger, grief that arrives in clusters, distress about suffering in the world, impatience with meditation, and the wish for a quick spiritual result. Some episodes draw from Theravada and insight practice. Others reach into Mahayana frames, including the aspiration to awaken for the benefit of all beings. The show also cites teachers and writers from Buddhist and contemplative lineages, but its center remains the practical question of how to meet what is happening now. It can be tender. It can also be direct. The language keeps returning to the body, the breath, the pause, and the possibility of responding rather than reacting. There is no glossy self-improvement arc here. Progress is described as patient, embodied, and checked over years rather than minutes. The best moments are often the small corrections, repetitions, and loops back to the same question from another angle. That texture makes the show feel less like a finished essay and more like a person thinking with care in front of a community. Undefended Dharma is for listeners who want Buddhist teaching that can hold grief, confusion, social pain, and daily irritation without losing warmth. It asks for attention, then gives attention back.
Made for: For listeners drawn to Buddhist teachings, meditation practice, and reflective spiritual instruction that stays close to daily life. It especially suits people who want patience, steadiness, and compassion without polished self-help language.
What sets it apart: The show’s strength is its lived-in movement from formal teaching to ordinary human detail. It makes concepts like equanimity, samadhi, dukkha, and bodhicitta feel practical without stripping them of depth.
Dharma talks from meditation teacher Mary Stancavage. These focus primarily on the pragmatic aspects of Buddhist teachings and philosophy drawing strongly on wisdom and heart practices. All are viewed through the lens of learning to live with an Undefended Heart. (photo by @kimanhuynh)
Based on 5 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Mary Stancavage turns Buddhist teachings on wisdom, ethics and equanimity into practical attention to thought, speech and everyday resistance.
Mary Stancavage repeatedly brings Buddhist teaching down to the scale of an ordinary reaction. The Eightfold Path, the paramis, equanimity and the Four Noble Truths become ways to examine harsh words in traffic, anxiety about being late, old resentment and expectations that…
An insult muttered in LA traffic becomes a test of who you are when nobody is listening.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A plainspoken reminder that equanimity starts with meeting the moment instead of wrestling it.
Mary Stancavage takes a small phrase and makes it usable: right now, it's like this. She ties it to Ajahn Sumedho, folds in Gil Franzdahl's line about neither clinging to nor resisting anything, and keeps circling back to the ordinary pressure points that people actually live…
A steady Dharma talk about fear, wisdom, and meeting life plainly.
This talk takes a broad Buddhist prophecy and narrows it to a direct question about fear, dukkha, and the work of seeing clearly. It moves through the Shambhala Warrior teaching, the four noble truths, the eightfold path, equanimity, and embodied awareness without losing its…
A plain reminder that speech is practice, not performance.
This talk keeps wise speech close to ordinary life instead of treating it as an abstract ideal. It moves from the Eightfold Path into the small moments that reveal habit: driving in traffic, irritation rising, harsh words said when no one else is around, and the inner cost that…
Wisdom is clear seeing, and suffering grows when resistance turns life into a fight.
The episode treats the paramis as practices to develop on the Buddhist path to liberation, then settles into wisdom as clear seeing rather than a store of facts.
A calm reminder that intention sets the course, but expectations can throw practice off.
Mary Stancavage keeps the episode focused on intention and expectations. She treats right intention as the part of the Eightfold Path that points practice in a direction: goodwill, compassion, and renunciation.
Hindi guru bhajans in direct devotional form.
Yoga research, translated without the haze.
Mary Stancavage presents Buddhism's five remembrances as a practice for facing aging, illness, death, separation, and the consequences of actions.
Joy and suffering can coexist when awareness replaces the impulse to grasp pleasure or reject pain.
Mary Stancavage teaches a 27-minute dharma talk built around the phrase 'right now it's like this,' sourced from Ajahn Sumedho of the Thai forest tradition, as a practical tool for equanimity when the mind is clinging or resisting.
Mary Stancavage shares a talk from a retreat, focusing on the Shambhala Warrior Prophecy, a 1,200-year-old Tibetan teaching.
This episode explores the importance of persistence and patience in spiritual practice, addressing common frustrations about progress and expectations.
Mary Stancavage explains the Buddhist concept of vedana, or feeling tone, as the pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral quality that precedes craving, aversion, or delusion.
Mary Stancavage discusses the Buddhist concept of samadhi as collectedness of mind, contrasting it with forceful concentration.
Mary Stancavage reflects on recent deaths of friends and global suffering, then contrasts with joy from a monk's march, framing a dharma talk on living with an undefended heart.
A dharma talk using the 'good wolf, bad wolf' parable to illustrate choosing positive qualities over negative ones.
A meditation teacher reflects on the Four Noble Truths, a core Buddhist teaching, and recounts the story of the Buddha's life.
Mary Stancavage pivots her Dharma talk to address current events, discussing fear and community in the context of a police killing.
Mary Stancavage explores the Buddhist concept of wise speech, a factor of the Eightfold Path.
Mary Stancavage explores how to offer loving-kindness to those who commit atrocities, drawing on Buddhist teachings and the Metta Sutta.
Mary Stancavage discusses Bhikkhu Bodhi's four domains for Western Buddhist sanghas, focusing on study and intellectual understanding of the Dharma.
Mary Stancavage reflects on a Tricycle article by Sayadaw Tejaniya about maintaining mindfulness after long retreats.
A Dharma talk exploring the importance of being present in one's body and the societal bias toward reason over intuition, drawing on Buddhist teachings.
Mary Stancavage discusses the Buddhist parami of truthfulness, emphasizing clear seeing and equanimity.
Mary Stancavage discusses the concept of emptiness in Buddhism, relating it to letting things be as they are.
Mary Stancavage, a guiding teacher at Inside Community of the Desert, explores wisdom as a parami in Buddhist practice.
Mary Stancavage explores the Buddhist concept of intention as the second factor of the Eightfold Path, describing it as a guidepost for moving toward liberation with goodwill, compassion, and renunciation.
The host reflects on 17 years of teaching a spiritual class, sharing early struggles with over-preparation and intellectualizing teachings before learning the importance of integration.
Mary Stancavage discusses the Buddhist concept of taking refuge in the Triple Gem (Buddha, Dharma, Sangha) as a spiritual shelter.
The host reflects on the Buddhist concept of Anicca (impermanence) through personal experiences of loss and change, exploring how endings and beginnings shape our lives.
The speaker reflects on their experience at an interfaith civil disobedience training, discussing Buddhist teachings on nonviolence and its connection to the Eightfold Path.
The host reflects on a recent retreat at Spirit Rock that blended Buddhist mindfulness and indigenous teachings, focusing on the teacher Bonnie Duran's concept of 'just collecting data' during practice.