How can we embrace the limitations of time and the certainty of death and create real fulfillment that thrives on an honest assessment of our human predicament? These are the questions at the heart of this episode. Ethan welcomes back bestselling author and journalist Oliver Burkeman for a discussion of finitude, death, limitations, productivity, and dueling concepts of the meaning of meditation.

Oliver Burkeman is the author of Meditations for Mortals: Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts, and the bestselling Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals, is now available. Oliver wrote a long-running weekly column on psychology for The Guardian, "This Column Will Change Your Life," and his work has also appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Psychologies, and New Philosopher. Learn more about him at oliverburkeman.com, and subscribe to his regular newsletter, The Imperfectionist.

Please support the podcast via Substack and subscribe for free or with small monthly contributions. Paid subscribers will receive occasional extras like guided meditations, extra podcast episodes and more! The Meditation Group starts up again on May 15th, and a special podcast/meditation on “Intuition” will be released to paid subscribers this Friday, May 2nd. You can also subscribe to The Road Home podcast wherever you get your pods (Apple, Spotify,Ethan’s Website, etc).

Check out all the cool offerings at our podcast sponsor Dharma Moon, including the Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Training program beginning June 13th, 2025. Free video courses co-taught by Ethan and others, such as The Three Marks of Existence, are also available for download.

In this episode, Ethan does what at least 40 people have asked him to do (special shout-out to Michele S. in Iowa who convinced him to devote a whole podcast episode to it!) - share his thoughts, as a Buddhist, on Season 3 of the Max streaming series The White Lotus. To do so, he explains three different ways to look at the concept of “Dharma Art,” along with a discussion of the three realms. He also ponders why pop culture seems to so rarely depict the act of meditation itself with any experiential accuracy. Note: a few moderate spoilers (though not major ones) are in the podcast, but the first twenty minutes primarily concern Dharma Art and The “God Realm.”

Please support the podcast via Substack and subscribe for free or with small monthly contributions. Paid subscribers will receive occasional extras like guided meditations, extra podcast episodes and more! The Meditation Group starts up again on May 8th, and a special podcast/meditation on “Intuition” will be released to paid subscribers this Friday, May 2nd. You can also subscribe to The Road Home podcast wherever you get your pods (Apple, Spotify, Ethan’s Website, etc).

Check out all the cool offerings at our podcast sponsor Dharma Moon. Free video courses co-taught by Ethan and others, such as The Three Marks of Existence, are also available for download.

In this episode, Ethan links a crucial set of instructions from mindfulness meditation teachers of the past regarding how we carry our posture to what it means to show up in this world at a time of chaos. He discusses the instructions on mindfulness meditation from the “warrior” tradition of enlightened society, as well as decoding the qualities of the instruction to maintain a “strong back, and a soft front.”

Please support the podcast via Substack and subscribe for free or with small monthly contributions. Paid subscribers will receive occasional extras like guided meditations, extra podcast episodes and more!

Check out all the cool offerings at our podcast sponsor Dharma Moon. Free video courses co-taught by Ethan and others, such as The Three Marks of Existence, are also available for download.