About Peter Fenner
Peter Fenner, Ph.D. is the founder and developer of the Radiant Mind course in nondual awareness. He is an Australian currently living in France, who travels the world teaching the Radiant Mind program, a synthesis of Asian nondual approaches. He studied as a monk for nine years with many notable Buddhist lamas, including Thubten Yeshe and Sogyal Rinpoche. He is founder of the Center for Timeless Wisdom, and author of numerous books, including Reasoning into Reality and The Edge of Certainty.
His most recent book is Radiant Mind, Awakening Unconditioned Awareness, is described as follows:
Whether it is called enlightenment, pure awareness, or the “unconditioned mind,” there exists an awakened state of pure liberation that is at the heart of every contemplative tradition. Yet, according to Peter Fenner, this experience of boundless consciousness does not have to exist separately from our day-to-day, “conditioned” existence. Rather, we can learn to exist as unique individuals at the same time as we rest in a unified expanse of oneness with all existence–in a state he calls “Radiant Mind.”
In Radiant Mind, Peter Fenner shares the insights, techniques, and exercises he has developed in teaching the thousands of students who have attended his sold-out workshops, including:
- How to observe and dissolve fixations, to live in the here and now without being controlled by our desires
- Listening and speaking in a way that moves us toward pure openness–and lets us share this experience with others
- Tools for identifying our conscious and unconscious sources of suffering–and learning to transcend those patterns
“As extraordinary as unconditioned mind may sound,” teaches Peter Fenner, “it isn’t distant from our everyday life; it’s always readily available to us.” Now, this respected authority on both Eastern spirituality and Western psychology introduces readers to a set of practices available to anyone open to the complete possibilities of their spiritual evolution–and to the experience of the unconstrained bliss of Radiant Mind.
A master of nondual spirituality teaches practices for integrating the liberated state of unconditioned awareness into your everyday life.
Video conversations with Peter Fenner:
Peter Fenner: Non-Dual Awareness
Continuation of the conversation with Peter Fenner.
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Peter Fenner on Radiant Mind
Peter Fenner discussed his Radiant Mind approach with Carol Sill while in Vancouver recently.
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Michael Shandler: Journey to Non-Dual Buddhism
“And often I’d find I began to rest in pure awareness…. I wasn’t trying to concentrate, I wasn’t trying to achieve anything, I wasn’t trying to go anywhere. And after a while this began to feel very very natural.”
Michael Shandler in conversation with Carol Sill
C: Hi, I’m Carol here in Vancouver.
M: I’m Michael Shandler, and I’m here at Amherst, Massachusetts.
C: And so today we’re going to be talking with each other about Radiant Mind, and about some of your interest and history. What would you like to start with?
M: Well, would you like to know a little bit more about Radiant Mind?
C: Let’s do that first, sure.
M: I came across Radiant Mind about four years ago when I met Peter Fenner. Peter Fenner is an Australian guy who is a professor, a PhD in Buddhist studies, and I heard about a course that he was offering called the Radiant Mind, which is a 9 month long course. And I was interested in steeping myself deeply, more deeply, in non-dual Buddhism.
So I thought this was a great opportunity to learn more, and little did I know when I signed up for this course, what I was actually in for. So I went through the 9 month long course and I learned a tremendous amount. It was not an intellectual pursuit, though, so much as an experiential .. as an experience, really. And after that was done, Peter asked me if I wanted to continue working with him, and in fact to become a Radiant Mind coach and trainer, which since that time I’ve been actively doing.
C: Well, you were deeply involved in a spiritual life well before then, weren’t you?
M: I was, and I have been. I started actually, and I was thinking about it today – I think my first pursuit was when I lived on a Kibbutz in Israel in 1967. There weren’t very many books to read but I came across a book – I’m struggling to find the name right now, but – it had to do with games people play. I think that in fact was it’s name. Games people play about, you know, being a parent to child, or being adult to adult, or speaking child to adult or child to parent, and so on. I found it very very intriguing. It was really my first exposure, as a 20 year old, to psychology. And I really got into it, and I realized for the first time in my life I was interested in psychology and in spiritual things. So that’s how I got started.
And from there I actually came to North America and I went through the whole kind of hippie revolution, if you will, with taking psychedelics and blowing my mind. But perhaps paradoxically that was how I came to have a deeper appreciation of the spiritual realm.
C: How was that?
M: Well, I was exposed to an experience which was just beyond my rational mind, beyond anything that I’d ever experienced before. And it opened me up to the possibility of realms beyond my normal consciousness.
After that I became very interested in yoga and meditation , and I met Ram Dass. I heard a recording of his and I was so moved by it that I wrote him a letter and asked him if he would come to - I was actually in Montreal at that time for a 3 month period - if he would come to Montreal to maybe give a speech. He wrote back and he said: Great, I’ll come.
And indeed, he showed up about a month and a half later, and he and I went on the radio together, we were chanting and doing all these sort of weird things – at least in those days they were still pretty weird for me. And the next day was the talk. 5,000 people showed up, and we only had space for about 2. So he said to me: Do you think we could get another hall for tomorrow night? I’ll stay longer. And I said: Well I’ll make something happen. And I went out there and I found another large hall, and this time we crammed the place again. That started a kind of a very intense relationship with him, and I became his road manager.
And he introduced me to Baba Hari Dass who became a very serious teacher of mine for about 20 years. I got deeply into what’s called Ashtanga Yoga or Eight-Limbed Yoga and that was my path for a long while.
I did take some, how can I say, maybe not deviations but some side trips let’s say, into other things. I spent a year and a half during that time working as an Arica trainer in New York City with Oscar Ichazo. And sat zazen, and had a number of other… went through the whole human growth potential EST kind of thing, but remained very true to my meditation.
And even after I went back to Vancouver to help found a community there called Dharma Sara which is still going today. And in fact they host a community on Salt Spring Island called the Salt Spring Centre, which to this day is still very active.
C: I’ve heard of that.
M: So that’s a little bit of my background.
C: So, I don’t know how to ask you this, but…You were strongly in that yoga path, and yet you took some side routes here and there, focusing back into your meditation. So how do you relate to that now, in your practice now? What would you say is the change? Or is there a change?
M: Well I think that a really big change has occurred. I think the change can be summed up very succinctly …I think that this was caused a lot by my involvement in the experimentation with the psychedelics, in that every time I took them I would be transported very rapidly into another realm. And so I found myself constantly wanting to go back into that realm. So you could say that I very powerfully was inducted into the search. And so everything became about the search. When I met with Peter Fenner, I had already gotten very tired of the search and found, like wow, this is a search that maybe will never end.
C: Right.
M: What happened with Peter was he said: Why not start from the result that you want here and now? You don’t have to do anything, you don’t have to do any particular practices. And I know this is going to sound heretical to a lot of people, and it was certainly very difficult for me at the time.
But basically what it did was it oriented me to working in the present. In the here and now, particularly with attraction and aversion, which as the Buddha said are the so-called core fixations. You either basically say: I want this experience that I’m having right now and I want it to go on, or you say: I don’t want this experience, I want it to stop, I want something else. Or you’re caught up in some kind of mixture of those two. And usually it’s a complex mixture, particularly if you’re fixated in a heavy kind of way.
So learning how to work in the here and now, rather than in a progressive way where I was doing meditation to get somewhere. I began to work in the here and now and to learn how to just be present, how to just be present. And often I’d find I began to rest in pure awareness, without trying to make anything…. I wasn’t trying to concentrate, I wasn’t trying to achieve anything, I wasn’t trying to go anywhere. And after a while this began to feel very very natural. That has become, again paradoxically, the practice. Because there are lots of biases and conditioning that we have that unconsciously come into our experience and take us away from the natural way of being.
C: Well that is a great start for us.
End of Part 1
View the video of this conversation.
About Michael Shandler
Michael Shandler has been a life coach, therapist and spiritual guide for over twenty five years. He is a certified Radiant Mind coach and teaches workshops in the Radiant Mind process in cities across North America. He has also served as a change-management consultant and leadership development coach in organizations internationally.
He is the author of six books in the human relations field, ranging from the The Marriage and Family Book: A Spiritual Guide to Vroom! - a graphic comic about collaboration and teamwork. He has studied intensively with numerous psycho-spirtual teachers including Ram Dass, Baba Hari Dass, Adyashanti, Peter Fenner, Genpo Roshi and others. He holds a Masters degree in Counseling (1981) and a Doctorate in Leadership and Group Psychology (1983) from the University of Massachusetts.
Shandler1008@comcast.net
www.spaciousmindcoaching.com
www.radiantmind.net
Video conversations with Michael:
Natural Pure Awareness
Michael Shandler outlines the non-dual approach he uses in his one-on-one Radiant Mind coaching sessions.
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Aversion and Attraction
Michael Shandler continues his discussion on the non-dual approach, beginning with an understanding of what the Buddha called the core fixations: aversion and attraction.
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Journey to Non-Dual Buddhism
Michael Shandler talks with Carol Sill about his journey into a deeper appreciation of the spiritual realm, from psychedelics to yoga to the non-dual. “And often I’d find I began to rest in pure awareness…. I wasn’t trying to concentrate, I wasn’t trying to achieve anything, I wasn’t trying to go anywhere. And after a while this began to feel very very natural.”
Link here for the text version of this conversation.
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