Episode 22

full
Published on:

1st Sep 2022

Wisdom and Jazz: Dialogue with Composer and Musician Carole Nelson

Composer and musician Carole Nelson helps us contemplate the dangerous wisdom of jazz and her new album, Night Vision. In honor of our dialogue, Carole and I collaborated on a meditative video project. You can check out the two takes we released here:

https://youtu.be/aWN6UDYp86E

https://youtu.be/OrnoYWUkVBw

In our dialogue, we make reference to Thich Nhat Hanh’s book, Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet, as well as The Diamond Sutra.

We also make reference to an older podcast episode titled, “This Changes Everything”. Look for the re-release of that episode soon. 

Carole Nelson is a Londoner who has lived in Ireland for nearly 40 years. She is a multi-award winning composer, a jazz and improvising musician, pianist, saxophonist and songwriter. Her most recent work is with the Carole Nelson Trio, with whom she has recorded 3 acclaimed albums. Her music reflects the natural world – the woodlands, river and wildlife in her home in southern Ireland. She endeavours to integrate an authentic ecoliteracy into her creative practice and into her engagement with the world.

She is a long-time meditation practitioner in the tradition of Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh’s socially engaged buddhism and she facilitates days of mindfulness.

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About the Podcast

Dangerous Wisdom
Journey into Mystery
A podcast for wild souls who want to live with open eyes and an enlivened heart. The world needs dangerous wisdom, and our education system functions primarily to keep us away from it—to stop us from taking the journey into the mystery and magic of the world. Because of this, we have achieved a catastrophic level of confusion, anxiety, and ignorance—with boatloads of tame wisdom, false wisdom, and self-help nonsense that only adds to the challenges we face. The path of wisdom—the path of wonder—deals with how things really work, and how we can become skillful and successful. Following it leads beyond concepts to a wonderstanding that can heal us, and empower us to help the world, realize our hidden potential, and experience the profound meaningfulness of life. In this podcast, we turn toward the dangerous stuff, the wild stuff, and confront the need to handle authentic wisdom with skill and grace, making sure the medicine doesn’t become another poison. If you want an inspiring space to explore the big and sometimes scary questions, a space that opens up into insights that can change your life and the world we share, join us. Find out more at https://dangerouswisdom.org/

About your host

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nikos patedakis

“Vain is the word of the philosopher that heals no suffering.” ~ Epicurus

Following in the footsteps of Epicurus, nikos patedakis works with individuals, groups, and organizations, bringing to bear the most powerful and holistic teachings of the wisdom traditions in relation to our most daunting personal and global challenges. nikos works with the unity of Nature and Culture, drawing from the sciences, the arts, and the wisdom traditions.

His educational and consulting practice offers a genuinely holistic approach to creativity and critical thinking, ecoliteracy and true sustainability, achievement and excellence, mindfulness and attention, wellness and stress reduction, burnout prevention and recovery, and more.

This work encompasses the traditional areas of ethics, knowledge, meditation, creativity, beauty, being, and metaphysics, remaining rooted in the ancient Greek orientation of philosophy as a way of life, in which philosophy is seen as therapy for the soul and fundamental to the healthy transformation of self and society. This is the tradition of Western philosophy that influenced Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., and the approach of world philosophies that have shaped our world.

The philosophical traditions serve as a sacred storehouse of practical wisdom, trainable compassion, and effortless beauty that can help us resolve complex personal and global challenges, uncover our hidden potentials, and realize our highest ideals. Wisdom is what works.