Hello and welcome to another episode of Mindfulness Plus. I'm your host Thomas McConkey. Thank you so much for joining. This is an unconventional episode of Mindfulness Plus because we just wrapped season five.

In the past, I've taken a six-month break, compile show notes, let life inspire me, come up with some new episodes and come back fresh in the fall.

But I wanted to give you all a heads up

that I'm taking the Mindfulness Plus podcast on the road. And it's relevant to you as a listener

because I anticipate it will shape the content of season six and seasons to follow. So what do I

mean by that? In about two months, I'm road tritripping to Boston. I'm picking up. I'm

moving my whole family out there. And I'm starting a graduate program at Harvard Divinity School.

My interest in going out there and doing some scholarship research is looking at how modern insights and how human beings grow up, change, transform,

are influencing ancient ways of understanding transformation.

These are deep themes that have run through the last five seasons of Mindfulness Plus.

I wanted to name it, talk about it a little bit, and hopefully what your appetite for a really fun season that's coming up.

So let me double click on what I just said about ancient and modern.

If you've listened to some episodes on Mindfulness Plus, you will have heard me talk about Christianity and Buddhism a lot.

These are the two traditions that I'm deeply formed by. I've spent my whole life in them.

I'm an admirer of Hinduism, Islam. I particularly have been influenced by the Sufis. I just had a

Kashmir Shaivist in the studio not too long ago. So I really love wisdom wherever it's found.

But I love to speak to Buddhism and Christianity because I feel

like they're in my bones. And I really respect the different ways they look at the human being

and they conceive of what is the good life and what are human beings capable of becoming

and what are the kinds of practices we can take on that help us become what we're meant to become?

So, for example, in Christianity, gathering as a congregation and a body of Christ, often on Sundays,

and taking communion or the host or the sacrament, depending on your tradition,

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