From meditation retreats to pop music, Vipassana teacher Trudy Goodman describes cultivating devotion in both obvious and unlikely places.

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In this episode, Trudy Goodman illuminates:

• Cultivating devotion through seeing things with a positive connotation
• The activity of compassion as a beautiful possibility to experience the sacred
• A story of Trudy’s daughter and facing severe illness with grace
• Holding a deep gratitude for life and the dharma 
• Practicing devotion through pop music and romance ballads
• Remembering the present moment, the only moment we have
• Experiencing devotion through the tenderness of our shared joys and sorrows 
• Enduring messy and painful moments with gratitude and continuing to enjoy our practice
• How judgment and worry fall away when we are truly present 
• A lesson from Ram Dass on loving everything 
• Emerging from the mystery of the cosmos 

This recording from a 2025 retreat at Spirit Rock was originally published on Dharmaseed

About Trudy Goodman:

Trudy is a Vipassana teacher in the Theravada lineage and the Founding Teacher of InsightLA. For 25 years, in Cambridge, MA, Trudy practiced mindfulness-based psychotherapy with children, teenagers, couples and individuals. Trudy conducts retreats, engages in activism work, and teaches workshops worldwide and online. She is also the voice of Trudy the Love Barbarian in the Netflix series, The Midnight Gospel. You can learn more about Trudy’s flourishing array of wonderful offerings at TrudyGoodman.com

“Of course, these songs are romantic songs, devoted to you, my lover. But, you could say devoted to you, the Buddha, the dharma, the sangha. You could listen to all those teenage ballads that way, and it deepens your practice. You can listen to beautiful religiously inspired music like Bach, but you can also listen to pop songs. It can be about the Dharma. Devotion everywhere." –Trudy Goodman

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