Unlocking True Happiness

Back by popular demand, Deborah Eden Tull joins Tenzin for a timely conversation about how to hold space and stay present in deeply challenging times. Recorded at the beginning of the renewed conflict between Israel and Hamas, this episode shares deep insight on how we can navigate polarization and difficulty with compassion and engagement with our shared humanity.

We're often led to believe that our highly-structured, thinking-oriented sides are what make us human, that "hard work" is of value above all else, and that play is simply something that young children do. However, research shows that play has incredible power is developing social bonds, fostering creativity, sparking joy and even helping to make positive changes to our epigenetics. In this episode, Tenzin explores the many types of play, the positives benefits, and how we can bring a sense of play to our own spiritual practice to make it more joyful.

No matter how mindful we are of our thoughts, speech and actions, being human means that we can sometimes act unwisely or hurt someone's feelings. Whether these mistakes are unintentional or not, they can lead to rifts in our relationships; and ultimately damage both our own contentment, as well as the cohesion of our community.

In this episode, Tenzin shares the power of apologizing as a roadmap for forgiveness, healing and reconciliation; and then leads a reflection on the impact of both giving and receiving a wholehearted apology.

Join Nina Simons, co-founder of Bioneers, and Tenzin for the second part of their conversation about Nina’s new book and her important work (listen to our first conversation in Episode 34 of the Unlocking True Happiness podcast).

In this conversation, Nina and Tenzin discuss intersecting systems of oppression and how they have led to our environmental crisis, and how we can get out of our multiple crises through relational collective engagement. And when this seems like unrelenting hard work, and we’re even afraid to engage, we must prioritize rest and rejuvenation, joy and play as a way to keep our work in the world sustainable.

Nina also discusses her upcoming projects, including a “Sacred Activism” training she will be offering in collaboration with Eden Tull, another guest on our podcast. We hope you enjoy this conversation!

In this episode, Tenzin speaks to Nina Simons, co-founder of Bioneers and author of Nature, Culture and the Sacred: A Woman Listens for Leadership.

In this episode, Tenzin explores the many gifts that gratitude can bring to our lives, helping to offset our natural negativity bias and bring more richness to our experiences and our relationships. She then shares some simple ideas on how we can cultivate our own practice of gratitude with an experiential meditation.

In this episode, Tenzin continued her conversation with Zen meditation teacher, author, activist and sustainability educator Deborah Eden Tull, continuing a rich conversation about her new book, Luminous Darkness: An Engaged Buddhist Approach to Embracing the Unknown.

Darkness is deeply misunderstood in today’s world; yet it offers powerful medicine, serenity, strength, healing, and regeneration. All insight, vision, creativity, and revelation arise from darkness. It is through learning to stay present and meet the dark with curiosity rather than judgment that we connect to an unwavering light within. Welcoming darkness with curiosity, rather than fear or judgment, enables us to access our innate capacity for compassion and collective healing.

Tull shows us how the labeling of darkness as “negative” becomes a collective excuse to justify avoiding everything that makes us uncomfortable: racism, spiritual bypass, environmental destruction. We can only find the radical path to wholeness by learning to embrace the interplay of both darkness and light.

This month, we are excited to have Sara Schairer, compassion educator, as our guest. Sara Schairer is the founder and executive director of Compassion It®, a nonprofit organization and global social movement whose mission is to inspire daily compassionate actions and attitudes.  A facilitator of the Compassion Cultivation Training® (CCT) course, Sara leads trainings for audiences of all walks of life, from corporate executives to inmates at correctional facilities.

Mindfulness meditation has become wildly popular in the last decade or two, and is taught in places as diverse as corporate board rooms, maximum security prisons, and everywhere in between. One of the standard definitions of mindfulness is “awareness that arises through paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment, non-judgmentally,” according Jon Kabat-Zinn, the founder of the popular program Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction.

The Buddhist teacher Pema Chodron says, in relation to contemplative practice, “We are being encouraged to remain open to the present groundless moment, to a direct, unarmored participation with our experience… How many of us feel ready to interrupt our habitual patterns, our almost instinctual ways of getting comfortable?”

Many of us find the experience of groundlessness to be profoundly uncomfortable, and in the last few years we’ve experienced this feeling to an accelerated degree, with the changes brought about by the pandemic, the global financial crisis, political unrest, and so on. How do we remain open and view groundlessness as a gift, see the potential inherent in it, and embrace it? Join Tenzin Chogkyi and Mathew Divaris to explore the theme of groundlessness and how to bring it into the spiritual path.