When I first heard about sound meditation, I understood right away it was something I needed.

The essence of sound meditation involves relaxing and allowing yourself to simply experience what you hear, letting sounds be a cue for greater awareness. Your heartbeat. The room. A car passing outside. You allow the raw sounds to arrive into the ear as they are.

If your mind wanders and you notice it: success! Your awareness caught you. As you meditate, many thoughts, emotions and sensations may come. Welcome them. Returning again and again to presence, you may discover a sense of natural wellbeing that lives inside you. It’s like an internal silence that envelops all sounds, holding them in a deeper stillness.

Sound meditation is a practice that also trains us to experience sounds without labeling them as good or bad, welcome or intrusive. You listen, and allow yourself the space to experience the sound without reacting. Or, if you do react, you simply notice that and allow your reaction to manifest, dissipate, or move to the background. Tibetan master Mingyur Rinpoche says, “As long as you are hearing, you are practicing.” Simple.

Over time you will cultivate a calm gap between the sensory experience and your response. This training can even overflow into other aspects of life. When you receive criticism, you catch yourself before snapping into the defensive, or you accept praise without being inflated by it. When the environment or external circumstances stop jarring you so much, it’s possible to stay steady. Having that option is a quiet freedom.

In 2011, I lived and worked in the beautiful Garden of 1000 Buddhas in the Jocko Valley, Montana. I planted over 1,000 perennial flowers, and I helped place 1000 small stupas on display for visitors. It was a kind of heaven, living there. Mountains, lakes, rivers, cherry trees, horses, vast blue sky. There were no engines, no sirens, no unnatural noises at all—only birdsong, wind, and water rushing over rocks: a meditator’s tranquil dreamscape.

Then I moved to San Francisco. Buses exhaling. Horns. Electronic humming sounds. Shouting. Notifications chiming from every pocket. Advertisements that pinged and flashed. There I walked into an alternate dimension of unrelenting stimulation. Agony. At night I could hear the neighbors’ voices through the wall, the creaking of floorboards, and the mini-fridge humming with a small insistence, drawing me in.

I complained about this to a close friend. She said:

“Okay. You’ve mastered being peaceful in a peaceful place. Well done. Now, can you try it here?”

It became a fun challenge; and I tried—on the BART train squished like a sardine, at the laundromat, in the city streets. I practiced sound meditation in my everyday moments. I am amazed how much it helped.

This past week, I stayed in a hotel, and nothing bothered me. There was even a noisy heater in the room that switched on and off through the night. It was one of those rare moments when you realize that you have changed. Practice—over time— made a difference.

Here is what I understand now. Sounds are only stimuli. The mind is the one who decides they are a problem.

If you can stay steady and let a sound move through you — and if, when a sound does provoke a negative emotion, you can turn toward that with compassion— eventually the sounds will longer be the master. Wisdom and compassion take charge. Sounds become more like a training partner, prompting you to practice meditation.

We also can apply compassion for the beings responsible for making noises that are bothering us!

I think about my mother and how she used to be very upset when some college students moved in next door. They had very loud parties. One time she actually sprayed them with a hose from the balcony.

I understand the impulse. Like many people, I also have a hard time trying to sleep when there is a loud party! I feel pretty angry.

I wonder: Could I bring some warmth to that? Could I be glad for them? Could I appreciate the joy and aliveness? If so, then their noise could become my friend, maybe, rather than something I am at war with.

Everyone wants to be happy. A party is that wish expressed. Imagine falling asleep to the sound of a party next door, genuinely pleased that people are enjoying themselves.

I am not there yet. But maybe someday.

If you want to try this, start with one everyday moment, maybe washing the dishes. Listen to the sounds you hear with awareness and with kindness. That’s it. That’s the practice. It seems like very little, but it can be the beginning of something quite longlasting and liberating.

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If you said yes, or you are feeling lonely now, you are not alone! Loneliness is the new smoking. A recent study by neuroscientist Richie Davidson found that 76% of middle-aged Americans report moderate rates of loneliness.

I’ve experienced this myself. There were stretches of my life marked by long commutes, distance from friends and family, relationships that came and went. There were also moments when I was surrounded by people and still felt entirely alone. Loneliness touches almost everyone at some point, and it’s a tricky thing to work with.

For a long time, I wondered if meditation — a solo activity that requires stretches of quiet time — could actually help with something as seemingly social as loneliness.

After many years of steady practice, I came to realize that meditation was an essential building block toward interpersonal connection. It helped me create a solid infrastructure of caring relationships, one that insulated me from the haunting sense of isolation I used to feel. Let me explain how.

Science is starting to catch up with what meditators have long known. In recent years, researchers like Davidson have poured resources into studying meditation’s effects on the brain and overall well-being, and what they’re finding starts with understanding distraction.

Researchers have discovered that a wandering mind is not a happy mind. A fancy phrase for this is “experiential fusion” — doing something without being aware that you’re doing it. It’s a kind of absorption without presence, like being on autopilot.

Have you ever driven somewhere and arrived without remembering how you got there? That’s fusion. Your experience was fused with your thought process.

The same study revealed a shocking statistic: people spend 47% of their lives not paying attention, not aware of the present moment. Folks are spending almost half of their lives in a state of distraction!

It makes sense to me that this would be painful. When I'm distracted, I can't settle. I'm not at home in my body. There are days I'm working with maybe ten windows open on my screen — I start one task, remember something else, and hop to the next tab instead. It's as if the computer is showing me, externally, everywhere my mind has wandered: a photo of friends at the river, my tax return, a meme my dad sent, car insurance, a funny picture of a cat. Bouncing around like that, I feel so tired afterward, so empty.

When you live continually distracted like this, you lose something really important: a sense of purpose. You feel restless, and you struggle to connect with people when your mind is busy ruminating, fantasizing, avoiding emotion, comparing yourself to others — or whatever else under the sun pulls you away. Just like you can space out while driving, you can space out while sitting across from someone you love…present in body, but with a mind that's traveling. Usually people pick up on it when you’re checked out.

There is some good news, though. The wiring in our brain is adaptable. The prefrontal cortex can change, as can the amygdala, You can train your mind through meditation the same way you build muscle at the gym through lifting weights. You can build your capacity for connection, hone your ability to be present, and cultivate a deeper sense of purpose. As Dr. Richie Davidson explains in his research, mindfulness and meditation are learned behaviors, not something written into the human genome, just like brushing your teeth.

So what is actually happening in the meditation process that creates this kind of change? Dr. Cortland Dahl, meditation teacher and scientist at Tergar International, explains the process in his work on the Science of Awareness. Here is a short summary:

First, through a mindfulness practice, you learn meta awareness, the practice of watching yourself and being aware of what you are doing. Oftentimes the instruction is simple, to watch the breath, feel the body, or listen to the sounds in the room, to take part in a simple steady activity that anchors you.

Then, inevitably, you will become distracted. The key is to simply notice that. In becoming aware of your distraction, you activate something called the salience network.

Next, you simply bring your mind back to the body, or whichever anchor you have chosen as the object of your attention. This re-direction activates the executive network. Do this again and again, and you strengthen a network of presence and awareness in the brain, one that guides you toward love and purpose.

What begins as a fleeting moment, with practice, becomes an enduring trait of the brain; and eventually, a new and healthy habit that changes the outcomes of your life. Your life changes, but from the inside out. This is different from how we usually think about changing our lives: set a goal, apply effort, and ‘make it happen.’ This relies on using some kind of force. Meditation works almost the opposite way and is somewhat counterintuitive. We accomplish a great deal by what looks, from the outside, like doing very little at all.

When you apply awareness practice to your daily life, even folding the laundry then becomes purposeful because you’re showing up for it with presence. Life becomes more vivd. You have more energy to invest in relationships, because you have a higher capacity to bring attention, care, and real listening to the people you love; and, in turn, you receive love back, a balm against loneliness. And, in making friends with your distractions, you become a better friend to yourself, which is also less lonely! Spending time alone becomes more enjoyable, too.

There’s no shaming in this process. You don’t try to make what distracts you disappear. You don’t strive for some state of happiness or bliss. You don’t try to change your emotions at all. You simply change the way you relate to them.

In meditation, you watch your own internal world and bring a sense of acceptance to whatever arises there. You hold yourself with compassion. Sometimes this takes courage.

Then, paradoxically, by not trying to control, you gain a new kind of self-control, the ability to notice emotions while they’re still small, before they build into something larger.

And through doing this type of practice, your emotional and mental state does start to change—even though you’re not trying to change anything—right alongside the quality of your life, your health, your sense of connection to others, and your alignment with a deeper meaning you find in your own life.

So many of us go to the gym, take supplements, or try special diets, hoping for a healthy body. What would happen if we also took the time to do exercises for a healthy mind?

I hope this helps you the way it helped me.

Note: this Dharma talk was born from an assignment I completed as I certified to teach Anytime, Anywhere Meditation with Tergar International. The research referenced came from materials shared within that program. The topic was inspired by the Awareness section of the training which highlighted the work of Dr. Cortland Dahl, among other prominent scientists in the field.

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My family descends from a long line of Orthodox rabbis, but the connection was broken, then hidden. Growing up in San Francisco during the 90s, I was surrounded by Jewish people without realizing that I was Jewish. I went to bar and bat mitzvahs every weekend in middle school. My first boyfriend was a Kaufman. Every year I lit Hanukkah candles on an old menorah passed down through the generations with my best friend and her family. In college I met a wonderful guy. He told me he liked me too, but needed to marry a Jewish woman. His mother was a cantor at the reform synagogue. I nodded solemnly, "I totally understand." I was immersed in Jewish culture without knowing it was also my culture.

In my twenties, I met Maori healers who traveled the world offering shamanic-style myofascial healings. I told them I had no culture, no indigenous roots. They said: You do. Look deeper. I did some research and discovered the truth, but didn’t know what to do.

At twenty-six, I began training rigorously with Tibetan masters. In meditation, memories arrived — all of them Jewish. Past lives or collective memory, I watched these like little private movies, felt them as real. I saw a synagogue burning in Toledo, Spain, a father running inside to save the Torah and never coming back out. I saw a mother and two children torn apart at a concentration camp. Judaism was asking something of me. The question rested quietly for years.

At thirty-three, I moved to Boulder from the Jocko Valley, Montana. My partner was starting Naropa. Besides enjoying riding my bike around town, I wasn’t sure what I was doing there.

One fall afternoon, I biked up Leigh Street and something caught the corner of my eye. Through a small second-floor window of a blue house, I could see a man with a white beard. Head down, exposing a small kippah, absorbed in spiritual practice, he turned side to side fervently, eyes fluttering. The prayer was communing with him, a call and response with the divine. Seeing him daven reminded me of dancing with a sparkler on the Fourth of July as a child.

His personal prayer was a symphony: the letters sounding out like musical notes, the sentences, a full orchestra. I sensed that beneath the liturgy was a roadmap, a story that reads backwards, unwinding to bare essence: sound, uninhibited radiance, the downbeat before the music begins. I stood there on the chilly street, hands on handlebars: look at this miracle.

He was an older man, eighties probably, gently bent over, but unstoppable. I wanted to hug him, join him, and simultaneously run far away from him.

Weeks later, my partner found a Craigslist ad. Nevei Kodesh shul needed high holiday coordinators. My heart leaped at the opportunity. On Yom Kippur, I was collecting programs on the synagogue’s upper balcony, back turned, when a man’s voice rose from the bimah—Hebrew prayer through a microphone. I froze, feeling its reverberation in every pore. This is so old, so old, so old! I burst into tears and turned around.

It was the same man. I loved him so much and I didn’t know why.

I sat alone in a balcony seat and listened, not knowing what the Hebrew meant or what Yom Kippur was. To hear someone pray with a clean heart is rare. The sound he made carried decades of discipline, vibrant love, and grief courageously tended. It was the sound of a life spent protecting and sharing something precious.

I took the trash out during what was called the Ne’ilah service, the penultimate moment of the most important day in the Jewish year—I had no idea. Nearly stepping into a nest of raccoons, I banged my leg hard on an iron bar protruding from the dumpster. Standing there in the dark, garbage bag in hand, shin throbbing, I knew I had made a wrong turn somewhere in life.

So I wrote this man a love letter. It was snowing. Halfway there, I turned around and went back home. On the fifth attempt, my quivering hand dropped the letter into his mailbox.

He wrote back right away and invited me over. When I arrived, his wife Eve led me to a downstairs den. There sat Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi in a brown armchair, surrounded by books, eyes twinkling. I offered him lavender I’d grown in Montana. Breaking into a larger-than-life smile, he said,

“Perfect for Havdalah!”

What is Havdalah? I thought to myself. Then I attempted to explain why I had come,

“I don’t really know who you are, but I saw you practicing in the window one day. You reminded me, somehow, of my teacher Yangthang Rinpoche. He was a meditation master from Tibet who survived imprisonment from the Chinese. Then I heard you speak in Hebrew at Yom Kippur. The sound of your voice struck a chord in my heart. I was working there, as the event coordinator. It was the first time I have ever been to a High Holiday, but I think I may have died in the holocaust. Can you help?”

He listened as I described everything — the visions, the memories, a rupture in my family’s line. He listened as if nothing else existed. When I was done, he gifted me a siddur and encouraged me to dance with Jewish music. Over the next weeks, with Rabbi Zalman, I delighted in several hours of personal mentoring.

Then, he invited me before the Torah at the conservative shul for a ceremony to receive a Hebrew name. Zalman told me to identify a quality I wished to cultivate.

“If you feel afraid,” he explained, “you take a name like ‘Courage,’ and God will hold up a mirror.” After reflecting, I told him that it was easy for me to dive deep, but sometimes hard to come back. He chose Galya. Wave of God: the one whom God has redeemed. The name was a password.

Just before the ceremony, the congregational rabbi leaned over with furrowed brows and taut lips whispering, “Is. she. Jewish.” Reb Zalman, turning his head slowly, faced the leader with warmth, responding simply,

“Yes.”

My whole body exhaled in a way it never had before. I looked at him, then closed my eyes for a moment to take it all in.

After the ceremony, I joined a small group of young people who met with Reb Zalman on Wednesday evenings. Six months later, I got a job offer at the Jewish Federation in California. When I told Zalman, his response rattled the phone:

“L’chaim!!!”

I moved to take the job. Shortly after that, he died. In our last conversation, I shared how I love to pray, especially at sites of massacre, helping those souls still bound there. I described the moment when prayer hits a tipping point, and spirits lift from the dirt, swirling light into the sky. I half expected him to dismiss me. He leaned forward, listening very carefully. Then he asked, quietly:

“Can you go to a concentration camp?” I promised him I would.

On his second Yahrtzeit in 2016, I went to Bergen-Belsen with my mom. She was born nearby — about a mile from the camp — in 1946.

The memorial was a vast green open space carved out of a forest. What surprised me were the wildflowers, the way the grass moved like ocean waves over mass graves, the gentle and elegant young trees. There was even a butterfly. Because of the many terrible dreams which had visited my sleep, I imagined this place would be dark and frightening, like stepping into a nightmare. It wasn’t. I picked up a large hawk feather and held it to the sun. I placed a crystal stone on Anne Frank’s grave. How could beauty exist here? Yet it did. Somehow seeing this land so empty, so quiet and still, helped me rest.

I sang a 1st century Kabbalistic song that asks the creator, “With your right hand, untangle this complicated knot, purify the terrible,” and then a Tibetan Buddhist song which turns any location into a holy place.

The earth opened — slowly at first, then unstoppable. Crystalline light in pastel colors swirled from the ground: lavender, aquamarine, soft yellow, tender pink and warm white, spiraling into the heavens like joy, like reverse rain. Like sky dancers. In the still point between pain and relief, I found it: a feeling that all is well.

“Thank you, my rebbe,” I whispered, “all is well.”

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At 16, she boarded a boat to the United States with her 18 year old sister and learned to fend for herself in a new country.

I wish I could tell you my Auntie Ingrid was warm and gentle, but she wasn’t. She had a sharp tongue and an even sharper mind when it came to criticism. But there was beauty in her harshness. She grew the most stunning roses—vibrant, robust, well-defended and delicate.  Her pound cake could make you cry. She loved. She cared. It was a rough love and care; but it was genuine. 

A few years ago, she met the age of 81 with a terminal illness. Our family sat by her bedside. She was tiny, her blue eyes sparkly. She told me, over and over, that she wasn’t scared. 

“I always tried to do the right thing. I was a good person in my life,” she repeated, reassuring herself. Family members stole glances. Someone said,

“Of course, of course” to break the silence.

Seeing her in the bed, knowing she would not be getting out felt suffocating.

How many times had I experienced a strong emotion, and then went for a walk in the woods? How many times had I needed a change of scenery and then went on a day trip to the river? Knowing that Ingrid had to stay right there and face whatever arose, I felt great admiration for her bravery.

I yearned to do something, anything, to help. My mind flashed back to meeting the “Threshold Choir,” a few weeks prior. They were a group of volunteers who sing bedside to those facing death. Sylvia Boorstein, a founder of Spirit Rock Meditation Center, brought them to her Wednesday class. I loved it.  Would they come all the way out to Santa Rosa to meet Ingrid and sing for her? There wasn’t much time. I called them. To my surprise, they knocked on her door the next day. 

Singing in perfect harmony gently, kindly, they gazed into her eyes like a mother looks at a new child:

You are loved, deeply loved, they sang. 

You are a well-cherished garden.
You are loved, deeply loved.
You are a treasured child.

All your life, all your days, from the very first moment of being.
Drink it in, drink it in.
Love is the life-giving water.

Take it in, take it in.
Know it in every cell.
Soak it into your toes, so the rose that you are fully blossoms.

(M.P. Scott © 2004)

Ingrid's face melted, her cheeks now pink and soft. She looked like she was in love, smiling,  laying there with arms spread wide, as if to free the heart from physical restriction. She was gentle, innocent, quiet: deeply absorbing the message, its meaning and its truth. Song held up a mirror and she gazed at her own innate beauty, her pure love. I had never seen her like that. She didn’t want it to end. 

It occurred to me that this was a completely radical moment in her life. Had she had experienced this kind of nurture before, this much attention and presence? Would she have been able to accept it, had it been offered? 

The vulnerability of illness offered space for a surrender to take place, one where she could drop her armor, open up. In this one way, the illness was a kind friend. Just as her life was ending, Ingrid experienced a profound beginning. 

Inside of all of us, we have this love and possibility. 

War, neglect, poverty, racism, loneliness–all of which Ingrid went through–are examples of the many adversities of modern life on earth. None of these could steal her goodness. This inner essence can’t be created, it can’t die. It is always there, our birthright. When we meditate, we rest in awareness of this treasure that we already have. In meditation, we do our best to realize this truth, to notice it, and come back to it, again and again. 

In some ways, Ingrid’s transition was like a meditation retreat, one which removed all of the external distractions of life. As her body slowly faded, she became more and more intimate with her heart essence. It takes courage to face ourselves without distraction, especially for one last time.

Some meditation teachers say that discovering our own innate goodness is like going home. When we get lost in life, we can breathe, pause, turn inward, and go back home.

Have you ever flown in an airplane that just cuts through a storm in the clouds, only to find that the sky is perfectly blue with sun shining? Our home inside the heart is like a beautiful blue sky that exists all the time, although the clouds and storms of life can obscure it. 

In daily life, meditation practitioners make an effort to experience and express natural compassion. We wake up every day and purposely arouse a wish for others to be free from suffering. We generate a motivation to help them; we make efforts to be helpful. We send love. We send well wishes. Doing this opens the door to let go of self absorption and ego clinging.

Joan Hailifax , a famous teacher from the Zen tradition, shares that caring for the welfare of others enlivens us. She explains that compassion enhances neural integration, hooking up all different parts of the brain. It also lowers cortisol levels which reduces stress and strengthens our immune system.

Neuroscientist Richie Davidson reports that compassion has even been found to reduce inflammation in the brain, a precursor to dementia. 

The research of neuroscientist Tania Singer reveals that compassion activates a network in the brain associated with pleasure and social connection. 

It feels right. It feels so good—to be compassionate. I think we all know this deep down.

My teacher, Yangthang Rinpoche, used to say: 

Think of how you came into the world as a baby. You were naked, alone, completely vulnerable. Somebody had to feed you, keep you warm, keep you safe, be there when you woke up–you are the recipient of so much love and compassion. 

Realizing that we are all deeply interconnected—that we need each other’s love to survive and thrive in this world where we are vulnerable—helps us to practice a generosity of spirit. With this realization, we can also let go of seeing ourselves as an island.

Then, all the individualistic competition and comparison that we are so inclined toward can more easily dissolve into collaborations. When we let go of that which obscures our true nature, or, like my auntie Ingrid, our armoring, we open up to the possibility of living a life filled with love and freedom.

“Love is the only cause of happiness. Its nature is all pervasive like space. Love is the sunlight of the mind.” 

—Garchen Rinpoche

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In September, I passed through the Bay Area on my way home to Oregon. I took my dogs to our old stomping ground, Redwood Regional Park. In an overdeveloped urban landscape, Redwood Regional offers a small slice of paradise.

The trail slopes down into a dark, cool grove of giant redwoods with a small creek rushing past round boulders and ferns before ascending to a sunny exposed ridge. 

On this particular day, as I reached the top, I came upon a family: two grandparents, a toddler just learning to walk, and a young mother. Each grandparent held one tiny hand, guiding the young boy’s very tentative steps. Occasionally his little body would crumple and collapse on the trail. Both grandparents would then hoist him up: keep trying. 

At one point the little boy noticed my terrier, Bodhi, and exclaimed “wooo woo!”

All three adults turned immediately to face the toddler. They responded with an enthusiastic “wooo woo!”

He smiled, said it again, and a joyful call and response ensued. 

I walked along past their happy sounds, as this intergenerational, deep and meaningful monosyllabic conversation continued to unfold on the trail. The family’s beautiful display swept me off my feet, reminding me of humanity’s capacity to be good, to be so good.

I also understood on some deeper level how very important it is, in life, to call out “wooo woo!” and receive a response. 

This child would begin with a foundation of love. Three people found great joy in celebrating his simple existence. 

May all beings know this love, and may examples of everyday beauty such as these continue to arise and flourish. 

I wanted to share this story because when we practice meditation, we are engaging in a practice to embody love and compassion. Deep down, we all have this capacity. It is so simple. Yet, many of us can try so hard, too hard. We can get stuck on a self-improvement path—following complicated instructions, striving for transformation, or undertaking spiritual ‘projects.’ 

Paradoxically, through the effort of mediation practice we can discover that we are fundamentally okay just as we are. 

Some days are harder than others. On those days, I am so grateful when the world shows me examples.

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I visited my teacher, Gyatrul Rinpoche, when he was on the mend from a life-threatening illness in 2016. He was 93 years old. He weighed 90 pounds. Lying in bed, he couldn’t sit up to speak with me.  All he could do was turn his head to the right. Somehow, though, his wisdom filled up the room.

To experience the full vulnerability of an aging body—the challenge of simple things like walking, sitting, and standing up—is our shared human experience.  No matter how hard we may resist, most of us slowly dim with age.

Great spiritual masters seem to get lighter with age, as if the shell of their body can no longer contain its inner radiance. That was certainly the case with my teacher.

The minute I walked in, he spoke about my life with piercing accuracy, pointing out my deepest faults. Often when I tell people this, they cringe and say it sounds hurtful. It was not. Words with integrity, so rare in this complicated world, have the power to soothe. Someone with a clean heart, brave enough to be honest in this way, is a precious gem.

I longed to be in his presence again and again—even though it meant looking deeply at my own shadow. With Gyatrul Rinpoche, I always felt loved. This made it safe. As I write this, I miss him so much.

How wonderful to be so deeply seen.

On that particular day, I had arrived at his home in a state of suffering. Earlier in the week I had experienced a form of persecution and had tried to fight back, but it had backfired.

Before I could open my mouth, Rinpoche offered a concise teaching about aggression.

Pointing to his frail body he asked,

“Are you going to attack me?”

What a preposterous idea. Who would attack a tiny infirm man lying in a bed?

And that was exactly his point. He modeled the truth of vulnerability, which is universal. Here was a man skin and bones, recovering from a major illness, and yet he was bigger and stronger than anyone I had ever met.

In May of 2024, I had the great fortune to experience this phenomenon once again when I traveled to India to meet the Dalai Lama. As the director of a Tibetan Buddhist meditation center in the Shangpa Kagyu lineage, I joined other representatives from centers around the world to support lineage master Kalu Rinpoche in making a long life offering to His Holiness, who is now 89 years old.

On May 18^th, His Holiness arrived at the small inner sanctuary of the temple complex in Dharamshala. Five attendants helped him onto the teaching throne. They held his arms, each one so thin, I could see the bone.

Somehow, though, his face looked youthful. He was a man who had witnessed the full spectrum of human suffering and joy.  In my mind’s eye, his face oscillated back and forth between young and old, eventually melding into a seemingly impossible combination of both simultaneously.

As he sat quietly on the throne, his radiance touched everything and everyone. I saw many people smiling and crying. I burst into tears. A deep relief overtook my being, in a way I had never known before. Just to see him there, to bask in his light, was enough. In the Dalai Lama’s presence, there was total peace and safety. I wanted to curl up right next to him and rest in that forever.

As a child I used to obsess over the Bruce Springsteen song that goes “everybody’s got a hungry heart” and I would walk around the house and school chanting “hungry heart, hungry heart” like a mantra. Perhaps, more realistically, I can see now that it was a kind of spiritual cry for help.

I came to the Dalai Lama like a starving person. Being near him, this heart nourishment came into every cell of my body. Some kind of door opened.

First, all of my mental tensions bubbled up, right to the surface of my being. From a detached place, like a scientist, I observed how my mental tension created systems of belief and habits, even calcifying into physical stiffness—a tight and constricted posture. In this moment, I could see myself trapped in a system, a structure of: sensation, belief, thought and physical pain.

It was quite a predicament.

In the presence of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, though, these mental tensions started to loosen. I felt a deep remorse for my shortcomings. They visited the room like guests at a party. I invited them there, all the faults I could conjure. Flipping through a mental rolodex of memories, really fast—I summoned and visualized all of these negative things I had done in my life. They came, and poured out like a confession from my eyes. Then, from a space beyond words or mental images, everything melted.  

I thought I was only crying for five or ten minutes. But later, when I watched the video of the day, I could see myself in the middle of the small inner temple, weeping. The video timestamp read: 40 minutes.

In his field of compassion, my resistance to goodness dissolved and there was nothing to do but let go. Heat from all over my body moved into the heart and then escaped like a gentle rain from every pore. A strong sensation of bliss infused my being. A giant smile washed across my whole face—the biggest smile—and yet my belly still quivered from crying.

His presence was that of a tender mother, completely available, attentive, nurturing, but also unattached.  I sensed him to be present and loving but simultaneously empty. His love had the power to reset my entire nervous system, and my life. It was highly specialized to treat my unique predicament; yet, it did not feel personal.  

He seemed to focus on me from across the room, then make some kind of mudra. I would feel a connection. Then I could see his focus shift back into a global, panoramic awareness and universal love.

At one point I just bowed my head so low. I felt overwhelmed with gratitude, thinking of what he had faced and accomplished in his life. I could understand what is possible as a human.

I have bowed so many times in my life, but never been moved in such a way. Before the Dalai Lama, there was nothing other to do than put my head down. It was like I never fully understood a bow before that.  

Then I felt my teacher’s presence very strongly—Gyatrul Rinpoche, who passed away one year ago.

Just after Gyatrul Rinpoche escaped Tibet though the Himalayas, the Dalai Lama sent him to teach in the West. At the time, Rinpoche did not want to go. The Dalai Lama insisted.

Remembering the kindness of my teacher, who went through so much hardship and displayed incredible generosity and compassion, I looked up at the Dalai Lama immediately. I was surprised to make eye contact. In my mind, I said,

“Thank you so much for sending Gyatrul Rinpoche to the United States. All of his students love him and miss him. He gave us Dharma and he changed our lives inconceivably.”  More and more tears streamed down.

On that same day, His Eminence Kalu Rinpoche gave the Dalai Lama donations from all of us. I fundraised $1,080 dollars and wrote on the envelope, “in loving memory of Gyatrul Rinpoche.”  Later I realized it was the anniversary of Gyatrul Rinpoche’s sea burial that very day. Something bigger than me was unfolding.

As the head of the lineage, His Eminence Kalu Rinpoche had organized an offering beautiful beyond words, with many finely crafted statues carried up and presented one by one.

Kalu Rinpoche also requested a Mahakala empowerment. Mahakala is very dear to the Dalai Lama. His Holiness told us that his mother felt so close to this dharma protector that she used to call him “our Mahakala” with much tenderness. 

I thought of the previous Kalu Rinpoche’s close relationship with the Dalai Lama and what they must have gone through in the early years of exile.

What a delight to witness a reunion of spirit, as the reincarnation of Kalu Rinpoche (also named Kalu Rinpoche), now in his mid-thirties, looked to the Dalai Lama with joy and deep reverence.

At the end of the empowerment, His Holiness walked away slowly. Then, all I could see was the back of his head. The room made a collective sigh. Our hearts broke a little to see him go.

I made strong prayers for the Dalai Lama to always remain in my heart. I wished for him to be my teacher, to turn the wheel of Dharma for all beings on the earth, and for him to remain in good health and live a long, peaceful, and happy life.

I know now that when I am close to death, I will remember that day. I will think about the Dalai Lama, Gyatrul Rinpoche, Kalu Rinpoche and the astounding selflessness they displayed, the help they offered me, their blessings, their selflessness.

(May this gratitude fill my heart, dispel  fear, and benefit beings. May it light the way when I take my last breath.)

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Kalu Rinpoche gazes at His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, as if one can see the former Kalu Rinpoche there too.

Gyatrul Rinpoche, of loving memory, at his home in Half Moon Bay, with the author and other devoted students, Lindy and Deidra, 2019

Gyatrul Rinpoche displaying his playful character, with the author, and students Lindy and Lama Les, 2015

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