The Maitripa College Podcast: Recent Episodes
Maitripa College
We are a Tibetan Buddhist graduate school located in Portland, Oregon. Our podcast features accessible Buddhist teachings from different scholars and practitioners in America today.
On July 6th, 2021, many of us, all around the world celebrated the 86th birthday of His Holiness The Dalai Lama, a magnificent exemplar of compassion in our times. This auspicious occasion and the manifold crises that face humanity call on us to reflect on how we can make compassion a more active part of our lives: in the way that we relate to our loved ones, our community, and the world. In Holiness’s words, we must come together as one human family embracing 7 billion brothers and sisters.
In this episode, Yangsi Rinpoche pays tribute to His Holiness the Dalai Lama by drawing from his life to share the key to remaining consistently compassionate, even in the face of people and situations that challenge us.
Please join us for this special podcast episode exploring Buddhist education at the unique intersection of east and west. In this episode, Namdrol Miranda Adams, Maitripa College’s Dean of Education, interviews Dr. Roger Jackson, Professor Emeritus of Carleton College, visiting faculty member to Maitripa, and a long time friend to our community and Yangsi Rinpoche, Maitripa College Founder, President, and Faculty about the traditional roots of Buddhist education in India and Tibet and how it is developing in the modern Western world.
In this special episode, Tiffany sits down with Dr. Leigh Miller, Director of Academic Programs at Maitripa College, to hear her take on the emerging field of Buddhist Chaplaincy, the framework students navigate in order to prepare for service as a chaplain, and the way Maitripa College fits into that frame.
In this episode, Yangsi Rinpoche takes us on a journey to discover the definition of a healthy mind. Relying on the Lamrim Chenmo (the Great Exposition on the Gradual Path to Enlightenment), Rinpoche discusses the work of Lama Atisha and Lama Tsongkhapa as a basis for defining a healthy mind according to Buddhist thought, and explores the delicate balance between intellectual understanding and experiential insight of the teachings.
In this end-of-year episode, Yangsi Rinpoche reflects on his own experience and guides us inreflecting on this year and looking ahead to 2021.
Episode 26. Wisdom Managing Your Mind in Difficult Times with Ven Robina Courtin - Part 1
Episode 24. The Nurturing Effect of the Linage on Our Spiritual Journey by Yangsi Rinpoche
In this, the second of a series of teachings on the lamrim and meditation, Yangsi Rinpoche explains how Buddhism took root in Tibet through the story of Lama Atisha, and how it is slowly taking root in the west. This episode also includes an introduction to developing a regular meditation practice.
In unique accessible language, Yangsi Rinpoche presents in summary the historic context of Atisha’s Lamp of the Path to Enlightenment. Rinpoche explains why the traditional spiritual journey is rooted in linage, Nagarjuna and Asanga’s influence on the tradition, and how lineage functions to create the merit that will support our spiritual life and progress towards enlightenment.
In this week’s episode, from Maitripa College’s Philosophy 302 class, Yangsi Rinpoche teaches on the Bodhisattva vow and gives commentary on exactly what it means to wish for and engage in actions leading to enlightenment for the sake of all sentient beings. In discussion, the class explores the differences between Aspiring and Engaging Bodhicitta, as well as the practice of wisdom and ethics that is the foundation of the Bodhisattva vow.
In this talk, Professor Willis focuses on a unique and quintessential teaching of the Buddha. Using narratives and key texts from the tradition, Professor Willis’ uniquely warm and approachable demeanor invites the listener to connect to and engage with the liberating wisdom of the Buddha’s foundational insight.
Among the Buddha’s most prominent female disciples were sex workers, mothers, and the nuns who formed the female monastic order. Narratives of the lives of these earliest Buddhist women show them struggling to emerge, with varying degrees of success and failure, from the places in which a patriarchal society kept them.This talk explores ways in which the limitations placed on women in early Buddhist communities were challenged or transgressed, and ways in which they were ultimately reinforced. We will ask what these narratives can teach today’s Buddhist communities as we seek to identify and liberate ourselves from our own notions of gender that restrict women’s spiritual potential.
In this talk, Enlightenment: Is there an App for that?, Rinpoche invites us to look closely at how we try whatever way possible to find the shortcut to happiness and even enlightenment. Rinpoche grapples with the reasons we seek an easy way out, and how meditation practice can help us cut through the tendency to look outwards for someone or something to take away our suffering and travel our own creative path of freedom.
In “Introducing Buddhism: Our View of the World and Our Place In It” with Venerable Venerable Damchö Diana Finnegan, who holds a PhD in Buddhist Studies as well as extensive translation and practice experience, we learn that the purpose of Buddhist philosophy is to function as a window through which to view the world. Venerable Damcho explains how studying the words of the Buddha leads to a greater exploration of how we see things and people and how we relate to them, and the way this profoundly affects our relationships with others.
In Integrating the Heart Sutra: Meditating on Emptiness, Rinpoche offers an approach to meditation on emptiness that reveals how to feel a healthy sense of self.
Rather than “redecorating” our mediation, Rinpoche advises to “clean up” our practice through allowing our fundamental nature to arise. In this case, non-action, patience, acceptance and allowing can put us in touch with our Buddha nature.
Balancing the Mind in Meditation begins with an eloquent explanation of joyful effort. Rinpoche proceeds to guide us on a meditation journey analogous to the balancing act of a pilot flying a plane while keeping her eye on the horizon. Enjoy this rare and essential teaching about how to maintain an uplifted mind while facing the ups and downs of the everyday world.
In Finding the Source of Enlightenment: A Non-Dual Approach, Yangsi Rinpoche teaches that by traversing negative emotions, we gain access to the non-dual, fundamental source of meditation and, ultimately, to enlightenment. Compassion, Rinpoche offers, is the natural result of the healing that comes from familiarizing oneself with how our reactive minds habitually discern positive vs. negative, good vs. bad, this vs. that, and so on. Enjoy this beautiful, timeless teaching from Dharma Friendship Foundation in Seattle, Washington.
Yangsi Rinpoche addresses the Maitripa College Sunday Morning Community Program with a discussion on Getting Unstuck: Balancing Ultimate and Conventional Natures. In order to “survive samsaric suffering” Rinpoche advises to navigate through meditation on conventional reality with the ultimate, clear light nature of the mind.
Yangsi Rinpoche teaches on the space-like practice of compassion and emptiness in Seattle, WA at the Dharma Friendship Foundation. In order to overcome the “karmic chaos” in our own minds, Rinpoche recommends spending time each day meditating on compassion and emptiness in an expansive way, in order to develop practice with a spacious view that ultimately pacifies challenges before they arise. This is a precious teaching that covers both “wings of the bird” in a profound and practical way.
In reflection on the question: how do we deepen our meditation?, Rinpoche asks us to expand our concept of our relationship to others by considering the power of lineage. Although in the material world, self-reliance is most important, when it comes to spiritual practice, relying on the teachings, teachers, and our community become more relevant. Rinpoche explains how to create a healthy sense of self through a thorough investigation of the way our ego functions, without either trying to control or ignore our habitual patterns. From this healthy, nourished basis, we can deepen our understanding of the emptiness of self--the actual “lifetime guarantee” of a stress-free life!
By guiding us through meditation on emptiness, and investigating our intrinsic sense of self, Rinpoche leads us on a journey through our own negative emotions and karmic habits into “the lab of meditation.” While we might think of meditation on emptiness as unattainable, too difficult, or something we aren’t yet ready to practice, Rinpoche’s instruction provides an accessible, realistic approach to understanding reality through deeply looking at this current moment of our experience. This, Rinpoche reassures us, is the ultimate form of healing all types of suffering. Once we have learned how to create the right environment within our mind, we can apply the concentration that naturally arises, without forcing, to all aspects of meditation practice. By building up our own “emotional immune system” in this way, we nourish ourselves, and growth and real freedom are possible.
Carl Jensen, MDiv, is a chaplain at Portland Providence Medical Center. Originally from the Pacific Northwest, Carl has lived all over the world. He first encountered Buddhism when he and his wife, Heather, were serving as Peace Corps volunteers in western China. After their Peace Corps service, Carl and Heather attended the annual month-long November Course at Kopan, Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s monastery in Kathmandu, where Carl learned about Maitripa College.
As a chaplain, Carl says, his work is “informed by my practice on a daily basis. The opportunity to develop a meditation practice with Yangsi Rinpoche is the foundation for engaging with the situations I encounter, and is what sustains me in doing this work.”
Carl is an important part of the Maitripa College community, teaching the Discovering Buddhism program and leading meditations and ceremonies for the community.
Yangsi Rinpoche leads us on a deep dive into understanding equanimity practice as it relates to generating compassion and bodhicitta. Is it easier to practice equanimity with strangers, or with our closest loved ones? Through a close look at the play of attachment, desire, and expectation, Rinpoche engages the Seattle Dharma Friendship Foundation Community in dialogue on the way we actually relate to equanimity, and a way to skillfully approach the practice of compassion and equanimity in our daily lives.
Recorded during his visit to Maitripa College in March, Geshe Kalsang Damdul shares personal stories and experiences from his own life, and relates them to lojong, or the Tibetan Buddhist psychological practice of mind training or thought transformation. With warmth and humor, Geshe-la recalls anecdotes about growing up in Tibet and in exile in India; his mischievous activities as a very “naughty boy” at the Tibetan Children’s Refugee School in Mussoorie; his later ordination and studies with some of the greatest Tibetan Buddhist masters of our time, including His Holiness the Dalai Lama; his life’s work at the Institute of Buddhist Dialectics in Dharamsala, and so on. Geshe-la recalls a life in exile with optimism and joy, showing us by example that even the greatest of adversities can be transformed into the path of Dharma.
In this second session of a two-part talk, Maitripa College visiting faculty member Roger Jackson, PhD, shines light on the continued relevance of the teachings of Tsongkhapa over centuries and across continents.
2019 marks the 600th anniversary of the passing of Tsongkhapa, one of the greatest figures in Tibetan Buddhist history, and is an appropriate occasion to examine his remarkable life and contribution to religion, philosophy, literature, and society.
Throughout the talk, Professor Jackson presents Tsongkhapa as a complex figure: the founder of the Geluk school who studied with masters of all the traditions of his era; a respected intellectual who also had a rich inner life; a prolific author and lecturer who spent as much time as he could in retreat; and a master very much of his own time and place who nevertheless remains relevant in our 21st century world.
In this first session of a two-part talk, Maitripa College visiting faculty member Roger Jackson, PhD, shines light on the continued relevance of the teachings of Tsongkhapa over centuries and across continents.
2019 marks the 600th anniversary of the passing of Tsongkhapa, one of the greatest figures in Tibetan Buddhist history, and is an appropriate occasion to examine his remarkable life and contribution to religion, philosophy, literature, and society.
Throughout the talk, Professor Jackson presents Tsongkhapa as a complex figure: the founder of the Geluk school who studied with masters of all the traditions of his era; a respected intellectual who also had a rich inner life; a prolific author and lecturer who spent as much time as he could in retreat; and a master very much of his own time and place who nevertheless remains relevant in our 21st century world.
In this teaching Yangsi Rinpoche gives clear advice on how to determine if meditation on emptiness practice is working, or just making you more grumpy! Included in this talk is insight into transforming negative emotions, and how the vajrayana path helps us go beyond the gross mind, to access the most subtle clear light mind- overcoming the tendency towards intolerance and self-grasping.
In a traditional presentation of the essence of the Buddhist path, with great humility Geshe-la shares his insights on how to be happy by stopping harm to others and learning to embrace them with compassion and loving-kindness. Interspersed with stories from his personal life, Geshe-la sheds light on a personal attempt at this simple but profound practice.
This episode of the Maitripa College Podcast, “A Talk about Karma”, features a teaching from Yangsi Rinpoche, Geshe Lharampa and President of Maitripa College. In our inaugural Podcast, Rinpoche gives a concise and inspiring explanation of the Buddhist view of karma. In clear, accessible language, Rinpoche gives advice on how to correctly apply this understanding and how to develop mindfulness of body, speech, and mind in our daily lives.