00:00:00,220 --> 00:00:36,180 [Speaker 0]
[mellow music] Welcome to Living Dharma, a podcast from the Tergar Institute. I'm Tsunma Kunsang Palmo, here with my co-host, Justin Kelly, as we explore what it means to bring Buddhist wisdom into everyday life. Each episode features conversations with practitioners, teachers, and change makers who are living the path in real, grounded, and inspiring ways. We're so glad you're here. 

00:00:36,180 --> 00:02:03,520 [Speaker 1]
[mellow music] Welcome back, everybody, for another episode of Living Dharma. Today, we're joined and honored to share a conversation with Jonathan Rose, an urban visionary, an author, philanthropist, and co-founder of the Garrison Institute. Jonathan's life and work sit at a rare and deeply generative intersection between real estate and ethics, city making and contemplation, inner transformation, collective responsibility. Throughout our conversation, we explore Jonathan's personal journey, his intellectual roots, his relationship with contemplative practice, and the lived experience of building institutions dedicated to the common good. We talk about cities as living systems, about mind and interdependence, about love, partnership, and the long arc of responsibility that comes with shaping the world we share. This is not a technical conversation. Instead, it's a heartfelt discussion. It's a spacious, reflective dialogue about how our inner life and outer life inform one another, about what it means to be within the moment, to evoke profound change, and to orient our lives towards something larger than ourselves. We're deeply grateful for Jonathan, for his generosity and clarity, his depth, and, uh, being with us today. So without further ado, our conversation. 

00:02:03,520 --> 00:02:30,920 [Speaker 0]
[mellow music] So hi, Jonathan. Thank you so much for, uh, spending some time with us today. Um, so I'd just like to dive right in with our first question for you. Um, I see you've got, you've got a podcast called The Common Good, and you're doing so much, um, in the world of Dharma. Could you share a little bit about what applying the Dharma in your life means to you?

00:02:32,320 --> 00:02:57,859 [Speaker 0]
 I think it means everything. [chuckles] So the, um-- so first of all, the Dharma is an amazing gift. It's a way of aspiring to see the world with wisdom and compassion. I, I know that I don't completely do that, but it's an aspiration, and, uh, you know, uh, people grow towards purpose the way trees grow towards light. Purpose, um, 

00:02:57,860 --> 00:03:54,299 [Speaker 2]
gives us a sense of direction, gives us a sense of meaning. And the Dharma gave me an amazing purpose, which is to relieve the suffering of all sentient beings. And I say one of the reasons why I think that purpose is so important is that we live in a very human-centric world, and the human-centric world has, um, has not been good to the earth, it's not been good to nature. You know, we see enormous species decline, and we see climate change, and, and, um, we have to shift our perspective from... And, and there's an enormous amount of human suffering that needs to be dealt with. This is not, not to deny the human suffering, but, uh, until we expand our consciousness to wish for the well-being and to act for the well-being of everything from the microbes in the soils to the elephants and the, you know, blue whales and, and the humans, too, um, 

00:03:54,300 --> 00:04:02,040 [Speaker 2]
we're not going to create a well-being society. So the Dharma, first of all, 

00:04:02,100 --> 00:04:11,740 [Speaker 2]
has somehow made more real this sense of all sentient beings than just the scientific sense would make it. 

00:04:11,800 --> 00:04:18,860 [Speaker 2]
And, and then, as I said, it, it, it gives us all a, an important mission, and 

00:04:18,860 --> 00:04:49,480 [Speaker 2]
you could imagine a society in which everybody adopted this mission. They don't have to call it Buddhist Dharma. They don't... They just, if everybody adopted the mission of relieving the suffering of all sentient beings, we could collectively get together and have eight billion forces for good, and how amazing the world would be. And so anyway, the bottom line is, um, although my day is filled with all kinds of practical things I must do, and there are things that are annoying and things that are delightful, but, uh, 

00:04:49,480 --> 00:05:00,100 [Speaker 2]
this larger sense of mission pervades it all. And I, uh, think about the mission every morning when I say my morning sadhanas. 

00:05:00,100 --> 00:05:27,600 [Speaker 1]
That's wonderful, Jonathan. Very inspiring to hear you say that. Um, I'm curious, too, there's so many obvious points of expression of this in your life. Before we get into that, I'd like to kind of dive in a little bit to who you are, you know, to orient our listeners. Could you say a few words about where this light and this purpose, this sense of purpose, initially emerged in you? Um- 

00:05:27,600 --> 00:06:37,420 [Speaker 2]
Yeah. So I, I am very lucky in that I grew up with s- several callings, not just one, lots of callings, but, uh, very powerful desires. Uh, when I was a child, I, uh, had a love of nature, and I had a real sense of humans harming nature and the sense of pollution and wanting to protect nature or to relieve the, you know, to r- relieve that pollution and suffering that we were causing. My mother was very involved in civil rights and voter registration, and, uh-... inner working with inner city children to teach them reading, and I had a great sense of social injustice and wanting to heal that. My father was a real estate developer, and, uh, he used to take me to visit the construction sites of the buildings he was building, and I loved the idea of building and the creative force. And, like, as a kid, he'd take me to a beach, and I'd build cities, you know, out of with sandcastles. And, and, um, I wanted to figure out how to put all those together, but there was no clear model when I was a child and as a-- even as a young person. So part of it was I had to figure that out. In my 

00:06:37,420 --> 00:06:49,540 [Speaker 2]
teens, then I had a, a particular spiritual experience and, uh, went to a high school, um, English teacher who, uh, just 

00:06:49,600 --> 00:07:11,680 [Speaker 2]
had strong spiritual instincts, and I asked him to explain it to me, and he told me that, um, only Buddhism would explain it to me. And he gave me, um, uh, the... I think it was the Seven Pillars of Zen, but anyway, a Zen book that I completely didn't understand. But, but at that m-moment, I said, "Okay, this is ultimately going to be the answer." Um, 

00:07:11,680 --> 00:07:46,880 [Speaker 2]
so there was a, just a lot of trying to figure out, and we-- I, I, by the way, looked in many different spiritual traditions. Uh, I was born in a Jewish family and felt I really needed to understand that more deeply and began studying with a great rabbi named Zalman Schachter. But I also did some Sufi things with Pir Vilayat Khan, and I looked at Hinduism. I looked-- You know, I explored all kinds of things that was something-- well, that part of my generation was doing in the sixties and seventies. And it was, um, you know, I can go through all the details, but essentially, slowly over time, I was able to 

00:07:46,960 --> 00:08:23,640 [Speaker 2]
begin to figure out how to put together my work in the world, these callings that I had. By the way, I had another calling, too, which was to be a record producer, and, uh, a part of my career in which I founded and ran a record label and, and, um, so music's been another part. So anyway, but this, um, you know, I think for all of us, uh, uh, you know, we don't-- [chuckles] we're not born figuring these things out, and our life journey is to figure them out. But when I, uh, and my wife and I met our guru, Galo Rinpoche, um, 

00:08:23,640 --> 00:08:33,260 [Speaker 2]
it, he-- we, and we really, you know, began to more seriously study the Dharma. It gave a framework that made it 

00:08:33,260 --> 00:08:39,160 [Speaker 2]
more cohe-- that, of coherence, that helped bring these pieces together. 

00:08:39,160 --> 00:09:03,800 [Speaker 1]
That's wonderful. I was gonna say, I wanna zoom in. Many people talk about this, this initial, I think you used the term spiritual experience, that gets us in touch with something. Could you take us back to that high school day where it happened and, and, and, and maybe dig in a little bit more to what it unlocked or what it evoked or insert whatever word you think is most appropriate? 

00:09:03,800 --> 00:09:34,460 [Speaker 2]
So it's a long... It, it was a complicated story. Um, I was out west, uh, uh, with a-- traveling with an extraordinary not-for-profit called the Cottonwood Gulch Foundation, which had a program for teens in which they would take us. We-- So we spent the first part of the summer in New Mexico, um, excavating Pueblo Indian ruins and sleeping out under the stars while we were doing that. 

00:09:34,460 --> 00:09:47,460 [Speaker 2]
One of the things I've, I've found is that, you know, when I camp out, if I, uh, the first few days, there's a kind of sense of apprehension, and then slowly you get to where 

00:09:47,520 --> 00:10:12,220 [Speaker 2]
the earth and the stars, and it's all, uh, this amazing protective realm. You lie in the ground, and you look up at this beautiful dome, black dome of sky and the stars, and you feel at peace with it and exhilarated by it. Anyway, so but also the excavating the Pueblo Indian ruins took us into deep history and deeper time and, and deeper cultures. And, um, 

00:10:12,220 --> 00:10:24,520 [Speaker 2]
so then from that, uh, we traveled north, and we were looking at, um... This is in the sixties, like nineteen sixty-five. We were looking at, um, 

00:10:24,520 --> 00:10:56,420 [Speaker 2]
the, the European Western expansion into the southern Colorado and the mines. So, uh, Telluride, which is today a, um, a ski resort, back then was a functioning mining town. And to make a long story short, um, we were in these old pickup trucks, and they broke down at the top of a pass, and I went down to get help. Uh, I was sent down at sunset, so everybody else stayed up there, and I did this walk with one other boy 

00:10:56,420 --> 00:11:10,280 [Speaker 2]
into the sunset. It was actually-- So theoretically, it was perilous. Here was all these people stuck at the top of this pass, and we were walking into town. Anyway, make a long story short, we arrived in Telluride 

00:11:10,280 --> 00:11:26,940 [Speaker 2]
in the middle of the night, and, um, the mine was going. It was like, uh, the, the arc lights and the noise and the big trucks, you know, mining, I don't know if it was coal or whatever ore they were mining out of it. 

00:11:26,940 --> 00:11:37,060 [Speaker 2]
And then, uh, so it was a long night, and I ended up back in the tents at the camp where we were, and having delivered the message that this group needed help. 

00:11:37,120 --> 00:11:41,460 [Speaker 2]
And then the next morning, um, 

00:11:41,460 --> 00:11:45,519 [Speaker 2]
I found myself by a, a stream, 

00:11:45,520 --> 00:12:05,079 [Speaker 2]
and, and all of a sudden-- and was sitting there just quietly by the stream, and then all of a sudden, I had a sense of complete oneness with it, that I was one with every blade of grass and every flower and every ripple in the stream. I can still see it completely, and, um, you know, that 

00:12:05,079 --> 00:12:30,383 [Speaker 2]
incredibly delicious sense of-... being alive with the aliveness in the world, but really having a dissolved self. So, you, you know, I'd been through a lot of stretching myself and challenges and probably not much sleep and a bunch of other things that took me to that state, but it was a pretty amazing state, and it gave me a sense of view of the oneness of the universe and, um, 

00:12:30,383 --> 00:12:38,284 [Speaker 2]
and a desire to experience that more and to understand what that was. 

00:12:38,284 --> 00:12:45,184 [Speaker 3]
Wow, that's so powerful, Jonathan. Thank you. Thank you so much for sharing that. Really, really beautiful. 

00:12:45,184 --> 00:12:49,093 [Speaker 2]
By the way, I've never described that in public before. 

00:12:49,093 --> 00:12:50,223 [Speaker 3]
[chuckles] Um. 

00:12:50,223 --> 00:12:51,603 [Speaker 1]
Thank you. 

00:12:51,603 --> 00:12:51,743 [Speaker 3]
Yeah. 

00:12:51,743 --> 00:12:54,483 [Speaker 1]
Very touching. 

00:12:54,483 --> 00:13:04,524 [Speaker 3]
And can you tell us a little bit how the Dharma has continued to, to shape how you approach your work? 

00:13:04,524 --> 00:13:34,204 [Speaker 2]
So first of all, I should describe my work. In nineteen eighty-nine-- So I joined the fam, my family business to learn the trade of real estate, and at the same... in nineteen seventy-six, and at the same time began to work, uh, with a wonderful community development organization in the Lower East Side, which is called the Education Alliance, which was building the, an old Jewish social service agency, a Jewish settlement house. But now the community was, although it still has some remaining Orthodox Jews in the neighborhood, it also had 

00:13:34,204 --> 00:14:21,064 [Speaker 2]
very diverse communities. And in the seventies, in the Lower East Side, it was a time of enormous abandonment and economic tribulation and drug dealing and danger and, um, poverty and, uh... So the Education Alliance was building, and because I was the real estate guy on their board, I oversaw this, this, um, housing for homeless families and homeless seniors and adult day health centers and centers for people with mental disabilities and people with physical disabilities and drug treatment centers and early childhood education. We built one of the very first, um, Head Start programs for, um, uh, 

00:14:21,144 --> 00:15:49,884 [Speaker 2]
you know, kindergartners in the country. And, um, so I was deeply involved in this work of low-income communities, and I reached a point at which I wanted to bring these two things together. So in nineteen eighty-nine, I started my own company as a for-profit, mission-focused company to repair the fabric of communities, and we started by, um, building low-income and mixed-income housing. We're one of the very first developers in America to be focused on green building, so we're integrating environmental solutions and social, health, and education, poverty solutions, all into development. And that company grew from just me and my secretary, from a two-person company, to now we're a hundred people and have nineteen thousand affordable housing units around the country and, uh, over five billion dollars worth of assets. So there, there's a mission, this dual environmental and social justice mission, um, actually called a triple environmental and social justice mission because there's environmental justice for the humans and environmental justice for the non-humans. Um, but that pervades my work and that, uh... So I am very blessed to be able to, you know, I work really hard. I work day and night on this, but the work is all for this benefit of all sentient beings, the best I, I can make it. Um, 

00:15:49,884 --> 00:16:00,784 [Speaker 2]
there's always challenges. There's, uh, there are-- It's interesting, I really don't like to call them trade-offs, but rather there's always so-- you know, 

00:16:00,784 --> 00:16:36,664 [Speaker 2]
there are constraints that, uh, you know, we, by the way, our work has to... We have a lot of investors. We have to make a return for the, uh, not only we have to make a return to satisfy our own investors, but we have to make a return in today's economic model. I'd love to see it change, but, um, that's what attracts capital, and if we're going to grow these solutions, and we are creating lots of good solutions, we, uh, they need to be profitable so that other people carry them out, too. At any rate, so there are, there are a lot, you know, there are a lot of challenges, but, uh, 

00:16:36,664 --> 00:16:40,723 [Speaker 2]
this core mission is the center of gravity of the work I do every day.

00:16:41,904 --> 00:17:24,824 [Speaker 2]
 Then additionally, uh, my wife and I, my wife, Deanne, and I were co-founders of the Garrison Institute, which is a whole other story I can tell you about. But that's a, uh, an organization, a not-for-profit, whose mission is to take the wisdom of all the world's contemplative traditions and apply it to the issues of civil society and the environment. So the bottom line is, I have constructed a life in which-- and anybody can do this, by the way, I really believe you just have to intend, you just have to want to do it or choose to do it. But I've created a life in which, um, there are many, many vehicles to express the Dharma and bring it into action in the world. 

00:17:24,824 --> 00:18:10,424 [Speaker 1]
That's really wonderful, Jonathan, and we really do want to talk about the Garrison Institute and more of your sustainable building projects. Um, so the, the, the nature of this podcast, right, Living Dharma, it's all about, and this is really what Rinpoche is most interested in: how do we apply the teachings within our daily lives? And sometimes that can seem like an abstract question, but we're really looking at it on a granular level to say, are there gestures, practices, ways of being that have supported you, right? You talked about that spark and the sense of purpose. So from however many years ago till now, are there practices that allow you to continue to sustain this sense of purpose, this alignment with the Dharma?

00:18:12,048 --> 00:18:50,408 [Speaker 2]
... Well, so the first thing is that every morning I say, you know, I've taken a bunch of initiations, made a bunch of commitments, and, um, and, um, and I have a bunch of sadhanas that I say. And sometimes I just say them, and sometimes I try and visualize them more deeply. So I'm better and worse at it. But, but here's what I know, that-- and I do this absolutely every morning, but sometimes there's just like something that I can't do it in the morning, and then I do it in the evening, but I do it every day before I go to bed. But if I haven't done it in the morning, 

00:18:50,408 --> 00:19:02,467 [Speaker 2]
that day is a janglier, more-- less coherent, more anxious day. There is something about the practices themselves 

00:19:02,527 --> 00:19:16,808 [Speaker 2]
that ground us, and the purpose of the practices is to remind us of the teachings. And they may or may not, and some, but often there'll be a line that'll just step out of a sadhana that'll like, 

00:19:16,808 --> 00:19:25,967 [Speaker 2]
uh, blink to me that morning and for me to, to think about a little more. Um, 

00:19:25,967 --> 00:19:47,207 [Speaker 2]
so anyway, my s-- uh, I, I guess I don't think this is very unusual. I would think that anybody who is, you know, seriously practicing the practices infuses their mind. That's the whole goal, that the practice is supposed to infuse our mind stream. The other thing is, you know, we live in this... uh, 

00:19:47,207 --> 00:20:39,368 [Speaker 2]
we live in a world that starting in the fourteen hundreds, the Europeans set out to physically colonize, to enslave, to take over lands that weren't theirs, to, uh, suck all the raw materials out of them, um, to exploit them for their own wealth. We now live in a world in which the tech companies, big and small, seek to colonize our minds, to do the same. And it's kind of interesting. It's a whole lot cheaper to colonize somebody's mind, and you don't have to, like, send in a military to take over their country and run their government and, and, you know, uh, you just take over their minds. And that is really the, the, the tech companies, I think, are quite explicit about it. They want to capture every bit of mind share that we have. Um, 

00:20:39,368 --> 00:21:24,947 [Speaker 2]
and they're doing that by promoting often anxiety and conflict and disturbance, and, uh, they're u-- they're using, uh, very effectively using the poisons. So one of the things is we know the Bodhidharma is to take the six poisons and turn them into six paramitas. The part is to recognize those poisons and to recognize, uh, when we're being triggered or they're being exacerbated in the outer world. Um, one of the things I love about the word mantra is mantra means mind protection. And just even that idea to remind us, we need to protect our minds. We need to protect our minds from these colonizing forces. 

00:21:24,947 --> 00:21:37,967 [Speaker 2]
To give us-- to ground us more in the paramitas so that we can act from a ground of, of the Dharma and from the ground of good. Um, 

00:21:37,967 --> 00:22:22,308 [Speaker 2]
so the Dharma is also a, a, a tool. It's a, it's a tool of protection. You know, in some of the Vajrayana practices, we create protection realms. We create, you know, pure land mandalas that have protection walls around them, um, uh, shells of protection. And, and, um, uh, my sense is to... So, um, I have a wonderful friend named Indy Johar, uh, who's a Sikh, uh, who's a very interesting thinker, and one of the things he's been talking about more recently is the need for us to be tender. And tenderness is a sense of 

00:22:22,828 --> 00:22:47,148 [Speaker 2]
pure, open-hearted sensitivity. Um, in a way, he's saying that that's one of the things that will define human intelligence from artificial intelligence, is our, our ability to be tender. And His Holiness the Dalai Lama talks about warm-heartedness. That quality, um, gets repressed when 

00:22:47,148 --> 00:22:51,648 [Speaker 2]
people or societies experience trauma. 

00:22:51,648 --> 00:23:08,007 [Speaker 2]
So we need to create-- anyway, we need to create protection zones from these colonizing onslaughts that are trying to colonize our minds from the trauma of the times. Um, 

00:23:08,007 --> 00:23:19,848 [Speaker 2]
and then within it, you know, as I say, cultivate that tenderness, and those are qualities that the, um, the Dharma practices help us develop. 

00:23:19,848 --> 00:23:46,447 [Speaker 0]
Um, this is really beautiful, and I have to say, I'm quite in awe of how you're able to function so well and create so much and, and you know, what I'm getting here is that you have a very deep practice. You know, the, the Dharma, it's really infusing what you, what you're doing. I'm just wondering, like, hearing you talk about the, the situation in such an honest and clear way, 

00:23:46,447 --> 00:24:06,547 [Speaker 0]
how do you stop yourself from feeling exasperated by the situation? How do you stay connected to this tender heart? You know, what is, what is it that supports you? Is it listening to Dharma? Is it your friends? Is it a relationship with Geshe Rinpoche? Like, what, what keeps you afloat when you're, when you're- 

00:24:06,547 --> 00:24:33,831 [Speaker 2]
It's a, it's a really good question. And by the way, this is all super imperfect, you know, and, and, um-... There, there are many, uh, frustrations. Well, you know, I think part of it is getting older. So I'm seventy-three years old, and I think that partly, you know, your hormones calm down as you get older, and you get wiser, and you have experience. Things that 

00:24:33,831 --> 00:24:53,610 [Speaker 2]
would unsettle me when I was younger, that I got through, I realize those same things are happening now. One way or another, we're gonna get through them. So, um, I think age actually helps. Um, Gelek Rinpoche passed away, I think, in two thousand and sixteen, and, um, 

00:24:53,611 --> 00:25:26,151 [Speaker 2]
although, uh, I-- particularly through the Garrison Institute and some other things, I have access to the most wonderful teachers and connections with the most wonderful teachers, but nothing like I did with my root guru. And, um, I still study his teachings, but, uh, I so wish he was here. I feel like, I feel like I'm a much better student than I was when he was alive, and I wish he was here for me to have some of the conversations we could have had. Uh, um, 

00:25:26,151 --> 00:26:31,672 [Speaker 2]
and although I feel this, the Three Jewels are the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha, and the Sangha is very important. Gelek Rinpoche was based in Ann Arbor. He used to come to New York when, during the early days, so we had an active New York Sangha, but then as his health got worse, he, he did that less and less. And, um, my life just doesn't take me to Michigan, to the Ann Arbor Sangha, which is really the center of the ongoing Jewel Heart Sangha. And so both my wife and I talk about the feeling that although we have many wonderful Dharma friends and, uh, um, we're, we're not part of an active, engaged Sangha, and for those who are, it's such a blessing. It's such a-- but there's an, there's all this amazing energy that flows through the Garrison Institute, and all these amazing teachers come, so we're, we're, we're part of a larger Sangha, but not that immediate Sangha. It's really wonderful. Um, 

00:26:31,672 --> 00:26:41,851 [Speaker 2]
these are complex and perilous times, and I think we just have to choose. You know, the-- one of the things about the Dharma is that, 

00:26:41,851 --> 00:26:55,992 [Speaker 2]
you know, every idea we're supposed to choose it, we're supposed to deeply examine it ourselves, decide whether it's true for ourselves, make a pers-- but we're not adopted by faith, but adopted by, by choice. And I think 

00:26:55,992 --> 00:27:56,371 [Speaker 2]
we all have this choice to be positive or negative, to be making the world a better place or not, to be, you know... Oh, I want to give, say one other thing. When I was, um, in my early twenties, I did something that many young people my age did, is I did the amazing overland trip from Istanbul into the Himalayas, across Asia. And I remember being at, um, arriving out of traveling in the middle of the winter through Iran and coming to western Afghanistan, to the city of Herat. And Herat, um, had been a great, uh, indigenous city, and then the Alexander the Great swept east all the way towards the border with India, and he destroyed the city, and he remade it as a, uh, as a Greek Alexandrian city. And then the Mughals swept west, and they 

00:27:56,371 --> 00:28:24,091 [Speaker 2]
pushed out the Greeks, and they destroyed the city, and they remade it. Anyway, there's this back and forth that's been going on and on and on, and after I was there, then the Russians came from the north and came down and destroyed Afghanistan and tried to remake it as a Russian place, and then, you know, the, the, the Americans came, and then, you know, the Talibans would come. But I-- what I remember is standing at the gates of, of Herat and thinking about these large sweeps of history 

00:28:24,091 --> 00:28:32,952 [Speaker 2]
and thinking about how proud and self-important, um, a prince or a king who had built it 

00:28:32,952 --> 00:29:08,331 [Speaker 2]
must have felt about his magnificent creations, only for fifty years later to have it completely destroyed by Alexander the Great, who must have thought he was like the king of the world, only to have, within a couple of generations of his death, it all destroyed again. And so I-- in, in that sweep of history, it-- so this was before I really began to study the Dharma, but I had this sense of, of the things we do can be important and seem important, but in a larger sweep of history, be entirely irrelevant. 

00:29:08,331 --> 00:29:18,971 [Speaker 2]
So with that mindset, there is so much for us to do now, and yet we need to do it and understand that 

00:29:18,972 --> 00:29:41,411 [Speaker 2]
we're hopefully planting the seeds, the DNA that will, you know, the seeds of karma, that will continue to grow and do goodness in the world, but then in the large sweep of history, they're likely to not, um, you know, uh, be full of sound and fury and signifying nothing. 

00:29:42,672 --> 00:29:45,371 [Speaker 1]
What a beautiful dance, Jonathan. 

00:29:45,371 --> 00:30:51,600 [Speaker 1]
That idea of like impact and irrelevance, you could say, and taking... You, you have a real vast mind, I'm noticing, and it's quite, quite remarkable that-- and I keep going back to that, that pinnacle moment that you described in Telluride, a place I've been many times in a very different way, [chuckles] skiing on those mountains and didn't have that sense of connection. So that's amazing. So let's-- I'd love to zoom in on the Garrison Institute. This is a place that is obviously very dear to our hearts in Rinpoche's Mandala. A-and selfishly, I want to share with you, I've never had a chance, um-... two pinnacle moments in my own life, one before I was born, and then one after. Before, my parents were married at the Garrison Institute, long ago, before it was the Garrison Institute. Um, so it's always had this place, and so Garrison, New York, has been spoken about in my family with a caveat that the reason they were married there is it was the only Catholic church that would marry them outside in nineteen sixty-- nineteen sixty-nine when they were married. Um- 

00:30:51,600 --> 00:30:53,660 [Speaker 2]
That's amazing. 

00:30:53,660 --> 00:31:21,300 [Speaker 1]
Yeah. Now, fast-forward to two thousand and five, Mingyur Rinpoche was there teaching over July fourth weekend, and that was the first time I met him. So it has this continuity, and I know many others hold it so dear, including Rinpoche. It's been seminal in his development. So, uh, first off, thanks. [chuckles] Secondly, uh, we'd love to hear a little bit about that process and the place Garrison Institute holds in the greater 

00:31:21,360 --> 00:31:23,660 [Speaker 1]
mandala, worldly mandala. 

00:31:23,660 --> 00:31:35,879 [Speaker 2]
So first of all, we would love for Mingyur Rinpoche to come back. He has not come back for some time. We'd love for him to come back and teach, come back and visit, come back in any way. We would love for him to be there again. 

00:31:35,879 --> 00:31:39,840 [Speaker 1]
Thank you. We will pass that message on to the Rinpoche. 

00:31:39,840 --> 00:31:57,780 [Speaker 2]
So, um, my wife, Deanna Rose, became the executive director of Jewel Heart, Gela Rinpoche's sangha. And, um, uh, we were al-- and, and it was growing wonderfully, and we're always looking for a bigger building in Ann Arbor and, um, and a retreat center. 

00:31:57,780 --> 00:32:44,420 [Speaker 2]
So it's a little side note. There was a, in the nine-- early nine-- like, in the nineteen sixty, nineteen twenties, the early nineteens, there was this thriving artistic scene in Greenwich Village, and this couple met, and they, um, out of this whole creative thing, and they created the Reader's Digest, which is one of the most-- you would never think it was coming out of Greenwich Village, out of this hip scene. But anyway, and they never had children, and they created this vast empire, this most popular magazine in the world. It was sold all over the world, and when they died, they left all the money and all their interest in the Reader's Digest to two not-for-profits, whose mission was to buy land up and down the Hudson River Valley and preserve it. 

00:32:44,420 --> 00:32:54,659 [Speaker 2]
And, um, so the Open Spaces Student Scenic Hudson have done a fantastic job of preserving nature all around the Hudson River Valley. 

00:32:54,659 --> 00:33:43,000 [Speaker 2]
And as part of that process, they were trying to connect the Garrison Institute, I'm sorry, the Garrison train station to the Appalachian Trail, uh, which floats, uh, a very important hiking trail that goes up and down the whole East Coast. And the missing link was the parcel of land that happened to have this monastery on it. And their boards, they had a mission which said that whenever they bought land that came with a building, they had to give the building a not-for-profit. To make a long story short, they couldn't find a not-for-profit who wanted this old monastery, and so they asked me if I knew of any. I mean, I asked Deanna, and Deanna said this would be a perfect retreat center for Gela Rinpoche. And we brought Gela Rinpoche and Philip Glass and a couple of others there, and everybody said, "This is a great idea." And, um, 

00:33:43,000 --> 00:35:10,400 [Speaker 2]
then, um, uh, Gela Rinpoche-- uh, then all these complexities came up, and, uh, I won't go into them all, but anyway, we were not able-- we in the Open Space Institute were not able to purchase it for a while. And, uh, Gela Rinpoche asked His Holiness the Dalai Lama, who asked his oracle, um, and we don't know exactly who the oracle is, but it might have been Khandro-la, who just came to the Garrison Institute this summer. And anyway, uh, the oracle said that eventually, uh, Jewel Heart would get a retreat center, but it would be in Michigan, and then after that, we would get the Garrison build or the monastery to make the Garrison Institute. But His, um, His Holiness said the world doesn't need more Buddhist retreat centers. What it needs is a center that takes the wisdom of all the world's contemplative traditions and applies it to the issues of civil society and the environment. So our mission came from him, and then Deanna was able to really... I was busy with my work, so really, Deanna, we talked a lot, but Deanna really led this whole effort to think about what does that mean and to visit retreat centers around the country. And we-- what was interesting is that so all this conflict, legal fights and political fights about the future of this building, and we had faith that we were gonna get it. So Deanna very-- was able to very methodically kind of 

00:35:10,460 --> 00:35:58,260 [Speaker 2]
continue to unfold and hold convenings on what the vision might be, and then all the obstacles disappeared, and the Open Space Institute bought the land and gave us the building, and we spent a year renovating it, and we opened with this mission that came from His Holiness. So here we are now, twenty, uh, two years later, and what the institute does is, first of all, we hold retreats of all contemplative faiths. So many different Buddhist ones, uh, you know, from, uh, Himalayan Vajrayana to Zen to Theravada, and then, but also Jewish and Christian and occasionally Sufi and, um, and Hindu, and, uh, we, um, 

00:35:58,260 --> 00:36:47,284 [Speaker 2]
and we pref-- we try to be a place-- there are many places where one can get of an introductory weekend to meditation. We deeply believe in lineage, traditions, and we, um, we focus more on retreats that are-- that can be longer and deeper. We feel like in the whole ecosystem of retreat world, um, that's our center of gravity.... And then we work very intentionally to take these ideas and apply them in the world. So, for example, in the very first retreats, [clears throat] my wife, Deanna, observed that many of the people who were coming on these retreats were burnt-out frontline workers in hospital emergency rooms and social service centers. 

00:36:47,284 --> 00:38:01,584 [Speaker 2]
And then she and Sharon Salzberg, uh, uh, got-- co-created a program, uh, called Contemplative Based Resilience Training. So another thing, we, through that whole digestion process, we decided that all of our programs would have a foot in contemplative practice, a foot in science, which, by the way, is a thing that we were also very active in Mind and Life Institute and going to, um, uh, these annual retreats with His Holiness in Dharamsala. And, um, that's where I first met Mingyur Rinpoche. He was one of those young monks, uh, that His Holiness had brought to hear the Mind and Life dialogues. And, um, a foot in contemplative practice, a foot in science, and a foot in applica-- real application in the world. And so putting those elements together, Deanna and Sharon created this thing called Contemplative Based Resilience Training, which is a training to help, and it uses meditation and yoga because trauma is embodied in a whole variety of components that they worked out, both science and spiritually based. It's very effective in helping people either protect themselves from the trauma of being on the front lines or 

00:38:01,584 --> 00:38:48,784 [Speaker 2]
help resolve it when they've had it. And this work has now been done, uh, all over the world, in Africa, with aid workers dealing with the Boko Haram, and in Jordan, with aid workers coming out of Syria, and in inner-city domestic violence shelters in New York, and, um, and it continues to this day. So that's an example of taking the wisdom of the Dharma and applying it to a real suffering population in the world. [sniffs] Um, amongst the things we're doing today, we realized that there are many social action, social justice organizations that have a spiritual foundation. Okay, so we have another theory of change, again, which Deanna created and her team, which is to identify an emerging trend, develop a hypothesis about it, 

00:38:48,784 --> 00:39:01,844 [Speaker 2]
map it, understand who all the key players are, convene them, bring them together, and when you publish the map, people go, "Oh, my God! Like, I'm part of something so much larger." Then in fact, they see the sangha of that work, 

00:39:01,844 --> 00:39:22,584 [Speaker 2]
uh, convene it, and then out of that comes all kinds of exciting projects. So, um, we've done a mapping recently of, uh, spirituality and social justice, and we found over six hundred organizations in the United States that are using spirituality and contemplative practice as a key part of their social justice and social action work. 

00:39:23,264 --> 00:39:52,564 [Speaker 2]
And now we're working towards convening a key bunch of those leaders, and we think there's a-- So when you give something a name and you give it credibility and you show its efficacy, it grows its own power. All of a sudden, there's a field that donors can identify. "Oh, we're contributing to the spirituality and social justice field." You can grow funding support, you can grow cross-collaboration of ideas. So we have an, an emerging program in spirituality and social justice. 

00:39:52,624 --> 00:40:26,804 [Speaker 2]
[clears throat] We look-- we-- I, I wrote a paper called Metaeconomics, which is about how do we reimagine an economic system that would be more environmentally and socially just, and help, as many of the drivers of the problems we're facing today come from the current economic system. So we have to reimagine the system. Um, but the old economic system is taught in business schools. As a matter of fact, there used to actually be a more compassionate kind of community-focused capitalism in America 

00:40:26,804 --> 00:40:49,004 [Speaker 2]
after World War II, in the early '50s, that, uh, it was the business schools that came out and said, "You can't be so philanthropic to your communities. You can't give lifetime employment to your people," which many companies did before then. "What mat-- You have a moral responsibility just to create shareholder value." 

00:40:49,004 --> 00:40:55,584 [Speaker 2]
So the multiple focus got turned into a single focus. So anyway, business schools are this amazing leverage point. 

00:40:55,584 --> 00:42:05,964 [Speaker 2]
So what we've discovered is that there are all kinds of amazing professors in business schools who are now bringing meditation and other contemplative practices into their work, trying to open the hearts of their students and see business from a more holistic, purpose-focused perspective that I started this podcast with. And again, they are feeling isolated, so we're doing-- we're just completing a mapping of those, and there'll be a convening in February, though. So we're applying this process now of how can we transform business school education? We are working in our own Mid-Hudson River Valley. Uh, when you bring these ideas of how do you transform the environment together? How do you transform the economy together? How do you transform, um, uh, social care? And we've also done work at the Garrison Institute in contemplation education. Might we weave these all together? And, uh, and we're bringing this idea that it's coming from many places called creating regenerative circular bio regions. So we're just launching a project now to try and bring these ideas all together and create a-- help 

00:42:05,964 --> 00:42:16,184 [Speaker 2]
bring together the elements to allow the emergence of a regenerative circular bio region in the Mid-Hudson Valley. Um, 

00:42:16,184 --> 00:42:45,204 [Speaker 2]
uh, we have another-- uh, we've noticed that from an environmental point of view, that you can be intellectually environmentalist, but, uh, when you really connect with nature, as I did in my teens, it gives you a whole other sense of motivation for the-... protection of all sentient beings, um, that there's an emerging field of earth-based contemplative practices, of forest bathing, of meditating in nature, of li- 

00:42:45,204 --> 00:42:47,024 [Speaker 2]
listening 

00:42:47,024 --> 00:43:06,964 [Speaker 2]
to the earth in different ways. And so we've done a mapping of those and a convening of those, and so that's another element. So, uh, these are some of the programs that the Garrison Institute is now doing, all grounded in what I'd call a universal dharma. Um, not-- 

00:43:06,964 --> 00:43:22,423 [Speaker 2]
for obviously, for many of us, deeply informed by Buddhism, but many of the people involved in the institute are not Buddhists. Informed by their own spiritual journeys, um, to apply these ideas to relieve the suffering of the world.

00:43:24,324 --> 00:43:57,443 [Speaker 2]
 That's amazing. [chuckles] Every one of those, Jonathan, I think part of our institute, the Tergar Institute, is the sponsor of this podcast, and part of our course of study is what we call our Social Impact Project program. And really, um, looking at kind of topics such as what you've outlined, marginalized communities, eco-- like ecological, um, interventions and so on and so forth. So that's, that's just really valuable for us to hear. I don't know, Kunsang, do you want to dig into one of those? Or how, how-- there's a lot of possible avenues now. 

00:43:57,444 --> 00:44:02,104 [Speaker 3]
Yeah, I, I think continue, continue, Justin. Yeah, um- 

00:44:02,104 --> 00:44:09,944 [Speaker 1]
I think this maybe even like a theoretical question, Jonathan, but that's okay. Like, around this idea of mapping 

00:44:09,944 --> 00:44:35,724 [Speaker 1]
and like, uh, because oftentimes what, what we find and what we work with our students is the balance between that vast view and the granule application. Because if we don't have an action step, as you probably, as you embody, if you don't have an action step, it's difficult to move. Uh, could you talk about that relationship, that vast mapping, and then the support of interventions, for lack of a better word? 

00:44:35,724 --> 00:44:39,784 [Speaker 2]
Right. So the mapping 

00:44:39,784 --> 00:45:28,604 [Speaker 2]
is of real organizations doing real things from a spiritual point of view. And this is interesting because there are lots of... Um, I'm seeing a proliferation of, of people who want to make the world a better place and have lots of great ideas about it and theories about it. Um, you know, one of the things, one of the tests I always hold myself to, I speak very idealistically. I give lots of speeches in the affordable housing world and the urban renewal world and community development worlds, and so I'm doing that all the time. And one of, and one of the things I hold myself to is that anything I say that we should do, I should do. Like, you know, if I say, "This is how we're gonna make the world a better place," I got to be able to try and figure out how to do it myself. There's a lot of 

00:45:28,663 --> 00:45:44,064 [Speaker 2]
wonderful, I would say, earth-based justice movements and social movements, and I would just recommend that, you know, you have to-- they just hold themselves to the test of, "Okay, what am I gonna, what am I gonna actually do? How am I gonna actually 

00:45:44,064 --> 00:45:56,564 [Speaker 2]
apply this and relieve suffering?" I think we do need, um, I know we need new mental models, and the Dharma is about creating a new mental model. Um, 

00:45:56,564 --> 00:46:11,044 [Speaker 2]
and remember, the Dharma has within it absolute reality and relative reality, and I think it's really important to try and aspire to understand absolute reality, but to apply that wisdom to relative reality. Um, 

00:46:11,044 --> 00:46:11,624 [Speaker 2]
at any rate- 

00:46:11,624 --> 00:46:12,804 [Speaker 1]
I couldn't agree more. 

00:46:12,804 --> 00:46:16,224 [Speaker 2]
So, uh, 

00:46:16,224 --> 00:46:20,344 [Speaker 2]
you know, one of the things that really grounds me in my daily work 

00:46:20,344 --> 00:46:28,964 [Speaker 2]
in affordable housing and community development is, is, you know, um, we 

00:46:29,024 --> 00:46:39,344 [Speaker 2]
house like thirty-five thousand real people, and meeting them and just understanding the struggles and their needs, the systemic 

00:46:39,404 --> 00:46:47,203 [Speaker 2]
personal issues, but also the larger systemic issues that they face, and trying to understand 

00:46:47,204 --> 00:46:54,444 [Speaker 2]
how we might, might, how we might help heal those. Um, 

00:46:54,444 --> 00:47:08,704 [Speaker 2]
so anyway, I think having real people and real species in mind is a very helpful way to try and ground. Um, but we also need, uh, the current system, 

00:47:08,704 --> 00:47:43,844 [Speaker 2]
the world we, we're seeing today with all its opportunities, but all the sufferings, the environmental pollution, the social injustices, the great inequalities, the sufferings that we're seeing are the outcome of the system design. So we have to be thinking about how to redesign the system, and by understanding more granularly, the actual stuff, conditions on the ground, um, help us do that. I can tell you a great story about this. I'm blanking the name of the guy, but there was a, uh, there was a great leader of, um, Unilever, this big company- 

00:47:43,844 --> 00:47:44,304 [Speaker 1]
Sure. 

00:47:44,304 --> 00:48:48,984 [Speaker 2]
Company. I'm blanking his name right now, but a, a generation ago. And anyway, Unilever, um, the South Asian, uh, branch of Unilever, held a retreat to try and figure out how could they better help the world. And as part of the retreat, they all went and spent a week or something like that with Mother Teresa, working with her. And in that process, one of the things they learned is the most powerful tool against disease is soap. That simply washing your hands with soap, you know, prevented dysentery, prevented all kinds of suffering. So they went back, and they thought about it, and they invented the one rupee bar of soap. Uh, and the one rupee bar of soap is like, you know, if you ever have been to, like, a really cheap motel, they're these tiny bars of soap. It was like that. But what it meant was that-... a very poor person could afford to buy it, and a little tea shop in the middle of, you know, rural areas of India and Asia could afford to stock some and sell them. 

00:48:48,984 --> 00:48:56,344 [Speaker 2]
And then out of that, it was so successful, they did a little one rupee bottle of shampoo and some other items. But anyway, the bottom line is, 

00:48:56,344 --> 00:49:19,244 [Speaker 2]
in the first year, they sold a billion dollars worth of one rupee bars of soap because, uh, they all of a sudden made soap available. It was profitable, it was good business, it-- but it was motivated-- the motivation was, how do we help solve a problem? And it did provide enormous health benefits to these families. 

00:49:19,244 --> 00:49:37,384 [Speaker 2]
Um, so to me, that's an example of grounding yourself-- using the current system, but grounding yourself in the suffering of the world, understanding it, and then trying to come up with how can you do something, uh, that could be transformational within it. 

00:49:38,124 --> 00:50:13,094 [Speaker 1]
There's so many pieces to pick up on, and, uh, one I want to highlight, Jonathan, is a resonance with Mingyur Rinpoche, right? As you well know, and many Tibetan teachers do, he framed his teachings through view, meditation, and application. And oftentimes, we can think about that as a linear progression, and he's really quite illustrative in saying, "No, it's a matrix," and at times, the application informs the view just as much as the vice versa, which is kind of what I'm hearing you say. The systems change, the, the mental models are important, but it's from the ground up. I think it's just a, yeah, part of you illustrating it. 

00:50:13,094 --> 00:50:21,003 [Speaker 2]
Well, we need the view to be able to... Remember, the view is asking us to more 

00:50:21,004 --> 00:50:40,904 [Speaker 2]
openly see the suffering, understand the nature of the suffering, the cause of suffering, and, um, so it's interesting in the dharmas, and its relief is by a transformed view. So the Dharma doesn't say soap is the relief of suffering. The Dharma says that, you know, enlightenment is the relief of suffering. 

00:50:40,904 --> 00:50:41,444 [Speaker 1]
Yeah. 

00:50:41,444 --> 00:50:51,064 [Speaker 2]
And, and I believe that, but I do believe that along the way, soap and affordable housing and good schools and kindness and 

00:50:51,064 --> 00:50:57,283 [Speaker 2]
relief of trauma and all those things, certain contribute and help 

00:50:57,344 --> 00:51:10,124 [Speaker 2]
create the state of mind and the state of society, um, that, uh, then allows the Dharma to flourish more. 

00:51:10,124 --> 00:51:31,164 [Speaker 1]
So, Jonathan, y-y-you've composed a really well-known and renowned book entitled The, The Well-Tempered City, and you're bringing to this idea of urbanization and building really progressive ideas. Um, I don't know how many of our readers will have read that book. Could you, could you overview a little bit about the theory in that book and maybe the process in writing it? 

00:51:31,164 --> 00:55:05,096 [Speaker 2]
Sure. The process in writing it has been all my life, and it's been a process of, um, trying to integrate all kinds of ideas. So let me back up. Bach wrote an amazing piece of music called The Well-Tempered Clavier. So I'm going to step back literally even a little bit more. So Pythagoras came up with this idea. He came up with this amazing observation that the distance, the ratio, the distance between the planets was the same as the ratio of the distance between the notes on a lyre. And, um, in fact, this ratio, uh, which we call the golden ratio, is the ratio that appears throughout much of nature. It's the same as the ratio in conch shells and many... the way leaves form on trees and, and, uh, by the way, it's also the same ratio as the ring, the, the rings of electrons around an atom are the same ratio of distance from one to the other as they are the planets around the sun. So it's a pretty good observation. So he said that therefore, for music to be really correct, it has to be-- all the notes had to be tuned in this ratio. The problem with that was that music has keys, and each you could tune your music in one key in that ratio, but if you tune music in another key in that ratio, uh, it's-- put them together, they sounded horrible. So if you think about Gregorian chants, for example, they're all in single key and kind of single notes sung together. Okay, so this became, as music became more complex in the fifteen, sixteen hundreds, this became a bigger problem. A guy in China figured this out. A mathematician figured out how to do a tuning system. It was kind of in between the notes. That came through the Silk Road, came into Germany, and then, uh, and a, a German, um, musician, mathematician, uh, kind of came up with a new series of scales called well temperament, uh, and those came out in the eighteen-- in sixteen eighties. And Bach said, "Wow, this is amazing!" All of a sudden, so Bach, who was a deeply spiritual person and in effect, was trying to map the universe, um, through music on Earth, all of a sudden had this vast range of tools available to him. All of a sudden, he could integrate all these keys. To show how to do that, he wrote... Meanwhile, a new instrument had been invented called the clavier, which is the forerunner to the piano. So he said, "Well, I got this new instrument, and I got this new way of tuning," and he created this thing called The Well-Tempered Clavier. He ultimately wrote two versions of it, um, that could, uh, integrate, you know, that could show how music could integrate these vast harmonies. And it's an amazing piece of music. And as I was writing, I was listening to it, and it became an, an image for me that the clavier was a new hardware and the temperament was a new software, and they were-- they took us from a linear world to an integrative world that reflect the spiritual nature. And therefore, should we do this with our cities? Think about how we could integrate new hardwares and softwares and, um-... and, uh, integrate these to create cities, uh, to make the world a better, better places. So that became the underlying theme for the book. And the book has both aspirational and I think has lots of wisdom in it, but it also has lots of practical examples. So 

00:55:05,096 --> 00:55:27,556 [Speaker 2]
in two thousand and seventeen, I-- oh, so remember I first went to the Himalayas in nineteen seventy-four, uh, on that trip that I went across Asia, and I've returned many times since. My wife and I went to Ladakh on our honeymoon in nineteen eighty-six. In nineteen eighty-two, I went to Bhutan. Anyway, so two thousand and seventeen, 

00:55:27,556 --> 00:55:32,136 [Speaker 2]
my wife and I go to, um, Bhutan, 

00:55:32,136 --> 00:56:04,276 [Speaker 2]
and I bring a copy of the book, and I give it to a guy who says he can give it to the King of Bhutan. Turns out the King of Bhutan wasn't in Bhutan, he was in Singapore on vacation. And while he was on vacation, he went into a bookstore, and in the bookstore, he came across the book and started-- bought it and started reading it. And he called his secretary and said, "Uh, I want this guy who wrote this book to help advise me on my cities." And the secretary said, "That's funny, this guy is in Bhutan looking for you." So the king and I met, and, um, 

00:56:04,276 --> 00:56:37,856 [Speaker 2]
uh, I began to work with him on the redesign of his capital city, Thimphu. And meanwhile, I knew I needed an urban planner to work with me, and I have a friend who is deeply interested in the Dharma, who lived in London, who is an urban planner, who had built an extraordinary school in Ladakh, um, the White Rook Academy School. Very green, very beautiful, very Himalayan in design. And so I, uh, invited him to join me. He and I met, 

00:56:37,856 --> 00:58:31,276 [Speaker 2]
mm, because a long time ago, because his name is also Jonathan Rose. And so the two Jonathan Roses began to work with His Majesty, the King, and the, the government of Bhutan, uh, in Bhutan. And so, uh, and we started calling it a well-tempered Thimphu, that we've now-- so we ended up, uh, working with amazing young planners and, um, uh, uh, and the whole planning team in the Bhutanese government and did a master plan for, um, the capital city of Bhutan. And s-- there are, uh, many cases, the whole idea was that the book would inspire practical implementation, and there are cases to little bits all over the world, but this is the one case where there's actually now the, the ideas in the, uh, in the book and contemporary city planning ideas, along with, um, uh, Bhutan's wonderful idea of gross national happiness, and one other idea called donut economics, which I'll describe in a second. We've integrated it all into this plan. When I first met His Majesty and Her Majesty, he told me the other book he'd read recently that really struck him was Kate Raworth's Doughnut Economics, which is a book, a beautiful book about economics, but essentially what it says is we need just enough prosperity to take care of the social foundation so that everybody has a safe place to live in, a great school, and good healthcare and food and all those things, but not so much that we're destroying the earth and the environment. And, um, so we integrated her views about, uh, the, the doughnut, which is social foundations and living within our means, and gross national happiness as frameworks to think through this plan also. 

00:58:31,336 --> 00:58:55,236 [Speaker 0]
Wonderful. Thank you so much, Jonathan. Thank you. So just thinking of the future of Buddhism in the twenty-first century, you know, we can see soci-societies becoming more global, digital, everything is faster, more pressured. How do you envision Buddhism evolving to meet the needs of twenty-first century? 

00:58:55,236 --> 00:59:01,256 [Speaker 2]
Well, it already is. So what's, uh, what's interesting is 

00:59:01,256 --> 00:59:24,636 [Speaker 2]
so Mingyur Rinpoche and his brothers, who have become great teachers in the West, uh, in, um, in that same trip in, uh, Bhutan, Diane and I met an extraordinary teacher, His Eminence, Gyalwa Dokhampa, who's a Kagyu Drupa teacher, um, and many, uh, Rinpoches of this generation now 

00:59:24,636 --> 00:59:36,696 [Speaker 2]
who really understand the West and are understanding how to teach to the West. Um, I think you know that Sobhi Rinpoche has done a lot of work kind of analyzing what are the 

00:59:36,696 --> 00:59:48,196 [Speaker 2]
psychological traumas and the psychological conditions of the West to think that it really needs different kind of teaching because we have different kinds of sufferings. Um, 

00:59:48,196 --> 00:59:54,256 [Speaker 2]
so there's this amazing range of, of, of teachers who are now 

00:59:54,256 --> 01:00:40,536 [Speaker 2]
teaching Dharma to the West. The West is also extremely receptive. Um, so one of the things I didn't say is that, you know, remember I told you there's a bunch of political conflict about the Garrison Institute, and the people who opposed us getting the buildings said, "You know, the streets of Garrison will be filled with, uh, orange, uh, robed monks, and they're gonna change our culture." And Buddhism is thought of as kind of an esoteric and perhaps strange thing. Now, and I find that everybody wants to be a Buddhist these days. Even people who aren't Buddhist, they kind of like talk like Buddhists, or they wanna, anyway. Uh, so there, there's a tremendous acceptance of Buddhism now, and I think Buddhism is seen as, um, 

01:00:40,536 --> 01:01:03,024 [Speaker 2]
s- spiritually neutral territory. His Holiness the Dalai Lama, has done an enormous job in expanding the space in which the many different flares of Buddhism have-... can unfold. Also, Thich Nhat Hanh has done an incredible job of, of connecting the idea of Buddhism with really active peacemaking. And, um, 

01:01:03,024 --> 01:01:08,504 [Speaker 2]
so I, I-- my sense is the West is extremely 

01:01:08,504 --> 01:01:24,384 [Speaker 2]
eager, not only receptive to, but hungering for the message of the Dharma, and at the same time, is being met with these wonderful teachers of whom Mingyur Rinpoche is just in a total exemplar. Um, 

01:01:24,384 --> 01:01:31,584 [Speaker 2]
uh, teachers who are, uh, ready to meet this challenge. So I see 

01:01:31,584 --> 01:01:34,324 [Speaker 2]
the flowering of Buddhism. 

01:01:34,324 --> 01:01:51,964 [Speaker 2]
There's also the threat of its dilution, and, um, I see there are many benefits to mindfulness, but mindfulness without the Dharma, without the morality of the Six Paramitas, is, um, 

01:01:51,964 --> 01:01:57,894 [Speaker 2]
helpful but insufficient. Um... 

01:01:57,894 --> 01:02:44,344 [Speaker 1]
Jonathan, I just want to follow up on that, that piece. I, I, I really in, uh, appreciate, um, your, yeah, the flowering that you're witnessing. In the back of my mind, and I've talked about this with some colleagues, I have a fear that I'd love to hear your thoughts about. I have a fear that there's a crest of a wave, and that wave is cresting, and that wave is the appreciation for Buddhism in the contemporary West, and some more frequent pushback from other religious traditions, particularly in North America, religious traditions, political forces that we're kind of in this era of appreciation, and that might end sooner than we anticipate. Tell me I'm wrong. 

01:02:44,344 --> 01:02:45,184 [Speaker 2]
You're wrong. 

01:02:45,184 --> 01:02:48,984 [Speaker 1]
Tell me that this is gonna continue, and, and share a bit why. 

01:02:48,984 --> 01:03:01,584 [Speaker 2]
So, first of all, I want to go back to the founding of the Garrison Institute, in which His Holiness said: "You want to take the wisdom of all the world's contemplative traditions." So the, um, 

01:03:01,584 --> 01:03:23,944 [Speaker 2]
we worked, uh, with this extraordinary Catholic monk named Father Thomas Keating, and, uh, now with, uh, a student of his who's much more than a student in, in her own right, uh, Cynthia Bourgeault. So within the Christian traditions, I mean, the, the principles of Catholic social justice are amazing. Uh, so, um, 

01:03:23,944 --> 01:03:33,204 [Speaker 2]
you know, maybe these ideas of, uh, an expanded whole systems consciousness that is grounded in, um, 

01:03:33,264 --> 01:03:56,384 [Speaker 2]
uh, warm-hearted tenderness for the, uh, the nature of the world and a desire to relieve its suffering, and using spirituality as a path forward, that can flourish in all kinds of traditions. It doesn't have to just be... You know, in effect, it doesn't just have to be the Buddhist Dharma, and my instinct is even the Buddha would have said that. And 

01:03:56,384 --> 01:04:10,044 [Speaker 2]
so, first of all, let's work for all that, all these traditions to flourish. They're not in opposition. And then, but I still think there's a lot of people, um, 

01:04:10,044 --> 01:04:14,944 [Speaker 2]
who feel like the, the 

01:04:14,944 --> 01:04:32,224 [Speaker 2]
Judeo-Christian traditions are not speaking to them and, uh, uh, to whom Buddhism does speak to them. So I don't see-- I don't, I don't think we're at a peak. I think there's far more growth to go. 

01:04:32,224 --> 01:04:37,264 [Speaker 1]
Wonderful. I'm, I'm with you, Jonathan. I hope that's so. May it be so. 

01:04:37,264 --> 01:04:40,544 [Speaker 2]
Well, you see, here's the thing. Now we can make it so. 

01:04:40,544 --> 01:04:41,304 [Speaker 1]
Yeah. 

01:04:41,304 --> 01:04:46,764 [Speaker 2]
And, and so there are two things that are important that in a way 

01:04:46,764 --> 01:05:16,924 [Speaker 2]
are reflected by the images that Justin and Kunzang, you present to me in this video. So, Kunzang, you're in robes, and we need people who are mining the depths of the Dharma, and, I mean, I have a sense that you're doing a lot of practical work in the world, too, but we need, we need monastics and deep contem- contemplatives, and we need people to immerse themselves to, a- as deeply as they can. We need, we need, 

01:05:16,924 --> 01:05:33,684 [Speaker 2]
we need, uh, more great masters. You know, may, may we never run out of-- every generation needs its masters. And Justin, you're dressed in, in lay clothes, and we need people then to apply this work in the world. So we need both. 

01:05:33,684 --> 01:05:47,804 [Speaker 1]
Fantastic, Jonathan. Yeah, it's such a, such a pleasure to be with you. I, I, I think that's a lovely way to bring closure, and I'm also open if you have anything else you'd like to share. 

01:05:47,804 --> 01:05:55,123 [Speaker 2]
Um, no, um, I think I'm said everything. Uh, I, I think I've said more than enough. 

01:05:55,184 --> 01:06:09,784 [Speaker 2]
One of the things I'd love to hear, and you can include this or not include this, so I'd love to hear more about Mingyur Rinpoche's vision for the Dharma and the application of the Dharma in, in the world. 

01:06:09,784 --> 01:06:20,064 [Speaker 0]
Yeah, his, his vision is vast, and his energy is unstoppable. Um, 

01:06:20,064 --> 01:06:26,084 [Speaker 0]
I mean, you were talking earlier about how our teachers are able to really understand what, 

01:06:26,084 --> 01:07:52,528 [Speaker 0]
what, what they see that we need in the West. And so Mingyur Rinpoche is really about, um... You know, you'll have listened to a lot of his teachings. He really brings the essence of the teachings. [clears throat] He's so skillful at [clears throat] the essence of the practice, really grounding what it is, what it is that really we need. And so his, his whole mission, or a part of his mission, is to share the Dharma-... with people who wouldn't normally have access to it. And, uh, so we have a meditation teacher program, EMTP, where people are, um, becoming, um, very proficient in his style of practice, his style of meditation, and really able to present a meditation that you can practice anywhere, anytime. Um, and it's quite phenomenal. I mean, the, the compassion that comes, he, he shares so much about his panic attacks and the compassion that he feels. I mean, I, I really feel like he, he meets people-- he understands where people are at, the struggles that they're, they're working with, the inner struggles. Um, so that's a big part of, of his activity. And I also see he's really, um, empowering his monks, his monastics here. Um, 

01:07:52,528 --> 01:08:49,707 [Speaker 0]
they're extraordinary monks. I've, I've been to a lot of monasteries and nunneries in the Himalayan region, and I've never met such friendly, open-minded, really genuinely curious, interested monastics. It's like we've got lots of mini Mingyur Rinpoches. They, they are so open, and so we at the Tergar Institute have Western students here, and, uh, the, the monks who are teaching them, the, the khenpos and the lopons, are really inspired by our genuine interest, our genuine, um... Yeah, they're very inspired, and I, and I think going forward, we're just going to see more of this integration with what, what the monastics here are able to bring out into the world and the way that the Dharma is going to meet, meet those people. 

01:08:49,707 --> 01:08:54,108 [Speaker 1]
Mm. Wonderful. 

01:08:54,108 --> 01:08:58,048 [Speaker 2]
Oh, Justin, I did think of one more thing that I'm actually supposed to say- 

01:08:58,048 --> 01:08:58,068 [Speaker 1]
Yeah. 

01:08:58,068 --> 01:09:04,648 [Speaker 2]
Which is, um, I'd like to talk just briefly about the Garrison's new podcast that I lead, called- 

01:09:04,648 --> 01:09:04,948 [Speaker 1]
Please 

01:09:04,948 --> 01:09:16,188 [Speaker 2]
... The Common Good, and this is the subject of the n- next book, the book that I'm currently writing. Uh, and the core view is that, um, 

01:09:16,188 --> 01:10:16,508 [Speaker 2]
many of the issues of our time come from our over-grounding ourselves in our sense of individuality. We have a culture that's deeply about my own self-identity, and that we actually need to ground ourselves more in a sense of the commons and the common good. That's the big theme of the book, and but these podcasts are with amazing teachers and thinkers, really, really interesting people. My goal is for me to speak five percent of the time and ninety-first five percent of the podcast to be their voice. Um, uh, but it includes people like Suzanne Simard, who wrote the book The Mother Tree, and all about how trees are interconnected; Janine Benyus, who wrote about, um, biomimicry and how do we really learn from the patterns of nature; Dan Siegel, about the nature of the mind; um, uh, Sharon Salzberg. Anyway, uh, just a series of fascinating conversations, uh, that 

01:10:16,508 --> 01:10:28,168 [Speaker 2]
in which one hears from these different perspectives, uh, different po- different speakers, their perspective on, on, on this idea 

01:10:28,228 --> 01:10:34,588 [Speaker 2]
of a larger, interdependent, integrated world. 

01:10:34,588 --> 01:11:29,248 [Speaker 1]
It's brilliant, Jonathan, a- a- and I think you're the-- you're really a perfect person positioned to have those conversations. You know, we were looking through some of your materials a- and, and, and taking a look at that podcast. We need it. We need this interdisciplinary approach, and this is part of what I think Kunzang was talking about in, in Mingyur Rinpoche's interests to look outside the box. This theme of mapping, to me, is one of the most interesting. And, uh, for example, he, Rinpoche is kind of interested in, in beginning a conversation around this theme of what he calls modern monastic education. So, and that includes the young kids at our schools and, and throughout Nepal, our most senior khenpos, people like Kunzang, who are embodying it in a, in a Western ethos, and it may be a more international, you know, cosmopolitan ethos, Eastern monastics, and the whole gamut, and then us as laypeople and how we support them. So just what you're saying is, is very much aligned. 

01:11:29,248 --> 01:11:30,388 [Speaker 2]
Yeah. 

01:11:30,388 --> 01:11:30,948 [Speaker 1]
Yeah. Yeah. [gentle music] 

01:11:30,948 --> 01:11:31,528 [Speaker 2]
Great. 

01:11:31,528 --> 01:11:31,788 [Speaker 1]
Yeah. 

01:11:31,788 --> 01:11:34,248 [Speaker 2]
All right. Well, thank you. 

01:11:34,248 --> 01:11:36,448 [Speaker 1]
Such a pleasure, Jonathan. 

01:11:36,448 --> 01:11:36,897 [Speaker 0]
Yeah. 

01:11:36,897 --> 01:11:37,928 [Speaker 1]
Yeah, you're doing wonderful work. 

01:11:37,928 --> 01:11:38,008 [Speaker 2]
Thank you. 

01:11:38,008 --> 01:11:39,128 [Speaker 1]
Very inspiring. 

01:11:39,128 --> 01:11:39,698 [Speaker 2]
Thank you. 

01:11:39,698 --> 01:11:39,768 [Speaker 0]
Thank you. 

01:11:39,768 --> 01:11:43,488 [Speaker 2]
I, I look forward to the time we're in the same room together. 

01:11:43,488 --> 01:11:46,407 [Speaker 1]
Yeah. May this be the beginning of a relationship between Tergar- 

01:11:46,407 --> 01:11:46,628 [Speaker 2]
Yeah 

01:11:46,628 --> 01:11:47,708 [Speaker 1]
... or a continuance. 

01:11:47,708 --> 01:11:48,508 [Speaker 2]
Yeah. 

01:11:48,508 --> 01:11:50,827 [Speaker 1]
Yeah, for sure. 

01:11:50,827 --> 01:11:50,907 [Speaker 2]
Great. 

01:11:50,907 --> 01:11:52,248 [Speaker 1]
Awesome. Take good care, Jonathan. 

01:11:52,248 --> 01:11:53,827 [Speaker 2]
Thanks. Bye. 

01:11:53,888 --> 01:11:54,128 [Speaker 0]
Bye. 

01:11:54,128 --> 01:12:34,008 [Speaker 1]
Bye. [upbeat music] Thanks for listening to this edition of Living Dharma. If you enjoyed this episode, we'd be grateful if you left a review, subscribed to the channel, or shared it with somebody that you love. As a 501(c)(3), the Tergar Institute relies on your generosity to continue offering transformational programs rooted in Vajrayana Buddhism. To support our work and explore our course offerings, visit us at tergarinstitute.org. Until next time, may your awareness be steady, may your heart be open, and may your wisdom be ever present. [upbeat music]