Gratitude's Gifts

Andrew Purchin is a citizen artist whose practice is rooted in mixed media art, dance improvisation, film and psychotherapy. He graduated with a B.A in his own major, “The Arts and Social Action” from UC Santa Cruz in 1985 and a Masters Degree in Social Work from San Francisco State University in 1990.  With his Creative Listening Project, Purchin paints, listens and encourages creativity at sites where there can be grief, discord and celebration.  A  creative listening internet friendship led Purchin to travel Pakistan to create and exhibit  "Encounters on the Frontier” with artist Mohsin Shafi at the National College of Arts in Pakistan in 2014 and for Shafi to join Purchin to create and exhibit “Upsidedownland” at the Radius Gallery in Santa Cruz in 2015.Purchin collaborated with the public as they marked on The Curious Scroll at the Republican and Democratic National Conventions in 2016 and in Santa Cruz County before the 2018 election. Purchin received the 2020 Ron Kovic Peace Prize for his short documentary, The Curious Scroll.  Purchin is a 2022 recipient of a Santa Cruz City Arts Recovery and Design Grant for his social practice and documentary project about our housing crisis, “What’s Home? Creative Listening Across Differences.”  This project also garnered a grant from the Awesome Foundation of Santa Cruz in 2023. Links to Andrew’s projects:https://www.andrewpurchin.com/https://www.youtube.com/aPurchinhttps://www.instagram.com/apurchin/

Tenzin Chogkyi  (she/her/hers) is a teacher of workshops and programs that bridge the worlds of Buddhist thought, contemplative practice, mental and emotional cultivation, and the latest research in the field of positive psychology.Tenzin is especially interested in bringing the wisdom of Buddhism into modern culture and into alignment with modern cultural values such as racial and gender justice and environmental awareness. She feels strongly that a genuine and meaningful spiritual path includes not only personal transformation, but social and cultural transformation as well. She has been exploring the presentation of traditional teachings using modern pedagogical methods such as experiential exercises, dialogue and small group interaction.Tenzin is a certified teacher of Compassion Cultivation Training, a secular compassion training program developed at Stanford University. She also teaches the Cultivating Emotional Balance program, a secular program using contemplative techniques drawn from Buddhism for managing emotions, developed at His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s request. Greg Morris (pronouns: any) is a student and practitioner of bhakti yoga and Advaita Vedanta, as well as a student and devotee of the Tao Te Ching and the four gospels of the New Testament. A lifelong peace advocate and bridge-builder with childhood grounding in Unitarianism, Greg offers their spiritual practice as the foundation of their work as a teacher, as a coach, and as a management consultant specializing in diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging. Greg is grateful to be the recipient and beneficiary of several healing modalities, most notably Rosen Method (Marion Rosen, Robert Harry Rovin), Transformational Bodywork (Stephen Allario, Fred Mitouer), Holistic Sexuality (Marina Romero), Interpersonal Dynamics (David Bradford), and psychotherapy. Greg is a certified teacher of Compassion Cultivation Training (CCT™), a secular program developed by Stanford University’s Department of Neurosurgery under the guidance of Geshe Thupten Jinpa and at the request of His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama.Mathew Divaris is a student of Buddhism who is deeply inspired by Tenzin's multidisciplinary approach of bringing the teachings to our troubled times in truly relevant, actionable ways.    When not helping out with the Unlocking True Happiness project, Mathew works as a marketing consultant.

Tenzin and Eden spoke of a number of different resources in this episode which are listed below:Eden's website: https://www.deborahedentull.com/And the video of her home after the hurricane: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jH32y0ooVYQ&ab_channel=DeborahEdenTullThe GoFundMe page to help her after the disaster:https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-eden-and-mark-rebuild-after-heleneThe Othering and Belonging Institute: https://belonging.berkeley.edu/

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

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

No matter how mindful we are of our thoughts, speech and actions, being human means that we can sometimes act unwisely or hurt someone's feelings. Whether these mistakes are unintentional or not, they can lead to rifts in our relationships; and ultimately damage both our own contentment, as well as the cohesion of our community. In this episode, Tenzin shares the power of apologizing as a roadmap for forgiveness, healing and reconciliation; and then leads a reflection on the impact of both giving and receiving a wholehearted apology.

Nina Simons is the co-founder and Chief Relationship Officer at Bioneers, and leads its Everywoman’s Leadership program. Bioneers is a nonprofit that uses media, convening, and connecting to lift up visionary and practical solutions for many of our most pressing social and ecological challenges, revealing aregenerative and equitable future that’s within our reach today.  Nina is a social entrepreneur who is passionate about reinventing leadership, restoring the feminine, andco-creating a healthy, peaceful,and equitable world for all.  She speaks and teaches internationally at schools, conferences, and festivals, and co-facilitates transformative workshops and retreats for women that share practices for regenerative leadership through reclaiming wholeness and relational mindfulnessHer book Nature, Culture and the Sacred: A Woman Listens for Leadership offers inspiration for anyone who aspires to grow into or inhabit their own unique form of leadership with resilience and joy. The book draws on Simons’ own personal learning and extensive experience with women’s leadership development... to reconnect and defend people, nature and the land, both practically and spiritually.

Nina Simons is the co-founder and Chief Relationship Officer at Bioneers, and leads its Everywoman’s Leadership program. Bioneers is a nonprofit that uses media, convening, and connecting to lift up visionary and practical solutions for many of our most pressing social and ecological challenges, revealing aregenerative and equitable future that’s within our reach today.  Nina is a social entrepreneur who is passionate about reinventing leadership, restoring the feminine, andco-creating a healthy, peaceful,and equitable world for all.  She speaks and teaches internationally at schools, conferences, and festivals, and co-facilitates transformative workshops and retreats for women that share practices for regenerative leadership through reclaiming wholeness and relational mindfulnessHer book Nature, Culture and the Sacred: A Woman Listens for Leadership offers inspiration for anyone who aspires to grow into or inhabit their own unique form of leadership with resilience and joy. The book draws on Simons’ own personal learning and extensive experience with women’s leadership development... to reconnect and defend people, nature and the land, both practically and spiritually.

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

Luminous Darkness: An Engaged Buddhist Approach to Embracing the Unknown by Deborah Eden Tull is a resonant call to explore the darkness in life, in nature, and in consciousness—including difficult emotions like uncertainty, grief, fear, and xenophobia—through teachings, embodied meditations, and mindful inquiry that provide us with a powerful path to healing.Darkness is deeply misunderstood in today’s world; yet it offers powerful medicine, serenity, strength, healing, and regeneration. All insight, vision, creativity, and revelation arise from darkness. It is through learning to stay present and meet the dark with curiosity rather than judgment that we connect to an unwavering light within. Welcoming darkness with curiosity, rather than fear or judgment, enables us to access our innate capacity for compassion and collective healing.Dharma teacher, shamanic practitioner, and deep ecologist Deborah Eden Tull addresses the spiritual, ecological, psychological, and interpersonal ramifications of our bias towards light.Tull explores the medicine of darkness for personal and collective healing, through topics such as:• Befriending the Night: The Radiant Teachings of Darkness• Honoring Our Pain for Our World• Seeing in the Dark: The Quiet Power of Receptivity• Dreams, Possibility, and Moral Imagination• Releasing Fear—Embracing EmergenceTull shows us how the labeling of darkness as “negative” becomes a collective excuse to justify avoiding everything that makes us uncomfortable: racism, spiritual bypass, environmental destruction. We can only find the radical path to wholeness by learning to embrace the interplayof both darkness and light.About the AuthorZen meditation and mindfulness teacher, author, activist, and sustainability educator. Eden teaches the integration of compassionate awareness into every aspect of our lives. She spent seven years training as a Buddhist monk at a silent Zen monastery and has been teaching dharma for 19 years. Eden has also been living in, and teaching about, sustainable communities for over 25 years.Her teaching style is grounded in compassionate awareness, experiential learning, inquiry, and an unwavering commitment to personal transformation. She teaches engaged awareness practice, which emphasizes the connection between personal awakening and global engagement. Eden draws upon teachings from the natural world and an embodied understanding of animism.She is author of “Relational Mindfulness: A Handbook for Deepening Our Connection with Our Self, Each Other, and Our Planet” (Wisdom 2018) and “The Natural Kitchen: Your Guide for the Sustainable Food Revolution.” Her work has been featured in The Los Angeles Times, Tricycle, Yogi Times, GOOP, Shambhala Times, and The Ecologist. She also teaches The Work That Reconnects, a program created by Buddhist scholar Joanna Macy, and teaches for UCLA’s Mindful Awareness Research Center. Eden offers retreats, online courses, and consultations internationally.Readers can connect with Deborah Eden Tull on Facebook, Instagram, and Goodreads.To learn more, go to DeborahEdenTull.com.