Refuge During a Year of Disruption (Link #807)

Speaker: Sarah Gomes. Sarah recounts how she met the Dharma through the writings of Pema Chödrön during a difficult period in her life. She experienced an immediate sense of meaning, particularly in the teaching that ‘within suffering lies the potential for transformation’. Sarah has been a student of Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche for 24 years and supports the living presence of the Dharma at the Mangala Shri Bhuti Center, Guna Norling, in Salvador de Bahia. She holds a deep commitment to the practice of life release and is a founding member of the local animal protection sanctuary. She strives to bring the teachings into every aspect of her daily life, believing that the Dharma reveals its true power when it moves beyond intellectual understanding and reaches the heart, transforming our words, choices, and the way we engage with the world.

Speaker: Daisuke Inaba. Dai-san discusses his seva activities, the challenges they present, and his findings in working with challenges. He divides a period of service into beginning, middle, and end and offers methods for dealing with difficulties that arise at each stage. In the beginning, there is procrastination and distraction, which he overcomes by setting up a physical and mental environment supportive of service. In the middle, discursive thoughts arise, which he addresses with a breathing practice similar to shamatha. In the end, pride and arrogance "slowly and sneakily creep in", which he surmounts by dedicating the merit and appreciating the opportunity to serve. Dai-san offers this three-part method as a beneficial antidote to self-absorption and an aid to achieving happiness and confidence in seva.

Speaker: Dungse Jampal Norbu. Dungse-la reflects on how the willingness to show up, especially with "a heart full of bodhicitta" is 60% of success in getting anything done in the Dharma. He relates the power of showing up to the five perfections, which are taught in a Tibetan medical text: place, teacher, teaching, assembly, and time. Dungse-la applies the five perfections to our upcoming gathering at NSS, but he also invokes the Thangtong Gyalpo prayer to demonstrate how the five perfections can be established in meditation practice.

Speaker: Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche. This talk was originally given to the European sangha on September 16, 2024 as part of an online, weekend program called "Compassion Without Limit". This is the final portion of the program's third talk which did not air as a live LINK, but is made available on the podcast to complete the third talk, which aired on June 7, 2026.

Speaker: Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche. This talk was originally given to the European sangha on September 16, 2024 as part of an online, weekend program called "Compassion Without Limit". The first of three talks aired on the LINK in August 2025 and the second in February 2026. This is the third and final talk from that program. Rinpoche describes how to put Compassion Without Limit into practice with the four immeasurables. He underscores the importance of merit and delves deeply into the "mindset of the Mahayana", which begins with a strong foundation in loving-kindess. Having cultivated this deeply, compassion, equanimity and sympathetic joy naturally unfold.

Speakers: Junglan Bang. Junglan recalls watching a documentary of an old man climbing mountains in China. When asked why he did it, he smiled and said he was, "...doing it for the happiness of all sentient beings". Carrying that old man's smile in her heart, Junglan went on to study Buddhism and particularly the four immeasurables practice, with equanimity as the first immeasurable. She notes that ‘when mind falls into equanimity filters fall away, and this is the foundation of what makes all other steps possible.'

Speakers: Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche and Elizabeth Mattis Namgyel. Elizabeth Mattis Namgyel speaks with her teacher, Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche, about the paramita of patience. A common misconception is that patience is a passive ability to "grin and bear it" or to endure suppressed anger. Rather, it is better understood as a creative and active way of working with the mind. Patience becomes a kind of inner armor, protecting us from afflictive states such as pain and aggression. Rinpoche describes it as "the ability not to be bothered"—a quality of non-reactivity that, when cultivated, invites grace and opens us to the experience of unconditional well-being and universal love.

Speaker: Peter Lauritzen. Peter reflects on the meaning of refuge in a time of personal and global disruption. He discusses how meditation on the four thoughts that turn the mind toward the Dharma offers a true refuge and lasting protection from anxiety, distress, and distraction. Cultivating the four thoughts is particularly helpful as a way to orient the mind on compassion and the law of cause and effect, or karma.

Speaker: Aline Gomes. As a member of MSB Brazil, Aline joins her sangha's regular efforts to release crabs and other animals back into the wild. More than 200,000 beings have been freed to date. Today's LINK illuminates the practice of life release as a direct and tangible expression of aspiration and application bodhicitta. Aline describes how saving a life moves practice beyond the theoretical into the living, visceral field of experience. Life release becomes a direct way to cultivate the six perfections: generosity, discipline, patience, diligence, concentration and wisdom. In caring for beings on the threshold of death, practitioners encounter the generative qualities of intention and motivation and also directly penetrate the nature of cause and effect.

Speaker: Bob Reid. Bob explores bodhicitta and the heart practice of the four immeasurables. He shares an approach he learned from Pema Chödron that enables him to work with the difficult tendencies of self-aggression and lack of warmth towards his own experience. In this approach, one begins with loving kindness towards oneself instead of loved ones. He further describes how the four links can be supportive in cultivating bodhicitta. The fourth link of prayer has been particularly helpful in cultivating a tender heart of ‘tsewa’- the sincere wish for beings to find peace and liberation. Bob concludes that bodhicitta is the heart of the whole path and therefore reminds us that we can turn our everyday experiences into a paramita practice and thus become a bodhisattva.