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Interview by Joanna Rotté View this episode's page on Libsyn Welcome to this very special edition of the Wisdom Seat Podcast. In August 2026, Shechen Rabjam Rinpoche traveled to Halifax, Nova Scotia to give a week of empowerments and abhishekas. A number of us from The Wisdom Seat traveled there to attend. It was a celebratory, wonderful week, and Rinpoche agreed to an interview with Joanna Rotté. Joanna asks Rinpoche about his life and upbringing. He talks about being born i

The Wisdom Seat recently concluded a weekend of teachings with our guest, Jetsunma Jamyang Yeshe Palmo, exploring aspects of hinayana, mahayana, and vajrayana practice. Friday evening was an in-person and online event at Swarthmore College. Saturday was an all day session of teachings concerning the nature of boddhisattva practice, held at Pawo Khandro Ling in Wallingford, PA, followed by a reception. Sunday, our guest gave talks for vajrayana practioners, again at PKL. We ce

How do we navigate with wisdom, compassion, and fierce courage in an age of spiritual crisis? We joined Buddhist teachers Michael Carroll and Susan Piver for a week of meditation, community, and real talk about how to take our practice into the beauty and confusion of our world. Michael and Susan at the Great Stupa at Drala Mountain Center, leading participants in the Refuge and Bodhisattva vow ceremonies. Another successful collaboration between the Open Heart Project and Th

A close look at the Luminous Dignity (Ösel Ziji) thangka, recorded live from the Pawo Khandro Ling shrine room for The Wisdom Seat's July 2026 Mindful Gathering. Thangka painter Greg Smith has lived and painted at Drala Mountain Center for 37 of the past 47 years and oversaw much of the painting in the Great Stupa of Dharmakaya. Michael Carroll, co-founder of The Wisdom Seat and author of Awake at Work, The Mindful Leader, and Fearless at Work, commissioned this thangka after

On June 25, we gathered on Zoom, with Bill sitting at Alex deVaron's piano, for a conversation about music, presence, and dharma. Alexander deVaron is a composer, music theorist, and longtime Buddhist teacher who began teaching in Shambhala in 1986 and spent five years living at Karme Choling. His primary teachers have been Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche, and Khenpo Tsultrim Gyamtso Rinpoche, and he has spent decades exploring where Buddhism and music actua

Interview by Joanna Rotté (A Sky Lake Series) View this episode's page on Libsyn Michele Martin has two graduate degrees in literature from Yale University and has been a Buddhist practitioner in the Karma Kagyu lineage for over forty years. She is a founding board member of the Tibetan Buddhist Research Center and has spent more than thirty years studying with and translating for Tibetan lamas in Nepal and India. She is the author and translator of Music in the Sky: The Life

Interview by Joanna Rotté (A Sky Lake Series) View this episode's page on Libsyn Larry Mermelstein has been a close student of the Venerable Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche since 1971. He is a founding member and Executive Director of the Nalanda Translation Committee, a senior teacher in the Vajradhatu-Shambhala community, and a consultant for Shambhala Publications. He resides in Halifax, Nova Scotia. This interview was conducted in person by Joanna Rotte before a live audience at

The dharma protectors are among the most striking figures in Tibetan Buddhism. Fierce, wrathful, often terrifying in appearance. For the May Mindful Gathering, Barry Boyce joined Bill Moriarty and the community to talk about what they actually are and what it means to work with them in practice. Barry laid out three levels of protector practice: outer, inner, and secret. At the outer level, protectors guard teachers and places. At the inner level, they protect the teachings f

A Mindful Gathering with Susanna Lack, Rhea Colmar, and Bill Moriarty On April 30, 2026, The Wisdom Seat hosted a Mindful Gathering on one of the least visible parts of community life: what it actually takes to plan and hold a group retreat. Every retreat has a visible side and an invisible one. Susanna Lack and Rhea Colmar joined Bill Moriarty to discuss what planning and holding a group retreat actually involves - from choosing a venue and approaching teachers, to managing

On April 16, The Wisdom Seat held an open discussion on death, dying and illness. There was no agenda, specific topics, or desired outcomes. Just an open discussion to share inner reflections on death and dying. As a community, we explored: how can we support ourselves and each other to deepen our experience of our mortality? How can we further our exploration of our own impermanence? What wisdom is to be found hidden beneath the surface of the reality of the human condition?

View this episode's page on Libsyn Host Bill Moriarty introduces a 2019 public talk from Anam Thubten: "The Wisdom of Meditation and Everyday Life" in the Dzogchen tradition. Anam Thubten describes meditation with an object (breath, body sensations, mantras, ordinary objects, sound) and meditation without an object (open awareness: "rest in the natural state of your mind"). Anam Thubten grew up in Tibet and at an early age began to practice in the Nyingma tradition of Tibetan

Video starts about 2 minutes in. The March Mindful Gathering was on Dependent Origination, one of the Buddha's core teachings. Michael used the metaphor of Indra's Web to explain it: everything finds its nature in relationship to everything else, rather than existing as independent objects with independent causes. Nothing that is happening in the world today happened overnight. What does it mean to really sit with that? From there the conversation opened up into territory tha

On Thursday, February 5, 2026, Andrew Safer and Michael Carroll came together for an enriching conversation on mindfulness meditation and how we can engage with the profound paradoxes of our modern world. The session explored how insight, skill, and compassion can help us navigate a world filled with both abundant resources and heartbreaking crises. The Challenge We Face We live in a time of extraordinary possibility, yet we're simultaneously confronted by widespread tragedie