774 Dark Retreat and the Practice of Being Enough with Lama Justin von Bujdoss

Lama Justin von Bujdoss has spent decades studying and teaching Vajrayana Buddhism — from his teenage certainty that he’d become a monk, through study in India and Nepal, to years as a chaplain inside the NYC Department of Correction, to co-founding the Yangti Yoga Retreat Center in rural Western Massachusetts. In this conversation with Tricia, he talks about the Buddhist nun who served as his root teacher and taught him he didn’t need to become someone else to be worthy of his own practice, the discipline of dark retreat and what it reveals about fear, memory, and the mind, and why he’s come to believe that his life “is not mine to own.”

In this episode, we’ll explore:

• What drew Justin to Buddhism as a teenager, and how his root teacher — a Buddhist nun — reshaped his understanding of who he already was
• The practice of dark retreat: what actually happens across days (sometimes weeks) in total darkness, and the insights that can emerge from it
• Why Justin believes “my life is not mine to own,” and what that means for showing up in service of others
• How to stay in relationship with people who see the world differently from you, instead of retreating into sameness
• The quiet power of a single kind word — and why we never know how far it travels