Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche And Robert Thurman: Buddhism in Daily Life in Conversation with Two Great Masters (#210)

This episode of the Wisdom Podcast, recorded live as a Wisdom Dharma Chat, is presented in collaboration with Tergar International and Tibet House US, featuring special guests Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche and Robert Thurman. In this special episode, Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche and Professor Robert Thurman come together for a rich and wide-ranging conversation on the practical application of Buddhist teachings in everyday life. With clarity, warmth, and humor, they explore tantric practice, the nature of Buddha’s potential, and the central role of meditation in transforming the mind. This episode concludes with a guided meditation from Rinpoche.

Listen as Rinpoche and Professor Thurman, along with host Daniel Aiken, discuss:

• Buddha nature and the role and value of meditation in everyday life;
• the modern misunderstanding of Buddhism;
• the importance of compassion;
• Buddhism’s place in the future of AI; and
• much more! 

Meet Our Guests

Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche

Mingyur Rinpoche is a world-renowned meditation teacher with personal experience of anxiety and panic attacks, which he suffered from throughout his childhood and into his teenage years, when he learned to transform his panic through meditation.

Born in Nepal in 1975, Mingyur Rinpoche began to study meditation as a young boy with his father, Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche, himself a well-respected Buddhist teacher.

As a child he became interested in contemporary science through conversations with scientists who were visiting his father, and as he grew older he began to collaborate with neuroscientists and psychologists, including Richard Davidson and Antoine Lutz at the University of Wisconsin, on research projects that study the effects of meditation on the brain and the mind. As the head of the Tergar Meditation Community, Mingyur Rinpoche supports groups of students in more than thirty countries, leading workshops around the world for new and returning students every year.

Robert Thurman

Bob Thurman, known in the academic circles as Professor Robert A.F. Thurman, is a talented popularizer of the Buddha’s teachings and the first Westerner Tibetan Buddhist monk ordained by His Holiness the Dalai Lama,

A charismatic speaker and author of many books on Tibet, Buddhism, art, politics and culture, Bob was named by The New York Times the leading American expert on Tibetan Buddhism, and was awarded the prestigious Padma Shri Award in 2020, for his help in recovering India’s ancient Buddhist heritage. Time Magazine chose him as one of the 25 most influential Americans in 1997, describing him as a “larger than life scholar-activist destined to convey the Dharma, the precious teachings of Shakyamuni Buddha, from Asia to America.”

As part of his long-term commitment to the Tibetan cause, at the request of H.H. the Dalai Lama, Bob co-founded Tibet House US in 1987 with Tenzin Tethong, Richard Gere, and Philip Glass, a non profit organization based in New York City and dedicated to the preservation and renaissance of Tibetan culture.