Living Dharma Podcast

In this episode of Living Dharma, co-hosts Tsunma Kunsang Palmo and Justin Kelley welcome Nico and Devon Hase, husband-and-wife Buddhist teachers and authors who write about what happens when lofty ideals meet the rub of ordinary life. Their answer begins with getting real. The beautiful ideals of the Dharma, bodhicitta, compassion, stability of mind, have to come alive in exactly the places where we are pushed up against a wall.
Drawing on their books How Not to Be a Hot Mess and This Messy Gorgeous Love, and on the three-year retreat they completed together, Nico and Devon explore relationship as a genuine path of awakening. They talk about the ideal and the real as two ends of a rubber band, about making the inevitable rub of any relationship into practice, and about the conflict styles they call volcanoes, diplomats, and dodgers.
The conversation widens into some of the deeper questions facing modern practitioners. What is the difference between the worldview of Western psychology and the worldview of the Dharma, and which is the foundation? What does an honest, responsible syncretism look like when so many of us are weaving traditions together? And why might the best yogis not be the best teachers. Candid, funny, and unafraid of the tender places, this is a conversation about letting our humanness become more human as we practice, and growing sturdy and vulnerable at once, like small flowers on a high alpine ridge.

Some conversations we approach with a particular sense of reverence, and this is surely one of them. In this episode of Living Dharma, co-hosts Tsunma Kunsang Palmo and Justin Kelley are joined by Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo. Her story needs little introduction. The cave, the long years of solitary retreat, the founding of Dongyu Gatsal Ling Nunnery, and the revival of the Togdenma lineage are by now the stuff of legend.
What this conversation reaches for is something more intimate: the lived texture behind all of it. Jetsunma speaks with candour and warmth about how there need be no division between practice and ordinary life, using the image of a little yeast that lightens and transforms the heavy dough of the everyday. She reflects on the quiet work of befriending oneself, on the difference between the spacious, sky-like mind of old Tibet and the restless, over-stimulated mind of our own moment, and on raising children with integrity in a noisy age.
She also turns to the situation of women who come to monastic life from the West and beyond, the non-Himalayan nuns who often arrive later in life, already formed, and who face particular challenges in finding training, community, and belonging. Here she shares the work of the Alliance of Non-Himalayan Nuns and her hope of making real use of all that these women bring.
What strikes you, listening to her, is that here is someone who embodies the tradition and shares it openly, without pretense, with great humility and kindness.

In this episode of Living Dharma, co-hosts Tsunma Kunsang Palmo and Justin Kelley sit down with Rob Roeser, a developmental psychologist who has spent his life with a foot in two worlds that do not always speak to one another: the rigorous world of science and the quiet world of contemplative practice. Director of Research at Emory University's Center for Contemplative Science and Compassion-Based Ethics, and a longtime contributor to the Mind and Life Institute, Rob is a leading figure in what has come to be called developmental contemplative science, the study of how practices like mindfulness and compassion shape the heart and mind across the whole arc of a human life.
The conversation traces his own origin story, from a childhood curiosity about the life of Jesus, through the burnout that cracked him open in graduate school, to his slow arrival in the contemplative traditions of India and Tibet. Along the way he reflects on struggle as the seedbed of transformation, his honest and ongoing wrestling with the first noble truth, and why he believes a teacher's inner life is, in a very real sense, the curriculum.
Rob also turns toward the harder questions of our time. How do we educate young people for an unstable world? What do gratitude, interdependence, and wonder have to do with it? And what might an education look like that draws on pre-modern wisdom to meet a post-modern age. Warm and wide-ranging, this is a conversation about waking up the wonder in ourselves and in those we teach.

In this episode of Living Dharma, co-hosts Tsunma Kunsang Palmo and Justin Kelly sit down with Bill and Susan Morgan, two highly respected voices at the intersection of mindfulness and psychotherapy. With over three decades of teaching together—including a consecutive four-year retreat at the Insight Meditation Society's Forest Refuge—Bill and Susan share their personal evolution away from rigid, hyper-intensive meditation toward an accessible, heart-centered approach. 
Drawing from their backgrounds as a psychologist and a psychiatric clinical nurse specialist, they introduce the concept of an "inner holding environment". They explain how leaning into and holding difficult experiences kindly allows for true somatic healing, rather than simply labeling thoughts from a distance. 
The conversation also explores the dynamics of long-term spiritual partnership, navigating conflict in spiritual communities without spiritual bypassing, and the power of collective practice. Bill and Susan discuss founding "The Daily Sit" online community during the 2020 pandemic and emphasize using "soft concentration" to soothe overwhelmed nervous systems. Joyful and nurturing, this episode offers practical wisdom for integrating the Dharma through simple rituals, evening gratitude games, and a deep appreciation for the miracle of being alive.

In this episode of Living Dharma, we sit down with Susan Kaiser Greenland—best-selling author, mindfulness teacher, Mind & Life fellow, and a pioneering voice in bringing contemplative practice into schools and family life.
Susan shares her path into meditation through a family health crisis, the challenges of a strong “thinking mind,” and how her legal training helped her navigate secular education settings with precision and care. We explore her foundational principle—“serve the child in front of you now”—and what she’s learned about attention, regulation, and humility from decades of working with young people. Susan also discusses her recent book Real World Enlightenment: Discovering Ordinary Magic in Everyday Life, and offers grounded reflections on practicing compassion and democratic values amid collective anxiety and polarization.
A rich, practical conversation about awareness, love, compassion, wisdom—and finding ordinary magic in everyday life.