A Joy of Living Level 1 Cohort? I’m in!” Marveling at this opportunity, I joined the cohort without hesitation in January 2025. I had subscribed to the Joy of Living (JOL) since June 2024 after returning from a road tour from Lhasa, Tibet, to Kathmandu, Nepal — a dream come true. I was mesmerized by the Himalayas and Tibet since my early twenties, when I sketched a dreamy view of snowy mountains in pencil on a journal page. In Kathmandu, one woman from the tour group, a Buddhist practitioner, visited Tergar Osel Ling, and I would have joined her but for the fatigue from the high-altitude travel and a respiratory tract infection.

I didn’t really know who Mingyur Rinpoche was, but I had been dabbling in yoga, meditation, and spirituality for years, increasingly searching for a genuine teacher from an authentic tradition. Back in Finland, I reviewed the various links that the woman from the tour group sent me, decided on Tergar, and began the JOL program with the short Anytime Anywhere Meditation (AAM) course. I soon struggled to make progress on my own, though, as I found it difficult to commit to and prioritize the program in my already full life. Joining the cohort was a turning point — or the first one.

At first, I was overwhelmed by the size of the cohort— about 120 of us in our optional WhatsApp group — but I didn’t want to become stuck in overwhelm, a well-practiced habit. I realized that I was part of an experience that Tergar had never offered before. How exciting! Could I release what I thought should be, my expectations and fears, and open myself to what was, to this precious offering? For it is precious even though the profundity of these simple teachings and practices is only dawning on me, at the horizon of my mind, as we’re nearing the end of JOL Level 1.

What has made the cohort so supportive of my practice is the framework of weekly sessions with guides, even though I am not always able to join each session. Each week, we have focused on one section, which provided me with the external motivation to finish the homework by the next session, until my internal motivation strengthened with discipline (despite laziness) and insight.

One morning, I had nothing short of a revelation. I was rushing out the door, running late, and thought, “I don’t have time for practicing awareness now!” A moment of exasperation transformed into a flash of insight! Awareness does not take any time. I don’t need to make time for awareness. In an instant, the rush was still there — I was still in danger of missing the bus — and yet it was gone. I was no longer lost in the rush of my own mind. For the first time, I understood what it meant to have a direct experience of a teaching, and that memory still makes me smile. And, yes, I still become lost in my mind.

The cohort also enables me to learn from others’ experiences and insights. I don’t need to feel alone in my experience of laziness because another member is also struggling with it. I always experience social anxiety before I join a session. However, I’m able to challenge myself to join a breakout room, and now, towards the end of Level 1, the anxiety, the sensations in my body, and the thoughts and emotions in my mind are transforming into supports for awareness. Even though our weekly time together is short, I always leave a session with a smile on my face, reminded that I’m not alone. We share this human experience of the mind and life, including the challenges, the confusion, and the clarity. 

The second turning point was connecting with Lydia from Germany through the cohort’s WhatsApp group. “I hope it is okay to contact you privately,” she wrote two weeks into the program. I was delighted to receive the message, as I had been longing for a deeper connection. My heart swells when I think of her. With Lydia, I’ve had double the joy of living! Coincidentally, we’re the same age, and we’ve been sharing our practice and experiences almost daily, even after she was diagnosed with breast cancer. Then I was thankful to be able to tell her about a meditation program by Tergar Australia that I had come across on social media: Find Your Inner Strength During Your Breast Cancer Journey.

Now, in July, thanks to the cohort, I’m on a 68-day streak with more than 50 hours of — to quote Mingyur Rinpoche — “boring and stupid” meditation and I have a new friend that I hope to meet one day.

August 2025