Expanding the Community

An Interview with Alejandro Chaoul-Reich

In this interview Ton Bisscheroux explores with Alejandro Chaoul-Reich the possibilities to expand the worldwide Ligmincha International community, and bring the benefits of the Bön teachings to an expanded audience.

You teach for many different groups. Do you adjust your way of teaching depending on the group in front of you?

Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche and Namkhai Norbu Rinpoche have been great teachers for me in this way to reach out to different audiences. They teach according to the tradition, and they always ask themselves how to bring it out so people can understand. For example, you see that Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche talks a lot about his own experiences with his son, Senghe, and does it in a way that is related to the Bön text or teaching he is teaching from.

So, yes, I teach differently in different groups. In a Ligmincha group we always start with guru yoga. In The 3 Doors, MD Anderson or the Jung Center, I don’t do that because those people are not always familiar with that prayer. Even when I teach Tibetan Yoga for a Ligmincha sangha there are always new people, so I start with something simple. I ask them to connect with their heart or heart-mind in a way that is inspired by the tradition. In fact, I started to do this with people with cancer, because I knew I had to bring it in a layperson's way. And I did this with the support of Rinpoche.

Some people relate to research and how there is evidence that meditation can help for stress and burnout. I bring this to many groups of healthcare providers (physicians, nurses, medical students, etc.). I recently spoke about burnout to a group of lawyers, a group of translators and interpreters, middle school teachers, and to community workers. In all these groups stress and burnout is a big issue. I  reframe the issue and invite them to use meditation practices as a different kind of CPR – Compassionate Professional Renewal – and from there to flourish like a lotus. The lotus is a good example of having been born in the mud; it still flourishes. So whatever difficult or stressful situation can be like mud, and in that mud they can grow. From there, I feel that it is not just seeing oneself as a lotus, but the importance of seeing the community as a huge pond of lotuses.

Can you tell us about the new project, The Power of Community, that you started recently? 

This started during the pandemic. At the Jung Center, we used to have monthly meditations from different traditions, which are open for everyone. The concept of sangha or community is important, but there is no sense of being Bönpo, Buddhist, Hindu or whatever. We invite people to participate in meditation – something that is for us a daily thing but for many is unchartered territory. The question is: how do we let people who are not within these traditions understand the differences that meditation can make in their lives? The other part is clarifying the intention. In a place like the Jung Center they do a lot of reflection, reading, listening and action. In the Buddhist traditions we talk about dharma. Recently I listened to H.H. the Dalai Lama, and he reminded me again of listening, reflecting and meditating. Meditators know that there is a sense of a deeper aspect of connection that intellectual mind does not get to. 

I have been teaching at the Jung Center for 20 years now. Our monthly meditation attracted a lot of people and sometimes we had 70 to 90 participants. We felt we were giving something that people really needed. When Covid hit, we started to offer weekly online meditations of an hour, half an hour or 15 minutes. For me it was really weird to offer such a short meditation, but for a lot of people half an hour was too much. We also gave the meditations a topic, which provided space for people to do two things: they can unplug from work and drop in and to meet people on Zoom and say hello. And we let them know that what we are doing in meditation is not pushing away, but opening our hearts and giving space, e.g., when the theme was “hosting fear and overcoming anxiety by cultivating openheartedness.” When the whole issue with George Floyd came up and the Black Lives Matter movement became important, we were a place of social responsibility and action, where everyone could talk freely in a safe space. We also added different instructors from Houston, to give the people of the community different flavors. This approach has proven to be very useful.

Do you offer the Bön teachings in a traditional way?

The resident lamas at Ligmincha tend to teach in a more traditional way; in The 3 Doors we are exploring a little more and every teacher brings in his or her own expertise; and at the Jung Center it is like a playground. I am always very clear what the source is of my meditations. I am very grateful that I have been able to teach in very different settings in my life, from a more traditional setting like Ligmincha, to The 3 Doors, to teaching from the podium. I’ve given lectures with a PowerPoint, shown research in conferences, and sat with participants on the cushion to meditate. The Jung center provides such a great space to bring all these different aspects, both from Jung’s inspiration as well as other traditions.

What have you done to help broaden the sangha?

First of all, you have to realize that Ligmincha is not for everyone, The 3 Doors or Lishu Institute is not for everyone; nothing is for everyone. Having different containers allows people to say, this is where I feel at home. And they don’t exclude each other; many people from Ligmincha also participate in The 3 Doors.

When new people participate, sometimes I adjust my language. I always try to understand what is important for people in the sangha or community. At Ligmincha it is important to start with guru yoga, but for some people guru yoga is weird. Instead we could ask, “What is your intention when you sit on your cushion?” Giving a class at the Jung Center, when I talked about the lineage, somebody from the Native American community said that they do the same with their ancestors. So we can invite participants to connect to the lineage or to the ancestors. Broadening the community is a matter of finding the language that people understand and can connect to. For me the Refuge Tree is important, but many are not familiar with that. At the Jung Center and The 3 Doors and less at Ligmincha, when we are in the position of teachers, we bring in our own stuff, and we do that in a safe space, a confidential space. I value those possibilities.

In order to fully integrate we need to invite more people of different religions, of different traditions, so we can knit together, rather than say, “I think this will be good for you.” We are creating more diversity in The 3 Doors and in Ligmincha, because for a long time we attracted mostly white, middle-class audiences. So we needed to extend to other socioeconomic classes as well as people of different ethnicities, and giving things to them that are relevant for them. And it is also important to get young people engaged. They do things differently from people from our generation. At the Jung Center many young people started coming to the meditations after a young staff person joined and got involved and reached out to his friends.

When people are working so much that they barely have time to sit and meditate, we have to ask ourselves what can we offer to them that is helpful. Can they use the STOP formula? Following the acronym, Stop whatever you are doing in that moment, then Take a deep breath, Observe how you feel. Then, only when you are ready, Proceed to what you need to do next. These short meditations can serve as an oasis in a long day, a way to connect and breathe into a sense of inner space in our inner home. The challenge is finding ways that are appropriate.

A way to make meditation more accessible is to have participants pay what they can afford to pay, because most young people don’t have much to spend. At the same time, people who can pay more do so and support so we can sustain our programs. We do that at the Jung Center, and it is really, pay what the heart wants.

Alejandro Chaoul-Reich, PhD, a senior student of Geshe Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, has been teaching Tibetan yoga (trul khor) retreats for more than 20 years and is a senior teacher with The 3 Doors. He is currently the director of the Jung Center’s Mind Body Spirit Institute and is an adjunct professor and at the University of Texas (UT) MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston and in UT’s Medical School. He teaches meditation to cancer patients and their supporters and is involved in research using tsa lung trul khor with cancer patients and their caregivers. He also is a contemplative Fellow of the Mind & Life Institute.