Heart-to-Heart on Aging and Illness

Join Tergar Guide Tim Olmsted and the Vajrayana Online community to reflect on, share, and discover how to age gracefully in the Dharma.

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Tuesday

Once a month
Starting September 8

11AM–12PM

EDT (New York)

Requirements

This event is open to all Vajrayana Online members.

Recordings

We strongly encourage you to join us live. If you’re unable to attend, the recordings will be made available.

Aging in the Dharma

Aging and illness bring us face-to-face with change, and with the fear and uncertainty it naturally provokes. They call us to explore what it means to practice when we or our loved ones experience declining health or approach the end of life.

In this new Heart-to-Heart series, Tim Olmsted will gather with those of us who are older, living with a life-threatening condition, or accompanying someone through a serious illness. Together, we will share our experiences and reflect on how we can bring our practice and study to this stage of life.

These sessions are part of Tergar’s year-long program on the bardo teachings, which begins with the eight-week course Dying Every Day: Essence of the Bardos and then continues into a nine-month immersion with teachings from Mingyur Rinpoche on each of the six bardos. We invite you to join us in exploring how the Dharma can sustain us through every stage of life.

If you are not a Vajrayana Online member, please join the community to participate.

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This event is included with your Vajrayana Online membership. Register to receive the Zoom link and an email reminders.

Thank you! You are registered! See you soon.

2026–27 PROGRAM ON THE BARDO TEACHINGS

What You Will Learn in the Dying Every Day Course

Mingyur Rinpoche and Tergar guides will offer in-depth teachings on the bardos of life, dreams, meditation, dying, dharmata, and becoming.

LESSON 1
The Bardo of This Life
In this lesson, Mingyur Rinpoche shows how accepting life’s ups and downs — and even the reality of death — can bring freedom and growth in every moment.
LESSON 2
The Bardo of Dreams
Discover how the bardo of dreams and the practice of lucid dreaming can free us from grasping and open the mind to spaciousness and joy.
LESSON 3
The Bardo of Meditation
Mingyur Rinpoche explains how the bardo of meditation helps us rest in the “gap” between thoughts, connecting with our true nature — open, spacious, and free.
LESSON 4
The Bardo of Dying
Learn how meeting the bardo of dying with awareness transforms fear into openness, revealing the luminous mind and a deep appreciation for life.
LESSON 5
The Bardo of Dharmata
Explore how the bardo of dharmata offers a rare moment to recognize pure awareness before concepts arise, awakening our innate wisdom and freedom.
LESSON 6
The Bardo of Becoming
Mingyur Rinpoche reveals how the bardo of becoming invites us to let the old, fixed mind dissolve so we can be reborn fresh, guided by awareness, love, and compassion.

Join Us Live!

This event offers a chance to connect with a vibrant community of fellow meditators, sharing the energy and support that come from learning together. We strongly encourage you to join us in real time. If you’re unable to attend, the recordings will be made available in the Dying Every Day: Essence of the Bardos course.
When we truly know that with every ending there is also renewal, we begin to relax. Our minds become open to the process of change. We feel we can actually touch reality and are no longer afraid of death. We can learn to live well and fully now, with the understanding that death is not something apart from life. So from the Buddhist point of view, we have a choice: to direct our story of living and dying now, or to wait, closing our eyes to the message of impermanence, until death itself opens them. Since we value happy endings, why choose to gamble with the Lord of Death?

— Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche

MEET YOUR GUIDE

Tim Olmsted

Tim Olmsted began his Buddhist studies in 1977 under the late Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche in Boulder, Colorado. In 1981, Mingyur Rinpoche’s father, Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche, was invited to teach in Boulder. Profoundly moved by him, Tim and his family moved to Kathmandu just a few months later to study with Tulku Urgyen and his sons.
During the twelve years that he lived in Nepal, Tim studied with many of the most renowned teachers living there and worked as a psychotherapist serving the international community. In 2000, Tim moved to Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, at the invitation of Pema Chödrön, where he served for three years as the director of Gampo Abbey, the largest residential Buddhist monastery in North America. He is the founder and president of the Pema Chödrön Foundation, which supports monastic training and communities in need around the world.
In 2003, after a visit by Mingyur Rinpoche to Gampo Abbey, Tim started the Yongey Foundation to support and promote Mingyur Rinpoche’s activities in the West. Since its inception, Tim has been one of the five instructors for Mingyur Rinpoche’s worldwide meditation community, Tergar International.
Tim lives with his wife Glenna in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, where he leads an active community that follows Mingyur Rinpoche’s teachings and those of his family lineage.
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By choosing the standard rate, you keep Vajrayana Online alive and flourishing.

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Cancel anytime.

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By choosing the sponsor rate, you help us offer a reduced rate to someone who needs it.

  • 10-day free trial
  • 25+ self-paced courses, including new content every month
  • Weekly live sessions
  • Vajrayana Online App
  • Includes free access to the Joy of Living online program
You will make the first payment after the free trial period. The membership will automatically be renewed in accordance to the frequency you have selected. You can cancel anytime, and no additional fees will be charged. For more questions about the membership, please visit our FAQs section.

Tergar is committed to making the benefits of Buddhist teachings and practices available to everyone. If the membership rate of $29 USD per month is a hindrance for you financially, please do not hesitate to reach out to us via volsupport@tergar.org to ask for a further reduced rate. We offer financial assistance rates for certain countries, for students with limited budgets, and for the monastic community.
I believe the most important factor in preparing for death is to remember that how we live is how we die. If we learn to embrace impermanence, to work with our kleshas, to recognize the sky-like nature of our mind, and to open ourselves wider and wider to the experiences of life, we’ll be learning both how to live and how to die. If we develop a passion to learn about the groundless, unpredictable, unfathomable nature of our world and of our mind, that will enable us to face our death with more curiosity than fear.

— Pema Chödrön

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