Joy and Sorrow Share the Same Piece of Soil, with Amita Lhamo

This conversation is truly precious. It was such a magical, synchronistic gift to meet Amita Lhamo while I was hiking one day along the hillside in California and now I am so grateful to say she is now my guide and teacher in the Dzogchen lineage of the Tibetan Buddhist tradition of Vajrayana. In this conversation we talk about Amita's path, death as a guru, the vastness of true Love and Awareness, and the power and poetics of yin/feminine principles. Amita Lhamo holds a Bachelor’s degree in Human Development and Family Studies, and a Master’s Degree in Marriage and Family Therapy. As a psychotherapist, she specialized in death, dying, and grief, as well as trauma, chronic illness, and women’s issues. She has cared for thousands of individuals and their families through the process of dying, both as a hospice chaplain and as an independent midwife in her community. She was the spiritual care manager for Napa Valley Hospice and Adult Day Center, and has since trained individuals, groups, and organizations in spiritual care to the dying. As a spiritual practitioner, she studied within the Lakota dream tradition, working with her first teacher for nearly a decade before meeting the lineage of Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche and studying with his Dzogchen lineage holder, Lama Drimed Norbu. Under his guidance, she completed a five-year meditation retreat in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. Following her own five-year retreat, she recognized the value of spending time in deep meditative practice within the kindness of the wilderness and founded Yeshe Ling retreat center in Marin County California in 2021, where she currently offers teachings and personal guidance in person and via online courses. She is the author of Dandelions Blooming in the Cracks of Sidewalks: Stories from the Bedside of the Dying, which received the Nautilus Book Award (gold) and Wisdom Moon: Presence in Dying. Her offerings are available at https://www.amitalhamo.com/