On Embracing Impermanence

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In a world where nothing lasts forever, how do we live? Life is perpetually, endlessly filled with change: new jobs and new loves, unfamiliar places and faces. And entwined in that change is loss: loss of what was or is, or what could have been. Amid this shifting landscape, author Ann Tashi Slater has found power in embracing impermanence through the Tibetan Buddhist belief in the intermediate state of bardo.

Ann has been writing and speaking about her Tibetan-American heritage and the relevance of Buddhism in Western society for over forty years. In that time, she has come to see how Tibetan bardo views on impermanence can transform the way we live. In Tibetan belief, bardo is the interval between death and rebirth, as well as the intermediate state between birth and death. It also refers to liminal periods in life when a current state of reality we know comes to an end. A time of great possibility, it offers us the opportunity to find happiness in an impermanent world.

Join Ann for an illuminating conversation exploring the Tibetan Buddhist tradition of the bardo in relation to marriage and friendship, parents and children, work and creativity. Ann shares insights from her latest book, Traveling in Bardo, along with stories of her Tibetan ancestors and the Buddhist teachings on the fleeting nature of existence. Ann shares what the teachings can tell us in our contemporary lives and discusses vital wisdom from Tibetan culture that can provide a framework to navigate moments of change and live life fully.

Meet the Speakers

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Ann Tashi Slater contributes to The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Paris Review, Tin House, Guernica, AGNI, Granta, and many others. Her work has been featured in Lit Hub and included in The Best American Essays. In her Darjeeling Journal column for Catapult, she writes about her Tibetan family history and bardo, and she blogged for the HuffPost about similar topics. She presents and teaches workshops at Princeton, Columbia, Oxford, the Asia Society, and The American University of Paris, among others. She was a regular speaker at NYC’s Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art during its 20-year run; her highly popular Rubin presentations on bardo and her family history have been mentioned in The New York Times.

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Fernando Ona is a methodologist, medical anthropologist, and minister, originally from the Northeast. He began his career in local and State public health and social services before joining the faculties at several public and private universities. He is also a somatic psychotherapist who has supported refugee and asylum-seeking communities who are survivors of torture. He is a certified 500-hour yoga instructor and an ordained minister.