Episode 31 of Redesigning The Dharma by Sahaja Soma features a conversation with Sunisa Manning, Heart Sangha’s guiding teacher.
Sunisa was born and raised in Bangkok in a Theravada Buddhist family with additional Mahayana influence through her Chinese-born grandparents and her mother’s devotion to Guanyin. After an intellectually rebellious college period at Brown, she encountered Tibetan Buddhism at 20, found it more expansive for her as a woman, and later became a student of Anam Thubten in the Nyingma school, eventually being ordained and carrying the Dudjom Lingpa lineage while teaching Chöd.
She describes Vajrayana’s transformative work with afflictive emotions, the purpose of Ngöndro as preparation, and Chöd as Machig Labdrön’s practice of cutting through self via radical generosity and purification; she also teaches a modified “Chöd Healing” ceremony. They discuss adapting lineage practices in the West, obstacles like religious trauma and commitment, cultural differences around generosity, her experience teaching in Thai to women moved by seeing a female teacher, and the need to support young people with contemplative training.
Episode Highlights:
00:00 Welcome and Guest Intro
01:28 Growing Up Buddhist Thailand
05:39 Gender Monastic Limits
11:31 What Is Chöd Practice
17:09 The Importance of Lineage Versus Open Source
19:20 Why Commitment Is Essential In Spiritual Practice
23:27 Preparing The Vessel & Teaching Meditation Stamina
27:43 Common Student Obstacles
31:32 Thailand vs US Dharma Culture
35:56 Teaching in Thailand as a Woman
45:06 How A Contemplative Practice Can Help The Next Generation
46:29 Where to Find Heart Sangha Offerings
Guest Bio:
Sunisa Manning is the founder and teacher of Heart Sangha. She was born and raised in Bangkok, Thailand, into a Theravada Buddhist family. When she was in college she found Tibetan Buddhism.
Sunisa lived in the Bay Area, practicing and studying the dharma under her teacher Anam Thubten. In 2024 Sunisa was ordained by Anam Thubten in the Nyingma school of Tibetan Buddhism. She carries the Dudjom lineage, and teaches Chod in English at Heart Sangha, and to Thai students in partnership with Vichak Panich of Vajrasiddha. The Thai group is called Sangha Chod.
As a married mother to two young boys, Sunisa speaks from her experience as a householder and mom.
Full Transcript:
Adrian Baker: Welcome to Redesigning the Dharma. I'm your host, Adrian Baker, and today I'm speaking with Sunisa Manning. Sunisa is Heart Sangha's guiding teacher. She was born and raised in Bangkok, Thailand, into a Theravada Buddhist family. When she was in college, she found Tibetan Buddhism. Sunisa lived in the Bay Area, practicing and studying the Dharma under her teacher, Anam Tuptim.
Her day jobs have included rural development in Southeast Asia, working with unhoused young people in Australia, as a teacher in Northern California, and publishing a novel on democracy and dictatorship in 1970s Thailand.
Sunisa was ordained by Anam Tuptim in the Nyingma school of Tibetan Buddhism. She carries the Dudjom Lingpa lineage and teaches Chö.
As a married mother to two young boys, Sunisa teaches from her experience as a householder and mom.
[00:01:00] Sunisa, let me start by just thanking you for joining Redesigning the Dharma. I'm really excited to discuss, your background and some of the things we have in common, and was really excited in particular because you grew up in Thailand, and I think your story is a really interesting one, I'm very interested in Dharma evolving as a global story. it's not just like Western Dharma. You know, it could traditional versus modern. and so really interested in sharing your story with the audience and getting into it, so thank you.
Sunisa Manning: Thank you for having me. I'm excited to speak with you
Adrian Baker: Wonderful. So I will have read your bio, for the audience, but if you could talk briefly just about, what you do, and also just a little bit of your background in terms of how did you become interested in Dharma practice?
Sunisa Manning: Yeah. I I was born into Dharma practice, you know. Um, so I'm mixed race, Thai and white American, born in Bangkok, raised in Bangkok, the capital of Thailand. And I was born on my Thai side into a very devout, Buddhist family. And of course, Thailand is [00:02:00] also a Theravadan Buddhist co-culture, I learned to meditate as a child, which is not uncommon.
I think I would say it's quite common. And my uncles and grandfather, you know, had, different times in their lives when they were monks. We would give alms in the morning, all of the things, that I think a typical Thai kid did. We spent a lot of time in the temple. but my grandparents, my Thai grandparents, actually were born in China, so I also had a Mahayana exposure in the home.
so this is, you know, the bodhisattvas and kind of a different vehicle than a traditional Thai Theravadan outlook. yeah, so really was born into Dharma practice, and I liked it. when I was in college in the States, I went to Brown, I did go through a phase of, I think, intellectual rebellion and feeling like rationalism was all.
Um, I think it's pretty common. And, you know, so I was really studying in a very Western way, and that was fun. It satisfied a different hunger. I didn't go to an academically competitive school, [00:03:00] so it was fun to be in a different environment for college. That said, when I was twenty, I had the good fortune to meet, Tibetan lamas through someone I was dating, actually, in upstate New York.
And, I stumbled into, an empowerment, uh, just a weekend retreat, and, um, it really shook me in the best way. And I, I just felt, I was like, "Oh, this is the Dharma for me." And particularly in a gendered sense, there was some stuff about, the way I encountered the Theravada that made it feel like it would be hard for me to pursue in the female body as I am.
Uh, so when I encountered Tibetan Buddhism, I was really struck by how expansive it felt for me as a woman practitioner. so that was about twenty. And then It took me until I was about twenty-five, twenty-six to find my teacher. I put myself in front of a lot of different lamas on many continents. but eventually I found my teacher, who's Anum Thubten, and I settled down right next to him.
I lived in the East Bay. I lived near the temple, his temple in Point Richmond, California, [00:04:00] and I lived under a really good Dharma rock. as a householder, I had a lot of, other commitments: a day job, I got married, bought a house, had a baby, all the things of, householder life and studied with my teacher.
so yeah, that worked for a really long time. That's how I found my way into Tibetan Buddhist practice as an adult.
Adrian Baker: Thank you for sharing that. There are a couple things I wanna go back to, So when you were talking about growing up your parents also had that Mahayana influence, through Chinese, heritage. I'm curious, was that just a difference in, like, iconography or were you actually getting a difference in the view in the way that you understood?
Because that's quite a different view, you know, in the, Buddhist sense of right view than Theravada. I'm curious if, it started influencing you in that way or if it was really just a different iconography and introducing you to the idea and the, Bodhisattva and
Sunisa Manning: Yeah, that's a good question. So I didn't receive Buddhism through my father at all, so just to be clear about that. but I think there's a lot of Buddhism that comes through in just [00:05:00] culture, and it's what you're saying about iconography. But actually, in my case, particularly through my mother, I did receive education or training in bodhisattva in terms of view.
My mother had a very strong spiritual yearning, and, she read a lot. She asked a lot of questions of monks and abbots, of different temples. And through her and her connection to Guanyin, who is female and a woman-- uh, the Chinese name is Guanyin, but in, Tibetan Buddhism, Chenrezig, or Avalokiteshvara in Sanskrit, these are all different names for the bodhisattva of compassion.
So I was really exposed to the view of Mahayana through my mother as a child, for sure.
Adrian Baker: Interesting. another thing that I wanted to ask, you were talking about that appeal of Vajrayana when you encountered it and how part of that was, you know, gender. It was a much more welcoming, orientation towards gender than Theravada, which I think people will very immediately get who've kind of been to Thailand or had some exposure to Theravada otherwise.
thing that I've noticed in Thailand, and [00:06:00] I'm curious if, you notice this as well, I kind of feel like sometimes I encounter an attitude there that I call enlightenment or bust. And it's, this idea that-- And I, I think it's because view is totally rooted in monasticism and they don't have a householder tradition where there's sort of this idea of I'll tell people I'm doing retreats and they're saying, "Oh, well, that's great.
Why don't you just become a monk?" You know? Or they would say, "Oh, that sounds wonderful, but I'll do it in my next life," or something like that. And there's kind of this way that it can set up a binary between, like, all or nothing if you don't have a clear householder path. And I'm curious if that's something that you've noticed, because for me, studying in tantric traditions, Hindu and Buddhist with Vajrayana, I felt that allowed me to orient to the path in a very different way when it was more explicitly householder
Sunisa Manning: Yeah, it's completely different as a path of practice. I mean, right now we're talking about the binary between householder and [00:07:00] monastic, but within Thailand, only now is there starting to be an option for a monastic to include a woman monastic, a nun. You know, when I was in my early twenties, I would joke that in another life, I would have been a nun, and that's actually kind of an ironic joke because it never occurred to me to go to Vietnam or Taiwan or one of the countries in which I could have been ordained as a nun.
So deeply embedded was the orthodoxy of my tradition of birth. so it's, it's just kind of, interesting. And then, of course, I become a, Dharma teacher anyway, still in the female body. But I really feel for people in Thailand, but particularly women who might have-- I'm sure they do because I did, and I saw my mother too, have a strong desire to pursue this path, but not really a place to go because it is only open to men who can become monks.
you know. That said, I mean, I do wanna say there's a lot of wisdom in the Thai traditions, and there are many streams within Theravada in Thailand, and [00:08:00] I didn't happen to, encounter some of the Thai masters that I've since read But I just don't wanna oversimplify everything.
You know, the complexity, and the vibrancy of what the Dharma offers in Thailand is immense. And there are some masters who, as far as I know, haven't really been translated into English, and I'm very curious about, what they taught too. Like, when I read someone like Buddhadasa or Ajahn Chah, and Buddhadasa is Phutthai Hat in Thai, they're non-dual, you know?
They're-- This is-- It's an immense, wisdom tradition, is my feeling when I read their teachings. So I don't wanna flatten Thai Buddhism either.
Adrian Baker: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I practice a bit in Mahasi Sayadaw and then a bit in Thai Forest, and there's a big difference between Mahasi Sayadaw and Thai Forest, so. There's a big difference between Gelugpa and Nyingma,
Sunisa Manning: Yeah, there is.
Adrian Baker: yeah. So let's talk a little bit about, Having encountered vajrayana and Adam Tukten, Can you say more about what that did for you in sort of transforming your own [00:09:00] life?
Like what did the Dharma do for you, in a really experiential, practical way?
Sunisa Manning: Oh, yeah. I love this question. It really changed my life. I mean, you could say the Dharma has been changing my life all along. you know, having the tools of meditation in me, in my body, I mean, really in my body from childhood, gave me a lot of tools for adolescence and young adulthood.
It's hard to describe for people who learn to meditate as an adult. Sometimes I'm like, "Wow, it's like not learning to swim until later." You know? you're just not able to work with your mind in the same way for, for some time. and it, was really important for me to be able to sit with some wild states of mind.
and for me personally, I came in with a lot of neurotic patterning and, anger, anxiety. My goodness. Uh, so my meditation practice has been so transformative. The Vajrayana specifically, that was a longer path, but also such a fast and powerful path. but really being able to turn towards what [00:10:00] we would call these poisonous or afflictive states, for example, of anger, and work with them, that was a huge tool.
I'm really grateful to learn it. You know, I'm very grateful I got to study the Dharma. Rinpoche taught a two or three-year cycle of the three yanas, in which you learn Theravada texts, and you studied Mahayana texts, and then Vajrayana. I did that a couple times because every cycle, he taught different texts.
And so I was in sort of a study and contemplation, um, cycle. And then, of course, and particularly with the Nyingma, we really emphasize practice and not letting all this study sit at the top of our head, but really bringing it into our bodies and integrating what could end up being kind of lofty and conceptual with, It's gotta kind of go down into your guts. You know? It's gotta get into your cells. And how we're treating our partner and our children and our coworkers, like all of that has to become so integrated with bodhichitta. And, of course, that's still a process for me, [00:11:00] but I really feel embedded in this stream of joy and compassion that is, really bountiful.
And sometimes walking around, I'm just like, "Huh, everything we need is already here." I don't understand how not everyone is taking part in this stream, but it's really just part of my own gratitude for what I've received from the Dharma and from my teacher.
Adrian Baker: Samsara, that's why. The confusion samsara, that's why we're not taking part of it, so many of us. It's thick and powerful. okay, So on that note, talking about sort of the power of vajrayana practice and working with afflictive emotions, we've spoken a little bit about Chod practice and how powerful that is.
So I'm wondering if you could talk about that and just start by explaining it for people assuming they know absolutely nothing about it
Sunisa Manning: Yeah, I'm so happy to. L-let me put it in a narrative sense. I am gonna explain what chöd is. So I'm, you know, going along, being very studious, which is kind of like a mode I like to be in, and I'm a [00:12:00] really bookish person. So I was studying the sutras with Rinpoche and, you know, da-da-da-da-da.
But one day in the temple, he mentioned chöd. He just said the word, and I felt this body, like it was like this wind going through my body. And I was like, "Whoa, that's mine, and I'm gonna cry, and I'm gonna look very not cool in front of all of my aunties at the temple, and am I ready for that?" Of course, I was.
So chöd is a vajrayana practice. You do the Ngöndro, which are the preliminaries to the, all of the vajrayana, and, they're very beautiful, and they prepare you to do, any of the sadhanas inside. I like to describe the Ngöndro as scaling the walls of the castle. Before you can go inside the castle, you have to go over the walls, and you're gonna go over, you know, with your hands and your feet and at night, and it's gonna be a little scary, and it's gonna be hard, and not everyone makes it.
You have to really want to do this. This is your own path. But if you make it over the walls, you can choose to learn chöd Chöd was originated by Machig Labdron. she lived in [00:13:00] the 11th century in Tibet, if I'm getting that right. But numbers really slide around in my head. She was a woman.
Adrian Baker: correct, yeah.
Sunisa Manning: Correct. She was a woman.
You know, she was a girl who was born into a noble family. there were many, as we would say, auspicious signs at her birth, and she was taught to read, which was quite extraordinary at that time. And she demonstrated as a young girl, or I should say, it seems like she was an adolescent, a facility for reciting the Prajnaparamita Sutras, the long ones.
And she could memorize what is it called? Like fast chant these, uh, profound verses for monastics. And so she had an exalted place in the temple, but she met two of her teachers.
One gave her six aphorisms that outlined Chöd, that she would one day-- It's so cool to think that one of her teachers, it was like seeing the future Buddha that she would become, and hands her these aphorisms, and her wisdom grows into them. That's one teacher. her other teacher, though, said, " What do you know about emptiness?
you know, kinda like you with your nice [00:14:00] clothes, eating your nice food in this temple." And she really took that challenge to heart. Ooh, that was a wrathful teacher. So she left, her nice clothes behind and all these nice foods and everything, and she's became a beggar on the streets, and her clothes kind of became tattered.
She looked like a beggar. She slept among lepers. You get the idea. and she ended up practicing in a charnel ground. That would be, if you think of the Tibetan plateau, very cold, very high, very windy. That would-- Yeah, it's not a place where they bury, their dead the earth. What they do is, um- Maybe many people have heard of the sky burial where they chop up bodies and the bodies become food for the vultures.
Actually, chödpas are the people who, facilitate sky burial. But Machig's in a charnel ground, which is really a, space where you bring the dead and the dead are decomposing and being picked over, and she practices there. And she originates from the dharmakaya mind, a practice that is about cutting through suffering.
I would [00:15:00] say in a simple way, you could think of it as the vajrayana, practice around emptiness. So in the mahayana sense, you're chanting the Heart Sutra, you're trying to collapse the dualisms. In the vajrayana sense, you're doing chöd, and you're offering the body to cut through self. You're really saying, " My cherished body that I protect at all costs from illness and injury and perceived harm, I'm gonna give this to everyone, but especially my enemies or my inner neurotic patterns that Machig called demons, that in twenty twenty-six I call parts, or we have parts."
You're gonna say, "Please, please take what you want. Take everything you want." And you're practicing this, profound, you know, you could call it maha generosity, the generosity of the body. And, I found it to be a big purification. I think that gets misunderstood by a lot of Westerners, probably coming in from a Judeo-Christian lens.
But purification is very important. we cannot skip this on our journey to Buddhahood. And so chöd is one of the big ways of purifying our karma so that we can [00:16:00] just fall open into the Buddhas that we are destined to become. That's the idea.
Adrian Baker: That was wonderful. I really like the way that you explained it from the dzogchen view there. It was also really interesting about Mahayana versus Vajrayana, sort of what we're doing, the way you're getting there. and then now are you actively teaching Chod practice yourself?
Sunisa Manning: I do, yeah. I teach chöd to people who are at, that stage, so they have to have done the Ngöndro. you know, there are many stages to get to it, then you need the lung. I do teach chöd, and then I also teach something that my teacher, Adam Totten Rinpoche, originated called Chöd Healing, where he does chöd, but anyone they don't have to be a Vajrayana practitioner. Anyone can be in the room. I call it a chöd ceremony, and I actually usually have people lie down. But it's bringing the energy of, the lineage I hold through my body, and I guide people. so it's modified, but it's like I'll hold the ceremony and bring the energy through me, and it allows people to take part in the healing that chöd brings and the purification that it brings, even if they're not gonna do the Ngöndro and learn chöd.
That's a commitment. [00:17:00] I think it's a worthy one, of course, but probably at least three years before I'm teaching you chöd chöd. So yeah, many paths for many inclinations.
Adrian Baker: One thing I'd be curious to get your perspective on is sort of, and I think about this sort of in the modern age, this idea of how much are we staying firmly in the traditional lineage versus like source dharma. And there's, different, variations within that, right?
So there are people who are very-- They're somewhere in between, right? They're firmly in a lineage, but they're drawing in some other practices. For example, some modern Zen teachers have looked at other traditions and realized, oh, we're kind of just doing shikantaza or just shikantaza and koans, and it would actually be really skillful to bring in some kind of four immeasurable practices,
Sunisa Manning: Mm,
Adrian Baker: yeah Theravada or from, Vajrayana. To me, I think that can be very skillful.
when I hear people talk about Ngöndro, I feel like the underlying issue is people need a preliminary practice of some sort, I think especially before they [00:18:00] access something like a non-dual teaching, like Dzogchen or Mahamudra.
And I'm curious, what's your view in terms of how open you are on that front? does it have to be the Ngöndro? For example, Minyur Rinpoche with Path of Liberation, he doesn't require Ngöndro right before he gives people Mahamudra, pointing out they're kind of doing shamatha, heartfulness practices, vipassana.
For me, I personally found that vipassana, even in Theravada, and even though I had to learn a different view, was a really helpful preliminary practice. so I'm curious how kind of liberal or flexible you are on, that view, ' cause I'm hearing you say a bit more of a traditional view
Sunisa Manning: Yeah. Uh-oh. But you are talking to a lineage holding teacher here, so that's a question
Adrian Baker: But they're lineage teachers who are the very same people I'm talking about who are adapting it to different extents,
Sunisa Manning: I hear you. You know, vipassana, it's not a beginner practice. Vipassana goes all the way through dzogchen. It's such a profound practice. And in the West, of course, it's been translated as insight. In Thai, when you say [00:19:00] vipassana, it has such a fresh connotation. It's like I always tell my students, like you're sitting on your cushion, and you go, "Whoa, suddenly I realized," and it has this freshness, and there's a delight, is the feeling, you know, if you're asking me of, of vipassana.
To vipassana, you're like, "Wow, check that out." There's a lot of joy in it. I do think, yes, there's a big and open question right now that we're probably not gonna decide anytime soon about how much we can adapt very traditional things to the modern age. And of course, different teachers in different schools and different streams will do it differently.
To speak just for myself and, what I see, I do see in the West a lot of grazing, and I, I think it's pretty funny. There's like a drill ten holes one foot deep thing happening, and people shop around a lot, but not just in the beginning of the path or in the beginning of their spiritual journey when that's very healthy.
You wanna shop around, you wanna [00:20:00] check out a lot of sanghas and teachers, and discrimination's very important, But I see people kind of unwilling to commit, like in the buffet of wisdom traditions. I think, we need to push against that sometimes and actually find your place and then do it, and you wanna drill one hole ten foot deep, like depending on what your goal is, of course, I'm assuming that the goal is liberation. And if it is, you know, go. And in that sense, then you wanna really, once you've found the place, commit to it because the path will be difficult, of course, and things will arise, and you wanna have -- I think this will be one of your questions, but the container of your teacher, a lineage, a sangha, and it becomes this tremendous place for you to go deeper and deeper and deeper.
If we continue to t-treat it like a choose your own adventure, where we only do it when it feels good, I'm not sure how, far we'll go. But, you know, I don't wanna say that definitively, too, because that's just been how I've approached it, and I've worked with only one teacher once I found [00:21:00] him.
That said, the Ngöndro that Anam Thubten is giving us is not three years long. He is making it more accessible to people, and it's six months. Six months in the scheme of our life and practice, I mean, we can do this, you know? Um, we can do
Adrian Baker: So he's not to do the 100,000 of Okay. Well, that, that's also a very different
Sunisa Manning: Yeah, it's a very radical move.
Adrian Baker: there. you know, that's what I'm saying.
Sunisa Manning: and I- I've met some people now who are doing their third Ngöndro and, you know, the traditional Ngöndro. And I'm-- again, you go back to what is your goal, right? If your goal is to go all the way through so that you can be of the most use, like you're purifying your karma so that you can be of aid in a way that isn't sticky but is really pretty clean, please don't do three Ngöndros.
Do one and go. Go find your practice. so I think there's a real balance between discipline and the container that people need, and also, of course, discernment and listening to your own [00:22:00] wisdom inside in terms of what you're pursuing. And, you know, the trick will really be to distinguish what is wisdom and what is egoic voices inside.
that's the big question
Adrian Baker: I do agree with you in terms of the danger. I mean, you're also-- That was naming kind of the, I mean, I would say the more extreme shadow side of the other problem of too open source, but it's also quite a common issue. So I do get you naming that. and even the fact that he adapts the Ngöndro that much is quite a statement.
You know, I think of Tsoknyi Rinpoche versus Minyak Rinpoche, very much lineage holders, and there's a difference even there. You know, Tsoknyi Rinpoche, his first retreat, open retreat, you could be totally day one to meditation, and if you do that first open retreat, you'll receive pointing out instructions, trekcho in one five-day retreat.
Minyak Rinpoche, he'll let you go straight to Mahamudra if you're a Dharma practitioner of any kind for five years. But otherwise, he asks that you do Joy of Living program first, which is that Shamatha Heartfulness Vipassana, which could probably get through in, six months to a [00:23:00] year of practice.
And I also think that's totally reasonable. I mean, if you don't have any experience, I think you're better off doing that first. I think it's a healthy debate as well because there's the shadow that you named, and then there's also the shadow of the traditional conservative, which is like we're not adapting it to the time and context in which we're living, and the Dharma's always adapted, to the, the time and context in which we live in.
Because I think that's what's made it successful, is that it is adaptable
Sunisa Manning: Yeah, completely. I mean, the Dharma changes so much country to country because it's culturally specific. But we're asking many questions here. I mean, one thing is that the immense teachers, and you just named two, like Mingyur Rinpoche and Tsoknyi Rinpoche, you know, their bodhichitta is so great. Like, of course they want everyone to get through to the, teachings that will transform them, and they wanna do their best to help people be ready for those teachings, ready to use them and ready to, receive.
I mean, I've known a teacher who gives pointing out instructions without telling people so that they can't hold on to the no-trod.
Adrian Baker: Right.
Sunisa Manning: there are many methods, but [00:24:00] I think it's worth saying that we can assume that the bodhichitta is that, oh, we want, we want everyone to, receive this, but it's about also trying to have it be able to land,
Adrian Baker: Угу
Sunisa Manning: You know, we need to prepare the vessel sometimes too, the vessel being the human body.
and I think for practitioners or at least for me, but I see this, it can feel really good to do hard things. You know? Saying you're gonna do something daily for six months, like amazing. You get that feeling, I would think, of running a marathon. I haven't run a marathon. But you really-- I'm not a runner.
Uh-oh. But yeah. I was like, uh-oh, but it's a metaphor. But that feeling of saying, you know, these big practices, like you do wanna develop some stamina, and you wanna work up to them, and that's really part of how you can receive the benefits, the blessing, the adhisthana, which also adhisthana has this connotation of power.
It's blessing for sure, but it's power, the stream filling your body cavity and really [00:25:00] transforming you. So why wouldn't we wanna prepare the vessel? I like the balance but it's a good question.
Track 1: Well, let's talk about that. I mean, you said a very important point, which is about building people's capacity and resilience and comparing people. And in this day and age where people have such a short attention span, I mean, I've been reading more and more about how it's incredible just how few people are reading now, not even writing with AI.
it's a real issue. So I'm wondering, what are you seeing with your students, and how are you helping people to take on some of these practices? Does it naturally filter in your case? Like, I'm wondering, will you, like, will you say, " Start with five minutes if you can't do five minutes?"
Like, or are you just kind of filtering for some people who, if you can't make that, then they're not gonna get through your door, to begin with?
Sunisa Manning: Yeah, it's an interesting age. I mean, our ability to remain, you know, with our minds on one topic at length is such a pleasurable ability, and it's interesting to [00:26:00] watch swaths of the population really drop that, skill. Well, I don't do five-minute meditations 'cause they're too short. But our Sunday practices, which are really open door, and people come, in all sorts of forms, it is thirty-five minutes, but I do talk most of the time.
So I guess my answer is that I use the relational container as much as I can. I'm sitting there being like, "You can do this, and listen to my voice. It's a rope. And I'm gonna tell you how to meditate." We get a lot of requests for a beginning meditation course, and I was like, "Uh-huh, it's Sunday."
Me talking almost constantly at you, it's a beginner meditation course. And there are silence gaps, but they're about five to seven minutes. And just as it starts to get really scary and we're like, "Uh-oh, it's so quiet," I start talking again. So that's how I've been, coaxing people, and anyone can do thirty-five minutes, honestly.
We're not gonna kick you out of the temple if you're a squirmy worm, [00:27:00] and everyone has been that person, you know? So I think it's pretty good. We even have some teenagers sitting with us, which is cool. And after that, then we develop our stamina for the silence and our stamina for home practice. We have something called deep practice that we run in the fall, and that's, more silence.
And it comes with a, you know, "You should try this every other day, every day." it's part of building the path into something like the Ngöndro once someone's ready for that, they're gonna take the commitment to do that every day. And that's, of course, it involves visualizations. Like the meditative stability that comes with the Ngöndro, you need to be able to meditate silently on your own without having someone hold your hand doing it.
So that's kind of a, bird's-eye view of the path through Heart Sangha.
Adrian Baker: What are some of the most common obstacles or issues that you're seeing with your students? And maybe you could start with people who are newer to it, and then you can also pick examples of, people who have been on the path for a little while
Sunisa Manning: The obstacle for people who are newer, I'm speaking in the West, is some sort [00:28:00] of trauma from their religion of their upbringing. And, um, I'm not Tibetan, but Tibetan Buddhism, like we call the room where we meet a temple. It is a temple. It was consecrated by Rinpoche. The iconography of Tibetan Buddhism, I think, people can feel, scared probably that they're just signing up for Buddhas as deities.
I'm teaching constantly in a way that dismantles that, but I wear robes, you know, we bow. There are some things in terms of the ritual that look like a religion that can be pretty scary for people who might be coming out of, other experiences that they did not feel safe within.
The obstacle for people who've been coming for a while, and they start to have this longing, it's like the candle in their heart has been lit and they'll say things like, "I don't know why I keep showing up, Sumisa, but I, can't stop." It's so beautiful. I feel like I'm definitely not Buddhist. I mean, I'm a practicing Jew, but I come, and I just can't [00:29:00] stop. And that's fine. That's beautiful. The obstacle there, it's something about commitment. yeah, discipline, meditating every day. Sometimes it can be the language. I like to talk a lot about how Buddhism is just language around experience, and if we get too attached to the Sanskrit or the Tibetan words, for example, we're just putting all of that on a pedestal that we'll have to dismantle later. so whether you call it the four immeasurables, you know, whether you memorize like karuna or compassion, it's really about finding this way for your heart to be this tremendous waterfall of love and compassion. And then it's really finding a way for your outer actions to show generosity reflexively.
Ooh, so hard for Westerners. My goodness. Why, why is it so hard? It's like we're scared that if we're generous reflectively, someone's gonna come along and take stuff from us. It's a very interesting bind.
Adrian Baker: Yes. I feel like especially in America.
Do you wanna say [00:30:00] anything more on that? this is something I've really reflected on. I'm curious if you have any thoughts on what is more deeply underneath that conditioning
Sunisa Manning: just what I see in my scant years as a teacher, so this is, you know, with a lot of humility. I really see people have the impulse towards it, like they wanna be, and then there's this grip. Uh, it's like we live in a really transactional culture, and so if they give too much, uh-oh. and so there'll be the impulse, and then it's squashed.
And also in the other direction, you know, we put out a, a bowl, like a-- it's just a begging bowl in the temple. But we don't enforce that people put anything in the bowl. And sometimes for some people in the beginning, there's a real triumph of I get to come, and they don't even know I'm not giving anything.
You know, that, shadow of the transactional culture was very intense, and I think that's the collective karma, of America, of the United States. You know, like slavery, a transaction, among [00:31:00] other things. so we're really living in so many of those collective ways. I'm not saying Thai people are more advanced dharma practitioners at all, just that the situation's different.
But my home culture, my first culture is one that is reflexively generous. And, um, man, you could just be passed around large parts of Thailand, particularly the countryside, and they would just feed you and feed you and feed you. These aren't people that have, a lot to give, necessarily.
And so it just comes from a different place, doesn't it?
Adrian Baker: Yeah, it does. I mean, I really resonate with what you shared, and I've reflected on this a lot, I mean, so I moved to Thailand two thousand and ten, but the last six years I've really kind of been splitting my time between Thailand and the US, and it's interesting, there's something about Thailand that's just a lot more supportive of being Dharma practitioner for me.
Yeah.
Sunisa Manning: Mm-hmm
Adrian Baker: and I've really tried to, like, reflect on that and why, and, at this point in my practice, it's not even like I don't practice in the Theravada tradition. It's not like a practical [00:32:00] thing of like, oh, my teacher's there or I'm going to practice in a temple. It's just there's something about being in a culture where people are modeling, mindfulness and patience and kindness and generosity.
I mean, I feel like I'm having that mirrored for me all the time when I'm there. So then it shows me when I'm not that way, I can see it more, and then it encourages me to be like that. Like interdependence, right? we are interdependent with our environment, and the thing I sort of feel I see more clearly stepping away from the US and then get triggered when I come back to the US is, is that, you know, it's a society that really it conditions you to get ahead, to be very clever, to achieve, and there is something about it where it's like you're taught that you wanna get to the top of the pile, you can be helpful.
I'm just thinking of what you shared, but I think that impulse people of being afraid of being too generous, I think it's because they're afraid if I'm too generous, it's weak and I'll trampled [00:33:00] upon on my way to the top,
Sunisa Manning: Or I'll just be trampled upon. I mean, Adrian, it sounds like Thailand is really melting your heart, so what an amazing thing you get to spend time there
Adrian Baker: that's a great way to say it. It's very heart opening. And I find that there's a similar feeling in some other countries in that region too. You know, I've spent some time in Bhutan, different culture, but there's certain things that are very similar as well in terms of open-hearted, kind,
Sunisa Manning: There's just different priorities. But, to be honest , Thai people have an edge too, and a culture will have an edge and a shadow. So don't, you know, don't put it on a pedestal. it's just that depending on, like, if you're a Westerner, it would make sense that, oh, melting your heart, like being in some of the kinder cultures could really facilitate.
And by the way, they're collective cultures too, so it's so beautiful in Thailand. People will look after you, trusting that you will look after them. it's, like, such a beautiful trust fall. And so that could be a really radical place to practice if you come from more of an individual culture [00:34:00] in which I will look after my needs, and you will look after yours, and that's how people are satisfied.
Adrian Baker: for sure. And I, I also wanna say I definitely, being there, it does make me appreciate also what is great about American culture too, and I've lived in Thailand long enough to also notice some of the, the shadow elements for sure. I don't wanna put it on a pedestal, but I do really appreciate this aspect a lot about Thai culture and some of those Asian cultures.
There's, I think there's a transmission there,
Sunisa Manning: Exactly, yeah
Track 1: of the lineage that It comes through being in the culture that it doesn't come through otherwise, even if I'm just meeting the teacher who's amazing in the West. It's like being in the group, in the room with the whole group of people and immersed in the culture.
Sunisa Manning: Mm-hmm. Yeah, exactly. You know, when I, was teaching in Thailand this summer for the first time and in Thai, which was really an experience, but I was so touched. you know, a group of students were having lunch with me, and they had all brought food, and we shared it. And an older gentleman, he used to be a monk, said, " Oh, Sunisa, can I give you an ice cream?"
And I-- Like a Magnum? And I was [00:35:00] like, "Oh, I get to eat Magnums, but thank you." And this is all happening in Thai. But the thing to translate is that when you're a monastic, so, like, normally a teacher would be a monk, and you walk the alms rou-round, you know what you never get is, ice cream. ' Cause it's so hot that by the time if someone was silly enough to give you a popsicle, by the time you're back in the temple, that will be, you know, melted.
And so he had thought, what a thoughtful gesture to bring, ice cream. You know, Magnum is-- it's like a really nice popsicle. It's vanilla ice cream encased in chocolate. To bring Magnum for the teacher because that's such a very special treat. And in this story, you can start to see, if you've never been to Thailand, how communal and thoughtful, and really it's loving, isn't it?
It's so loving of saying, "Oh, maybe this will be a very special treat for you." But I can't really have too much sugar when I teach, so I had to say no.
Adrian Baker: I'm curious, so on this note of, like, culture and [00:36:00] teaching Dharma and practicing Dharma in different cultures, what do you find, like, when you're there in terms of the Thai Sangha and Thai practitioners?
What are some of the... I'm assuming some of the issues you initially identified were with your Western Sangha. I'm curious what you see in terms of challenges or issues, with Thai Sangha
Sunisa Manning: Well, I haven't accepted Thai students yet, and I've only, worked with them very briefly once this past summer. but it is my native culture. you know, it was interesting. I taught a weekend, and I would've said it was a retreat, but the person hosting me, who's also a teacher, Vichak, he said that we have to call it a workshop so everyone can speak.
And I was like, "Speak? That's crazy." But of course, he was right. For Westerners, broadly speaking, to generalize, no speaking because too much conceptualization and too many books have been read, and I really want people to be silent and drop in and deepen and deepen into their meditation. But of course, in Thailand, in Bangkok for this weekend, the most important teaching session was [00:37:00] lunch half the Sangha and then the other half brought food and sat with me, and we-- one big table, and we shared everything, and they could very casually be like, "So, Sunisa, when you were talking about anger, did you mean it like this?"
And it was the opportunity to have critical thinking, the opportunity to question and disagree, which is very culturally uncomfortable.
and, uh, to really try something on and decide for yourself whether that is gonna work for you. You know, the weekend workshop was a lot of women, Thai women, and-- 'cause I was teaching in Thai, everyone's Thai.
And just watching me take my seat in the teacher's seat, a lot of the women started crying because structurally it is impossible for a Thai woman to be a teacher. it's just, like, so crazy. And so the minute I took my seat and I said hello in Thai, they just burst into tears So there's a lot there as I cry and tell you about it.
There's a [00:38:00] lot there there's just a lot of longing and a lot of stuckness, and yeah. What an honor, really Sorry.
Adrian Baker: No, don't apologize
Sunisa Manning: Ugh.
Adrian Baker: I think it's a wonderful actually transmission you're offering people right now just to see what, seriously, some of the, um, the issues of the Dharma that, for example, we might take for granted in the West because, you know, people are going to certain spaces here and they're maybe not
Sunisa Manning: can I speak to that actually? So I teach and I
Adrian Baker: Yeah, please.
Sunisa Manning: which is why I never wear mascara when I teach. Um, but to speak to that a little, you know, I do notice sometimes Western students will let themselves off the hook of enlightenment and say there was something about Tibet, you know, those caves, et cetera, that allowed, Tibetans to become
Adrian Baker: mystical, it's magical.
Sunisa Manning: Yeah. And I just wanna say, you know, let's [00:39:00] reality check exotifying Tibetans. Is it easier to become enlightened as a Tibetan? I mean, literally, is it easier with the circumstances, let's say today in Tibet? It genuinely is not. Or Nepal. It is not easier to become enlightened there. And it just really, you know, I have my hand on my heart.
Sometimes my dear Western... What I see is like we just take so for granted. We have running clean water, something my toddler's learning about. You can drink the water, and you can't do that everywhere. And we have electricity, and we are educated, at least to some level, girls and boys. also teachers reside in the West because of, what has happened in Tibet.
And so I really see that we can take for granted these causes and conditions here, and people will sometimes not practice because they just have such an abundance of distraction. And, um, in Thailand, for example, if you're a woman and you wanna do a retreat, where are you gonna go? There's starting to be some [00:40:00] places, but literally, where are you gonna go?
Say you wanna do a week-long solo retreat, and you're a Thai person. You're not a, Westerner, and so you can't go to any of these special places and pay more money. There are very few spots that are open to human in the female form in Thailand. And so just saying, you know, we have so many choices here and so many ways to develop ourselves that, can be easy to overlook.
Adrian Baker: Absolutely. I think the material conditions, I mean, they're, they are an advantage up to a point, and then almost like it becomes, you
Sunisa Manning: Too much.
Adrian Baker: I'm thinking of the idea of god realm, right? It become a distraction in, Or the technology, you know, which of course is ubiquitous now, But the, these devices we have, and the way that in some ways that's why renunciation is, important, you know, is removing those obstacles of things that distract But I think it's always important to incline the mind towards gratitude, appreciation, wherever you are in making the most of really noticing what's favorable about those causes conditions [00:41:00] for practice too.
Sunisa Manning: Yeah. I think, you know, technology I always think of as a tool of ignorance in the three poisons or the five poisons because it numbs us out, and it can cause us to fall asleep to our potential. And, um, yeah, it's very effective at that. So there we are. But it's true. If we have too much comfort, we are in the God realm.
the dedicated students I see, and there are many, I feel like I've been knocking Westerners, which is not my intention, but I see people come in, you know, it's suffering that brings people in. And when you are in that place, it's-- I mean, life is happening to you, and it's like you're in this well, and you're-- it's real dark for real long, and you're kind of willing to try anything, and you've heard about meditation maybe.
That can be a huge motivation and a very effective one for really getting the hours in, really starting to listen to the teachings and practice them, you know, and come and integrate and, that's why people come. So suffering comes for us all and, you know, depending on where we [00:42:00] are, like in our time in life.
But, but that's what, if you ask me, is making the Dharma accessible. it's just that when people are suffering, they will try it.
Adrian Baker: Yes. Well, there's no shortage of it. You know, can fool ourselves. We can fool ourselves into, forgetting about that, you know?
Sunisa Manning: Too much brunch. But eventually the brunch stops.
Adrian Baker: That's a good metaphor.
Sunisa Manning: Yeah, that's what I say.
Adrian Baker: Have you seen anything on the note of technology specifically with like, I mean, I'm thinking this could be generational, but not necessarily if like people really struggling, with some kind of, um, smartphone addiction or different things and, that's how they get into it, right? Meditation and then seeing some of the challenges that people have.
I'm wondering, I was thinking, you know, when parents, their kids would misbehave and they'd send them to like boarding school or military school, like maybe now with the smartphone addiction or something, they're gonna send their kid to, to meditation. Yeah, exactly.
Sunisa Manning: I haven't seen it yet. but I'm sure that will be a thing. I [00:43:00] really hope the Dharma in the West, and I hope Tibetan Buddhism, I hope we start to work with, um, kind of a gap year. Like, I wanna work with young people, whether that's they are 18 and taking a gap year before college or after college or in their 20s.
I see Upaya does it for Zen, but that it would be wonderful to have-- Oh, no, I'm saying it out loud. But probably I'm not gonna do this. Someone else is gonna pick up this very wonderful idea and have a, you know, dorm room intensive practice situation. I just think, there's so much instability that young people are being, birthed into as adults, technical adults, And there's a hunger. Like, it's such a good moment to meet them with a lot of meditation, a lot of classes, -- Shedra. Like You mimic a monastic college, and you teach them about Buddhism so that they can be a different kind of citizen in the United States. That would be really interesting
Adrian Baker: It's funny you mention this. I was just talking about this about a month ago with someone. So Mingyur Rinpoche is starting Tergar schools, and it's, starting as [00:44:00] like a, K-12 school in Kathmandu, but the idea is like, how can you prototype all these different ways about bringing contemplative practice in a secular way into schools?
Kinda like the way he did with The Joy of Living, doing that similar thing with education and contemplative practice. And I talked with someone from his organization about the same thing. It's like, I think that's a really key point in people's development in life, and it's, also something that's so helpful is taking that pause.
I actually took a semester off before I went to Brown, and I worked, but it was actually just really helpful in terms of getting perspective and maturing in other ways. It's just like instead of going straight on the hamster wheel the next rung before you go to college or after college to a job, taking time to step out and to turn inward and train your own mind would be like really powerful intervention point.
So I hope this gets out there and many people seize the idea. I know some people, there's [00:45:00] like one or two organizations doing it, but it's, it's really nascent. There's not a lot of people
Sunisa Manning: Th-this really is it. Like, the next generations are gonna have a lot of challenges in terms of weather, climate. There's a lot of instability that we are seeding them with. Equally, we could try to seed the gift of contemplative practice.
Whether or not it's Buddhist doesn't matter. But I happened to get that with meditation training as a child, and I had some really turbulent circumstances as an adolescent. But one of the reasons I made it through is that I had a foundation, if you're asking me. A foundation of meditation, bodhisattva.
I-I don't even think I had the practice, but this idea of bodhisattvahood kind of percolating. and then just to mention, my, my husband went to a Quaker school where they sit in Quaker meeting, which is silent. I would say that's a form of meditation. And then he encountered Buddhism and decided to study abroad in Kyoto, where he did a full monastic term abroad, waking up at four AM, sweep the temple.[00:46:00]
Very rigorous amount of meditation, you know? We should all get the chance to have a coming of age that is integrated with a contemplative practice that's deep enough that we can then choose you know, to continue it or not. But it gives us a stability of mind, my goodness, that is really immense. It's a gift
Adrian Baker: It is. Yeah. Well, maybe that's an amazing place on which to end. It feels like a wonderful wish to put out there, and you and I, or many people out there, I hope they begin to nurture those karmic seeds. before we close, I wanna give you the opportunity just to share where people can, find out more about you or any of your upcoming offerings
Sunisa Manning: Oh, yeah. the place to go is Heart Sangha, which is heart-sangha, S-A-N-G-H-A.org. And all my teachings in the West are hybrid, so you can just tune in if it works in your time zone. and then I also write a Substack called Dharma Bytes, so you can read along on that if you want. But in the end, I really encourage people to, you know, it's a practice path.
come [00:47:00] actually meditate and, um, sit on the cushion and instead of watching the river, jump in the river. That's what we're meant to do. Thank you so much.
Adrian Baker: Thank you so much.
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