Tergar Schools on the Wisdom Podcast
We are excited to share that Justin Kelley, the Executive Director of Tergar Schools, recently joined Daniel Aitken on The Wisdom Podcast for an insightful conversation about his personal Dharma journey and the groundbreaking work of Tergar Schools and the Tergar Institute. This episode provides a deep dive into the inspiration behind our schools, the vision that guides our work, and the meaningful impact of education rooted in awareness, compassion, and wisdom.
During the conversation, he spoke about the experimental approach we are taking in Kathmandu, and the ambitious plans for our larger campus in the Yolmo region of Nepal. As he shared:
“We’re building a much larger school in the Yolmo region of Nepal—this sacred land of Guru Rinpoche and Milarepa—that is going to house somewhere between 600 and 700 students. So it’s going to be a magnificent campus. We have a ten-year build plan.”
But the vision doesn’t stop there. Our work is not just about building schools—it’s about discovering and refining an educational model that integrates ancient wisdom with modern science and best practices in child development. He elaborated on the broader mission:
“How can we take the learnings that we have in Nepal and extrapolate them at a universal level to then take them to other places? That’s where we are going at it methodically, incorporating people from the Center for Healthy Minds—people like Richie Davidson and Cortland Dahl and Susan Kaiser Greenland—Mingyur Rinpoche, some of his peers like Tsoknyi Rinpoche, and his senior lamas. We’re really putting our heads together to ask: how can we extract the greatest meaning from this experience we’re getting in these pilot settings, and how can we apply it more broadly? Mingyur Rinpoche’s vision for this project is, not surprisingly, as vast as you can imagine. He wants to create schools that are infused with these principles all around the world. We are a little early to say what the pragmatic steps to get there are, but we are in that experimentation stage—we’ll quickly get to that though.”
This episode is a must-listen for anyone who wants to understand not just the “what” of Tergar Schools, but the “why” and the “how.” It’s an inspiring glimpse into how we are shaping a new model of education that brings together timeless wisdom and cutting-edge research to support the flourishing of students worldwide.
Listen to the Full Episode
For more information also check out the podcast details at the Wisdom Experience website.
