A Living Matrix of Awareness, Wisdom, and Compassion
At Tergar Schools, our students don’t just learn about awareness, love, compassion, wisdom, and joy, they practice them every day. Through mindful engagement with their studies, peers, and community, they learn to see clearly, understand deeply, and respond wisely. This is the heart of our learning model, and it is a joy to watch it come alive.
Guided by the visionary Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche, our Executive Director Justin Kelley, and core advisor Susan Kaiser Greenland, we have developed an approach that blends Buddhist wisdom with developmentally appropriate education. This dynamic framework of interconnected life skills, a living matrix, nurtures both traditional values and innovative learning practices.
Recently, the Tergar Schools model was shared in four sessions at the Stanford Contemplation by Design Summit 2025, offering educators, practitioners, and enthusiasts a chance to explore how contemplative education can transform classrooms into spaces of awareness, compassion, and joy. The Summit presentations highlighted the model’s practical application, its foundation in Buddhist principles, and its holistic approach to developing children’s social, emotional, and cognitive skills.
Rather than following a linear path, our model unfolds as a web of practical, interrelated skills. Children draw on them as needed throughout the day: settling their minds with awareness, reframing challenges with wisdom, or acting compassionately with care for others. In this way, the core qualities of the Buddhist path become lived experience, naturally woven into learning, relationships, and daily life.
SEE — Awareness
Learning begins with awareness: the ability to arrive fully in the present moment. Inspired by Susan Kaiser Greenland’s pioneering work with mindfulness in children, students practice simple exercises, feeling the breath, listening attentively, pausing before speaking, to steady their minds and bodies.
Awareness grows into a broader skill set: pausing and opening to new experiences, listening deeply, and noticing themselves and others with empathy. These practices form the foundation for focus, emotional balance, and meaningful engagement with the world.
UNDERSTAND — Wisdom
From awareness arises understanding. Guided by Rinpoche’s accessible teachings, students explore inquiry and reflection, developing the ability to ask thoughtful questions, connect ideas, and reframe challenges as opportunities for growth.
Creativity, play, and curiosity are essential here. Students learn through imagination and exploration, experiencing wisdom as a joyful, lived quality rather than abstract knowledge. Understanding deepens into insight about themselves, others, and the world around them.
RESPOND — Love and Compassion
The natural expression of awareness and understanding is compassionate action. Students practice thoughtful decision-making, develop caring and supportive relationships, and act with purpose—through collaboration, community projects, or everyday kindness.
This emphasis on response reflects Rinpoche’s vision of education as training in both heart and mind, preparing students to meet the world with steadiness, care, and joy.
A Living Framework for Real Life
Our life skills translate Buddhist principles into developmentally appropriate practices, nurturing balanced, curious, and compassionate learners. A mindful breath before a response cultivates awareness; reframing a setback strengthens wisdom; helping a peer develops compassion and purposeful action. These are not abstract lessons: they are embodied, everyday practices that prepare children to thrive academically, socially, and emotionally.
Through this integrated approach, Tergar Schools is shaping an education that’s both contemplative and creative, rooted in timeless wisdom and responsive to today’s world. Students experience a holistic education that balances tradition with innovation, helping them grow into resilient, caring, and insightful human beings ready to make a positive impact.
