Background

Indigo’s path has been shaped less by a desire to adopt a religious identity than by a sustained curiosity about the nature of experience itself. Over roughly fifteen years of engaging with Vajrayana Buddhism, she has moved through periods of intellectual study, visualization practice, devotion, and increasingly direct forms of embodiment. What seems to matter most to her now is not how much Buddhist philosophy she can explain, but whether the teachings are becoming inseparable from the way she actually lives.

Earlier in her practice, Indigo was drawn to the philosophical dimensions of Buddhism because they gave her active mind something meaningful to work with. Over time, however, she found herself moving away from analysis and toward direct experience. The Vajrayana practices that most resonated with her were those that invited a fuller sensory and imaginative participation in the Dharma—particularly deity visualization and practices that gradually dissolve the perceived separation between practitioner and awakened qualities.

Her relationship with her longtime teacher, Anam Thubten, became one of the defining influences on that evolution. Indigo has practiced with him for more than a decade, and she describes their journeys as having unfolded alongside one another. In earlier years, both were deeply engaged with devotional and Vajrayana forms such as Vajrayogini practice. As his teaching became progressively simpler and more focused on direct embodiment, Indigo found herself moving in the same direction.

That relationship was tested in a very concrete way when Anam asked her to leave a life she loved in Maui and move to California. Indigo initially resisted. She had no desire to leave and tried to construct conditions that would make the move almost impossible. Instead, circumstances aligned with surprising ease, and within weeks she found herself relocating.

For Indigo, the experience became more than a story about moving. It revealed something about what it meant to genuinely accept someone as a teacher. She had made a commitment not to allow her teacher to become merely a “rubber stamp” for what she already believed. A real teacher, she came to understand, would sometimes challenge the limits of her certainty.

Today, Indigo’s practice is increasingly centered on recognizing Buddha nature in the immediacy of ordinary life. She is less interested in attaining extraordinary states than in allowing awakening to feel progressively more natural. Even her meditation reflects this. She sometimes finds herself laughing spontaneously while sitting, describing her nature as that of a “laughing Buddha.”

Her journey suggests a form of Buddhism that is intimate, experiential, and alive—one in which the path gradually becomes less about reaching somewhere else and more about discovering what is already present.