If you’ve found your way here, chances are you already know something about the quiet power of this tradition—how it shapes us from the inside out, how it steadies the heart, how it helps us meet the world with a little more clarity and compassion. And because you know these things intimately, your presence here carries a different kind of weight.

This project may appear, on the surface, to be geared toward those who are just beginning—people curious about Buddhism, hesitant meditators, spiritual seekers who feel the world tugging at them from all directions. But the truth is, your support as a practitioner is the backbone of the whole effort.

Every time someone committed to this path shares, likes, registers, or simply shows up, it tells a much larger story: that the authentic Dharma still matters; that lineage still matters; that transformation is not only possible but alive and well in our communities. Your engagement becomes a quiet vote of confidence that publishers, partners, and the broader world can see. It validates that a project like this—built on depth rather than novelty, tradition rather than trend—deserves to exist.

This work has always been rooted in something deeper than content creation. It’s part of my practice. Part of a long effort to bring the stories of everyday practitioners into the light so that newcomers can find their footing on an authentic path—not the diluted, consumer-friendly versions that dominate our feeds, but the living transmission that has carried countless beings to freedom.

For this project to grow, for the photo book to demonstrate its viability to traditional publishers, and for the website to evolve into a real resource for people seeking the path, your support genuinely matters. It signals that this isn’t just one photographer’s passion—it’s a project held and upheld by the community it aims to honor.

Here are a few simple ways you can support the work:

• Follow and engage on Instagram
• Like and follow the Facebook page
• Sign up for the newsletter to stay connected
• Register on the website to access extended interviews, portraits, and stories
• Share the project with friends in your sangha or community
• Offer feedback when something resonates
• Be a collaborator to shape the narrative of this project  
• Refer photographers in your local sangha 
• Be an advisor to help develop the non profit. 

Each small action helps create the momentum needed to bring this project into the world with integrity—so that when someone, somewhere begins searching for a true path amid all the noise, they might stumble on these stories and feel something open.

Thank you—for your practice, your presence, and your willingness to walk this path alongside others.

I was born into a Buddhist household, but my path was anything but straightforward. Like many second-generation practitioners, I had to rediscover the dharma on my own terms. That rediscovery began after college, during my years in the Bay Area, where I immersed myself in long retreats at Spirit Rock and other Insight centers. The teachings made sense intellectually, but it was the direct, experiential clarity of retreat practice that transformed me from someone who understood the dharma to someone who genuinely wanted to live it.

For the first decade, my practice was firmly rooted in the Theravāda and Insight traditions, shaped by teachers like Jack Kornfield and others who carried that lineage into the West. But everything shifted after a profound retreat with Tsoknyi Rinpoche, where I unexpectedly received pointing-out instructions. That moment cracked something open. It left me with a powerful longing to find a teacher, and I spent the following years attending retreats with Minyaur Rinpoche, Khandro Rinpoche, Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, and Sogyal Rinpoche. Despite my commitment, I struggled to make progress without a formal guide. Even as I regularly attended Aman Thuten’s sangha toward the end of my time in the Bay Area, ngöndro still wasn’t being taught there, and I felt myself hovering on the threshold of something I couldn’t yet enter.

When I relocated to the Midwest during the pandemic, I finally began my ngöndro through Lama Tharchin Rinpoche’s Pema Ösel Ling, a community where I had already spent significant time in retreat. In Ann Arbor, I had the great fortune to support Lama Nancy of the Ann Arbor KTC and the founding of Karuna Buddhist Center under Khenpo Chophel. Serving on the board and the steering committee gave me a firsthand view of the challenges and beauty of building a sangha from the ground up. Through this relationship, I formally shifted my ngöndro into the Karma Kagyu lineage under Khenpo-la’s guidance—a turning point that deepened my practice in ways I had been seeking for years. Nowadays, I am splitting my time between Ann Arbor and Denver, where I manage a dharma inspired airbnb rental aptly name Tara’s Wellness Sanctuary.  I also spend a lot of time time living in my truck camper, using the great outdoors as practice container and capturing images for my print store. 

Now, after more than twenty-five years of navigating the path—through devotion and doubt, progress and distraction, the pull of modern life and the quiet call of practice—my commitment has settled into something steadier and more wholehearted. This project has become a natural extension of that commitment, a way of honoring the lineage, the teachers who shaped me, and the countless practitioners whose stories illuminate how the dharma continues to unfold in our time.