Letter from the Executive Director
Dear Friend of Tergar,
First, thank you. Our community of students, practitioners, teachers, volunteers, and donors like you is what makes it possible to share the benefits of meditation with so many people around the world.
Mingyur Rinpoche often says that we learn and grow far more through difficult times than when everything goes smoothly. This past year gave us a real chance to put that teaching into practice.
By almost any measure, 2025 was one of the most challenging years we’ve faced as an organization. Events dropped sharply. Fundraising fell below what we’d hoped. We had to make painful decisions— cutting projects we believed in, and saying goodbye to colleagues we care about deeply.
But difficulty sharpened our focus, and early enough that we could adjust course. Tergar is now on solid footing. And as we reach the halfway point of 2026, we find ourselves moving forward in a much more sustainable manner.
We’re sharing this mid-year update because you made that possible. Your generosity carried us through a hard season and into this one. We wanted you to see what that support has set in motion.
With deep appreciation,
Cortland Dahl
Executive Director, Tergar International
Finding Each Other
When Practice Meets Community
Too many people begin their meditation journey only to drift away. Not for lack of interest, but for lack of company. In early 2025, we launched something we’d never tried before: combining our self-paced Joy of Living program with weekly live sessions, peer connections, and chat app support groups. We hoped for 70 participants. We got 230.
Since that first cohort, the model has grown steadily.
Through mid-2026, we’ve completed six cohorts across all three levels of Joy of Living, with more than 900 enrollments and 679 unique participants from around the world. The numbers matter less to us than what they represent. Nearly 100 people have progressed from Level 1 to Level 2, and 67 have continued all the way to Level 3. It's proof that when students have a reason to keep going, they do. Your support is what makes that possible.
A woman in Finland had been struggling to maintain her practice alone. Through the chat group, she connected with someone in Germany facing a cancer diagnosis. Their daily sharing became a lifeline for both. After 68 days of consistent practice, she wrote: With Lydia, I've had double the joy of living!
Enjoying Aging with Awareness, Together
What began with a single email has become a community.
In early 2025, two volunteers—Ana in Brazil and Mary in Virginia—answered a call to create something Tergar had never formally offered: A space for older practitioners to explore the joys and challenges of aging through the lens of meditation. The group they built, Enjoying Aging with Awareness, Love, Compassion, and Wisdom, celebrated its first anniversary in January 2026.
Today, Enjoying Aging meets monthly on Zoom, drawing around 20 regular participants from across the US, Canada, and beyond, with 122 people on the email list.
Topics such as letting go, navigating loss, and finding joy amid physical change are filtered through the question, how does this apply to us as we age? As Mary says, “The fact that people keep coming back means it’s speaking to what they need.”
What Ana did not anticipate was what the work would do for her. “It inspired me to inspire,” she told us. Facilitating the group moved her to enroll in Meditation Teacher Training and to start a local practice group in Brazil.
A single email sparked a community. That community sparked a teacher. Your support started it all.
A Wider Welcome
Teachings in Every Language
Vajrayana Online is the Tergar International community platform for students to explore the Buddhist path with courses, guided meditation, and resources for applying practice in everyday life. Making that program accessible to more people, in more languages, is central to our mission.
Vajrayana Online has made it possible to access teachings that I would hardly have otherwise had. I am very grateful to our dear Mingyur Rinpoche and the entire team who do such generous work teaching and helping us on the path of dharma.
— Vajrayana Online Student
In 2025, we launched our first Chinese-language courses on Vajrayana Online: Essence of the Ganges Mahamudra and Essence of the Bardos. Together they’ve reached more than 1,200 students—a response that made clear how much it means to encounter these teachings in one’s own language.
In 2026, we added a third: Essence of the Way of the Bodhisattva. More courses are in development, with the goal of creating a complete pathway for Chinese speakers within the Vajrayana Online community.
I had hoped such beautiful courses could be translated into Chinese one day to benefit more students. Now it came true! Great gratitude to those who make it happen.
— Vajrayana Online Student
International in More Than Name
In the first part of 2026, Tergar began automatically adjusting event prices based on local economic realities in 26 countries, from 30% discounts in places like Italy and Japan to 80% reductions in Nepal and Indonesia. A teacher in Thailand or a student in Brazil can now access the same programs without financial strain, and without having to ask. Your support makes it possible for Tergar to meet people where they are.
That same spirit extends to giving. Beginning in late 2025, Tergar International can now accept online donations in your local currency. No mental math, and no uncertainty about how much you’re actually contributing. Since then, we’ve received gifts in 37 currencies, from the Brazilian real and Singaporean dollar to the Nepali rupee, Georgian lari, and Mozambican metical. These changes are making it easier for people everywhere to feel truly welcome in the Tergar community, no matter where they live.
Practice in Your Pocket
In parts of Africa and South Asia, up to 89% of internet users access the web exclusively on a phone. Globally, the majority of people who will ever encounter Tergar’s teachings will do so on a small screen, not a desktop. That's especially true for younger adults—the generation Mingyur Rinpoche has spoken about reaching—who are often mobile-first by habit even when other devices are available.
That’s why we’re pleased to share that the Tergar Joy of Living app is now available on the App Store and Google Play. It includes the full Anytime Anywhere Meditation Course, all three levels of Joy of Living, and guided meditations and short teaching clips—with more content coming over the next few months.
The app is a game changer for engaging with the content in my live cohort. I love the speed and accessibility to get back to the material. In addition, the convenience of reviewing the material throughout the week—it is so much easier than navigating a computer and webpages.
— Joy of Living Cohort Student
Kickstarter backers who helped make this possible have already received their rewards. Thank you for believing in this before it existed. A full public launch is coming soon. For now, the door is open.
Passing it On
A Global Network of Practice
The Tergar mission doesn’t only live in online courses and large events, but in the weekly rhythms of local communities, led by trained volunteer practitioners around the world.
In 2025, Tergar trained 76 new community leaders across 20 countries. Today, more than 160 practice groups in 46 countries make up that global network.
And momentum is building. In just the first six months of 2026, 24 new community leaders have completed training and 6 new local groups have already formed—with 55 more leaders currently in training and 28 additional communities in the process of being established.
Those communities are taking root in places like Plzeň in the Czech Republic, Manchester in the UK, Milwaukee and Denver in the US, Zagreb in Croatia, Candelaria Tenerife in Spain, and a new online group in Israel. There’s even a first-of-its-kind shared-interest group focused on AI and meditation.
To support these leaders, Tergar developed a new Community Practice Session Library and Resource Portal, giving volunteer facilitators curated tools to lead meaningful, welcoming sessions with the full backing of Tergar International behind them.
New this year is a self-paced training for umdzes, or chant leaders, for those who want to volunteer in that role or simply deepen their own practice in liturgy.
This is how human flourishing spreads—through the people who show up week after week, in communities large and small, around the world.
Jenny White in a group discussion during a volunteer gathering at Tergar Osel Ling, December 2025. Photo: Ngawang Thigchok Gurung
Meditation Teacher Program (MTP)
More than 270 Meditation Teacher Program graduates are now teaching in 49 countries. They teach in prisons, hospices, schools, and communities that Mingyur Rinpoche cannot physically reach. When the 2025–2026 completes next month, we’ll surpass 500 certified teachers. Hundreds more will join the new cohort in September.
Getting here required rethinking the program from the ground up. The cohort that graduated in 2025 was the first to receive full instruction in Cantonese, Mandarin, Japanese, and Russian alongside English, with live sessions across 18 weekly time slots
spanning every major time zone. One-third of those students came from Asia and Oceania—a region that was nearly unreachable in the program’s early years.
The graduates themselves have become a community. They meet in person at Tergar events, support each other’s teaching, and record guided meditations in their own languages for students. Thousands of people have already encountered these teachings through MTP graduates alone. We’re building a living network of teachers who carry the same view, in their own words, to their own communities.
Bikash is the principal of Mingyur Rinpoche’s school in Kathmandu, Nepal, a place where ancient Buddhist wisdom and modern education meet. When he enrolled in the MTP, he wasn’t sure he belonged. “I wasn't an experienced meditator,” he told us. “I used to wonder whether I’d even be eligible.” Paying for an online course in dollars was, as he put it, simply not something he could imagine. After receiving a full scholarship, he found a program designed for people like him. His doubts vanished.
He became a father during the cohort, and found the teachings on love, compassion, and awareness helped him stay present through all the joy and difficulty that new parenthood brings. Now he’s planning to teach schoolchildren as young as six, with a dream of a network of meditation schools across Nepal.
“It’s because of your kindness and compassion” he told us, “that someone like me—who would not have been part of this program under any other circumstances—is getting this opportunity.”
— Bikash Deshar
The MTP Scholarship for Young Adults
The MTP Scholarship was created to fund training for individuals positioned to bring these teachings to places and communities Mingyur Rinpoche cannot physically reach, from marginalized communities to institutions serving those facing trauma, addiction, and mental health challenges.
For 2026–2027, the scholarship has a special focus on young adults aged 18–35 who will shape the future of contemplative practice. We believe in investing early in the next generation of teachers—people who will guide students and communities for decades to come.
Bikash Deshar with some of his young students at the school in Kathmandu. Photo: courtesy Tergar Schools.
Tergar International is dedicated to transforming hearts and minds by making the ancient wisdom of meditation accessible to the modern world. We do this through online courses and events, mobile apps, in-person retreats, and practice groups that meet people where they are, in 70+ countries and at every stage of the journey, from a first taste of meditation to a lifetime of practice. Everything we offer is made possible by the generosity of our global community of supporters.