About Open Question Podcast

How do we navigate our lives in the midst of uncertainty? How do we bring our deepest intentions together with our actions? What is the purpose of spirituality? How can we accommodate both the beauty and the pain of life?

These questions may never have a definitive answer, but they are questions to live by. At OQ Podcast we feel that if you have a genuine question you should explore it, continue to ask it, and then pay close attention to what happens.

I am Elizabeth Mattis Namgyel, a Buddhist student and teacher. Please join me as I share some intimate and rich teachings on The Middle Way.

Open Question Podcast is available on all podcast platforms (Apple, Spotify, etc.). English and Portuguese transcripts are available on each podcast episode webpage.

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Elizabeth Mattis Namgyel on How OQ Podcast Began

The production of Open Question Podcast: A Call to Inner Brilliance emerged as an opportunity for me to serve during the 2020 pandemic. Through producing the podcast, our team found a way to connect with a variety of students and teachers who generously shared their insight and kindness.

In 2020 we received funding to create the podcast from the Hemera Foundation’s Tara Project, which sought to support women communicating Buddhist Wisdom. My dear friend and Mangala Shri Bhuti Sangha member Michael Velasco signed on as my podcast partner, heading up production and communication. When it became clear that COVID would profoundly affect physical production, we considered postponing. After giving it a lot of thought, we decided not to postpone, and made arrangements to produce the podcast remotely. The moment we decided to proceed, everything fell into place.

Michael mailed me a microphone overnight, and we began the next morning. Because everyone was sheltering at home, all the guests I wanted to interview for the podcast—people from various spiritual and cultural traditions—were available and wanted to connect. These meaningful discussions remain available for your listening, and we are excited to share them. The music featured in the OQ Podcast is by my brother Chimé Mattis.

The first OQ Podcast aired on April 20, 2020. In 2020 and 2021 we featured special guests in a discussion-style format. In 2022, we decided to revamp the podcast series to feature solely my teachings. We created an annual theme to the podcast, with each episode forming part of a series. The themes are as follows: Sacred World: Through the Eyes of Prajnaparamita (2022), The Self: Walking the Middle Way Path (2023), Faith: Beyond Belief and Doubt (2024) and Bodhichitta: Burning with Love in a World We Can’t Fix (2025).

Also in 2022, we created the online event series, Open Question Live Conversations, complimenting my annual teaching theme in the OQ Podcast. OQ Live Conversations feature wonderful engagements with great teachers, artists, and scholars. We offer these events with simulcast Portuguese translation and recordings in both languages.

Open Question Podcast is a labor of love and an evolving process of creativity. It requires my contemplation, flexibility, openness, and research. From the team, the podcast is an offering to you. I hope that it supports you, bringing encouragement and joy into your life.

Listen to Recent Open Question Podcast Episodes

Featured

Episode 601: Across the Valley

In episode 601, Across the Valley, Elizabeth uses the analogy of two communities situated on opposite sides of the valley where she lives to consider our tendencies towards fundamentalism and rightness. “What happens” she asks, “when everyone feels absolutely right?” The Bodhisattva Vow is a commitment to create connection with others, without bias, by looking inward at the mechanisms of reification, and then applying the Buddha’s Middle Way Beyond The Extremes.

Episode 505: Looking Into the World

In this episode Elizabeth reflects upon the provocative poem composed by the renowned contemporary teacher, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, entitled, “Looking Into the World.”

“It’s not a cozy poem,” says Elizabeth, “It’s a reflection on loneliness. It is an incantation to distrust. It is a tribute to the freedom and confidence that comes from standing on our own two feet.” Put your familiar and conventional views aside for this wonderful exploration.

Episode 504: “Hook and Ring”

In Episode 504, Elizabeth explores devotion, one of the many aspects of faith. Through stories and inquiry, she brings us through various meanings of devotion. Elizabeth examines devotion as an experience, along with cultural and interpersonal challenges that can arise through misunderstanding the teacher/student dynamic. When understood more clearly, devotion hastens the process of spiritual awakening for the student.

Episode 503: The Ineffable

All great spiritual lineages point us back to that which defies concept and language. Authentic practitioners describe awakening as being touched by a sense of awe, overcome by the beauty, fierceness and power of being. To be in AWE is a natural human experience. Ironically, so is the discomfort that leaves us restless with the experience, making it almost impossible to bear. Our inability to bear the ineffable gives rise to dualism and our conflict with faith.

Episode 502: Hail the impossible!

At 7:15 am on August 7th, 1974, 1,300 feet above a gathering crowd, French high wire artist, Philip Petit, renowned for his unauthorized public stunts, stepped onto a 131-foot wire rigged between the twin towers of New York City's World Trade Center. In this episode, Elizabeth recalls Petit 's "impossible" display of human courage and confidence as an analogy for faith, why we need to cultivate it, what it is, and how it works.