Online Dharma: Tergar Kickstarter Campaign for New “Joy of Living” Mobile App Gathers Steam

NEWS

Home » News » Meditation and Buddhist Practice » Online Dharma: Tergar Kickstarter Campaign for New “Joy of Living” Mobile App Gathers Steam

Online Dharma: Tergar Kickstarter Campaign for New “Joy of Living” Mobile App Gathers Steam

By Craig C Lewis
August 30, 2024

Tergar International, founded by the revered Dharma teacher and meditation master Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche, has announced the resounding success of its recent Kickstarter campaign to raise development funding for a new mobile app, named “Joy of Living” after Tergar’s foundational Buddhist practice and learning course.

“We’re thrilled by the incredible support our Joy of Living app Kickstarter campaign has received. [This] enthusiasm reaffirms our mission to bring Mingyur Rinpoche’s teachings to a global audience,” Tergar shared with BDG.

“Our Kickstarter funding goal was only US$10,000, and we were fully funded within two hours. But our actual goal is much higher than that. So what’s going on. . . ? Early success on Kickstarter encourages more backers to join, potentially helping our project go viral and spreading Mingyur Rinpoche’s wisdom to an even wider audience. . . . By setting an achievable initial target, we’ve gained traction and are reaching new audiences beyond our Tergar community. While we’ve made great progress, the cost of developing and maintaining this app is estimated at US$1.5 million over three years. Every dollar raised brings us closer to creating a more robust, feature-rich app.”

As at the time of writing, the Kickstarter campaign had raised US$146,170 from 476 backers.

“The global mental health crisis is acute, with millions grappling with increased anxiety, depression, and isolation,” Tergar stated in an announcement shared with BDG. “Meditation has become a key tool in the growing movement for mental well-being, offering a powerful way to build resilience. The Joy of Living app delivers a proven, user-friendly meditation approach, based on Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche’s teachings from his bestselling book. This innovative app supports users on their personal meditation journey and helps expand the reach of this transformative practice.”

The first public version of the Joy of Living app is scheduled to be released in early October 2024, with the full feature set rolling out in subsequent months.

“In a time when stress, anxiety, and disconnection are prevalent, the Joy of Living app offers a beacon of hope,” Tergar’s director of philanthropy, Beth Korczynski, observed. “It’s not just about relaxation. It’s about providing people with practical tools to cultivate awareness, compassion, and wisdom in their daily lives. We believe that by making these teachings widely available, we can contribute to a calmer, wiser, and more compassionate world.”

The app promises to provide users with: anytime-anywhere access to guided meditations and Dharma teachings; a structured, step-by-step path to help beginner’s and advanced users to deepen their meditation practice; personalized meditation recommendations and insights based on user preferences and progress; access to exclusive live events featuring Mingyur Rinpoche and Tergar teachers; and connection with a global community of meditators for mutual support and inspiration.

“The Joy of Living app was born from our desire to make Mingyur Rinpoche’s transformative teachings accessible to everyone, everywhere,” said Tergar executive director Cortland Dahl. “In today’s fast-paced world, we saw an opportunity to bridge ancient wisdom with modern technology, bringing the profound benefits of meditation right to people’s fingertips.”

Click here to learn more about the Joy of Living Kickstarter campaign

“Tergar’s ‘Joy of Living’ is a meditation path that anyone can follow, regardless of religious or cultural orientation,” Tergar noted. “It deals with basic functions of the mind, such as mindful awareness and the movements toward happiness and away from suffering. In working with these qualities of mind, we gradually transform our relationship to present–moment experience, learning to approach every thought, feeling, and sensory experience with unconditional warmth and acceptance.”

Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche. Image courtesy of Tergar International

Mingyur Rinpoche, the founder of the Tergar Meditation Community, which has centers and practice groups across the world, is a renowned teacher and best-selling author whose books include: The Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret & Science of Happiness (2007); Joyful Wisdom: Embracing Change and Finding Freedom (2009); and Turning Confusion into Clarity: A Guide to the Foundation Practices of Tibetan Buddhism (2014).

Born in 1975 in the Himalayan border region between Tibet and Nepal, Mingyur Rinpoche received extensive training in Tibetan Buddhist meditative and philosophical traditions from his father, Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche (1920–96), considered one of the greatest modern Dzogchen masters, and subsequently at Sherab Ling Monastery in northern India. After just two years, at the age of 13, Mingyur Rinpoche entered a three-year meditation retreat and then completed a second immediately afterward, serving as retreat master. At 23, Rinpoche received full monastic ordination.

Mingyur Rinpoche famously undertook a four-year solitary wandering retreat through the Himalaya in 2011–15. In recounting how he came to terms with the realities of his ambition to practice in the manner of a wandering yogi, Rinpoche revealed that he confronted many personal and spiritual challenges—including, at one point, his own mortality. Rinpoche has described the years he spent wandering in the Himalaya as “one of the best periods of my life.”*

The essence of Buddhist practice is not so much an effort at changing your thoughts or your behavior so that you can become a better person, but in realizing that no matter what you might think about the circumstances that define your life, you’re already good, whole, and complete. It’s about recognizing the inherent potential of your mind. In other words, Buddhism is not so much concerned with getting well as with recognizing that you are, right here, right now, as whole, as good, as essentially well as you could ever hope to be. ― Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche

* Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche Returns from Four-year Wilderness Retreat (BDG) and Y ongey Mingyur Rinpoche Releases Video Offering Insights Following His Retreat (BDG)

References

Mingyur, Yongey. 2007. The Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret and Science of Happiness. New York City: Harmony.

Craig C Lewis

Craig Lewis grew up in a transplanted Scottish family in southern England before setting off against all advice to seek light and wisdom in far-off places, rather than staying put and looking within. After repeated encounters with the Buddhadharma as a journalist in Thailand, Singapore, Hong Kong, and across Asia, he eventually found refuge as senior editor at BDG, where he reports and writes on the diversity of contemporary manifestations of the Dharma. Craig is also a keen mountain trekker and photographer, finding particular inspiration in the peoples, cultures, and Buddhist expressions of the Himalaya. In his column for BDG, “Chasing Light,” Craig seeks to document encounters, experiences, and epiphanies resulting from his own tentative and faltering path toward liberation. Contact: [email protected]

All Authors >>