Photo by Marc-Olivier Jodoin on Unsplash

 

In 1979, when I was seventeen, I met a teacher named Jack Engler who introduced me to Buddhist meditation. From that first class, something inside me recognized the path I’d been looking for. Within a month, I could see myself as a nun, and held open the wish to travel Southeast Asia to study with the meditation masters I’d heard about—Ajahn Chah, Dipa Ma, Ajahn Buddhadasa—those who lived, breathed and totally embodied the Dhamma.

Eight years later, the conditions ripened. I quit my job as an analytical chemist, gave away everything I owned, found a home for my cat Tasha, and bought a one-way ticket to Kathmandu. I was twenty-five and ready to dedicate my life to awakening.

The Journey Into the Mountains

Nepal was vibrant and disorienting. The longer I stayed, the more unsettled I became. I’d never been this far from home, this long. I missed my family and friends. So I followed my oldest compass: head into nature.

I flew to Delhi and in 125-degree heat made my way to the Himalayan foothills, to McLeod Ganj—home to His Holiness the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan government in exile. There I met Brian, a traveler my age who seemed kind, grounded, safe. I asked if he’d join me on an overnight hike into the mountains. He said yes.

We packed food, hiked into cool mountain air, ate wild strawberries along the way, and reached Triund—a high ridge ten thousand feet above Dharamsala. We spread out our sleeping bags and slept under the stars.

That night was two days before the full moon in May—Vesak, the Buddha’s birth, awakening, and death. A blue moon. Rare and auspicious.

What Emerged

The next morning, we left our packs to explore a nearby canyon. I stood in front of a boulder and noticed a cave. “Brian, did you see—”

And then it came.

A sound like nothing I’d ever heard—part roar, part growl, part snort—and from six feet away, a massive black bear charged straight at me.

When the bear’s face was two feet from mine, I went for refuge, screamed, jumped—and blacked out.

When I came to, my belly was pressed against a branch, the bear’s body along my back, its jaws chewing my head.

The first moment of consciousness was pure, unbounded fear—no edges, no space around it, just total immersion.

But right next to that fear was the knowing of fear.

And then a thought: There’s no point in being afraid. You’re going to die.

With that, something released. The body softened. The mind opened. Fear vanished.

Then—joy. Luminous, radiant joy. Clarity. I watched sensations and thoughts arise and pass. In fear’s place was curiosity: What will it be like to watch this mind and body dissolve?

The bear was still chewing on my head.

From that stillness came the sound of “Om.” Not something I’d practiced, not something I expected. It arose on its own. I turned my attention toward it.

The instant the mind turned to rest upon that sound, the bear left.

The Sound of Kindness

When Brian reached me, he said, “You’re not that badly hurt.”

It was such a kindness. My head and neck were covered in gashes, but my skull was intact. Eventually we made it back to our big packs where Brian cleaned and bandaged me. We hiked down for three hours. At the clinic, the doctors expected mangled remains. Instead, I walked in laughing.

Later that night, when the bliss wore off and pain arrived, I lay on a cot, tears streaming. There must be a reason I’m still alive. I just don’t know what it is.

Weeks later in Nepal, one wound refused to heal. A doctor finally removed a seed pod lodged in my scalp that had been between the bear’s teeth. After that, the wound closed. I continued to Thailand, visited monasteries and each of the masters I had wanted to meet. Eventually I was ordained as a Buddhist nun in the UK.

What I Understood Then

For many years, I understood what happened through a purely spiritual lens: in the presence of awareness, profound surrender became possible and fear vanished. What became available in surrender was unimaginable without it. My faith in meditation was confirmed—the practice of awareness truly liberates.

What I See Now

Decades later, with a deeper understanding of trauma and the nervous system, I can see what happened on that mountain more clearly. My nervous system somehow stayed within its window of tolerance, allowing awareness to meet terror directly. But I’ve since learned that when we’re pushed beyond that window—when we’re stuck in overwhelmed—awareness may not be enough. We need smaller steps, gentler pathways back to regulation. Often we need co-regulation—finding our way back into awareness of what is going on with the safe, grounded, and loving presence of another person, animal, tree, rock, or body of water.

This is the same process I now guide others through—learning to discern what’s needed in each moment, and developing the tools, resources, and practices that support us, including co-regulation. It’s about expanding our capacity to stay present and embodied—especially when every instinct says to flee, numb, or collapse—so we can meet life with greater steadiness, compassion, and connection.

The bear taught me that presence isn’t the absence of fear—it’s the capacity to stay with what is, and keep the heart open, even there.

In a world facing wars, genocide, climate collapse, and the breakdown of democracy, this matters. We need the capacity to meet what’s unbearable without turning away—and without being destroyed by it.

The Second Bear

Years later, after my father died, I sat quietly in the Garden of the Gods in Colorado. A young she-bear approached. She walked right up to me, her eyes level with mine. She paused, looking me right in the eyes and touched her nose to my knee—then startled and fled.

My heart pounded wildly. And then again: the blessing.

That meeting closed a circle. The first bear shattered the fallacy that we can ever truly know what the next moment will bring — or even whether we’ll still be alive for it. The second revealed the intimacy that becomes possible when we’re fully present to the totality of life itself.

The Teaching

Most of us spend our lives trying to secure what we want and push away what we fear. Yet in that first encounter, even as the bear chewed my head, there was clarity, joy, and luminous presence. The blessing wasn’t that I survived; it was the knowing that I was at peace — that I would be okay, whatever the outcome, even if that outcome was death.

By the time of the second encounter, after tending to some of the many layers of trauma and fear, I could meet the bear differently — alert but unafraid, fully alive to the mystery and intimacy of being connected with all of life.

For many years I understood the first encounter as an initiation into the bear clan — a sacred exchange between species, a transmission of power through surrender. And that was true in a way. But after doing shamanic work, I came to see something else. The bear had also left an energetic imprint — an attachment of its spirit within me that wasn’t entirely wholesome. It wasn’t about belonging to the bear clan; it was about remembering the power of surrender and learning to discern what entered through that opening.

The second bear reminded me of what becomes possible when we’ve done the work of clearing trauma residues from the body and psyche. Then life can move through us freely — alive, fresh, open to connection.

The first encounter showed me surrender.
The second revealed belonging.

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Postscript

What the bears taught me—to stay awake in the middle of terror, to soften around fear, to return again and again to presence—is what I now share through the Integrated Meditation Program: a collaborative practice that blends mindfulness, emotional attunement, and the science of neuroplasticity.

This work helps us, individually and collectively, to shift our baseline patterns—to become more resilient, more connected, and more capable of meeting both the fierce and the beautiful in our world, not as enemies but as invitations to awaken.

And in times like these, when so much invites us to turn away or harden, this capacity—to stay open, embodied, and connected in the midst of suffering—may be the most essential gift we can offer.