Meet Cortland Dahl, Author of A Meditator’s Guide to Buddhism
Interviewed by Liza Frenette
With a strong history of meditating, studying, teaching, leading retreats, and designing meditation courses, Dr. Cortland Dahl kept bumping up against the same problem: he was looking for a book to use in his courses that took a meditation-first approach to Buddhism and was accessible to a broad audience. He couldn’t find what he was looking for, so he wrote the book himself! In The Meditator’s Guide to Buddhism, Cort shares the road map to a meditation practice that worked for him and many others – one that foregrounds meditation as a gateway to Buddhism, not academic study.
Buddhism is a practice where, in part, people train their minds to suffer less and flourish more. Do you believe this pathway is primarily accessible through meditation, or is it more important to study Buddhist principles first?
Buddhism offers a practical way to live, centered around three core elements: view, meditation, and daily life application. Your view is how you understand yourself and the world around you, which then informs meditation and the way you live your life. These practices are meant to help us suffer less and experience more well-being.
At the heart of Buddhism is the question, “Why do we suffer?” The Buddha wasn’t a god; he was a human being who struggled with the same sense of dissatisfaction many of us feel. The word “stress” wasn’t in the vocabulary back then, but if it had been, he probably would have talked about the problem of chronic stress. He wanted to know how and why we get stuck in patterns that are not fulfilling in any lasting sense, and he sought answers by studying with great teachers of his time and meditating deeply. In The Meditator’s Guide to Buddhism, I emphasize the approach that the Buddha took 2500 years ago. Buddhism isn’t about belief—it’s a practice. It’s a way of training your mind to gain insight into how it works.
You’re the co-founder and executive director of Tergar International, a global NGO with one of the largest libraries of online meditation courses in the world. Tell us more about Tergar and its aspirations.
At Tergar, we support a global community of meditation groups and centers—over 110 in total, spanning every continent except Antarctica. Last year, 40,000 people participated in our online retreats from 50 different countries. Our programs are rooted in Tibetan Buddhism, and specifically the experiential lineage of our guiding teacher - Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche - but we present the teachings in an open way that’s accessible to everyone, regardless of their background.
A big part of my work at Tergar has been designing its courses. Through this process I realized there wasn’t a book that fully captured what Mingyur Rinpoche and his lineage are trying to convey, which inspired The Meditator’s Guide to Buddhism. The courses and the book both focus on practical steps people can take to deepen their practice.
You spent eight years living in Tibetan refugee settlements in India and Nepal. What led you there?
As a teenager, I had a ton of social anxiety and struggled with a fear of public speaking—so much so that I once fainted on stage. That stuck with me into college, where I developed a level of stress and anxiety that made life really challenging. Everything changed when I started meditating. My anxiety went from something that dominated my life to something that just wasn’t there anymore. It wasn’t overnight, of course, but the world felt like a completely different place once I started meditating regularly.
I had a pretty severe phobia, quite debilitating, so it was more than just notable that it wasn’t there anymore. That’s why I became curious about what else I could learn through meditation. That question took me to the foothills of the Himalayas, where I spent years doing long meditation retreats and studying Tibetan Buddhism. I learned Tibetan, earned a Master’s Degree in Buddhist Studies, and started translating texts. It was all part of figuring out how the pieces of this path fit together.
In addition to your work at Tergar, you’re also the chief contemplative officer at Healthy Minds Innovations and a scientist at the Center for Healthy Minds, a large research center at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Can you talk about your work there and how it connects with your practice?
At the Center for Healthy Minds and Healthy Minds Innovations (the non-profit linked to the center), we’re focused on blending meditation with cutting-edge science to explore how practices like mindfulness impact our well-being. For example, we’ve explored the question: How much meditation is enough to start seeing real benefits? The data shows that even within a week, you can notice a difference. We also use more formal research methods like biological measures and brain imaging to study things like how meditation affects things like our microbiome and gene expression. It’s fascinating to see how something as simple as meditation can change how we respond to stress.
We developed the Healthy Minds Program App based on my Ph.D. work at the University of Wisconsin, Madison to do research on these questions, and much to our surprise, it has now been downloaded more than a million times! It gathers data that helps the scientists in our labs understand how meditation works while offering practical meditation tools. A lot of my work is centered on the Healthy Minds app. We are actively doing research on a range of different topics and questions, and with many groups of people, from school teachers to people struggling with depression and anxiety.
How does someone who has suffered significant loss or who has been affected by trauma like PTSD, stress, or chronic pain apply the principles you study and teach?
One of the key distinctions we make in Buddhism is between pain and suffering. Pain is unavoidable—everyone experiences it. But suffering is something we add on top of the pain, and that’s where we have more influence. Meditation helps us change the way we relate to the layers of suffering, allowing us to face pain without being overwhelmed by it. By becoming more aware of what’s happening in our minds and bodies, we can step back and respond to our experiences with intention rather than get caught in automatic emotional reactions.
For instance, when my father passed away two years ago, of course, I felt sadness. But at the same time, I felt this deep sense of gratitude for the love and care he gave me throughout his life. Meditation didn’t take away the pain of losing him, but it did help me hold both the sadness and the gratitude at the same time.
Four of the most important things we can cultivate that help us get through hard times are awareness, compassion, and wisdom. These are the three foundations for the path of meditation, according to Mingyur Rinpoche, and each relates to specific networks of the brain. Meditation, psychotherapy, journaling, and even exercise are all ways to work with the mind and strengthen these three dimensions. But meditation has a unique role. It facilitates the process of learning to recognize and nurture these critical qualities and bringing them into our everyday lives.