On a morning at Serenity Ridge Retreat Center, a spiritual teacher stands before a small group and poses a question so simple it feels dangerous: Where in your life do you need to be more open? The question carries weight not because it demands a philosophical answer, but because it demands honesty. It asks practitioners to locate the precise place where peace and joy are missing—and to recognize that absence as a map showing exactly where openness is needed.
This is the heart of a teaching built around Sherap Chamma, a tantric deity from the Tibetan Bön tradition. Sherap means wisdom; chamma means love. Together, they name a principle that moves through Tibetan Buddhism and beyond: that compassion and care do not have to be forced or manufactured. They arise naturally when we are open.
To understand Sherap Chamma is to understand how individual masters in Tibetan Buddhist traditions choose a particular deity as their primary spiritual connection. Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche recalls that his own teacher, Yongdzin Lopön Tenzin Namdak, made Sherap Chamma his central practice. Every morning, in his home, he would sit at a large prayer wheel containing the mantras of Sherap Chamma. This was not casual devotion; it was a lifetime's focus, a deliberate choosing of one energetic form through which to realize enlightenment.
In Tibetan Buddhist tradition, each master may emphasize a different deity. His Holiness Meri Tenzin, for example, took Purba (Vajrakilaya) as his primary practice. These choices are not arbitrary. According to Tibetan philosophy, deities manifest at particular moments in history and culture because they address a specific need. As Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche explains, "all these deities manifest out in the universe, or manifest out in one particular culture, tradition, in time, in societies life, because there was a need for that particular manifestation." The form, energy, name, and characteristics of a deity arise because a particular kind of healing was necessary.
Other Buddhist traditions have parallel figures. In schools related to Tibetan Buddhism, Tara serves a similar function—a wisdom and compassion deity present to receive practitioners' devotion and mirror back their own enlightened nature. What matters is not which form one chooses, but how one relates to that choice.
Here the teaching takes a critical turn. Spiritual traditions, including Buddhism, carry a subtle danger: the tendency to over-identify with a deity, a practice, or a system. And over-identification, Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche warns, always means the same thing—you begin to lose yourself in something else. The moment that happens, the entire purpose of the practice inverts. The connection to Sherap Chamma was meant to help you realize yourself, but if the practice becomes a way of losing yourself, then it has failed.
This principle extends beyond deity practice. Relationships, work, roles—all can become traps of over-identification. A person may enter a romantic relationship seeking to access their own capacity for love, hoping the connection will teach them to be open and vulnerable. Yet instead of deepening their own ability to love, they can lose themselves entirely in the other person. The same pattern occurs in work. A career or a role—father, mother, professional position—can initially feel like a test of your clarity, vision, and ability to handle stress. But if you over-identify with that role, you lose the very qualities it was meant to develop. "The success of the role," Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche says, "depends very much on how less you identify with it, not how much you identify with it."
From this foundation, the teaching narrows to what Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche calls two fundamental questions. The first is radically personal: Where in your life, right now, do you need to be more open?
The question does not ask about your past or your future aspirations. It is not a meditation on who you should have been twenty or thirty years ago, nor a prescription for who you should become in ten years. It is utterly present-tense. It asks: How are you right now? What, in this moment, prevents you from having a sense of peace, a good night's sleep, a joyful day, a meaningful conversation with someone, a little clarity about what you're trying to do?
Each of these small goods—sleep, joy, clarity, connection—requires a kind of inner openness. They require that you be open to yourself, or open to another person, or open to a situation. The places where these goods are missing point directly to where openness is needed.
Openness can take many forms. It can mean opening to another person in love or friendship. It can mean opening to your own pain, your wound, your limitation, your sickness. It can mean opening to aging, to death, to letting go. It can mean releasing your grip on an identity or a role—the identity of being a certain kind of parent, partner, professional, or person. Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche phrases it sharply: "Letting go of open to you open to letting go of your identity."
The name Sherap Chamma carries the key to why openness matters so much. Sherap is wisdom; chamma is love. In Tibetan Buddhist philosophy, these are not separate capacities. They arise together. In the Refuge Prayer chanted in these traditions, a line appears: "compassion spontaneously arise." The spontaneity is crucial. Compassion does not arise because you have disciplined yourself into being kind. It arises naturally when two conditions are met—when you are open enough and aware enough.
Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche states this directly: "If you are in that union. If you are open enough, if you are aware enough, then it's compassion is not a problem. We are meant to love. We are meant to take care of each other. We are meant to be kind."
The reason we fail at kindness is not moral weakness. It is blockage. We block the space, the flow, the energy through which compassion naturally moves. Urban life offers a clear example. In large cities around the world, people are often less kind—not because they are innately unkind, but because the conditions of their lives create constant stress. Long commutes, traffic, the friction of density and speed exhaust the nervous system. When you are dealing with these stressors, you are naturally depleted, you do not get enough rest, and you cannot access the inner space where kindness arises. Openness becomes impossible when you are contracted by exhaustion.
One of the most specific openings the teaching addresses is the opening to aging, death, and letting go. This is not a morbid digression. It is central to Tibetan Buddhist practice. Many practitioners in this lineage maintain regular practices related to death awareness. The point is not to become depressed about mortality, but to stop resisting it. Most of human distress, according to this view, comes from the attempt to deny or postpone the inevitable. The moment you genuinely open to impermanence—to aging, to loss, to death—a strange peace becomes possible. You stop wasting energy on a battle you cannot win.
This opening requires more than intellectual acceptance. It requires felt recognition, a shift in how you inhabit your body and your days. When you can be present to the fact that everything is impermanent, including yourself, you become capable of genuine appreciation. You can sleep better. You can be kinder. You can show up more fully in your relationships because you are no longer trying to make them permanent in the way you imagine will save you.
The teaching's second question follows naturally: Where are love and care needed? This question moves from personal introspection into action. Once you have identified where you need to be more open, the next step is to ask where, specifically, care is needed. Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche emphasizes finding one concrete, actionable place. It does not have to be grand. It can be small. It can be local. And crucially, it can begin with yourself.
This last point—caring for yourself—is where many spiritual practitioners stumble. There is a common misconception that spiritual development means transcending self-care in favor of service to others. But Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche turns this on its head. Taking care of yourself—getting enough sleep, eating well, moving your body, resting your mind—is not selfish. It is the foundation from which all genuine care flows.
He points to a concrete example: sleep. Many people in modern life suffer from poor sleep, yet they often do not make it a priority. They drink too much coffee, eat late, keep their minds stimulated until bedtime. They accept as normal a state of chronic fatigue. Yet restorative sleep is not a luxury; it is foundational. When you deprive yourself of sleep, you are not practicing discipline or commitment. You are blocking the space from which kindness, clarity, and openness flow. To care for yourself by protecting your sleep is to care for everyone you encounter, because you will meet them from a place of relative wholeness rather than depletion.
The same applies to food, rest, and any practice that restores you. These are not distractions from "real" spiritual work. They are part of the fundamental openness that allows wisdom and love to arise.
The teaching leaves practitioners with a clear invitation: Take the two questions into your own life. Do not force understanding. Do not memorize doctrine about Sherap Chamma unless it resonates. Instead, locate the one place where you need to be more open. Sit with that honestly. Feel what closes you there. Then ask: Where, specifically, are love and care needed? What is one small, concrete action I can take? That action might be calling someone you have been avoiding. It might be setting a bedtime and keeping it. It might be finally addressing a grief you have been postponing. It might be forgiving yourself for something you have held against yourself for years. The specificity matters. The action grounds the teaching in your actual life, where wisdom and love are not abstractions but lived experiences of opening.
