Medicine Buddha Practice: Refuge When the Teacher Is Away

Before the first mantra of a recorded Medicine Buddha session, the facilitator is still sorting out the tech. The opening music is queued, the chat is filling with greetings, and she is doing something quieter: praying. Ms. Sharon, stepping in for the weekly sitting while Lama Rod is away, asks Medicine Buddha to give each person in the room, and each person who will later press play on the recording, whatever they need. That small act of asking, before anything is performed, is the key to understanding how this practice works. It is a community held together by refuge, by shared prayer, and by a teaching about where generosity actually comes from. The session, dated October 26, 2026 and published on Lama Rod Owens' channel on November 2, shows a practice that is less a performance than a room where people are allowed to be tired, anxious, and in need.

What happens when the teacher is away from a Medicine Buddha practice?

The weekly sitting is designed to be held by a group. The channel's description frames it as guided Medicine Buddha practice "each week to nourish healing, deepen spiritual friendship, and abolish social forces that perpetuate harm for self and others." On this particular night the facilitator says plainly that Lama Rod is away and that every week is different even when he is present. The format is flexible enough that a different voice can carry it, and the facilitator treats that flexibility as a feature rather than a stopgap.

Sharon also makes clear that the session belongs to the people in it. She asks participants to "feel into what your own needs are" so that the room can "co-create with Medicine Buddha what we need as a community." The practice is not a transmission from one authority to a passive audience. It is a shared field of intention, and the facilitator's job is to keep the container steady.

Why does a Medicine Buddha practice begin with admitting anxiety?

The most striking thing about the opening is how plainly the facilitator names her own state. She does not claim to be fully resourced. She says:

"I don't know if I'm in need of refuge because nothing, everything is good in my life, but I definitely am in want of refuge because I have just been feeling anxious and ungrounded, and some self-created pressure around not doing enough, not getting enough done." (Ms. Sharon, facilitating the October 26, 2026 session, published November 2, 2026; around 1:17)

This matters for the practice. Refuge, in the sense used here, is not reserved for people in crisis. It is available to someone whose life is, by her own account, generally good, and who still feels the grip of self-imposed urgency. Naming that state at the start gives the room permission to bring its own version of it. The practice does not ask anyone to arrive whole.

What does refuge mean in this Medicine Buddha session?

Refuge in Buddhism is usually taken in the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha: the awakened example, the teachings, and the community of practitioners. Sharon returns to this triad, describing them as sources "always available to us, always there for us." She grounds the idea in something physical. She asks listeners to notice the chair, the bed, or the floor, and to feel the earth supporting them:

"We can't fall off the earth. We are always held, and we're held in such gentleness and held with such consistency that... I consider that a message of the divine, that the divine energies are always present and always supporting us." (Ms. Sharon, facilitating the October 26, 2026 session; around 4:12)

The move is worth noticing for anyone who finds abstract language about refuge hard to access. Gravity is a fact most people never think about, and yet it is continuous. By pointing to it, the facilitator turns a doctrinal idea into a bodily one. Refuge becomes something you can feel in the spine before you have to believe anything about it.

Her own path explains why the language is so eclectic. She describes an early upbringing in the Methodist church, years as a practicing pagan, and a stretch of involvement with new age spirituality before she came in contact with Lama Rod. "I still do a lot of eclectic practices," she says, "but Medicine Buddha is a sweet, nurturing, supportive practice." That lineage of Christian roots, pagan practice, and Buddhist refuge is not presented as a contradiction. It is presented as the way many people actually arrive at a practice.

How do you pray to Medicine Buddha in a group?

Prayer in this session is both collective and quiet. Participants are invited to drop requests into a shared prayer document, which the facilitator says the group will "come back to" and read aloud. But she is clear that the document is not the only channel. "Medicine Buddha knows your prayers," she says, and you can "whisper your prayers, you can think your prayers," and they are still received.

She also describes the figure she is praying to with unusual warmth. Medicine Buddha, in her telling, is "not a control freak," unlike the speaker herself on some days, and is "the most generous, nurturing divine mother that any of us could have." The image does real work. A practitioner who worries about phrasing the request correctly, or who fears they are asking for too much, is reminded that the response is generous and does not depend on perfect formulation.

The mantra structure reinforces this. The first chant is a call for attention. The facilitator explains that it translates roughly to asking Medicine Buddha to look upon the speaker, not because the Buddha is ever absent, but because "we are not always conscious that we are being looked upon." Chanting becomes a way of becoming conscious of an already-present gaze.

"Medicine Buddha is not a control freak as I can sometimes be about how we come with our request, how we come with our needs." (Ms. Sharon, facilitating the October 26, 2026 session; around 9:30)

Why do you fill yourself before serving others?

The teaching at the center of the session is a principle the facilitator attributes to Lama Rod: "don't give out of your deficit." The sequence she describes is specific. You fill yourself first, and then you serve out of your overflow. She is candid that she herself violates this, saying that sometimes she gets "so busy trying to serve and help and support the liberation of others that I neglect my own care, and that is not divine order."

The logic is stated in two parallel sentences that deserve to be read slowly: "We have to be in a place of abundance before we can offer abundance to others. We have to be in a place of liberation before we can effectively support liberation for others." This reframes the familiar Mahayana ideal of working for the liberation of all beings. The goal stays collective, but the path runs through the self. Burnout, in this view, is not a sign of commitment. It is a failure of the sequence.

That is why the session's stated purpose is so modest in its verbs. "To get free," she says, "and to support each other in getting free, and to support all beings in getting free." The order matters. Getting free comes first.

What happens during the visualization?

The visualization is offered as an option, not a requirement. Participants can keep their eyes open, close them, or skip imagery altogether. For those who visualize, the instruction is concrete: picture Medicine Buddha joining you in your space, reaching out to place a hand on your heart, and pouring love and compassion into you. Then let that light move through the body, releasing "any tightness, any discomfort, any pain."

The image ends with the body itself becoming the light, which then extends outward into the shared space. The facilitator describes it as "filling this Zoom room, cyberspace, through the connections of spirit and the magic of technology." The line lands with a light touch. A practice like this has always been carried by whatever tools a community has, and this group does not pretend otherwise. She even hedges: "Or maybe that's the connections of technology and the magic of spirit. Okay, maybe both."

How are group prayers carried into the world?

The most affecting stretch of the recording comes when the chat's prayer document is read aloud. The requests move quickly from the intimate to the global. People ask for help with things "I cannot control," for health and healing after difficult stretches, for a dear friend, for a visit with a mother, for safe travel, for the protection and support of people navigating the hard parts of life. Others arrive as expressions of gratitude. The reading is not framed as a performance review of who asked what. It is a way of letting the room hold each other's needs in the same breath.

The session closes with a dedication that carries the logic back out. A line near the end of the recording asks that the pain of every living creature be eased, and the facilitator thanks the group for its practice. The move from personal need to universal dedication is the structure of the entire session: you come in tired and anxious, you receive what you need, and then you offer what overflows.

Where to go from here

The recording is a useful model for anyone curious about group Buddhist practice, especially those who do not come from a Buddhist background. The useful takeaways are practical. Name your actual state before you pray. Treat refuge as available rather than earned. Let your requests be imperfect, because the figure you are addressing is not grading them. And remember the sequence the facilitator returns to: fill up first, then pour out.

For people who want to join a weekly sitting, the channel's description points to a registration page for the weekly Medicine Buddha practice at lamarod.com/deity#medicinebuddha, along with information about other happenings and ways to support the work. The best way to begin is simply to show up as you are, which is exactly what the recording asks of everyone who presses play.