My Friend Tara: Helping Kids Meet Compassion | Ivan Bercholz

This week we’re hanging with Ivan Bercholz, co-owner of Shambhala Publications, publisher of Bala Kids, and co-author (with illustrator Lasha Mutual) of My Friend Tara, a children’s book that introduces kids to Tara, the Buddhist archetype of compassion.

Ivan set out to create a book that gets straight to the heart of practice: how can kids actually relate to an archetypal quality? How do you help them imagine compassion as something fun, alive, and embodied? How do you make an ancient practice feel natural for modern kiddos?

When Jeff’s rambunctious six-year-old Eden stumbled on the book, he flipped through, chose his favorite of the colorful Taras and, while playing with the visualization, had a profound, whole-body shift.

Jeff describes it as a “rainbow-candy version of internal regulation” that honors children’s natural inclination towards imagination. Kids are naturals at this stuff. Ask them to picture beams of warmth radiating from the heart and they just do it, while adults tie themselves in knots worrying about doing it “right”.

That might be the core thread of our conversation: practice is really about getting open enough to let what’s naturally here come through. Kids, wild lil portals that they are, let that wisdom stream through all the time. Books like this can give them language for what they already know.

We talk about:

* Visualization as a practice playground for kids and adults

* The 5 Taras and their different archetypal qualities (white for calm, green for protection, blue for difficult emotions...)

* Why mantra might be our oldest human practice

* How books can become spiritual oases when teachers aren’t accessible

-------------

We make this show with love, lols, and a lot of curiosity. If it lights you up, help us keep it going with a paid subscription 🌿