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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjQgOXO50qM

Show Notes:

In this episode of The Business of Trust, I sit down with Lama Karma Chötso to explore a question that feels both simple and impossibly deep: What does it actually mean to trust life?

I first met Lama years ago when she was leading the Open Awareness Buddhist Center Sangha in Miami. I remember asking her—very seriously—if she was enlightened. She laughed and said, “Oh my gosh, no. That takes like 10 lifetimes.” That mix of wisdom and humility is exactly what you’ll hear in this conversation.

Lama began studying in the Kagyu lineage of Tibetan Buddhism in 1982 and later completed a traditional three-year, three-month meditation retreat in seclusion. But what makes this conversation powerful isn’t philosophy—it’s how practical her perspective becomes when applied to business, uncertainty, and the emotional reality of entrepreneurship.

This episode felt personal for me. I share openly about a season of uncertainty I went through in December—when things felt like they were falling apart relationally and professionally. And instead of trying to fix it, Lama challenged me to look at uncertainty differently.

What if groundlessness is liberating?

What You’ll Learn:

1. The difference between hope and trust—and why confusing the two creates anxiety
2. Why trust must come after examination, not blind belief
3. How entrepreneurs get trapped manipulating outcomes instead of dancing with change
4. What resilience actually feels like when you stop resisting uncertainty
5. Why uncertainty isn’t the same as suffering
6. How to work with triggers by shifting into awareness instead of reaction
7. The difference between confusion and clarity—and how to move between them in real time
8. Why creativity expands when you relax your grip on control

This conversation is especially relevant for coaches and consultants navigating change—whether in your business, your identity, or your leadership.

Because maybe the goal isn’t to eliminate uncertainty.

Maybe the goal is to become steady in the middle of it.

Connect with Lama Karma Chötso:

Instagram: @LamaKC

Website: LamaKC.com

Music: Search “Lama KC – No Hopes No Fears” on Spotify & YouTube

Life is filled with uncertainty, and at times that can be a very painful reality. But what if uncertainty was actually liberating? How can we trust life even when things are falling apart? And what exactly does it mean to trust life? These are the questions I explore with today's guest, Lama Karmachatza. I first met Lama about six years ago when she led the Open Awareness Buddhist Center Sangha here in Miami. I remember she was showing me around the garden and the stupas, and at one point,

I asked her, Lama, are you enlightened? And she stopped, turned around and said something like, ⁓ my gosh, no, are you crazy? That takes like 10 lifetimes of work. She was hilarious. After that, we shared some delicious tea and we became friends.

I'm so excited about today's episode. It is truly one of my all time favorites. The topic of trust in life feels pretty close to my heart and I'm sure it feels close to a lot for a lot of you. So let's get started. I'm your host, Hugo Sanchez, and this is the Business of Trust podcast.

Hello Lama, welcome to the Business of Trust Podcast.

Thank you. Thank you for inviting me here. This is exciting.

my God, it's such an honor to have you in this podcast. I am so thrilled. And the reason is because this is like the first episode that I'm taking in this new direction around trust as a general topic. And I couldn't think of a better person to talk about all of this than you. And we have a personal relationship. And I guess I would like to start with a definition of what does it mean?

you

to trust life because I think a lot of times we have that connotation whenever I use that phrase in my life, it's like I'm hoping for a specific outcome. Like I trust that things are gonna be alright. I trust that like this will happen. But that's sort of like, I don't know, maybe that's a confusion with hope and trust. don't know, but how do you understand trust and trust in life?

Well, hmm, okay, I'm going to start off with the Buddha, which is always a good place to start. But you know, the Buddha, even the Buddha said, these are my teachings. Don't just take it and say, because the Buddha said this is this. He always said, take my teachings and examine them.

And he taught how to examine, how to logically analyze, how to, and to try it out and see if it works for you, great. Doesn't work for you, drop it. You know, he was, he, was not this thing about, ⁓ it's because I say it, has to be true and you have to trust that. He never said that, never, ever said that. He said, you must examine it for yourself.

So when it comes to trust, trust for me now being a Buddhist for over 40 years, trust for me has to come after analysis, after really honest dispassionate looking at what I'm supposed to trust.

Right? And I think without that, then it is like you're talking about. It's just a hope. just a throw out. It's just, it's not real. You know, it doesn't have any stability to it. And I think the other word that we have to talk about is life. Right? We have to talk about what is life.

If you're to trust in life, you better darn well examine what that is for you. Right? So life is ⁓ experiences. One experience after another after another. One moment after another after another. It's momentary stuff.

It's not this long linear thing that if we examine it, it's not that long linear thing that we're very attached to. And so we think it's always the same with few changes, you know. ⁓ But if we really examine life, it's like our experience and how do we experience? We experience because we have awareness.

So part of the point of Buddhist practice is to work on upping your awareness beyond the normal everyday delusions and maybe there within your own mind you can find trust. ⁓

And that examining, guess, is like when you mentioned this examining, it's like looking with awareness at our experience, right? Like at the things that are happening in the moment. And like, so in that sense, trusting life is not hoping for an outcome. Instead, it is like...

I mean, I don't want to put words in your mouth. So like, what would be trusting life in this context?

⁓ I think it would be an acceptance of your own ability to be truly aware.

right, to not, you you talked about ads, you mentioned ads before, right? You know, there's nothing, there's no larger delusion in the world than an ad. You know, and so even the examination of that, ⁓

dispassionately and without any attachment one way or the other, you come out with, okay, now I see what someone else is trying to make me do. Right?

When

we were talking before the recording, you and I were having a little chat about the podcast and we had a little conversation about ads, so that's the reference. ⁓

about ads. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so, you know,

⁓ and we have to examine ourselves and see, you know, what's the ad that I'm selling to myself about myself? You know, so it really, I mean, I have to say your first question was so loaded. don't know if we're going to get beyond it.

Mmm.

⁓ I'm sorry.

You know, ⁓ like I typically tend to confuse the terms like hope with trust and faith. And like I'm like, I'm not sure like if you understand it differently because I know you're a singer and you have a song that I really love called No, No, No, Fears, No Hopes, No Fears. And

Right.

So like, trust is not the same as hope, right?

No, it's not.

I mean, for me, and let's face it, everybody's got their own ideas about this, but let's put out the idea that trust is something that comes after examination. Right? Trust is something that comes after analysis. When you, in your own experience, can say, okay, this, can trust this.

Mm-hmm. I see.

And I think that that can even move into, instead of sort of trusting life, quote unquote, it could move into trusting change. Trusting that change is the constant, know? That every moment is new. Every thought is new. Every breath is new.

Hmm

⁓ And so I think that the trust in that sense would be very much acceptance.

acceptance of what we find when we examine an

Whereas hope, seems like it's a non-acceptance of what is, right?

Well, I mean,

for some people it's very important. In Buddhism we have like aspiration prayers, I aspire to this. But hope is never a word that we use within that because hope is kind of this little ephemeral thing like, oh, I hope my book sells, oh, I hope that this happens, oh, I hope that this happens. So I guess hope.

Right.

because it is the way it is, brings along a little bit of anxiety with it. I hope that this happens and then there's always a little thing of what if it doesn't? So that's what the song No Hopes No Fears is about.

And you know, I think that hope comes pretty handy in times of great uncertainty. Like in December, I went through a personal experience relationally that had a lot of uncertainty around it. And it really trickled into my work, in life, and in other aspects of my life. And in any moment when we're facing with a lot of uncertainty, I feel that...

I had to repeat myself like I trust life, I trust life, but like I guess what I trying to say is like we...

Whenever there's a great deal of uncertainty, I immediately try to get in this mode of fixing, of trying to get solid ground under me to have a plan, to have a sense of control over life, to exert influence in my sphere of influence ⁓ to create changes the way I want it to be. I manipulate things around, you And like...

Is that a healthy thing to do or like it should we Does that go in odds with trusting is trusting more like relaxing into what is you know?

I think I

like that the trusting is more about relaxing into what actually is. I like that. I think that's a really good phrase that you use there. You know, there's one Buddhist teacher who said, I forget who it was, but he said, imagine that you have just jumped out of a plane at like 35,000 feet or something and you're falling, falling, falling and you have no parachute.

But that's the bad news. The good news is there's no ground.

So that uncertainty really throws us for a loop, right? That really basic uncertainty that really there's a fishiness about something here. It's not, something here is not quite right. But ⁓ if you can breathe into no ground, if you can breathe into the uncertainty and just watch.

how things unfold and let it unfold sort of without just sitting back and just letting it unfold. What does that feel like? I think that feels like trusting that you're gonna be okay one way or the other, right? And you know, there's nothing wrong with that.

It is as if I remember reading this book by Pema Chodron where she says like, we know that when things fall apart, this sense of like the rock being pulled under your feet. what I remember reading in this book is that that's our nature. I mean, sense of solid ground was always an illusion. And do you resonate with that? like... And why are there...

Absolutely. Absolutely.

Why are there moments that feel like free falling? And those are the real moments? Is that life what is, but we just happen to experience it in that moment as is? And the moments where we feel like we're not free falling, that feels like we made an illusion to, you know, what's the real aspect of life?

I mean,

another loaded question to go. But it's, I think that the free-falling sense ⁓ is liberation.

⁓ huh ⁓

Right? The freedom of just allowing and accepting and observing, you know, but free of that constant emotional and physical engagement, you know? And when we are in that mode of constant physical and emotional engagement, then we are really trying to get a certain outcome.

Right? There's a certain outcome that we feel we need. So then you can examine, what is the need? Where does the need come from? Why is this, what about this is sort of not okay for me? And why? You know, there's so many, these moments are so rich. They're so rich for self-examination. They're so rich for growth.

You know, when we're contented and just happy and hanging out, we're not growing very much. You know, but those really, really tough, just excruciating moments is when we have to up our game. You know, we have to adult ourselves through it. We have to get to accept that

There is no ground. Hey, what does that do for me? It might frighten me at first, but doesn't it also liberate me?

I can tell from my experience after December being a free falling month for me that that's definitely true. Like I step into January without with a recharged sense of me like ⁓ I think like a wiser sense of who I am more rooted. My uncle Carlos which you met like referred to that moment as I was going through a birth canal and that was painful.

Come on.

We have.

I somehow, I want to get, your brain on this because somehow I see the connection between trust, acting from a place of trusting life and acting from a place of manipulating life. And, and, and they can look very similar because you're, putting out their stuff. Like you, you can, you could be like, you're acting in a way, but let me rephrase that.

I want to look because I want to think about I think I'm thinking about creativity like stepping into a create that flow state and creativity and sometimes when you were in this like manipulating sense like that creativity is like

I'm talking from my experience, I feel that I would be more contracted, creating around a specific outcome. But whereas trust and access to creativity is more of a dance, it's more expensive, and I don't know what is gonna happen. Have you experienced this? Do you have any thoughts on access to creativity?

Absolutely,

absolutely. And that's the best part of creating. That's when creation happens. It's when you have boundaries. It's okay. I mean, it's good to create within discipline.

It's good to create within boundaries. So if you're a painter, yes, you may be totally free with your subject and with, you you might not have any great idea about what you're going to, what your painting is going to end up as, but you still have to work with paints and brushes.

Right? So within that, ⁓ things have to happen. But it's that the creativeness for me, I need a lot of mind space to be creative. Even if it's within the context of like a novel, right? There still has to be for me to actually sit down and write that novel, there has to be this space for

you know, whatever's going to happen happens. And my book, which is coming out shortly, hopefully in the next couple of months, it's called Rinpoche. And within that book, I really had to let the characters do what they did once they became characters. And so there were surprises in the book for me. Some of them I edited out later because they didn't serve the story. you know, so it's that...

I think that we work within the boundaries of our craft. We work within the boundaries of what we need for our craft, but we have to have that dance. I love that you said dance, you know, because it is, it's really, it's a dance of everything that's going on in our minds.

And you know, you can pick and choose and you can entertain yourself and you can do it. Your mind could do anything, right? ⁓ So yeah, I love that, that the real creative stuff comes when there's room for the dance.

there's room for the dance. love that. And the reason why I'm asking this, I think I ask it for me and a lot of people I work with who are entrepreneurs and we're creating stuff, know, we're creating a business and we're putting together events, offers, programs. And a lot of times we have a business plan to attract clients doing this event and then like we're gonna send these emails and a lot. And...

And sometimes things don't work out and sometimes the macroeconomic aspects or the bigger influences shaping the business come into play. So I think as entrepreneurs, there's a lot of dance that happens with the business and the market and there's a lot of uncertainty, you know? that's why I wanted to talk about that prompted me to wanting to talk about trusting life in general.

Yeah,

yeah. Well, I think it's lovely to talk about that in terms of the entrepreneurial aspect of it, of how you really have to be open to, know, if you're locked into something and you can't allow anything to change, you're not going to be successful. Right?

It's just sort of the name of the game, right? So, you know, it's again, you have your discipline.

and you have your boundaries, and within that, you still have to be open to changes. And if you are, then your dance starts to happen, and you can dance with whatever shows up. And that's where things get really good for both the entrepreneur and the people that are using whatever that business might be.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah. And because in that space for the dance, I think really lies our creativity when we can actually relax into it and look and have the experience of it ⁓ to use the language you were using at the beginning. And when you were when I started the question, the interview with that loaded question of what is trust in life, you mentioned there is like that that experimental aspect of like really ⁓ of really looking at your experience. ⁓

Is there a marker in the body that tells us that we are in that dance space with life, that we're trusting life? Is there a somatic, like a signal that tells us, yes, you are trusting life? Because sometimes it can be elusive.

I think, ⁓ hmm, hmm, body stuff I'm not so sure of, ⁓ but I do know that when you can do that, have resilience. And if you have resilience of mind, you're gonna have better resilience of body. Because body follows mind, it's not the other way around.

Mm-hmm.

So

I think that I think that that sense that resilience is where you can see like okay This is this is working because it could because you're moving you're moving with the with the flow You know so many people get so locked into their perspective ⁓ that that perspective becomes fixated and When you're fixated on perspective, then there's no resilience

When things change, you can't look at it from a different angle. If you can't look at things from different angles and you're an entrepreneur, you're going to lose the game, right? I mean, you know that. You know that really well. So I think it's a sense of resilience that then I guess in the body, it would be that you're breathing more deeply. You're not stressed. You don't physically stress the body because the resilience in your mind allows for the stress.

It's not stress anymore. It's like a challenge or it's interesting or it's something to figure out, what fun, instead of it being stress.

I think that's a perfect segue to the next question I have that for me that place of curiosity comes very easy with lighted things. know, when life is good, when I like the challenges, it's just right. But when the, when, I'm gonna say when shit hits the fan and when I'm like so triggered on edge in moments of grief, of despair, of loneliness, of heartbreak.

It's so hard to trust life and to enter this space of curiosity. just want to... I just don't want to feel this way, you know? I experienced that in December. I felt like an iron ball in my stomach and like it wouldn't go away for weeks. And I was like, I don't want to feel this way. I will do anything to not feel this way. But while the circumstances were there, it was so hard, you know? So... ⁓

How do we access trust in life in those super triggered moments?

You don't. Forget about it. Forget about

life during that moment. You're asking too much of yourself. But what you can do is step away in your mind, away from the triggers and away from engaging in them, and sit with the awareness that you have that's allowing you to experience it.

So whatever it is that you're experiencing, if you are sort of connected and open to your own awareness, you can just sit back and say, okay, I'm watching this happen. And any time that you can disengage yourself for even a few moments, when you get back to whatever that thing was, it's never as strong.

So, you know, when those things happen, just say, okay, this is my experience. My awareness is allowing me to experience this. My awareness is allowing the experience to happen. And sit with the awareness.

Right? It's a completely different experience then.

Because you know, you talked about triggers, boy, we've all got triggers. We've all got them. ⁓ But what we do with them is another thing. let's say that you get very triggered by something, and you immediately go, okay, I can either engage in this or I can just watch what's happening. And

all of a sudden you have a completely different perspective on what's going on.

And sometimes then you can even get to the point where you say, groundlessness is really liberating. You know? Because awareness is not grounded in anything really, but it is what allows you to experience.

Did you set something to add?

So it.

It just hit me. said grandlessness is very liberating. And I want to come back to this moment in December. I remember feeling all of the sensations and I was like feeling like some sort of like truth in my heart. Like my heart was telling me some things that were truth that I was trusting. was like, don't know what's going to happen, but I can trust my heart when it's telling me that I need to do this and this. But then I started questioning, I don't trust my heart when it's telling me that I need to take a pause from my business and relax.

because at this moment, ⁓ like, I was doing a big push in my business and I was like leading to burnout. And the next day, I started actually toying with the idea of taking a pause with my business. I did, like January has been a moment of general, overall partial pause because I'm the owner, I can't disengage from my responsibilities, but the pressure went away. And in that time,

somebody reached out to me with the biggest project that I would handle at the agency yet. So it was so interesting to see like when I was able to relax and trust that, like how like that was liberating, you know, like to actually trust what my heart wanted to say. And I wouldn't have access those truth of my heart, as I call it, if I wasn't going through the excruciating pain of the uncertainty. So when you.

Yeah, yeah, yeah,

living with uncertainty and accepting uncertainty turns it around. It's no longer uncertainty. It's that creative dance. the space of liberation. But a new perspective, you just need a new perspective. And so that's why I say, back into your own awareness and just look at what's going on. Just watch it.

right,

because certainty is fixed, right? Certainty is like, this is the certainty, the truth, the uncertainty is reliberating because the possibilities are endless. And what we do, I guess, is we dance with that uncertainty. Wow. ⁓

Exactly, you got it, you got it, Hugo.

Because, you know, uncertainty is not necessarily suffering.

Just isn't. It is what you, every single moment of your life and your life is nothing but one moment after another, moment after another. Every moment can be a moment of confusion or a moment of clarity. And it's your choice. You've got the awareness and you got the intelligence and everything that goes along with it and you can choose.

Every moment in life can be a moment of confusion or clarity. And what's, what's the difference? I mean, I the difference between confusion and clarity, like, like, how do I, if I'm looking at a situation, I feel in confused. How do I turn that into clarity?

What?

Okay,

so you're confused right now.

Right now I'm confused here.

In that,

right now you're confused between confusion and clarity. Okay, so slip back into your own awareness.

Yeah

And.

moment to moment, which is confusion and which is clarity.

It's the experience. Wow. I see it now. my gosh. Wow. That was amazing because right now, I mean, it just took a few breaths, but there was just a stillness. wasn't the chattering of the brain time to rationalize it. There was just like, like a stillness and that was

Yeah, I know. It's so great. It's so great.

That was less confusing maybe clear

That was that was that

was clarity. Yes. Yeah.

Lama

that was impressive, thank you. What a gift.

Well,

I think you're the one who's impressive. You had to do the work. I just sat here and talked.

Well, I think that's a great way to end this conversation. ⁓

I think

so too, yes.

Thank you so much, Lama. Can you tell us a little bit about your book? ⁓ Because I'm very curious and I'm sure our listeners are curious to learn more about your book, your music, where they can find you online.

⁓ my goodness, I've been retired for a couple of years now and so everything is kind of like falling apart. So it all has to be pulled back together again. the book, people ask me for many years, because I wrote a book of poetry many years ago and they kept asking me to write a book about Buddhism, you know. And honestly, right now there are so many different books about Buddhism.

great translations, fabulous teachers, teaching in our language. And I thought, for people who are not Buddhists, what would I do? I would tell them a story. I would tell the story, and the story would include different Buddhists and different situations. And that became the novel.

Is it fiction or is it... Yeah, nice.

Yes, totally,

totally fiction based on, you know, decades of experience with, you know, Asia and with Buddhism and Tibet and stuff like that. But yeah, so that's the And yeah, it's interesting because it's a it is a lot of it is about actually most of it is about what happens to a child who experiences wartime atrocities.

beautiful.

very timely.

Exactly. It was timely when I started it 10 years ago and it's still timely. Sadly, sadly, it's still, you know, and so that's, yeah, that's the book.

And are you still writing music and publishing music? No, okay.

No, I haven't done anything

musically for a while. ⁓ I did.

But your music can be

found on Spotify, if I remember correctly, under LamaKC.

Yes, Lama

K A Y C. Yes, Lama K C. And No Hopes No Fears. And that's also on YouTube with a with a video that a friend of mine put together. So that's still there. Yeah. So now, my my next task is to pull all of the social media that I've been ignoring.

this.

Ha

Pull everything together and

get a book launch done and ⁓ hopefully by the end of May it will be out there and then I can just concentrate on book number two which is a sequel.

Okay, great. Thank thank you Lama. And if people want to connect with you online, what is the best way to send them?

to send a message.

No, what's the best way to send people, where should we send people to connect with you online? Like it's Instagram, Facebook, or your website maybe.

I think Instagram is good. I don't usually post my own stuff, but I'm really, I'm so excited about the monks that are walking for peace. And so you'll see every day, I don't know what I'm going to do when they finally reach Washington, DC, because every morning I do nothing but post the one for peace.

And I'm really going to miss them when they're done. ⁓

Good.

But yeah, so you can connect with me there. And MiamiBuddhism.org is still a functioning website. So there's that too. And there's actually LamaKC.com.

So I'll put the links in this.

thank you. Thank you so much for your time, for sharing your wisdom. Namaste.

Thank you. Namaste. Take care. Stay in touch.

Well, that's all for today. hope you enjoyed my conversation with Lama Karma Chutso. Make sure to check out the show notes because I left some links there to Lama's Instagram and her website. So if you enjoyed this episode, make sure to go to thebusinessoftrust.com or in whatever platform you are and subscribe and rate us. It really helps to spread the word on this podcast. Also, if you know of someone who can benefit from this, feel free to share it and let us know what you think. We love to hear from you. Bye for now and I'll see you in our next episode.