Special Appeals

Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche, Kopan Monastery, Nepal, 1980. Photo by Robin Bath.
LAMA YESHE WISDOM ARCHIVE 2023 YEAR-END APPEAL

Dear LYWA friends and supporters,

Thank you so much for your interest in and support of LYWA. Our work in 2023 has taken on new meaning now that our shining beacon of wisdom and compassion, Lama Zopa Rinpoche, passed away in April. For the past twenty-seven years we’ve been custodians of the vast collection of Lama Yeshe’s and Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s authentic and exceptional teachings and we hope to carry on for as long as we can.

The Lamas' legacy of unique Dharma instruction not only lives on in the work that we do but also in all of us. We aspire to continue our work to safeguard and preserve their teachings as well as to keep them alive and relevant in changing times.

We are launching our year-end appeal and aim to raise $60,000 by December 31. Please partner with us in 2023 to continue the meaningful work of preserving and disseminating the special expression of Dharma that was taught by the Lamas. We invite you to read on to see the work we have accomplished so far this year!

The Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive is one of a kind, Help Us preserve the unique Dharma of the Lamas

In order to make the Dharma easily accessible and as widely available as possible, we have the best team to do it! In addition to the books in print that so many of you know and love, we continue to reach interested seekers through our website, ebooks, free audiobooks, videos, podcasts, multimedia presentations and through two auxiliary websites.

Our e-publishing and social media manager Megan Evart disseminates the Dharma in digital format via the LYWA podcast and the LYWA YouTube channel while also reaching out to our ever-growing social media communities on Facebook and other platforms where we have over 140,000 subscribers. Along with the social media outreach, Megan has developed and published twelve of our most popular titles as free audiobooks through Google Play and YouTube and also designs all of our ebooks.

This year we published a new Lama Yeshe free book, titled Knowledge-Wisdom: The Peaceful Path to Liberation. Collected Teachings, Volume 1. Compiled by Sandra Smith and edited by Uldis Balodis and me. Our next publication will be Lama Yeshe’s Clean Clear: Collected Teachings, Volume 2, containing extensive teachings from Manjushri Institute, England (1976) and Maitreya Institute, the Netherlands (1980) and more. This volume, too, will be free.

As always, our free print books continue to be popular and our customer service manager Venerable Ani Desal manages dozens of domestic and international shipments of our free and for-sale books to individuals and centers around the world. In addition to this Ani Desal looks after the ever-growing LYWA membership program, which is a major source of support for us, thanks to her expert management and great compassion.

Our website continues to be one of our greatest assets and offerings. Easily accessible and user-friendly, we offer thousands of published Dharma teachings, images, advices and multimedia resources, just to name a few! Our web editor Sandra Smith posts previously unpublished teachings every month, including transcripts of Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s teachings from the Kopan Courses, lightly edited by Gordon McDougall. Along with the monthly teachings, Sandy posts new advices in Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s Online Advice Book, which now includes nearly 2,600 of Rinpoche’s precious advices online.

You can also find on our website links to foreign translations in eighteen languages. We are grateful to work with so many amazing translators who make our publications and transcripts available in languages other than English. This year we have posted several new links to Vietnamese, German, Spanish and Italian translations. 

In addition to our website, we have two auxiliary websites that we maintain and update with new resources and teachings: the Lamrim Year Companion site and Teachings from Tibet. The Lamrim Year Companion site was launched last year and is designed to help with accessing the daily meditations found in our popular publication, Lamrim Year. So far nearly 1,200 students have enrolled and close to 20 have completed the full year of study. Recently we updated the site with improved speeds and posted a new resource, the Lamrim Year Crosswalk, a navigational guide created to support students who wish to extend their understanding of the teachings found in Lamrim Year by reading the corresponding section of Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand.

Lama Yeshe, His Holiness Zong Rinpoche and Lama Zopa Rinpoche at EEC1, Dharamsala, India, 1982.The Teachings from Tibet website features the teachings of exceptional Tibetan lamas such as HH Ling Rinpoche, HH Trijang Rinpoche, HH Serkong Rinpoche, HH Zong Rinpoche, Khunu Lama Rinpoche and many others. Recently we posted teachings by Kirti Tsenshab Rinpoche and Venerable Geshe Doga, the resident teacher at Tara Institute in Australia. This site was inspired by many of the teaching transcripts we’ve received over the years from these and other great Tibetan lamas and by our popular publication Teachings from Tibet. Please take a look!

We also publish a monthly e-letter, compiled and edited by our content and communications manager Stacey Martin. The e-letter contains the most up-to-date published video teaching excerpts, podcasts, teachings, foreign translations, audiobooks and current activities. With over 13,500 subscribers receiving our e-letters each month, we are able to keep our community updated and plugged-in to the Dharma they love. The e-letter archive is also a great resource detailing all the activities and content we’ve shared over the past twenty years. Periodically throughout the year, we also send out special mailings to subscribers on Buddhist holidays and provide practice advice and teachings.

Preserving the Archive For Future Generations

Lama Zopa Rinpoche and Lama Yeshe near Lawudo Retreat Center, Nepal, 1970. Photo by Terry Clifford.The Archive's massive photo collection includes tens of thousands of image files dating back to the 1940s, with an estimated 50,000 images documenting the Lamas’ travels and teaching events among other historically relevant events. Our digital imaging specialists David Zinn and Francine Fagundez continue to digitize, optimize, preserve and catalogue this exceptional collection of historical images.

This year our IT and finance director Jen Barlow, along with the support of Stacey, completed the migration of our entire video, audio and transcript collection—more than 30,000 digital files—into our new digital asset management system, AssetBank. This new system is shared with FPMT and ensures that the entire Archive collection, along with all the precious digital assets of the FPMT, will be safely preserved and easily managed for many years into the future. We rejoice in all the hard work and effort it took to make this happen!

It is only through your kind and generous support that we have been able to do all this beneficial work for the sake of all sentient beings. Please donate and help us make our year-end appeal a success.

Much love,

 

Nick Ribush
Director

You can donate directly on www.LamaYeshe.com, or send a check to this postal address. Thank you!


LAMA YESHE WISDOM ARCHIVE 2022 YEAR-END APPEAL

Dear LYWA friends and supporters.

Thank you so much for your interest in and support of our work. For the past twenty-six years we have been extremely fortunate to be doing the highly beneficial work of recording, editing and publishing the teachings of Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche for the benefit of all. All of us here at LYWA rejoice in being able to partner with you to bring all of us closer to enlightenment.

As 2022 draws to a close, we again launch our year-end appeal, aiming to raise $60,000 by December 31 to help us close out the year on a positive note and get 2023 off to a great start.

Spreading the Dharma, the solution to all the world’s problems

The team at the Archive endeavor to make the Dharma accessible in as many ways as possible! So, in addition to the books in print that you all know and love, we are reaching interested seekers through our website, ebooks, video, podcasts, multimedia presentations and now free audiobooks. Our e-publishing and social media manager Megan Evart has developed and published ten of our most popular titles through Google Play and YouTube. In addition, Megan tirelessly spreads the teachings of the lamas in digital format via the LYWA podcast and the LYWA YouTube channel, and every day she reaches out to our Facebook and other social media communities of more than 140,000 subscribers with news, teachings, video and much, much more.

This year we launched the Lamrim Year Companion site, designed to help you access the daily meditations found in our very popular recent publication, Lamrim Year, from wherever you are, whether on a desktop computer or on a mobile device. The site tracks your progress, and supports additional study on each lamrim topic by emailing teachings, resource links, and inspiring quotes and images as you progress.

We continue to add new material to our website. Our web editor Sandra Smith has posted the complete transcripts of Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s teachings from two more Kopan courses. We have now posted thirty-three of the fifty-two courses given so far, and we won’t stop until we have them all freely available on our website! Sandy also regularly posts previously unpublished teachings along with new advices for Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s Online Advice Book. There are now nearly 2,500 of Rinpoche’s precious advices online.

Our free books continue to be in high demand, so this year we reprinted thousands of copies of some of our most popular titles: Freedom Through Understanding, The Joy of Compassion, Ego, Attachment and Liberation, and The Peaceful Stillness of the Silent Mind. Our customer service manager Venerable Ani Desal manages dozens of shipments of our free and for-sale books to individuals and centers around the world, and also looks after the LYWA membership program, which continues to grow under her expert management and is a major source of support for us.

Our next publication, a new Lama Yeshe book, titled Knowledge-Wisdom: The Peaceful Path to Liberation. Collected Teachings, Volume 1 has now gone to our printers. Compiled by Sandra Smith and edited by Uldis Balodis and me, we are expecting delivery of this title in the spring 2023.

Finally, we continue to publish our monthly e-letter, compiled by our content and communications manager Stacey Martin, which brings you news of our current activities and teachings that you would not have seen before. We have been publishing it for nearly twenty years and the e-letter archive is an amazingly detailed record of all we’ve been able to do over this period.

Preserving the Precious Archive for the Future

Our digital imaging specialists David Zinn and Francine Fagundez continue to digitize, optimize, preserve and catalogue our exceptional collection of historical images. For the past year they have been migrating this collection of tens of thousands of images to a new digital asset management system, AssetBank, which we share with the FPMT.

AssetBank Home PageAlso in the past year our IT and finance director Jen Barlow, assisted by Stacey Martin, has been migrating our video, audio and transcript collection—more than 30,000 digital files—into AssetBank. This new system will ensure that the entire Archive collection, along with all the precious digital assets of the FPMT, can be safely preserved and easily managed for many years into the future. We expect to have the Archive’s collection completely migrated by March 2023.

Thank you!

It is only through your kind and generous support that we have been able to do all this beneficial work for the sake of all sentient beings. Please donate and help us make our year-end appeal a success.

Much love,

 

Nick Ribush
Director

You can donate directly on www.LamaYeshe.com, or send a check to this postal address. Thank you!