Dear Friends,

Happy Lama Tsongkhapa Day, Merry Christmas, and Happy Hanukkah, all falling on December 25th this year! We hope your hearts are full and that you and your loved ones are well and happy.

As we near the end of the year, we ask for your support in our year-end appeal to help us continue offering valuable resources and teachings to individuals and Dharma centers worldwide. Thanks to your generosity, we’ve already made great progress toward our goal, but we still need your help to reach it.

Every donation, large or small, makes a difference. Your contributions allow us to continue to further preserve and share the teachings of Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche, work to expand our reach and continue serving as a vital resource for those seeking to cultivate compassion, wisdom, and stronger communities of care.

Please consider making a donation today to support our work in spreading the Dharma far and wide. Together, we can achieve even more in the coming year.

The Wisdom of Lama Tsongkhapa

Today marks the anniversary of Lama Tsongkhapa's parinirvana. Known as Ganden Ngamchoe—which means "Ganden Offering of the Twenty-Fifth Day"—this important day is observed on the twenty-fifth day of the tenth month of the Tibetan calendar. This year, Lama Tsongkhapa Day coincides with Christmas and the beginning of Hanukkah, both falling on December 25th.

Lama Tsongkhapa (1357-1419) was one of the most influential Tibetan Buddhist masters. His extensive studies and meditations across all the major Tibetan Buddhist schools led to the founding of the Gelug lineage. Lama Zopa Rinpoche encourages students to engage in various practices on this day to honor Lama Tsongkhapa and create merit, including making light offerings.

On our website, you can find Lama Zopa Rinpoche's teachings on Lama Tsongkhapa Guru Yoga, as well as the foreword to the English translation of Lama Tsongkhapa’s Illuminating the Intent—an important philosophical text edited by Geshe Thupten Jinpa and published by Wisdom Publications in 2021. You can also explore Lama Yeshe's teachings on the Three Principal Aspects of the Path, published in the book Essence of Tibetan Buddhism.

LYWA Books: Past, Present and Future

'Tis the season for Silent Mind, Holy Mind! Published earlier this year, the expanded edition features the original collection of talks given by Lama Yeshe at Kopan Monastery on Christmas Eve, along with an additional Christmas talk and a moving tribute by a Cistercian priest following Lama Yeshe’s passing in 1984. You can read this book online, listen to the audiobook or listen on YouTube, or download a free PDF. LYWA Members can download the ebook for free.

We are happy to share that the FPMT’s Dutch center, Maitreya Instituut, has just published LYWA’s updated edition of Silent Mind, Holy Mind as Stille Geest, Heilige Geest in a beautiful hardcover edition. This follows their publication of the Dutch translation of Wisdom Publications' first edition of Silent Mind, Holy Mind back in 1981.

Our free print books and ebooks continue to be a beloved resource for individuals and Dharma centers worldwide. We’re thrilled to announce several new titles set for release in 2025:

• Rinpoche’s Animal Friends: A heartwarming book featuring over 100 images and teachings from the plushie toys that appeared in Lama Zopa Rinpoche's video teachings during the COVID-19 pandemic.
• How to Have a Happy Life With a Good Heart: A cookbook with over 100 vegetarian and vegan recipes inspired by the wisdom of Lama Zopa Rinpoche.
• Clean Clear: Collected Teachings, Volume 2 by Lama Yeshe: Another installment in this valuable collection of teachings to deepen our Dharma practice.

Stay tuned for more details and the release dates!

On the LYWA Podcast: Everything Comes from the Mind

Through this way of meditating, you begin to realize it’s not the object that is disturbing. It’s your mind; it’s your concept. Your mind is making you unhappy; your mind is disturbing you.
– Lama Zopa Rinpoche

This month on the LYWA podcast, Lama Zopa Rinpoche explains how everything we experience comes from the mind. These teachings were given during the Thirty-third Kopan meditation course held at Kopan Monastery, Nepal, in 2000. You can follow along with the unedited transcript on our website.

The LYWA podcast contains hundreds of hours of audio, each with links to the accompanying lightly edited transcripts. See the LYWA podcast page to search or browse the entire collection by topic or date, and for easy instructions on how to subscribe.

The BIG LOVE AUDIOBOOK HEART PROJECT

We are excited to present the latest audiobook installment of Big Love: The Life and Teachings of Lama Yeshe, written by Adele Hulse. Organized by Janet Brooke, this heart project comprises narrations recorded by personal friends of the late Åge Delbanco (Babaji), one of Lama Yeshe's earliest students. This is a unique opportunity to hear this extraordinary account of Lama Yeshe’s life read by those who were there as the story unfolded—especially valuable if you don’t have a copy.

This month, the Big Love Heart Project brings you Chapter 15: 1977: The More Meditation, the More Happy, narrated by Steve Pearl and Wanda Sisnroy. Chapter 15 covers the Lamas' teaching tours to England, Italy, the USA, New Zealand, and Australia. It also recounts the events of the Yucca Valley, California course and concludes with the Lamas’ return to Kopan Monastery in Nepal for the Tenth Kopan Meditation Course.

As a reminder to our Members, you receive a 50% discount when you order Big Love from our online store. If you already have a copy, consider sending one as a gift to a friend this holiday season. For new Members, we are offering a special promotion: with a one-time payment of $1,000, you will receive a free copy of Big Love, shipped directly to you or a recipient of your choice.

What's New On Our Website

This month we have posted extensive advice from Lama Zopa Rinpoche on How to Bring Up Children. The advice was in response to a student who had asked Rinpoche how to best prepare for motherhood, what qualities to look for in a partner and how to balance being a mother with working. Rinpoche’s intention was for this advice to be useful for others with similar questions. Transcribed and edited by Ven. Joan Nicell, who also edited the popular title Joyful Parents, Successful Children. Read an excerpt in the monthly teaching below.

We have also created a Kopan eBook Series page, which provides links and synopses for all ebook titles of Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s teachings from the annual Kopan meditation courses held in Nepal since the early 1970s. You can also find all the Kopan courses currently posted here on our website.

We’ve added new entries to Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s Online Advice Book. Each year, we include over 100 new pieces of advice on various topics, bringing the total to more than 2,600 entries now available on our website.

• How Fortunate We Are: Rinpoche sent this letter to thank a center director for offering service to sentient beings and the teachings of the Buddha. Rinpoche also advised the benefits of Chenrezig mantra and explained why we need to practice and actualize Dharma.
• Emptiness of Great Bliss: In this letter, Rinpoche thanked a student for their practice, advised how to meditate on emptiness and recommended lamrim study and practice.
• How to Meditate on the Graduated Path: Advice on how to meditate on the lamrim, the graduated path to enlightenment, until realizations are attained.

You can always find a list of all the newly posted advices from Lama Zopa Rinpoche on our website.

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.

Big love,

Nick Ribush
Director

THIS MONTH'S TEACHING: Benefiting Others Benefits Us

If we live our life for others—if we stop harming them and, on that basis, cause them happiness—the result will be that we experience temporary happiness in this and all future lives while we are still in samsara. All our wishes will be fulfilled and from life to life we will experience more and more happiness. It will also bring us to everlasting happiness, freedom from the oceans of samsaric sufferings, and to peerless happiness, enlightenment. Wow, wow, wow. That is amazing, amazing, amazing.

To stop harming others and instead benefit them from our heart is Dharma. It is holy Dharma. First, that prevents rebirth in the lower realms and causes us to receive a higher rebirth. Second, it causes us to experience again as much happiness as we have already experienced from beginningless rebirths up to now. This outcome can be understood from Sutra of a Pile of Flowers. It causes us to experience ultimate happiness, liberation from samsara, which is everlasting happiness. Then, it causes us to experience the peerless happiness of enlightenment. Wow, wow, wow. On top of all that, it enables us to liberate the numberless sentient beings from the oceans of samsaric sufferings and bring them to enlightenment by ourselves alone. That we can bring everyone to enlightenment is amazing. Wow, wow, wow. Can you even imagine these benefits?

In short, when with a good heart we do one action that benefits a sentient being by causing them happiness, it has two results. It causes happiness to us naturally in all our lives and it also brings happiness to them. So, the benefit is that by one action of benefiting others, two works get done, the works for ourselves and the works for others. Wow, wow, wow!

Whatever Activity We Do, Do It for Sentient Beings

Therefore, whatever we do, we should do it for sentient beings—to cause them temporary happiness, to free them from samsara and to bring them to the peerless happiness of enlightenment. We should eat for them, sleep for them and also wash and dress for them. We should do our job for them. We should go shopping for them. We can even do pipi and kaka for them. Wow, that is the happiest life. It brings satisfaction and fulfillment. It causes us to have a healthy mind free from regret and depression. We experience unbelievable joy when we start to free sentient beings from the suffering of samsara and cause them temporary and ultimate happiness. Can you imagine it? Wow, wow, wow.

Whenever we rejoice, we cause our merits to double, quadruple and so forth, and we get happiness now, happiness when we are dying, and happiness in the future. We experience greater and greater happiness, skies of happiness, more and more happiness. Wow, wow, wow. And not only do we cause ourselves happiness, we also cause much happiness to others, to the six-realm sentient beings and especially to the sentient beings in this world.

Even if we don’t have bodhicitta but are sincerely good-hearted and kind and always help everyone, including animals, wherever we go people will always like us. Even if we go somewhere where we don’t know anyone, everyone there will like us. People will also praise us, pray for us and help us. Even if we don’t need help, they will insist on helping us! They will do that because they really want to help us. Then, as I already explained, whenever we benefit someone, the result will be that we receive much happiness and success in this life followed by more and more happiness and success in each successive life. It goes on and on for hundreds, thousands and millions of lifetimes. Wow, wow, wow!

To Live Our Life for Others Is the Best Life

How this present life turns out for us, how much happiness and success we experience in all our future lives, and how quickly we achieve enlightenment in the future, whether in three, seven or sixteen lifetimes, all depends on what we do in this life. It depends on whether or not we are helping sentient beings and living our life for them. And that depends on how we live our life this year, this month, this week, today, and even this hour.

Even doing something small for others has the incredible result of happiness and success from life to life. It goes on and on and our mind is always at peace. We experience happiness all the time, whether we are with other people or alone. We have no regrets now and in the future. Even when we are dying, we have no regrets. Instead, there is much for us to rejoice in because we have done so much to benefit sentient beings. Then, by our dying with a happy mind, everyone around us at the time will also be happy.

On the other hand, if we die with a suffering mind, it will make our friends and family upset, but they won’t be able to do anything to help us. Basically, we are the only one who can cause ourselves to have the best death—one that is most beneficial for sentient beings. When we die, think that we are dying for sentient beings. If we can do this, we will be without fear and will be most happy, as if we are going on a picnic. Then, exactly as we prayed to happen, we will go to the pure land of a buddha where there are no samsaric sufferings.

Excerpted from Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s advice on How to Bring Up Children, given at Kopan Monastery, Nepal, in 2021. Transcribed and edited by Ven. Joan Nicell.