Dear Friends,
A huge thank you for your ongoing support of LYWA's projects and offerings. Thanks to you, our 2024 year-end appeal was a tremendous success. We couldn’t have done it without you—thank you so very much!
We're kicking off the year with a jam-packed January newsletter and we have lots to share with you. We have a brand new multimedia presentation, a new audio file of Lama Yeshe from our archives, a new video and podcast, the latest installment of the Big Love Audiobook project, fresh advice added to Lama Zopa Rinpoche's online advice book, and an excerpt from the forthcoming book of collected teachings from Lama Yeshe, Clean Clear: Refuge and Bodhicitta: Collected Teachings, Volume 2, which is our featured eletter teaching below. And that's not all—there’s some very good news about the upcoming book Rinpoche's Animal Friends. Read on to find out more!
LYWA Multimedia: My Second Trip to Lawudo, Summer, 1974
Our multimedia editor, Megan Evart, reports: Our latest multimedia presentation features an account by Nick Ribush, who shares his journey back to Lawudo in the Solu Khumbu region of Nepal to complete a Vajrasattva retreat in a cave there. Originally published in the Love Lawudo Newsletter, this presentation also includes rare archival photos of Lawudo, the Charok cave, and the lamas. Here's what Nick writes:
I was invited by the Love Lawudo Newsletter to write about my trips there in 1973, 1974, and 1977. The first account was published in three parts, now combined here into one. And now, here is the story of my second trip in 1974. I hope you enjoy it and feel inspired to visit the amazing, wonderful Lawudo yourself.
You can find LYWA's complete multimedia collection on our website. We are pleased to offer a growing collection of multimedia titles on a range of topics, presenting the teachings in all their multimedia aspects: transcripts enhanced with images, audio, and video from the teachings, as well as informal video, related advice, and other materials in the Archive.
From the Video Archive: Your Search for a Table
This month from the video archive, watch Lama Zopa Rinpoche guide students with love and laughter as they contemplate how things exist. This video is an excerpt from the Ganden Lha Gyäma retreat, offered by Rinpoche at the Istituto Lama Tzong Khapa in Pomaia, Italy, in 2004.
Visit and subscribe to the LYWA YouTube channel to explore our complete video collection of teachings by Lama Yeshe and many from Lama Zopa Rinpoche, available from our archive. See the FPMT YouTube channel and the Rinpoche Available Now page on the FPMT website for many more videos of Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s teachings.
On the LYWA Podcast: The Shortcomings of the Self-Cherishing Mind
When you follow the ego, you become a disciple of the ego. You follow the ego day and night and listen to what the ego says all the time. Even if you have received all the sutra and tantra teachings and have heard them many times, when you follow the ego nothing happens in your mind.
–Lama Zopa Rinpoche
This month on the LYWA podcast, Lama Zopa Rinpoche discusses the many shortcomings of following the self-cherishing mind, and encourages us to abandon it without delay. These teachings were given at the Thirty-third Kopan Meditation Course, held at Kopan Monastery, Nepal, in 2000. Read along with the unedited transcript on our website, where you can access audio and transcripts from the entire course.
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 happy to share 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 16: 1978: Mahayana, Mahayana, Mahayana!, narrated by Steve Pearl and Wanda Sisnroy. Chapter 16 covers a lot of ground, including stories about the many business enterprises initiated by Lama Yeshe, the events of His Holiness Zong Rinpoche’s first Western teaching tour, Lama Yeshe’s extensive travels to California and teachings at UC Santa Cruz, and a description of the eleventh Kopan meditation course.
What's New On Our Website
This month we have posted an interview with His Holiness the Dalai Lama, in which His Holiness discusses spiritual experience and how we can be inspired by those who have attainments on the path to enlightenment. This 1989 interview by Hermes Brandt is published here in English for the first time.
We have also posted Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s foreword for Dr. Renuka Singh’s anthology, Becoming Buddha: Wisdom Culture for a Meaningful Life, published in 2011. In the foreword, Rinpoche discusses the kindness of the Indian people and how the wish to repay that kindness led to Tushita Mahayana Meditation Centre being established in Delhi in 1979.
We are happy to share that FPMT Russia has published LYWA's Teachings from the Vajrasattva Retreat, an edited transcript of Lama Zopa Rinpoche's teachings from a three-month Vajrasattva retreat held at Land of Medicine Buddha, USA, from February 1 to April 30, 1999. You can purchase the PDF on the FPMT Russia website. LYWA partners with foreign publishers worldwide to translate our publications and our titles have been translated from English into 19 different languages!
For more Vajrasattva-related news, you can now download a free PDF of Chapter 7 of Becoming Vajrasattva from Wisdom Publications. You can find more on the benefits of Vajrasattva practice here on our website.
Also this month, we’re delighted to share an audio file of Lama Yeshe leading Lama Chöpa. This was recorded during a lamrim meditation course with His Holiness Zong Rinpoche in California, May–June 1978. The mp3 audio begins with a brief introduction by Lama Yeshe, who explains the purpose and motivation for doing this puja.
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.
- All Existents Are Like a Dream: Rinpoche advised a longtime student with advanced breast cancer to meditate on the emptiness of the cancer and the kindness of sentient beings.
- The Quick Way to Achieve Enlightenment: A student who had left another Buddhist organization wrote to Rinpoche to request spiritual guidance and practices that would help them benefit others and support their journey on the path to enlightenment.
- Self-Harm and Suicidal Thoughts: A student wrote that her relative was self-harming and suicidal, and the behavior was escalating. Rinpoche explained that it could be caused by spirit harm and advised animal liberation and Black Manjushri practice.
- Dharma Practice Is the Most Important Thing: In this letter, Rinpoche advised that the precious human rebirth could end at any time and recommended practices for life.
You can always find a list of all the newly posted advices from Lama Zopa Rinpoche on our website.
Hot off the Press!
We are thrilled to share that Rinpoche's Animal Friends has been printed (in Latvia) and will be shipped to us in the first week of February. We hope to start sending out copies by the end of February. Stay tuned! Meanwhile enjoy this short video clip of Lama Zopa Rinpoche reading the message, “I love all the sentient beings" on a plush toy.
As always, thanks for all your love and support.
Big love,
Nick Ribush
Director
THIS MONTH'S TEACHING: Taking the Bodhisattva Vows
In 1976, Lama Yeshe gave his first teachings at the FPMT’s newly established Manjushri Institute, Cumbria, England. Included was Lama’s bestowing of the bodhisattva vows on the many students in attendance. This is part of Lama’s preamble to the ceremony.
So, last night you all heard the vows [which were read out to the students]. Do you understand what they’re about and what I’m saying in terms of who should and should not take the vows? That’s all I’m saying. If you feel you have reached the stage to take the sixty-four vows, take them. If you feel you have not, take them at the aspiring level, thinking, “There’s no doubt that bodhicitta is the most worthwhile thing in the world, so I must try to actualize it by following the bodhisattva’s actions, such as practicing the six perfections, as much as possible.” By taking the vows in that way, you don’t have to keep the actual precepts but you plant the seeds for doing so in the future. It’s an individual decision, so check your own mind.
Now, when you take the vows, visualize all the universal living beings surrounding you and look at them with equanimity and great compassion. Also visualize all the buddhas, bodhisattvas and arhats surrounding Lama in front of you. Think, “All these buddhas and bodhisattvas have actualized the universal, innermost heart thought, the purest of motivations, bodhicitta, and have gradually attained the highest goals. As I have discovered that this is the most beneficial path, I, too, am going to actualize the pure thought just as they did and attain the very highest goal, enlightenment.”
Generating such thoughts is incredible; a remarkable inner cultural revolution the likes of which you have never experienced before. It is extremely difficult to do. Anybody can make the kind of external revolution that comes about through attachment and anger. Generating an inner revolution, abandoning the kingdom of attachment out of concern for other sentient beings, is truly a remarkable experience. It’s really too much. I think you people are all too much! It’s so worthwhile; really incredible.
Normally, we think birthdays are special. We have the conception, “This birthday is special. I have to buy them a present, I have to dress up, I have to do this, this, this….” Or New Year’s: “I have to celebrate; I have to buy all these things.” The new year is not so new. You’re getting old. You’re dying. Tibetan lamas think that instead of creating new year confusion, try to prepare for a happy death. Are we communicating? I’m saying that at New Year’s, it’s not a new life that’s coming. It’s that you’re getting older and closer to death. But still, you think, “Ooh! New Year, New Year.” You just make it up. It’s basically the same old thing but you totally exaggerate the occasion.
From the Tibetan point of view, it’s much more important to dress up when taking the bodhisattva vows than it is on other celebratory occasions such as birthdays or New Year’s Eve. In Tibet, people taking the vows would make elaborate preparations. In a large group, some would do prostrations, some would meditate, some would offer mandalas, others would recite the prajnaparamita text; people would engage in all sorts of preliminary Dharma activities like those.
So here, we’ve also made a big arrangement. You’ve just spent weeks listening to and meditating on the lamrim teachings, so in terms of preparing to take the vows, you’ve done pretty well.
If you look around the world, maybe you’ll find two or three people who have seen the shortcomings of self-cherishing and sincerely want to change it into the cherishing of others. It’s incredibly rare to find people who are more concerned for the welfare of others than their own. Extremely rare. Over the past few years I’ve met a great number of Western people, many of them beautiful. They’re not religious; they just want to help others. But despite that, they tend to forget their inner world. They have this beneficial attitude but they still haven’t abandoned their attachment and self-cherishing. Like I say, it’s just so rare to find people who have set their sights on the very highest goal and have generated the enlightenment attitude.
Intuitively, Western people like to help others. That’s true. But their idea of help is limited. As I said before, when somebody discovers that the highest way in which they can help others is to change their attitude to that of bodhicitta, in my opinion that itself is some kind of enlightenment experience. It’s extremely fortunate, worthwhile, or, in the vernacular, mind-blowing.
We can understand the power of bodhicitta by looking at what all the buddhas have done while they were on the bodhisattva path, dedicating their body, speech and mind to the welfare of mother sentient beings. Forget about material possessions—they would give their legs, their eyes, even their whole body to another sentient being if it would help. You can read about the incredible things Lord Buddha did in the Jataka Tales, stories from his previous lives as a bodhisattva. Unbelievable.
When your level of bodhicitta is small, if someone in dire need asks you for money, perhaps you give them some, but it’s a bit painful. You see the need, you want to give, but it hurts a little. However, as you develop, you get to the stage where if somebody asks you for something, you’re extremely happy to give and you do so with pleasure and respect.
Here I’m just talking about material giving. If you’ve been to Nepal, you’ll have encountered kids running up to you asking for money, “Sahib, paisa; sahib, paisa.” Since you have enough, you can feel very happy to give, thinking, “These children are helping me on the path to liberation.” Of course, it doesn’t have to be in Nepal. There are people asking for money all over the world; there are poor people everywhere. America may be the richest country in the world but there are still people begging in the streets. I’ve given them money myself.
So, as your mind develops, you’re happy to not only give others things like food or money; you can even give parts of your body, as Shantideva said.1 The Madhyamaka teachings explain that when you first develop bodhicitta, cutting off a piece of your flesh to offer somebody causes you pain, but you can control it. Your bodhicitta helps you cope. As you develop further, not only do you not feel pain; when you cut yourself you feel blissful. We think that’s impossible because we’re incredibly self-sensitive, under the control of attachment. But it’s possible. We can even see ordinary examples of this. Many Western mothers would choose to die if it would save their child. They are extremely attached to their children and have much compassion for them, so they would give their lives in order to save them.
Excerpted from Lama Yeshe’s Clean-Clear: Refuge and Bodhicitta: Collected Teachings, Volume 2. Edited by Nicholas Ribush. Forthcoming from Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive, April 2025.
NOTES
1 Bodhicaryavatara, 7:25,
At the beginning, the Guide of the World encourages
The giving of such things as food.
Later, when accustomed to this,
One may progressively start to give away even one’s flesh. [Return to text]