E-letter No. 264: June 2025
Dear Friends,
Thank you for checking in with us each month—we’re so grateful to have you with us. Please feel free to share this e-letter with friends who may also enjoy it!
And a heartfelt thank you for your incredible generosity and support during Saka Dawa. What makes LYWA truly unique is that with your help, we can offer Dharma books completely free of charge—something very few Buddhist organizations do. We feel so fortunate to be in community with you and hope we’re serving you well. We always welcome your feedback—let us know how we’re doing!
In this month’s issue, we’re excited to share a variety of new offerings from the archives: a new video and podcast, the latest installment of the Big Love audiobook heart project, several newly published Big Love teaching excerpts on our website, and fresh additions to Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s Online Advice Book. Plus, our featured teaching this month is an excerpt from the much-loved Rinpoche’s Animal Friends.
From the Video Archive: Questions and Answers with Lama
This month from the video archive, Lama Yeshe answers students’ questions on a range of topics, including the importance of retreat and the role of dreams, and shares stories about his exodus from Tibet. This exchange took place following Lama’s commentary on the practice of Thousand-arm Chenrezig, Buddha of Compassion, at Vajrapani Institute, Grizzly Lodge, California, in May 1980.
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 Blessings of the Guru
The meaning of blessing is for one’s own mind to be transformed into the whole path to enlightenment, the path of wisdom and method, so the mind becomes the dharmakaya and the body becomes the rupakaya. The meaning of blessing contains all this.
—Lama Zopa Rinpoche
This month on the LYWA podcast, Lama Zopa Rinpoche explains what it means to receive the blessings of the guru and then recites Lama Tsongkhapa's lamrim prayer, The Foundation of All Good Qualities, in Tibetan. These teachings were given by Rinpoche at the Thirty-third Kopan Meditation Course, held at Kopan Monastery, Nepal, in 2000. Read along with the 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’re happy to share the latest audiobook installment of Big Love: The Life and Teachings of Lama Yeshe, written by Adele Hulse. This heartfelt project, organized by Janet Brooke, features narrations recorded by close friends of the late Åge Delbanco (Babaji) during his final days, so he could listen to the book. Babaji was one of Lama Yeshe’s earliest students. This audiobook offers a unique opportunity to hear this extraordinary life story read by those who lived it, especially meaningful if you don’t yet have a print copy.
This month the Big Love Heart Project brings you Chapter 21, 1983: Lama’s Last Year narrated by Breige Walbridge and Lara Brooke. Chapter 21 shares stories of events, including Lama Yeshe's trip to Egypt with Mummy Max, Lama's extensive travels and teachings in Europe, and when Lama left Kopan for the last time.
What's New On Our Website
This month, we’ve added two new teachings from Lama Yeshe, excerpted from Big Love: The Life and Teachings of Lama Yeshe. In Actualizing the Perfection of Patience, Lama Yeshe teaches on Nagarjuna's Letter to a Friend and the importance of developing patience in situations where strong emotions arise. In our second excerpt, The Blissful Wisdom of Vajrayogini, Lama Yeshe discusses how to make all experiences beneficial by transforming phenomena into Vajrayogini’s blissful nondual wisdom.
Visit our new Big Love Teaching Excerpts webpage, where you’ll find a growing selection of teachings featured in the book. The teachings are organized by chapters, with easy navigation links. Be sure to check back often, as we’re adding new content every month!
Don't miss out on the new entries to Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s Online Advice Book we've added this month. 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.
- The Unbelievable Benefits of Explaining Dharma: Rinpoche gave this advice to a teacher who said not many people were attending their classes.
- Daughter with Schizophrenia: A student wrote that her teenage daughter was struggling with severe mental health challenges. The mother asked Rinpoche what she could do to help her daughter through this difficult time.
You can always find a list of all the newly posted advices from Lama Zopa Rinpoche on our website.
In Case You Missed It: Our Latest Releases
In case you’ve been deep in retreat in a remote Himalayan cave, you might have missed our announcement of Clean-Clear: Refuge, Bodhicitta, and the Nature of the Mind—the second volume in Lama Yeshe’s collected teachings series. This new free release includes introductory talks given in England (1976) and Holland (1980), and is now available to order on our website in both print and ebook formats. You won't be disappointed!
We’re also delighted to share an excerpt below from our recently published—and already much-loved—Rinpoche’s Animal Friends. The response has been overwhelmingly positive, and we’re so glad to hear how much you’re enjoying the uniquely joyful way that Rinpoche taught Dharma. If you haven’t received your free copy yet or would like to send one to a friend, we’ve got you covered!
As always, thanks for all your love and support.
Big love,
Director Nick Ribush
and the LYWA team
THIS MONTH'S TEACHING: Following desire
Guru Shakyamuni Buddha said in the sutra teachings that as long as we follow desire, we will not be satisfied. Until we renounce desire, we will never be satisfied. I don’t remember the words exactly, but what Guru Shakyamuni Buddha said was that the person who follows desire is always suffering, and the person who is satisfied by Dharma wisdom is always happy.
The practice of Dharma brings satisfaction. This does not mean just shaving our hair, wearing robes or changing our clothes. It doesn’t mean living in a monastery or center or in a hermitage, or just reciting prayers or circumambulating stupas and temples. It doesn’t mean just meditation. Practicing Dharma doesn’t mean just this.
So how does practicing the holy Dharma bring satisfaction and peace to our mind? Taking care of desire is a problem that brings fundamental confusion to our life. All the problems that we hear about all the time in the West—in the newspapers or on television, with the family or the single person, whatever—all these problems are the shortcomings of following desire and seeking samsaric happiness and perfections. We seek comfort and the pleasures of this life, but our mind is unsubdued, uncontrolled. Whenever we start to practice the holy Dharma, right in that minute, right at that time, the result in our mind is peace, relaxation and calmness.
Excerpt from a teaching given by Lama Zopa Rinpoche during the 14th Kopan Course held at Kopan Monastery, Nepal, in November 1981. Featured in the free LYWA book Rinpoche's Animal Friends.