E-letter No. 274: April 2026

Dear Friends,

We hope you are safe and well. Thank you for subscribing to our monthly e-letter and for staying connected with us.

In this issue, we’re pleased to feature a talk by Peter Kedge from our video archive, in which he shares his travels to Kopan Monastery and his first meeting with Lama Yeshe. In addition to his decades of service to the FPMT in various roles, Peter was instrumental in the development of the Archive in its early days. Our monthly podcast presents Rinpoche explaining why some teachings may appear contradictory. We’ve also posted two new teachings by Lama Yeshe on our website, excerpted from Big Love, along with a new teaching and advice from Lama Zopa Rinpoche. In addition, we’re excited to introduce a new collaborative project and to share a short but poignant teaching by Lama Yeshe. Read on!

From the Video Archive: Remembering Lama Yeshe 

This month from the video archive, Peter Kedge tells an engaging story, illustrated with archival images, of how he ended up at Kopan Monastery in Nepal, met Lama Yeshe, and ultimately learned about Universal Education. This talk was given in 2015 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and was organized by Dekyi Lee Oldershaw.

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. For many more videos of Lama Zopa Rinpoche's teachings, visit the FPMT YouTube channel.

On the LYWA Podcast: Why are there different instructions?

When you read different teachings, you might get confused because they look contradictory. One teaching says you must never do something, then another teaching says you must do that. The difference is in the level of development of the mind.
—Lama Zopa Rinpoche

This month on the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive podcast, Lama Zopa Rinpoche explains that karma becomes negative or positive based on the mind, not on the action. A bodhisattva who cherishes others can engage in actions that appear negative when they are motivated by the mind of enlightenment. But when we are motivated by self-cherishing, we must abandon such negative actions. Rinpoche gave these teachings during a lamrim course at the Maitreya Instituut in the Netherlands in August 1990. You can 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 subscribing.

what's new on the lywa website

This month we've posted a new teaching on our website, Happiness and the Subdued Mind. In this teaching, Lama Zopa Rinpoche explains that the essence of Buddhism is to subdue one’s own mind, that by taking care of our mind, we take care of our life. This teaching was given at the Ganden Buddhist Center in Riga, Latvia, in 2019. Visit FPMT's Rinpoche Available Now (RAN) for more teachings, transcripts, audio recordings and videos from this event. You can also find the video for this teaching excerpt here on FPMT’s YouTube Channel.

As a reminder, we’ve posted online Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s teachings from the 3rd & 4th Kopan Meditation Courses, held in October-November 1972 and March-April 1973. The lightly edited lectures present the path to enlightenment in Rinpoche’s unique, spontaneous and intimate teaching style. Visit our Kopan eBook Series webpage to find links and short descriptions for each title, lightly edited by Gordon McDougall. You can also read many more Kopan courses online or download as free PDF files.

This month we’ve added two new teachings from Lama Yeshe, excerpted from Big Love: The Life and Teachings of Lama Yeshe. In our first excerpt, Meditation Brings Clarity, Lama Yeshe explains that enlightenment arises by integrating teachings through meditation into lived, experiential wisdom that brings clarity and inner certainty. In the second teaching, Why We Exist, Lama Yeshe explains that we can access our potential for awakening through understanding dependent arising.

Visit our 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 the new entries we’ve added this month to Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s Online Advice Book. With more than 100 new pieces of advice published each year, the collection has now grown to over 2,600 entries on our website. 

• The Best Offering and the Greatest Joy: Rinpoche sent this card to a center director to thank them for their service and for benefiting the sentient beings who come to the center.
• Transforming Illness into the Path: In this advice, Rinpoche explains how to use sickness and discomfort to purify negative karma by taking on others’ suffering and giving them all our happiness and merit.
• Disturbing Experiences in Retreat:  A student began hearing voices while on retreat and was hospitalized. They later sought guidance from Rinpoche, who explained spirit harm, samsaric suffering and rejoicing in difficulties, and advised extensive dedication prayers.

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

Honoring the Lamas' Legacy for Future Generations

In 2025, the FPMT family celebrated what would have been the 90th birthday of Lama Yeshe. Istituto Lama Tzong Khapa (ILTK) marked the occasion by collaborating with Fabiana Lotito and Carlota Pinheiro to honor Lama’s profound legacy for future generations by interviewing Lama Yeshe’s direct students about their experiences with Lama and the most important teaching or life lesson they received. You can find the interviews here on the LYWA YouTube Channel.

This year in honor of the 80th birthday of Lama Zopa Rinpoche, Fabiana and Carlota are collaborating similarly with LYWA, interviewing up to 80 of Rinpoche's students from around the world. The project is dedicated to capturing the heart of Rinpoche's teachings through the personal experiences of those who knew him closely. 

Fabiana and Carlota explain, "The goal of this project is to create a space where the depth of Rinpoche’s impact can be felt by both longtime students and those new to the path. By sharing these reflections, we hope to build a bridge between generations of students, fostering a sense of continuity for our precious Lama.” If you feel called to share your own story about Rinpoche, they would love to hear from you!

Read below for this month’s teaching, a brief and timely reflection from Lama Yeshe on integrating a meditative mind into daily life and how meditation brings clarity rather than confusion.

As always, thank you for your continued support. We are all in this together, and we warmly invite you to reach out and let us know if there is anything we can do for you.

Big love,

Nick Ribush, Director, and the LYWA team

Monthly Teaching: Meditation Brings Clarity

In the Tibetan system we have a kind of gradual process that leads to enlightenment. First of all you hear the teachings. Through hearing you receive a clear intellectual understanding. This we call the wisdom of hearing. Next, we analyze what the teacher says; we check up to see whether the teachings actually fit with our experiences or not. We check up internally, analytically. This we call the wisdom of analysis, or contemplation. This analytical checking wisdom is what gradually grows into a kind of inner experience. You know? It grows into what we call penetrative wisdom. But this wisdom grows slowly, slowly.

When you participate in this meditation course, you act; in every moment, in every movement you act! When you are walking, you are in meditation. When you are eating, you are in meditation. When you are drinking, you are in meditation. You understand? You try to integrate all your actions with your penetrating wisdom consciousness by using your memory and bringing to mind your understanding of the teachings. You understand? That is the reason we present this kind of meditation course. It is so useful. Not only do you hear the teachings and take notes; you need to put those notes into your consciousness and to check up analytically if the words are really valuable or not. If they have no value, then you can just get rid of them. But if they are of real value, if your analysis proves their validity, proves that they work well with your experience, then ... deeper understanding! Penetration! Meditation brings one to a useful inner conclusion. But without meditation, I tell you, we have no conclusion. Do you understand?

In the West we are overwhelmed with so much information ... so much! A hundred thousand bits of information from the television, from newspapers, from Time magazine ... we keep learning things. But all this information brings us no conclusion, no clear direction. This is the problem. If you have too much information, how can you come to a conclusion? This is why meditation is so important. From meditation comes clarity, a clear conclusion, a deeper understanding.

Lama Yeshe gave this teaching in Marseille, France, in October, 1978. Published in Chapter 16 of Big Love: The Life and Teachings of Lama Yeshe and here on our website.