E-letter No. 275: May 2026
Dear Friends,
Happy Saka Dawa Düchen! We hope you are safe and well. Thank you for staying connected to LYWA and subscribing to our monthly eletter.
This year we celebrate Saka Dawa Düchen on May 31, 2026. This special holy day commemorates the birth, enlightenment, and parinirvana of Shakyamuni Buddha. According to the vinaya text Treasure of Quotations and Logic, any actions performed on this day are multiplied 300 million times.
In this issue, we share Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s advice on how to make the most of holy days. From our video archive, we feature a teaching by Rinpoche on the preciousness of the human body, accompanied by a guided meditation. Our monthly podcast highlights Rinpoche’s explanation of why compassion must remain at the heart of your practice. We also offer this month’s teaching below, which focuses on the power of Shakyamuni Buddha’s great love and compassion.
Ways to Celebrate Saka Dawa
To help you make the most of this holy day, we encourage you to read Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s advice on how to make the four great holy days most beneficial.
You can take the Mahayana eight precepts via video with Lama Zopa Rinpoche, recorded at Kopan Monastery in May 2020. This is an opportunity to receive the lineage directly and make your practice even more meaningful.
Rinpoche also recommended reciting The Sutra Remembering the Three Jewels on special Buddha Days.
Join the 2026 Global Mani Retreat, which began on Sunday, May 17, and will conclude on the final Buddha Day for this year, Lhabab Duchen, Sunday, November 1. Consider incorporating it into your Dharma practice this year. The total number of mantras recited will be offered to His Holiness the Dalai Lama at the conclusion of the retreat!
From the Video Archive: Precious Human Body Filled with Light
This month from the video archive, Lama Zopa Rinpoche praises the great value of our precious human body, then guides us in a meditation that begins with simple breathing and ends with our hearts filled with light. Rinpoche then dedicates the merit in emptiness. This guidance was given by Rinpoche in Missoula, Montana, on August 28, 1997, hosted by Osel Shen Phen Ling.
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: The Importance of Compassion
There are many different kinds of Dharma practice— hundreds of different mantras to recite, all kinds of meditation—but the most important of them all is the practice of compassion.
—Lama Zopa Rinpoche
This month on the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive podcast, Lama Zopa Rinpoche explains that no matter how you lead your daily life, if you never let compassion leave your mind, everything you do becomes work for the welfare of others. These teachings were given during a four-day course at Tilopa Center in Decatur, Illinois, in August 1997 and were published in the LYWA free book Virtue and Reality, edited by Nicholas Ribush.
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.
Current Projects at LYWA
Visit our Current Projects page to explore many, though not all, of the initiatives advancing LYWA’s strategic priorities: Preservation, Access, Community, and Resilience.
We invite you to join us this Saka Dawa by making an offering, helping to ensure that Lama Yeshe’s and Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s precious teachings remain accessible to current and future generations.
Please consider including LYWA in your will or estate plans. Planned giving is a powerful way to extend your compassionate intention for many years to come, helping to preserve and spread the unique expression of Dharma as taught by Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche.
As always, thank you for any offering you feel moved to make, and for holding the Dharma in your heart. Your kind intention is the greatest gift of all, and your support is deeply appreciated.
Big love,
Nick Ribush, Director, and the LYWA team
Monthly Teaching: The Power of the Buddha’s Love
Just before Guru Shakyamuni Buddha was ready to be enlightened, the maras suddenly filled the whole sky with fog and lightning, throwing thunderbolts and sending floods. They changed the whole place so that it completely became dark and terrifying. Many thousands of them tried to destroy him with many different methods, some carrying mountains, others with wheels that would behead somebody by just thinking about them. Everything they threw at him transformed into flowers. Unable to destroy him through violent means, in their last attempt, they transformed into the form of women, dancing in front of him, trying to disturb his concentration by luring him with their beauty.
No matter how they tried to destroy him, whether in a violent way surrounded by many thousands of maras with weapons or in a peaceful way, his concentration remained unshakable and indestructible. They couldn’t disturb his concentration; they couldn’t even disturb a single hair of his holy body. For such a holy being, nothing could disturb his concentration. Despite all the violent and peaceful means they used to disturb him, his holy mind remained completely tranquil, completely concentrated, without an atom of attachment or irritation arising.
The point I'm making is that the whole problem is created by the mind, by the negative mental state. The object itself is not the principal creator of the problem. If the object was the problem rather than the mind attached to the object, when there were many thousands of maras trying to control and destroy Guru Shakyamuni Buddha, there is no way he would have been able to overcome them without moving from his concentration.
How did he overcome them? With his great compassion and great love. These amazing minds have that much power. His great love was able to subdue all the evil spirits, all the evil thoughts, making everything peaceful. The whole thing was done by the realization of his great love, without depending on even the slightest movement of his holy body, without moving at all from his concentration.
If we tried to compare the power of all the countries of our world with the Buddha’s holy mind, even just one of his qualities, great love, there is no comparison. All the power of all the material possessions, all the weapons that all the countries possess, can never compare to his great love. His great love has the power to pacify all the problems, all the wars, without harming one single living being, even the size of an atom. But the countries of this world, no matter how rich or developed they are, with the power of their weapons, instead of using them to stop suffering and war, they use them to harm other beings. So, all the power of the countries’ material possessions and weapons is very limited; it can’t be compared to Guru Shakyamuni Buddha’s great love.
Excerpted from the Fifth Kopan Course held at Kopan Monastery, Nepal, in November-December 1973. Lightly edited by Gordon McDougall. Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s teachings from this meditation course are forthcoming as an ebook, as part of the Kopan eBook Project.