Refuge, Bodhicitta and the Nature of the Mind

COLLECTED TEACHINGS: VOLUME 2

Lama Thubten Yeshe

Forthcoming in May 2025

The gray clouds of ego come and go but the blue sky of totality is always there. It’s always been there, it’s there now and it will always be there. The essential clean-clear nature of the mind is like the sky: always there. The heavy blanket of ego is laid on top of that but it is not inextricably mixed with it.
  —Lama Yeshe

This collection contains teachings Lama Yeshe gave in England in 1976 and the Netherlands in 1980. Lama taught mainly on refuge and bodhicitta and also gave a public lecture on the nature of the mind. Clean clear as always.

Everybody loved attending Lama’s teachings. Even though they were profound, Lama presented them very lightly, with pertinent contemporary examples, a lot of laughter and frequent jokes. “I’m joking, dear; ah, I’m joking so much!” But then every now and then he would remind students, “I’m not joking when I say I’m joking!”

Compiled and edited by Nicholas Ribush, this book is the second volume in a series of Lama Yeshe’s collected teachings, the first volume being Knowledge-Wisdom: The Peaceful Path to Liberation. Since the topics are similar there is a little repetition, but according to Lama Zopa Rinpoche, repetition never hurts. This is not an academic work and is essentially an introduction to fundamental Tibetan Buddhist teachings on refuge and bodhicitta.

This book is currently in production and will be released in print and ebook formats in May 2025. Until then, please enjoy excerpts from this book, which you can read online.