E-letter No. 257: November 2024
Dear Friends,
Thank you for your ongoing support and for staying connected with our latest projects and offerings! As you may know, we recently launched our 2024 year-end appeal to preserve and share the teachings of Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche. Through this effort, we aim to expand our reach and continue serving as a vital resource for those seeking to cultivate compassion, wisdom, and stronger communities of care.
We are deeply grateful to all who have already contributed. So far, we've raised $5,500 toward our goal of $60,000—and we're just getting started! Be an early bird and make your contribution today, ahead of Giving Tuesday on December 3rd! It’s easy to donate using your existing PayPal balance, or for folks in the US, Venmo.
In each mailing during our year-end appeal, we highlight an area of our work to share the resources LYWA offers, celebrate the accomplishments of the past year, and preview exciting upcoming projects. In this issue, we focus on our free print and ebooks. Read on to learn more about our latest ebook publication!
KOPAN EBOOK PROJECT: the 52nd Kopan Meditation Course
We are delighted to share the first ebook in the Kopan ebook Project series that we launched this year: Teachings from the 52nd Kopan Meditation Course. Lama Zopa Rinpoche gave these teachings at the 52nd Kopan Meditation Course, held at Kopan Monastery in Nepal from November to December 2019. Ven. Joan Nicell transcribed and edited them, with additional light editing by Gordon McDougall.
Teachings from the 52nd Kopan Meditation Course is now available as an ebook from your favorite vendor. You can also read the book online on our website and find videos, audio files, and transcripts of Rinpoche’s Kopan 2019 lectures on the FPMT website. Read an excerpt from this book in our featured teaching below.
LYWA Members can download the ebook for free. If you are interested in becoming a Member of LYWA, we offer flexible monthly payment options! Please email us if you’d like more information or have any questions.
Learn more about the Kopan ebook Project, which aims to convert Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s teachings from the annual Kopan Meditation Courses into a series of ebooks. The project will feature both previously published teachings available on our website and new, unpublished teachings from these courses.
LYWA Books: Compassion and Wisdom IN Every Format
LYWA free print books and ebooks remain a popular resource for individuals and Dharma centers worldwide. This year, we published a revised edition of 1978’s Silent Mind Holy Mind by Lama Yeshe and Teachings from the 52nd Kopan Meditation Course by Lama Zopa Rinpoche. We’re also excited about several new titles set for release in 2025.
In February, we will release Rinpoche’s Animal Friends, a book showcasing plush toys inscribed and blessed by Lama Zopa Rinpoche and given to students worldwide. This book, which features more than one hundred images, along with a selection of short teaching excerpts, is a reminder of Rinpoche’s great love for us and his unique means to inspire and open our hearts. Watch Beyond Enlightenment, a short mp3 video created by Magda Torres, featuring the travel adventures of Tong Nyi, the teddy bear, and Bodhicitta, the monkey.
Sign up as a Monthly Donor or donate $100 or more to receive any free LYWA publication, including Rinpoche's Animal Friends. Visit LamaYeshe.com/Donate for more information.
Also forthcoming in 2025 is Clean Clear: Collected Teachings, Volume 2 by Lama Yeshe and How to Have a Happy Life with a Good Heart, a cookbook featuring more than 100 vegetarian and vegan recipes inspired by Lama Zopa Rinpoche
In addition to these titles, our LYWA editors, in collaboration with Wisdom Publications, continue to publish various lamrim commentaries by Lama Zopa Rinpoche, including recent titles such as The Power of Meditation, The Power of Mantra, Perseverance, and The Six Perfections, with many more to come.
ON THE LYWA PODCAST: Listening Like the Limitless Sky
Even if you find it very hard to understand the teachings on emptiness, you will leave positive imprints on the mind and remove the imprints of delusion. The benefits you receive just by listening is like the limitless sky.
—Lama Zopa Rinpoche
This month on the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive podcast, Lama Zopa Rinpoche elaborates on the emptiness of the I, then gives an oral transmission of the Heart Sutra and a partial transmission of the Diamond Cutter Sutra. Rinpoche gave these teachings on Lhabab Duchen during the 33rd Kopan Meditation Course, held at Kopan Monastery, Nepal, in 2000. You can follow 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.
BIG LOVE AUDIOBOOK HEART PROJECT
We are happy to share another 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 month the Big Love Audiobook Heart Project presents Chapter 14: 1976: Heaven Is Now, narrated by Keith Emmons and Elaine Jackson. Chapter 14 includes the development of the early Kopan community, the arrival and consecration of the Kopan Tara statue, the events of the Lamas’ third world teaching tour and the ninth Kopan meditation course.
This is an incredible opportunity to listen to this extraordinary account of Lama's life read by people who were there as the story unfolded, especially if you do not have a copy in hand. As a reminder for our Members (and future Members!), you receive a 50% discount when you order Big Love from our online store, and if you already have a copy, you can order one and have it sent to a friend as a gift!
What's New On Our Website
Read about how the LYWA Image Archive was established by our digital imaging specialist, David Zinn, and the ongoing work to preserve, catalog, and publish images of Lama Thubten Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche. The archive holds a vast collection of images dating back to the late 1960s, and we continue to uncover new, previously unseen images of Lama and Rinpoche every day. In many ways, this work keeps the spirit and inspiration of these remarkable teachers alive.
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.
- Animal Experimentation: Rinpoche discussed Mahayana motivation and how to purify the karma of killing in this advice given to a student who was harming animals for a research project at a university.
- Morality Is Like the Earth: Rinpoche advised that pure morality is the root of the Buddha’s teachings, and recommended building a monastery in Solu Khumbu, Nepal, to ensure that the teachings of the Buddha are preserved.
- Preparing a House for End-of-Life Care: This advice was given to students who were thinking of starting a hospice service.
You can always find a list of all the newly posted advices from Lama Zopa Rinpoche on our website.
The Limitless Impact of Your Giving
We understand that at the end of the year you receive many requests for support. Please rejoice with us at the work we’ve been able to accomplish and the vast Dharma resources we freely share, which we hope have touched your heart and made a meaningful impact on your life. We are deeply grateful for your kindness and support that has enabled us to do all this. We couldn’t do it without you.
Thank you for your generosity and helping us to make our year-end appeal a success. Continue on to read a short teaching by Lama Zopa Rinpoche on how the Buddha teaches us.
Big love,
Nick Ribush
Director
THIS MONTH'S TEACHING: How the Buddha Teaches Us
Why did the Buddha descend in this world? What is the purpose? The purpose is to liberate sentient beings from samsara, from samsaric sufferings, and lead them to liberation and the state of omniscience. That is the only reason the Buddha descended in this world. There is no other reason at all. It is said in a sutra:
The Great Ones do not wash away sin with water;
they do not rid beings of suffering with their hands;
they do not transfer realizations of suchness onto others.
They liberate by teaching the truth of suchness.
Hindus wash their bodies with the water of the River Ganga, thinking they purify everything. It is not in that way. The buddhas do not wash away negative karma with water. And they do not take out the suffering of transmigratory beings with their hands, which means like taking out a thorn with the hands when it’s in the body. That is not the way the Buddha liberates sentient beings from suffering. And they don’t “transplant their realizations into us.” It’s not like taking a monkey’s brain and transplanting it into a human or replacing [diseased organs] with healthy ones. That is not how buddhas do it, by transplanting their realizations into us sentient beings. The way the Buddha liberates us from the sufferings of samsara is “by teaching the truth,” the ultimate nature, emptiness. That is what is said in sutra by the Buddha.
To subdue the minds of the sentient beings, the sentient beings who are objects to be subdued by the Buddha, the Buddha has revealed the 84,000 teachings. The four noble truths are the basis, the root of the 84,000 teachings. After he became enlightened, the very first teaching of the Buddha was what is called the first turning of the wheel of Dharma, which reveals the four noble truths, showing us exactly what is to be practiced and what it to be abandoned.
In Maitreya Buddha’s teachings, Do Dei Gyen [Ornament of the Sutras], the example given is [of disease and cure]. The disease is what is to be known; the cause of the disease is what is to be abandoned; the cure is what is to be achieved and the medicine is the way to become cured. Like that, the four noble truths are: suffering, the cause of suffering, the cessation of suffering and the true path. First, the truth of suffering is to be known, then the true cause of suffering is to be abandoned, the true cessation of suffering is what is to be actualized, and the true path to achieve that cessation is what is to be followed. Maitreya Buddha said that.
For example, in the world, when somebody is very sick, to become completely free, they must first know the essence of disease, the shortcomings of the disease. Then, they should look for the cause of the disease, where the disease came from. Then, to abandon it forever, they need to not just be cured of the disease but also of its cause. When they have generated the wish to be free from the sickness and its cause forever, they have to take the right medicine and for that they have to rely on a wise doctor. Only in this way can they become completely better, from both the disease and its cause.
For us sentient beings who are tormented by the sufferings of samsara, the kind Guru Shakyamuni Buddha taught true suffering, then he taught where that suffering comes from, from karma and delusions, which we need to abandon. Then, he taught the all-arising truth. After we have generated the wish to be free from all suffering, including its cause, to achieve that, the Buddha taught the true cessation. Then, he showed the graduated path, the true path, the method to achieve liberation.
Excerpted from Lecture 11, Kopan Course No. 52, Kopan Monastery, Nepal, November-December 2019. Lightly edited by Gordon McDougall.