Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive

By Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche

What's Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive about?

Listen to teachings from great Tibetan Buddhist masters Lama Thubten Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche. Visit our website (www.LamaYeshe.com) to read teachings from many of the greatest teachers of our time and to order our free books.

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Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive episodes:

03.28.2024
How We Name the World
Every single phenomena is like that. There’s merely gathered, the base to be labeled, then due to that, then mere imputation, then only after that, then you have that appearance. -Lama Zopa Rinpoche In these teachings by Lama Zopa Rinpoche given during...
02.22.2024
The Living Heart of Compassion
Compassion should be at the heart of our life, at the center of all our relationships and in all our practices. -Lama Zopa Rinpoche Lama Zopa Rinpoche gives the transmission of the mantra and dharani of Chenrezig, the Buddha of Compassion and...
01.29.2024
The Power of the Object of Merit
If you don’t practice Dharma, don’t learn Dharma, don’t meditate, if you don’t pray to have realization of the path to enlightenment, at least even the path to liberation, if you don’t do that then so many sentient beings have...
12.27.2023
Make Your Life Worthwhile
Don’t cheat yourself. Don’t deceive yourself. Don’t be distracted by sense pleasures. Exist where you are right now. Make your life worthwhile. -Lama Zopa Rinpoche This month’s LYWA podcast is a short spontaneous Dharma talk by Lama Zopa Rinpoche on the importance...
11.27.2023
Practicing the Good Heart
You have to develop perfect power, so that you can reveal to all sentient beings the appropriate methods according to their level of mind. -Lama Zopa Rinpoche Lama Zopa Rinpoche explains why practicing the good heart is so extremely important, the basis...
10.24.2023
Chanting the Names of Noble Manjushri
Manjushri bodhisattva is the highest manifestation of being, the embodiment of all knowledge. -Lama Zopa Rinpoche The Ārya-mañjuśrī-nāma-saṅgīti (Chanting the Names of Noble Manjushri) consists of 160 verses and mantra sentences, condensing an enormous tantric lore. Listen to Lama Zopa Rinpoche reciting the...
09.25.2023
It’s all in your mind
You have no enemy when you don’t have anger. Only when you have anger you have enemy in your life. So it’s all to do with your concept. It’s all in your mind. -Lama Zopa Rinpoche These teachings by Lama Zopa Rinpoche...
07.28.2023
Contemplate Karmic Appearance
If we don’t create good karma again, we cannot predict what will happen to us after this minute, after this hour, tonight, tomorrow, next year. -Lama Zopa Rinpoche From extensive teachings on karma excerpted from a lamrim course led by Kyabje Lama...
06.26.2023
Renouncing the Self-cherishing Thought
One must understand that by hurting others, you are also creating the cause to be hurt by others. To really solve the problem one has to do something with the cause, which is within your mind. -Lama Zopa Rinpoche Lama Zopa Rinpoche...
05.25.2023
How Guru Shakyamuni Frees Sentient Beings
So, what is the way that Guru Shakyamuni Buddha, what is his way of freeing the sentient being from suffering? By revealing the absolute truth, by revealing the nature of the existence. -Lama Zopa Rinpoche Lama Zopa Rinpoche explains how Guru Buddha...
03.27.2023
Karma in Everyday Life
We are released from confusion while we are aware of the reality of things. -Lama Zopa Rinpoche Lama Zopa Rinpoche encourages us to live our life with a mind that is aware of the reality of things so that we avoid the...
02.23.2023
We Are the Cure of Our Own Samsara
All our suffering is caused by our belief that even though the I is merely labeled on the aggregates, it exists from its own side. This sickness is the root of all our suffering and our cure is our wisdom. -Lama...
01.26.2023
The Essence of the Dharma
The essence of the Dharma is to subdue one’s mind by taming the disturbing, obscuring, emotional thoughts that bring so much suffering to yourself and to others, from life to life. -Lama Zopa Rinpoche In this teaching from the 33rd Kopan Course...
12.25.2022
Everything Depends on Your Mind
As Buddha said, you are your own enemy or you are your own liberator. You can create a hell realm or you can create enlightenment. Everything depends on what you do with your mind. -Lama Zopa Rinpoche In these 2000 teachings given...
09.27.2022
The Meaning of Secret Mantra
The meaning of the word ‘mantra’ includes the whole path to enlightenment. -Lama Zopa Rinpoche Lama Zopa Rinpoche discusses the use of mantra in highest yoga tantra and explains how our minds should approach the practice of the mantra of Chenrezig. These...
08.25.2022
The Qualities of the Dharma and Its Teachers
The particular nature of the Dharma is that the more you study the teachings, the more the Dharma becomes deep and clear. And the holy beings, those who work for sentient beings, those who have accomplished the path, these holy...
07.28.2022
Buddha’s Compassion Never Gives Up
The Buddha of Compassion is the embodiment of all the buddhas’ great compassion that embraces and never lets go, never gives up on sentient beings even for one second. -Lama Zopa Rinpoche These teachings on the benefits of reciting the Compassion Buddha’s...
06.27.2022
The Dharma Will Protect Us
How to live the life? First your attitude becomes Dharma. Then with that attitude one lives the life, one does the works, one does the activities. -Lama Zopa Rinpoche Lama Zopa Rinpoche observes that we think we can rely on purification practices...
05.25.2022
The Label Is Not Enough
Do not be confused by people who try to disprove the existence of objects of faith like reincarnation or karma by simply labeling them as nonexistent. -Lama Zopa Rinpoche Lama Zopa Rinpoche addresses how some people try to disprove the existence of...
04.27.2022
The Enemy is the Kindest Person
By developing the mind in patience, whatever happens to you, whatever harm others give you, you will never get angry. -Lama Zopa Rinpoche Lama Zopa Rinpoche explains the power of the mind of patience to bring happiness to all beings we encounter...
04.26.2022
The Enemy is the Kindest Person
By developing the mind in patience, whatever happens to you, whatever harm others give you, you will never get angry. -Lama Zopa Rinpoche Lama Zopa Rinpoche explains the power of the mind of patience to bring happiness to all beings we encounter...
01.25.2022
The Long-Life Mantra of White Tara
Those sentient beings who accumulate merit, especially the sentient beings who know how to accumulate merit, if they have long life you see, then the longer they live then they are able to make their life more meaningful. They are...
11.23.2021
Subduing the Mind
If one practices mindfulness in the reality of these things, that which is impermanence, there is liberation from samsara. Lama Zopa Rinpoche The mind is the source of all suffering and the source of all happiness. In this session Lama Zopa Rinpoche...
10.23.2021
The Power of Cherishing Others
Even if we feel we are only capable of doing small things to help others right now, don’t feel hopeless or depressed. Instead rejoice because even the smallest attempt to help others should fill our hearts with happiness and joy. -Lama...
09.24.2021
Making This Precious Human Rebirth Meaningful
Be very clever. “I should be very skillful with my life from now on. I should be very careful with my life. I must make it, without wasting the precious human body which I have received now, without wasting it,...
08.26.2021
Compassion and Emptiness Together
One must have the wisdom and method simultaneously developing. -Lama Yeshe Lama Yeshe gave a series of introductory talks in Los Angeles in 1975. In this excerpt from these talks Lama describes the difference between Hinayana and Mahayana motivation and impresses upon...
06.28.2021
The Yoga of Offering Food
With that continual thought of benefiting other sentient beings, then with every single morsel of food or drop of drink, you collect limitless skies of merit. -Lama Zopa Rinpoche These teachings were given by Lama Zopa Rinpoche at the 36th Kopan Meditation...
05.20.2021
Lama Yeshe Rides the Radio Waves
We hope you enjoy listening to a radio interview with Lama Yeshe on the “What’s Cooking?” radio show with Judy O. This wide-ranging interview took place in Boulder Creek, California on July 22, 1983, just before Lama offered public talks...
04.27.2021
The Useful Fear of Death
Once we are free from delusion and karma, there is no cause for fear, so we are free from fear forever. Lama Zopa Rinpoche These teachings were given by Lama Zopa Rinpoche at the 36th Kopan Meditation Course, held at Kopan Monastery,...
03.25.2021
The Eight Benefits of Practicing Refuge
So this time I must receive full enlightenment, that which is free forever from samsara, for the sake of the sentient beings. Lama Zopa Rinpoche From teachings given by Lama Zopa Rinpoche prior to a refuge ceremony at Jamyang Buddhist Centre, London,...
02.23.2021
A Meditation on Emptiness
Delusion and karma come from the mind; they don’t come from outside. The main cause is the mind, so we need to learn more about our own mind, about delusion and karma, and about the path. -Lama Zopa Rinpoche Like a star,...
01.26.2021
The Emptiness of Sound
When we hear the sound, we will know what is the hallucination and what is the reality, what is false and what is the truth of our view of the sound. Lama Zopa Rinpoche This short excerpt is from a series of...
12.28.2020
Pervasive Compounding Suffering
Letting go of desire is not losing; it is only gaining. It is freeing ourselves from the prison of samsara. We are put in the prison in chains but by letting go of desire we are released; we are free. Lama...
11.27.2020
The Shortcomings of Desire
Desire will be there all the time, but on top of that there is more anger. So much of the problem is desire; it is really the whole world’s problem. Lama Zopa Rinpoche These teachings were given by Lama Zopa Rinpoche at...
10.27.2020
The Kindness of the Enemy
The minute our anger arises, we find an enemy in our life. We see a person that we hate or we want to hurt, or a person harms us and we see them as an enemy. But the minute our...
09.23.2020
The Path of Universal Responsibility
Just by lecturing that we need compassion, that alone cannot generate compassion in the hearts of the people in this world. We need to learn how to develop compassion. Compassion, like rain falling, doesn’t just happen. Lama Zopa Rinpoche These teachings were given by...
07.28.2020
The Benefits of Thought Transformation
All the hindrances of life, all the hindrances of meditation, of practicing Dharma, by practicing Mahayana thought training, all those hindrances of meditation, of Dharma practice, all those become helpers, beneficial conditions to practice Dharma. Lama Zopa Rinpoche When we face so...
05.26.2020
The Nature of the Mind on the Path
Taking refuge, now, becomes a very serious matter or serious practice, very fundamental, like the earth is used for many things, roads, houses, to grow food, crops, plants and so forth; the earth is used for so many things, for...
02.23.2020
Integrating What You Have Heard
I know you people understand something, have discovered something; but many things are only intellectual and not yet realization, therefore, I think you need something more. Lama Yeshe In the early 70s, Lama Yeshe used to give Sunday afternoon lectures at the...
11.25.2019
The Power and Potential of the Mind
Our meeting the spiritual friend, the spiritual master, who reveals the right path, is like the stick that meets the gong. -Lama Zopa Rinpoche In this talk Lama Zopa Rinpoche explains how the nature of our mind is the source of our...
10.24.2019
The Benefits of Purification
There’s no other way to do this perfect work for others, so therefore one must actualize the steps of the path to enlightenment; to do that one must purify the obstacles, the negative karmas, obscurations, so therefore then one must...
09.24.2019
The Purpose of Meditation
Because uncontrolled, undisciplined mind is opposite of knowledge-wisdom and happy, that nature is dissatisfaction. So your mind put such way, control, with your own wisdom, there is space, you can discover peace and joyful. So your life is becomes joyful,...
08.11.2019
My Life as a Tulku
On August 11th, 2019, Tenzin Ösel Hita participated in the ongoing series “Taste of Buddhism” offered by FPMT center Tse Chen Ling in San Francisco. Tse Chen Ling describes Ösel as “a radical free-thinker, former monk, filmmaker, and musician who...
04.27.2019
The Source of All Happiness
May the good heart, altruism, source of all the happiness, may it be generated within my mind, in the mind of the family, all sentient beings; those who have this altruism, bodhicitta, thought of full enlightenment to benefit others, to...
03.25.2019
Why Are There So Many Different Buddhas?
With ignorant mind you cannot approach the omniscient mind. Like without the fuel in the car you cannot reach your destination. Even if you have the car, if you don’t have the fuel then you cannot reach to the desirable place. -Lama...
02.26.2019
Fulfilling Life’s Purpose
If we take care of others, work for their happiness, we are automatically taking care of ourselves. Trying to make others happy is the best way of loving ourselves. -Lama Zopa Rinpoche Listen to this profound teaching by Lama Zopa Rinpoche on...
01.23.2019
Loving-kindness and Realizing the Yidam
Lama Zopa Rinpoche answers questions from students on how to generate loving-kindness without generating attachment and does it mean to realize the yidam. Rinpoche also describes the many joys and benefits from living a meaningful life guided by the Dharma....
12.10.2018
The Benefits of Bodhicitta
The benefits of bodhicitta can never be finished explaining it is said in the teachings by Buddha, like limitless sky. -Lama Zopa Rinpoche Lama Zopa Rinpoche gave these lamrim teachings on the immeasurable benefits of bodhicitta at the 29th Kopan Meditation Course held...
10.29.2018
Seeing Oneself as Lower Than Others
So main thing is by practicing oneself as lower, then pride does not rise. -Lama Zopa Rinpoche Listen to Day Two from Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s 2003 commentary on Eight Verses of Thought Transformation, an essential mind training text composed by Kadampa Geshe Langri Tangpa....
09.24.2018
Your Mental Bureaucracy
Understanding, the wisdom makes you happy. Always with you. But all the material, what you consider build up this life, is, when you need, not there. It’s there, it’s not there. Lama Yeshe explains in his uniquely skillful and powerful way...

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Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive episodes:

How We Name the World

The Living Heart of Compassion

The Power of the Object of Merit

Make Your Life Worthwhile

Practicing the Good Heart

Chanting the Names of Noble Manjushri

It’s all in your mind

Contemplate Karmic Appearance

Renouncing the Self-cherishing Thought

How Guru Shakyamuni Frees Sentient Beings

Karma in Everyday Life

We Are the Cure of Our Own Samsara

The Essence of the Dharma

Everything Depends on Your Mind

The Meaning of Secret Mantra

The Qualities of the Dharma and Its Teachers

Buddha’s Compassion Never Gives Up

The Dharma Will Protect Us

The Label Is Not Enough

The Enemy is the Kindest Person

The Enemy is the Kindest Person

The Long-Life Mantra of White Tara

Subduing the Mind

The Power of Cherishing Others

Making This Precious Human Rebirth Meaningful

Compassion and Emptiness Together

The Yoga of Offering Food

Lama Yeshe Rides the Radio Waves

The Useful Fear of Death

The Eight Benefits of Practicing Refuge

A Meditation on Emptiness

The Emptiness of Sound

Pervasive Compounding Suffering

The Shortcomings of Desire

The Kindness of the Enemy

The Path of Universal Responsibility

The Benefits of Thought Transformation

The Nature of the Mind on the Path

Integrating What You Have Heard

The Power and Potential of the Mind

The Benefits of Purification

The Purpose of Meditation

My Life as a Tulku

The Source of All Happiness

Why Are There So Many Different Buddhas?

Fulfilling Life’s Purpose

Loving-kindness and Realizing the Yidam

The Benefits of Bodhicitta

Seeing Oneself as Lower Than Others

Your Mental Bureaucracy