With Pema Khandro, Father Francis Tiso, Lama Lhanang Rinpoche, Chagdud Khadro, Shugen Roshi, Julie Rogers, Jim Tucker, M.D., Koshin Paley Ellison and Dr. William McGrath
Open Dates
Teachings on Death and Dying Facing realities of dying, death, and grief are central to our human experience. This program offers practical instructions for helping others in the process of dying and an overview of essential knowledge on death, bardo, and rebirth. This includes self-paced lectures on dying, loss, grief, and illness from Lamas and scholars of Buddhist Studies. Support the Buddhist Studies Institute by donating for these precious teachings. Your contribution, big and small, helps makes in-depth Buddhist training and education more accessible for all. May the teachings spread and flourish!
With Dr. Nicole Willock, Julie Regan, Ph.D., Pema Khandro, Lama Willa Miller, Amy Langenberg , Dr. Ann Gleig, Dr. Nida Chenagtsang, Lama Rod Owens, Dr. Jim Hopper, Dr. Elizabeth Call and Damchö Diana Finnegan
Open Dates
Join Pema Khandro and a group of esteemed Buddhist Studies scholars for an exploration of the history of Buddhist Sexualities from celibacy, to sacred sexuality in Buddhist Tantra and a simple approach to embodied integration with nature in Dzogchen. Support the Buddhist Studies Institute by donating for these precious teachings. Your contribution, big and small, helps makes in-depth Buddhist training and education more accessible for all. May the teachings spread and flourish!
This course on Buddhist Ethics goes through the Five Buddhist Precepts. The five precepts form the basis of a Buddhist way of life and the vows that Buddhists Seek to follow. The Five Precepts are a discipline of freedom, honor, and precision that cover the potent themes of life from the extraordinary perspective of non-duality. Support the Buddhist Studies Institute by donating for these precious teachings. Your contribution, big and small, helps makes in-depth Buddhist training and education more accessible for all. May the teachings spread and flourish!
With Holly Gayley, Judith Simmer-Brown, Sarah Jacoby, Amy Langenberg , Damchö Diana Finnegan, Venerable Karma Lekshe Tsomo and Pema Khandro
Open Dates
This is the missing history of women in Tantric Buddhism. This course addresses the fascinating story of nuns, mothers, teachers, consorts, prophets, and disciples. Taught by scholar-practitioners whose groundbreaking research on women and Buddhism has changed the way we think of Buddhist history. This course will address the history of women in Buddhism, the history of yoginis and dakinis in India and Tibet, the stories of important Buddhist women, Buddhist philosophy on gender, sex, and sexuality, and the role of the consort in historical Tibet, and contemporary manifestations and so much more. Support the Buddhist Studies Institute by donating for…
Join us for the 21 Taras. The twenty-one taras is a sublime chanting meditation and praise of the forms of the female Bodhisattva Tara, each one a contemplation of all the forms of compassion ranging from gentle to fierce. This event explores the outer, inner and secret meaning of the twenty-one taras. This will be a joyous fundraiser in honor of our beloved Pema Khandro Rinpoche’s birthday. Wednesday, December 4th 6 pm pt | 9 pm et
Wishing you a very Happy New Year from Pema Khandro and the Buddhist Studies Institute!
If you resolved to practice more this year, we are here to support you with many exciting events, starting today! We hope you will take advantage of this wonderful and FREE opportunity to practice meditation with us for the next 40-days. Read on to learn more…
FREE 40-Day Meditation Marathon Starts Today!
January 1st is the kick-off to our 40-day meditation marathon. This is an invitation to practice every single day for 40 days from January 1st to Losar (Tibetan New Year) on February 10th. It’s so wonderful to be able to share this commitment with others and we invite you to join us every day for our free Daily Meditation sessions. Each 30-minute session is led by a Certified Meditation Instructor from the Buddhist Studies Institute. Whether you practice on your own time or join us live, we will celebrate all those who complete the 40-day marathon at our Losar Event on February 12.
January 26 – January 28, 2024 9am – 12pm PST | 12pm – 3pm EST | 5pm – 8pm GMT
Join Pema Khandro and the Buddhist Studies Institute for a weekend of fasting, purification, and re-envisioning ones life.
A profound cleansing of body and mind, the Buddhist Fasting practice, “Nyungne” is a practice of disintegrating previous ways of being to re-emerge within the ground of one’s own intrinsic liberation. The fasting practice includes vows, mantras, Avalokiteshvara meditation, and silent practice to purify karma and heal body and mind.
This Buddhist fasting tradition comes from a Tibetan nun, Gelongma Palmo, from the eleventh century, who used fasting for liberation in the face of extreme illness. The online retreat will follow the journey of Palmo and by engaging in the meditation of the Buddha of Compassion, Chenrezig. The weekend will include instructions on Buddhist Fasting practice, along with supportive instructions for nutrition and detoxification according to Tibetan Medicine and Ayurveda to support those both new to fasting and those whose bodies are familiar with it.
Worried about fasting? Fasting can be done in ways that are helpful or harmful to the body. Let our experts in Tibetan Medicine, Chinese Medicine, and Ayurveda guide you in fasting safely for your body.
Ngondro Training Heart of the Vast Expanse with Pema Khandro
Module 1 begins January 29, 2024
Mondays Online
5pm – 6:30pm PT San Francisco
8pm – 9:30pm ET New York
12pm- 1:30pm AEDT Sydney
Ngondro presents the core practices of Buddhist psychology, working with core needs in identity, relationality, forgiveness and repair, resources and the sense of empowerment. Join Pema Khandro and the Buddhist Studies Institute for a journey into Ngongro, the core practice of Buddhist tantra.
Ngondro meditation is the foundation of a solid experience of spiritual growth. Ngondro refers to a series of meditation practices for purifying, training and empowering the mind & body.
“There are different approaches to Ngondro, for some schools of Tibetan Buddhism it is reserved for much later. But for the Nyingma tradition we open the door to Ngondro meditations sooner, because for us it is the core or nucleus of spiritual training.” – Pema Khandro on Ngondro
People all over the world have turned to Buddhist meditation as a source of wisdom. Meditation offers a powerful method to access a sense of spaciousness, peace and authentic presence. The practical benefits of meditation are well documented. Research shows it improves mood, reduces stress (Brown & Warren 2003), it improves memory, visuospatial reasoning, sustained attention and executive brain function (Zeidan et al. 2010). It reduces sub-clinical depression and anxiety (Schreiner and Malcolm 2012).
From a Buddhist point of view, when we know how to meditate, we learn how to work with mind and emotions. We have a practice for unraveling conditioned scripts and unconscious habits. Meditation is a pathway to discovering human goodness by making peace with our mind. Ultimately it is a method for getting free from dissatisfaction, resolving confusion and waking up to see reality more clearly.
The Meditation Instructor Training supplies the fundamental knowledge and experience necessary to lead meditation classes and one-day meditation intensives.
3 Modules
Traditional Meditation
Teaching Practicum
Teaching Ethics
This training is a pre-requisite for the Chaplaincy Certificate offered summer of 2024.
Beyond effort and achievement is the state of natural ease, the basic space of being. How to breakthrough to find this innate expanse is the focus of a profound Buddhist meditation manual known as The Treasury of Basic Space, The Choying Dzod (chos dbyings rin po che’i mdzod). It presents the essence of esoteric Tibetan Buddhism, known as Great Perfection, or Dzogchen (rdzogs chen) in verse form. Venerated as a manifestation of the expanse of reality itself, is the quintessential Dzogchen text by the fourteenth century master, Longchenpa. It refers to the expanse of reality and pure experience of meaningfulness as the revelation of the ground of being.
The Treasury of Basic Space is a manual for meditation and liberation, as well as being a text that one reads to a dying person to introduce them to the nature of mind at death. Read during dying, it offers the crucial support at the most important time, by guiding the dying person to realize the nature of mind. Indeed, The Treasury of Basic Space has been read at the time of death of many great Dzogchen masters.
The Treasury of Basic Space details the elements of breakthrough meditation (trek cho), instructions which cut through misunderstandings of emptiness and point to the vivid wakefulness of sublime knowing.
Join Buddhist Studies Institute for this special program taught online by Khenpo Yeshi, Dzogchen Nyingthig scholar and Drikung Kagyu teacher and Dr. Pema Khandro, Dzogchen scholar, lama and lineage holder of the Nyingma tradition. The three days of online classes will include the lung, the oral initiation into this profound text by Khenpo Yeshi, study, and practice led by Khenpo Yeshi and Dr. Pema Khandro.
One Nun’s Hardship & Beauty The Story of Gelongma Palmo
by Pema Khandro
Our upcoming Buddhist Fasting Retreat in January will feature practices based on the founder of this fasting tradition, Gelongma Palmo. Read what Dr. Pema Khandro shares about her fascinating story.