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…
Build your life on a solid foundation. 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 Ngondro, the core practice of Buddhist tantra. This module focuses on the purification of speech as the basis for Buddhist tantric practice. It then focuses on generating the refuge field. This is a practice of getting resourced, learning one’s own lineage and understanding the field of support for one’s spiritual journey. This section concludes with a…
Meditation Teacher Training 2025 For Teachers Beholding a Diverse Beautiful World The Meditation Teacher Training supplies the fundamental knowledge and experience necessary to lead meditation classes and one-day meditation intensives. 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. 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…
All are welcome to join Pema Khandro for our annual Tibetan Lunar New Year Celebration This is a free online program; open to the public. Vajrakilaya Dances Performed Losar Address with Pema Khandro Celebration of 21-Day Meditation Marathoners Dedications of Merit Year of the Wood Snake Begins! Donate below any amount to celebrate The Buddhist Studies Institute’s mission to help the Buddhist Teachings flourish.
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…
5pm PT San Francisco | 8pm ET New York | 11am AET Sydney
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. This includes recorded lectures, and conversations with experts in caregiving, hospice, Buddhist ministry, Tibetan Buddhist history, and scientific research on reincarnation. It also includes a self-paced training in Buddhist funerary practices, known as Zhitro, led by Pema Khandro.
Fri. Nov 3rd – Kunzang Monlam with Pema Khandro Sat. Nov 4th – The Tibetan Book of the Dead for Beginners: A Guide to Living and Dying, with Lama Lhanang and discussion with Pema Khandro Sun. Nov 5th – Shitro for Departed Loved Ones with Pema Khandro
5pm PT San Francisco | 8pm ET New York | 11am AET Sydney
“Use the 100 days to try to evoke a contemplative life…this may be something you don’t feel like doing, your attention span may be conditioned otherwise, and it may take some kind of effort, but it is a way of creating sovereignty and reclaiming sovereignty over our attention span.” ~ Pema Khandro
The Season of Practice is held each year starting November 1st – Tibetan Lunar New Year (Losar).
9am PST San Francisco | 12pm EST New York | 5pm GMT London
The Heart Sutra for more than two thousand years has been chanted daily by Buddhists around the world. Known as Prajnaparamita, the Heart Sutra, powerfully illuminates the path of freedom from suffering. The Heart Sutra contemplates the way we perceive, and what is beyond what our dualistic assumptions portray. This course with Lama Pema Khandro & Shughin Roshi explores the Heart Sutra from the Tibetan Buddhist perspective including the pivotal teachings of the four extreme mistakes on the spiritual path, discovery of one’s true nature and one’s true purpose.
For students interested in pursuing the long-term accomplishment of traditional Vajrayana stages of study and practice, we invite you to check out Vajrayana Training.
The course is taught by Pema Khandro whose background of growing up in North America has provided her with an understanding of Western culture and learning styles. Thus the Vajrayana Training offers advanced esoteric teachings in a modern format. She engages straightforward language with a supportive teaching methodology that offers lecture, question and answer, slide shows with outlines of the material, recordings of the class for viewing and reference and the support of an assisting instructor who will follow up with one on one conversations after each class. The training is given in the accessible format of live web-cast teachings to keep Vajrayana accessible despite the demands of modern life. It is held on the first two Wednesdays of every month.