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…
In-person in San Diego, and Online This retreat provides a rare opportunity to receive authentic guidance in these essential Dzogchen methods within a supportive environment conducive to deep practice. Through direct instruction, guided sessions, and periods of integration, participants will learn how these seemingly simple yet profound techniques can cut through ordinary conceptual mind to reveal what has been present from the beginning – one’s own intrinsic wisdom. Join us to explore how the Semdzins—practices not of concentration or fabrication, but of discovery—can open doors to experiencing the natural perfection that is our primordial condition, with practical applications that…
Join us for the 6th installation of the Choying Dzod, with Dr. Pema Khandro and Khenpo Yeshi Awakening to the Expanse 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…
In the protected space of retreat, we will investigate the essence of Breakthrough—learning to allow thoughts and emotions to self-liberate without suppression or engagement, discovering the spaciousness that remains when we release our habitual grasping.
Tomorrow,experience the profound simplicity of Breakthrough meditation, the cornerstone practice of Dzogchen that directly “cuts through” all mental fabrications to reveal our natural state of awareness. This immersive retreat offers a rare opportunity to receive authentic guidance in this ultimate practice of the Great Perfection tradition, where we learn to recognize what has been present from the beginning. Through skilled instruction, guided sessions, and periods of integration, participants will explore how to rest in the effortless recognition of mind’s true nature beyond all conceptual elaboration.
This retreat will be led online by Dzogchen teacher and scholar, Pema Khandro. Each day will include study and practice of breakthrough practice, Trekchö (ཁྲེགས་ཆོད་, sometimes transliterated as “tekcho”), from the Heart Essence of the Dakinis (mkkha’ ‘gro snying thig) one of the most beloved Dzogchen texts in Dzogchen history. The Heart Essence of the Dakini’s was the text that Longchenpa studied and regarded as his past life masterpiece.
We are grateful for donations to support the Buddhist Studies Institute. We are a grassroots organization and all of our funding is based on individual donations.
We hope you will remember us in your charitable giving giving and we are also so grateful for the continual support of volunteers, good will and prayers, the positive energy that keeps us going! So please give however you can.
We have an exciting summer season of programs and look forward to connecting with each other each other again and again. To make a donation, you can click the donate button below or mail your check to the address listed below. No amount is too small or too large! Every gift counts and makes a difference.
To gift by check, please make payable to Buddhist Studies Institute, and mail to:
Buddhist Studies Institute
P.O. Box 2396 Nevada City, California 95946 USA
Buddhist Studies Institute is a project of Ngakpa International, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit EIN 68-0529687 and all gifts are tax-deductible as allowed by law.