March 4th Retreat with Pema Khandro Rinpoche

Upcoming Events

Bardo Teachings – Self Paced Course

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!

Buddhism & Sexuality – Self Paced Course

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!

Buddhist Ethics – Self Paced Course

With Pema Khandro

Open Dates

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!

Women in Tantric Buddhism – Self Paced Course

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…

Fierce Compassion: Comprehensive Chod Training

With Pema Khandro

June 9 - October 13, 2025

Embark on a transformative five-month journey into the heart of Dzogchen Chod with Tulku Pema Khandro, Ph.D. and the Buddhist Studies Institute. This comprehensive Chod training offers a rare opportunity for an in-depth immersion in the Dzogchen Chod system, Healing Chod, and the Secret Black Dakini Teachings. Take your Chod practice to the next level and cultivate fierce compassion and psychological transformation while studying the Tibetan tradition.

Breakthrough Retreat (Tekchod)

With Pema Khandro

June 27 - 29, 2025

Breakthrough Retreat Online with Pema Khandro June 27-29. 9am-12 pst, each day. 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. 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

January 27, 2017 by Khandro News

Winter Meditation Retreat in Santa Cruz, California – March 4th 2017 – with Pema Khandro

“Joy and sorrow, pleasure and pain, these experiences are facts of our lives. It is not a matter of whether we will experience joy and sorrow, it is a matter of how we will meet these experiences. Because we usually respond to strong emotions with habitual reactions, we miss the opportunity for further presence. Buddhist meditation offers us a way to meet mind with simplicity, straightforwardness and therefore with a natural resilience.”
– Pema Khandro

Meditation is widely respected for its powers to heal the body and mind, reduce stress, encourage neuroplasticity of the brain, increase speed of recovery during illness, impart peace of mind, increase empathy, increase powers of concentration and so much more. In Buddhism, meditation is used as a practice to awaken a capacity to see reality more clearly, to see things as they are, while remaining present and open-hearted. This one day retreat offers a day of meditation practice – for all these purposes. In a time when quite, simple sanity is most needed, a meditation retreat offers a space to restore a sense of clarity, freshness and resilience.

This retreat focuses on meditation and prayers drawn from one of the most important figures in Buddhist history, the female Buddha, Yeshe Tsogyal. Yeshe Tsogyal is an inspiring symbol of enlightened wisdom demonstrated in real life circumstances. The legend of this female Buddha of Tibet and founding figure of the Nyingma lineage is an example of authentic discipleship, enlightened romance, facing violence, dealing with spiritual politics and transforming obstacles, demonstrating the entire path from beginning to ultimate fruit. A story of overcoming incredible obstacles, she became the student and partner of Padmasambhava, the Indian Yogi who is credited with converting Tibet to Buddhism.

This weekend we learn Yeshe Tsogyal’s mantra and meditation, contemplate her teaching on transforming misfortune into the path and practice the prayer for Carrying Joy and Sorrow on the Path from the Pegyal treasure teaching.

Some retreats are practice oriented, some are study oriented, some are community or discussion oriented.
*This retreat is practice oriented.

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