Purifying the Mind – Starts Today!

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…

Ngondro Module 1

With Pema Khandro and Tsal'gyur Starbuck

January 27 - April 7, 2025

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

With Pema Khandro, Dr. Satya and Aruna Rig'dzin

February 10 - August 4, 2025

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…

Love as a Path to Liberation

With Holly Gayley, Sarah Jacoby and Pema Khandro

February 21 - 23, 2025

Love as a Path to Liberation

Losar 2025

With Pema Khandro

March 5, 2025

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.

Choying Dzod 5: Unwavering Awareness

With Pema Khandro and Khenpo Yeshi

March 21 - 23, 2025

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…

April 24, 2023 by Buddhist Yogis

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Buddhist Studies Institute

Purifying the Mind

Ngondro Training Module 2 – Online with Pema Khandro

Starts Monday, April 24 – Online

5-6:30pm San Francisco (PDT)

8-9:30pm New York (EDT)

10-11:30am Sydney (AEST)

Have you ever wanted to do something important to you, went through cycles of trying and failing, given up in frustration and then later went back to it and found, to your extreme joy and possibly to your surprise, that, yes, you could do it?

Through the Buddhist Studies Institute, Pema Khandro has made your successful practice her top priority. And perhaps the most seminal of the practices of Tibetan Buddhism is the Ngondro (pronounced “Non dro”) which literally translates as “Before Going.”

Ngondro provides a firm basis for living the meaning of Buddhist practice by training the body, speech and mind in the vast view. It provides an immersion into the core techniques of Buddhist tantra. Module 2, Vajrasattva meditation and purification of karma, is a highly effective practice. It’s an education that teaches you the attitudes, mindset and ways of a successful practitioner.

This training is designed with busy people in mind and if you cannot attend a segment of the training live, you will have access to the recording so you can view at a time that fits your schedule.

Chod Retreat

At Dakini Mountain with Pema Khandro

June 1st – 4th, 2023

Chod is the profound method of psychological transformation in esoteric Buddhism. Chod means cutting, referring to cutting through fictions to authentic presence.

Tsok, Chod dances and Secret Chod small group sessions will take place throughout the weekend, with transmissions and teachings from Pema Khandro.

This is a profound occasion of the sangha gathering for the first in person retreat since the pandemic at the glorious land of Dakini Mountain in the scenic Tahoe National Forest of Northern California. We will also celebrate Saga Dawa, the birthday and enlightenment day of the Buddha together in person with spiritual community!

Ngakpa Training

5pm PST April 26, 2023

For students enrolled in Ngakpa Training, we will have a Ngakpa Training with Pema Khandro on April 26th and a discussion group to talk about key parts of our reading from the Treasury of Words and Meaning to follow.

Impermanence, Illness, and Health Podcast

Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo and Pema Khandro Rinpoche

Author, teacher, and founder of the Dongyu Gatsal Ling Nunnery, Tenzin Palmo has a frank discussion with fellow teacher and scholar, Pema Khandro Rinpoche about what advice Buddhism has to offer about health and illness during a time of pandemic. Tenzin Palmo also shares what she’s learned about suffering and gratitude while on solitary retreat in a Himalayan cave for 12 years, and what she did after.

Listen Here