Saga Dawa – Buddha’s birthday SEND 5/31

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

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Buddhist Studies Institute

Saga Dawa Celebration (Free!)

With Pema Khandro

June 3, 2023 – Online

10am – 11:30pm San Francisco (PDT)

1pm – 2:30pm New York (EDT)

Saga Dawa is the most auspicious day of the Tibetan Buddhist Calendar and a day celebrated by Buddhists all around the world. It is the anniversary of the Buddha’s birth, enlightenment and the day he passed away into parinirvana. The effects of actions on this day are said to be multiplied by ten million times because of the spiritual power of this full moon on the fourth month of the lunar calendar. Join us for prayers and aspirations on this auspicious occasion.

Chod Retreat

with Pema Khandro

June 1-4, 2023

Available online free for Snow Lion and All Access Pass Members

This is a Tibetan meditation which is a potent, dynamic practice for cutting through fear and facing death. It is a practice of healing through ultimate compassion.

General Public – Register Now for Chod Retreat

Online Access for Snow Lion & All Access Pass Members

Teaching Meditation in a Multicultural World

Developing Multicultural Awareness

Mondays – June 5, 12, and 19

Geared towards supporting Meditation Instructors, this class is open to Meditation Instructors certified through the Buddhist Studies Institute or currently enrolled in Meditation Instructor Training, and to meditation instructors who received their instruction and training through other programs and schools. It is also offered as part of the 180-hour Meditation Instructor Training curriculum offered through the Buddhist Studies Institute. Pema Khandro will teach for 1 hour on June 12th and the focus groups are June 5th and 19th are 30 minutes.

Teachings on Karma

Online with Pema Khandro, Aruna Rigdzin & Dr. Satya

June 21, 26 & July 10

Optional weekly 30 minute Focus Groups offer review and discussion of self-paced coursework and time for fostering community connections

The Basic Space of Being Dzogchen Retreat
With Pema Khandro and Khenpo Yeshi

August 4-6, 2023 – Online

10am – 11:30pm San Francisco (PDT)

1pm – 2:30pm New York (EDT)

Beyond effort and achievement is the state of natural ease, the basic space of being. How to effortlessly find this innate expanse is the focus of a profound Buddhist text known as the Treasury of Basic Space, The Choying Dzod (chos dbyings rin po che’i mdzod), the quintessential Dzogchen text written by the great fourteenth center Dzogchen master, Longchenpa. It refers to cho ying, the expanse of reality and pure experience of meaningfulness as the revelation of the ground of being.

It 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, The Treasury of Basic Space 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.

When Buddha Was a Woman

Buddhist Women Who Made History

with Pema Khandro

Early on in his succession of lives, in the third lifetime, the Buddha was a born a princess who was also the sister of the Buddha of previous aeons, Buddha Former Dipankara.