The Choying Dzod Annual Dzogchen Retreat is Tomorrow! – SEND 8/3

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

The Basic Space of Being

Choying Dzod Retreat
With Pema Khandro and Khenpo Yeshi

August 4-6, 2023 – Online

9am – 12:00pm San Francisco (PDT)

12pm – 3:00pm New York (EDT)

Choying Dzod is the meaning of the innate nature of mind, dharmakaya.

It elucidates naked primordial wisdom
without affirming or negating anything.

It is the heart essence of the visions of
the Omniscient Lama Longchen Rabjam.

It is the most profound of all profound teachings.

It is the vivid arising of pure dharmakaya as the teaching.

This excellent teaching is a living buddha.

It fulfills the Buddha’s activities in this world.

It manifests the absolute vision of the Buddha.

Even if you were to see the Buddha in person,
there would not be [any] greater teaching than this

– Paltrul Rinpoche

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, The Treasury of Basic Space is the quintessential Dzogchen text by the fourteenth century master, Longchenpa.

Join Buddhist Studies Institute tomorrow for this special program taught online by two esteemed Dzogchen scholars, Khenpo Yeshi, and Dr. Pema Khandro. Experience the power of the coinciding of study and practice on this rare occassion.

Longchen Nyingthig Ngondro Training

Module 4 – Intrinsic Wisdom

Monday, August 21st – Online

5pm Pacific / 7pm Eastern

Intrinsic Wisdom module 4 focuses on the key theme of Vajrayana, which is empowerment, to experience the power of the indestructible buddhanature within oneself.

This covers the Lama Naljor, the meditation for stepping into self-empowerment through connection with Vajrayogini and Padmasambhava.

The Lama Naljor begins with Vajrayogini meditation and the seven line prayer, a prayer used widely in the Nyingma tradition to supplicate the awakened mind. This is followed by the guru yoga meditation and merging into Buddhahood.

Module Four is open to new and returning students, new comers will be fortunate to join in with a brilliant group of dharma friends. Returning students will reunite with the Water Rabbits to persevere through the profound contemplative training system of Ngondro together.

Pema Khandro’s Life Story

in Lion’s Roar: Meet a Teacher

Pema Khandro says: “Guess who is featured in the “Meet a Teacher” in Lion’s Roar?! what a fascinating a difficult process to boil down my life to a few paragraphs, and they edited that down even more…. There was a long section about the lamas I studied with and also about being a woman of color and multi-cultural person, adventures in Asia… Despite being so introverted I had alot to say! but it was too long so thanks to the skillful editors its now a pithy glimpse into a few facets of the strange and wonderful journey that I’ve gone on as a female lama, tulku, scholar, and someone who loves to walk by rivers… Check out the section on my heroes! That’s my favorite one….”

Read Here