Silent Mind Holy Mind: A Tibetan Lama’s Reflections on Christmas
About this audiobook
The celebration of Christmas focuses on our longing for peace and deepest expression of love. Its essential spirit, therefore, appeals not only to Christians but to all people. Until recently the Buddhism of Tibet has been largely shrouded in mystery. But as its teachers, or lamas, have more and more contact with the West they confirm the fundamental unity of the human family.
In this book, Lama Yeshe, a highly respected Tibetan lama trained in the lineages of compassion and wisdom, shows how the modern spirit can be revitalized. Taking as his major focus the ways in which we customarily celebrate Christmas, Lama Yeshe exposes the foibles of our secular age and shows how we can surmount them. With the warmth and humor that have endeared him to so many, he takes a clear look at the ways we think. The relevance of these insights is refreshing.
First published in 1978 by Wisdom Publications, the book has been out of print for many years. With the kind permission of Wisdom’s director, Daniel Aitken, LYWA has created the second edition, which includes the original collection of talks given by Lama Yeshe at Kopan Monastery on Christmas Eve, as well as another Christmas talk and a Cistercian priest’s tribute to Lama after he passed away in 1984.
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About the author
LAMA THUBTEN YESHE was born in Tibet in 1935. At the age of six, he entered the great Sera Monastic University, Lhasa, where he studied until 1959, when the Chinese invasion of Tibet forced him into exile in India. Lama Yeshe continued to study and meditate in India until 1967, when, with his chief disciple, Lama Thubten Zopa Rinpoche, he went to Nepal. Two years later he established Kopan Monastery, near Kathmandu, in order to teach Buddhism to Westerners. In 1974, the Lamas began making annual teaching tours to the West, and as a result of these travels a worldwide network of Buddhist teaching and meditation centers—the Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition (FPMT)—began to develop. In 1984, after an intense decade of imparting a wide variety of incredible teachings and establishing one FPMT activity after another, at the age of forty‑nine, Lama Yeshe passed away. He was reborn as Ösel Hita Torres in Spain in 1985 and recognized as the incarnation of Lama Yeshe by His Holiness the Dalai Lama in 1986. Lama’s remarkable story is told in Vicki Mackenzie’s book, Reincarnation: The Boy Lama (Wisdom Publications, 1996) and Adele Hulse’s official biography, Big Love (LYWA, 2020).
JONATHAN LANDAW was born in New Jersey in 1944 and attended Dartmouth College. After teaching English with the Peace Corps in Iran (1966‑69), he began studying Buddhism in India and Nepal, his main teachers being Lama Thubten Yeshe, Kyabje Zopa Rinpoche, and Geshe Ngawang Dhargyey. While studying in Dharamsala, India, he worked as English editor for the Translation Bureau of His Holiness the Dalai Lama. After moving back to the West in 1977, Jon continued his studies and practices while traveling extensively, giving courses and leading meditation retreats throughout much of North America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand. He is the editor and author of a number of Buddhist books, including Wisdom Energy, Prince Siddhartha, Introduction to Tantra and Buddhism for Dummies. He lives with his wife and family in Freedom, California.
DR. NICHOLAS RIBUSH, MB, BS, is a graduate of Melbourne University Medical School (1964) who first encountered Buddhism at Kopan Monastery, Nepal, in 1972. Since then he has been a student of Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche and a full‑time worker for their international organization, the Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition (FPMT). He was a monk from 1974 to 1986. He established FPMT archiving and publishing activities at Kopan in 1973 and with Lama Yeshe founded Wisdom Publications in 1975. Between 1981 and 1996 he served variously as Wisdom’s director, editorial director and director of development. Over the years he has edited and published many teachings by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Lama Yeshe, Lama Zopa Rinpoche and many other teachers and established and/or directed several other FPMT activities, including the International Mahayana Institute, Tushita Mahayana Meditation Centre, the Enlightened Experience Celebration, Mahayana Publications, Kurukulla Center for Tibetan Buddhist Studies and now the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive. He was a member of the FPMT board of directors from its inception in 1983 until 2002 and currently serves on the boards of LYWA and Maitripa College.
