The Enlightened Experience:: Collected Teachings, Volume 3
About this ebook
Lama gave his first teaching which is presented in this ebook as Practicing Dharma in the West: Q&A with Lama Yeshe. In this question-and-answer session, Lama offers essential advice to students on how to integrate Dharma when they return to the West. In response to a question about Christianity, Lama discusses the principles of loving kindness and compassion, which are fundamental to all religions. Lama continues with advice on relationships and explains in simple terms the meaning of Dharma, the importance of bodhicitta, the power of holy objects and the qualities of the Buddha.
The next discourse, on December 9, 1983, is entitled The Peaceful Path to Liberation. In this extensive teaching Lama discusses the inner refuge which enables us to have a satisfied and happy life without depending on our external environment. He explains the meaning of Buddha, Dharma and Sangha, and gives an overview of the five lay precepts, the bodhisattva vows, equilibrium meditation and the tantric path. The teaching concludes with a refuge ceremony, in which Lama clarifies the correct motivation as well as the essential meaning and purpose of refuge.
In Lama Yeshe’s final discourse, on December 10, 1983, he teaches on bodhicitta, which he describes as a universal meditation that is especially suitable for Westerners. Lama urges students to change the attitude of self-cherishing into a determination to hold others dear and benefit them as much as possible. In the second part of this teaching, Lama discusses two ways of taking the bodhisattva vows according to our level of commitment and concludes with a motivation for taking the vows.
Lama Yeshe was a pioneer in bringing the Dharma to Westerners and the teachings in this ebook demonstrate his understanding of the Western psyche and his ability to express profound truths in simple terms.
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, (forthcoming from LYWA).
