We’re excited to share what’s new to the Wisdom Experience this April and hope these resources continue to provide you with moments of inspiration, adventure, and awakening all month long.
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As you read the rest of the newsletter, remember to keep an eye out for the membership level icon in the corner of each image. These mark what level of membership the content is available to.
During the month of April, Illuminating the Intent and the film Digital Dharma are available to Free members.
Completed the year before the author’s death, Tsongkhapa’s exposition of Candrakirti’s text is recognized by the Tibetan tradition as the final standpoint of Tsongkhapa on many philosophical questions, particularly the clear distinctions it draws between the standpoints of the Madhyamaka and Cittamatra schools.
Written in exemplary Tibetan, Tsongkhapa’s work presents a wonderful marriage of rigorous Madhyamaka philosophical analysis with a detailed and subtle account of the progressively advancing mental states and spiritual maturity realized by sincere Madhyamaka practitioners.
Illuminating the Intent remains the principal textbook for the study of Indian Madhyamaka philosophy in many Tibetan monastic colleges, and it is a principal source for many Tibetan teachers seeking to convey the intricacies of Madhyamaka philosophy to non-Tibetan audiences.
Digital Dharma uncovers E. Gene Smith’s 50-year journey with renowned scholars, lamas, and laypeople as they struggle to find, preserve and digitize more than 20,000 volumes of ancient Tibetan text. Crossing multiple borders—geographic, political, and philosophical—Digital Dharma is an epic story of a cultural rescue and how one man’s mission became the catalyst for an international movement to provide free access to the story of a people. During the month of October the film is available to all members of the Wisdom Experience in celebration of the new partner volume Digital Dharma: Recovering Wisdom.
Don’t forget, you can invite your friends to sign up for a Free membership to join you.
Each year we work with Gompa – Tibetan Monastery Services to bring our Plus, All-Access, and In-Depth members three courses and/or teachings by eminent Rinpoches, scholars, and practitioners given in their monasteries and nunneries in India and Nepal. Our current Gompa Wisdom Teaching provides the rare opportunity to receive a four-day course of teachings from Choepa Karma Wangchuk Lhamo on ‘The Four Thoughts that Turn the Mind to the Dharma’. The four thoughts or four considerations are regarded as key subjects of contemplation in a practitioner’s quest to overcome attachment to the attractions of worldly life. When successfully undertaken the four thoughts lay a firm foundation for spiritual growth. These four are:
1) cultivation of an appreciation for the potentials and the opportunities of human existence;
2) reflection on death and the impermanence of all things;
3) reflection on karma and the law of cause and effect; and
4) reflection on the unsatisfactory nature of life in the cycle of existence and the nature and causes of suffering.
The teaching is given in Tibetan with translation in English.
Be sure to register for our upcoming Wisdom Dharma Chats episodes this April!
This month we’re honored to have back-to-back Wisdom Dharma Chats with two special guests, Kyabje Kalu Rinpoche and Tsoknyi Rinpoche.
Join us for our first Wisdom Dharma Chat filmed live in New York City with Kyabje Kalu Rinpoche on Wednesday, April 24 at 7:00 PM EDT. During this Wisdom Dharma Chat host, Daniel Aitken, and Rinpoche will discuss his Wisdom Academy online course Illusory Body and Mind, along with his new and upcoming Wisdom Academy online course on Niguma’s dream yoga, and much more. This is a live event that will have both an in person and Zoom audience. Seats are limited for both so please be sure to register below. There will be a short meet and greet after the Wisdom Dharma Chat with Rinpoche for those in attendance in person.
Kyabje Kalu Rinpoche is the lineage holder of Shangpa Kagyu. He was born in 1990 and recognized by H. H. the Dalai Lama and H. H. the 12th Chamgon Kenting Tai Situpa. Kalu Rinpoche completed the traditional three-year retreat between January 2004 and September 2008.
To register to watch this Wisdom Dharma Chat live over Zoom, register here.
To attend this Wisdom Dharma Chat in-person at 132 Perry St. #2B, New York, NY 10014, reserve your ticket here. Seats are limited please only reserve a ticket if you plan on coming in person.
Then come back the next day and join us with Tsoknyi Rinpoche on Thursday, April 25 at 7:45 PM EDT. (Please note this is not at our usual Wisdom Dharma Chat time.) For over three decades, Tsoknyi Rinpoche has been teaching students worldwide about the innermost nature of mind in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition and more recently, how to be a healthy human being with his course, Fully Being. Born into a family respected for its spiritual accomplishments, he was identified while still a small child as the third Tsoknyi Rinpoche and given the special education and upbringing of a tulku, or reincarnate lama. His teachers include some of the most renowned masters of Tibet.
During this Wisdom Dharma Chat host Daniel Aitken and Rinpoche will be discussing Rinpoche’s father, the great Dzochen master Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche, in celebration of the upcoming releases of the new edition of Blazing Splendor: The Memoirs of Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche this October, and much more.
To register to watch this Wisdom Dharma Chat live over Zoom, register here.
Discover all of the books in our Reading Room under the “Explore” menu on our website. Books in our Reading Room are available exclusively to Plus, All-Access, and In-Depth members.
Featured in the Reading Room
Noble Truths, Noble Path
Introduced and translated by Bhikkhu Bodhi
“Once again, with inimitable grace and accuracy Bhikkhu Bodhi has compiled a collection of teachings of the Buddha with a specific aim in mind. In this volume he explores and elucidates the four noble truths, which, as the implicit framework of the whole teaching, means this humble volume maps the terrain that forms the context for the entire Buddhadhamma. It is thus a precious and reliable guide to a vast spiritual domain, and I cannot recommend it too highly.”
—Ven. Ajahn Amaro, Abbot, Amaravati Buddhist Monastery, UK
Realizing the Profound View
By His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Venerable Thubten Chodron
“Realizing the Profound View is of signal importance, for it contains the Dalai Lama’s most extensive and detailed exposition yet of the various ways in which Indian and Tibetan Mādhyamikas analyze persons and phenomena so as to arrive at their ultimate nature: emptiness of inherent existence, which, far from entailing nihilism, assures the validity of dependently arisen conventional reality.”
—Roger R. Jackson, John W. Nason Professor of Asian Studies and Religion, Emeritus, Carleton College
Also in Your Reading Room
Exclusively for In-Depth, Plus, and All-Access members
- The Swift Path translated by Szegee Toh
- Saltwater Buddha by Jaimal Yogis
- The Middle Way By His Holiness The Dalai Lama, translated by Thupten Jinpa
- Buddhist Suttas For Recitation by Bhante Gunaratana, forward by Bhikkhu Bodhi
- and many more!
New Releases & Back in Stock
The following books were released in March, are available to purchase early on our website, or are now back in stock:
- Nāgārjuna’s Precious Garland by Sara L. Mcclintock and John D. Dunne
- Abiding in Emptiness by Bhikkhu Anālayo
- Footprints On The Journey by Khenpo Sodargye
- Saraha’s Spontaneous Songs by Klaus-Dieter Mathes and Péter-Dániel Szántó
- Ocean of Attainments translated by Yael Bentor and Penpa Dorjee
- Bearing The Unbearable (A Guided Journal for Grieving) by Joanne Cacciatore
This episode of the Wisdom Podcast, recorded live as a Wisdom Dharma Chat features special guest, Peter Skilling. Peter is a special lecturer at Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, and an honorary associate, Department of Indian Sub-Continental Studies, University of Sydney, Australia. Until his retirement in 2017, he was a professor of the French School of Asian Studies (EFEO) based in Bangkok. He is an honorary member of the Siam Society, Bangkok, and in 2017 he was elected an honorary fellow of the Asiatic Society of Mumbai. He has published widely on the Buddhist literature, history, and epigraphy of South and Southeast Asia. During this episode, Daniel and Peter discuss:
- Peter’s newest release Buddha’s Words for Tough Times;
- his inspiration for writing the book;
- the important roll images play for us as readers;
- heedfulness (appamāda) and its relation to mindfulness;
- how the Buddha’s words remain relevant in today’s climate; and
- much more!
Don’t miss our newest addition to our offerings for our In-Depth and All-Access members Vajra Essence, Part 4. The Vajra Essense, Part 4 is an eight-week retreat with Lama Alan Wallace. During this retreat, Lama Alan grants an oral transmission and commentary to Düdjom Lingpa’s revealed treatise, The Vajra Essence. This retreat focuses on Dudjom Lingpa’s famous text, The Vajra Essence: From the Matrix of Pure Appearances and Primordial Consciousness, a Self-Emergent Tantra of the Nature of Existence.
In this final 8-week retreat of this series on Düdjom Lingpa’s revelations of the Great Perfection, we come to the culmination of the Lake-Born Vajra’s teachings in The Vajra Essence on cutting through to the original purity of pristine awareness (tekchö). Included is a series of pointing-out instructions drawing critical distinctions between the mind and pristine awareness, between conditioned consciousness and primordial consciousness, and other fundamental distinctions within the Dzogchen view. These instructions are followed by detailed teachings on the final stage of Dzogchen practice known as the direct crossing-over to spontaneous actualization (tögal), which comes to its fruition in the achievement of various manifestations of the rainbow body. Finally, an oral commentary will be offered on the Lake-Born Vajra’s concluding teachings on the six transitional phases (bardo), including dream yoga.
Please note that due to the nature of the teachings, the content of this retreat is available only to students who have complete Part 1.