Ven. Thubten Pemo at Kopan Monastery. Year unknown, photographer unknown. Courtesy of Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive.

Earlier this month we received the news that Ven. Thubten Pemo, ordained since 1974 and one of the first students of Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche, passed away. We shared an inspiring letter she wrote to Lama Zopa Rinpoche in the late 1990’s discussing her experiences in retreat. 

Please enjoy two pieces written by Ven. Pemo in 2000 for Mandala magazine and in 2006 for Sangha magazine. The first piece is about the beginning of Lama Yeshe’s work in the West; and the second is advice from Ven. Pemo about the benefits of doing retreat. 

We will continue to share details of Ven. Pemo’s extraordinary life as one of the first Western students of Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche. 

• The Beginnings of Lama Yeshe’s Work in the West
• The Benefits of Doing Retreat

The Beginnings of Lama Yeshe’s Work in the West

By Ven. Thubten Pemo

Lama Yeshe with Ven. Thubten Pemo, 1983. Photo courtesy of the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive. Photo courtesy of Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive.

Last summer was the 25th anniversary of Lama Thubten Yeshe and Lama Thubten Zopa Rinpoche’s first teaching tour to the West, a tradition that has continued annually ever since. Many of us were at Kopan Monastery in Nepal, when around July 4, 1974, Lama and Rinpoche got their passports and, accompanied by Ven. Max Matthews, left on their first trip to America.

Arriving in New York City, they visited Geshe Wangyal’s center in New Jersey and then went to see their teacher, Geshe Sopa Rinpoche in Madison, Wisconsin. After that they went to Indiana to meet their student Louie-Bob Wood, where they established the first FPMT center in the West, the Bodhicitta Foundation for Developing Human Potential (which closed a year or two later).

Lama Zopa went back to Geshe Sopa in Wisconsin while Lama Yeshe visited other lamas, including Trungpa Rinpoche in Boulder, Tarthang Tulku in Berkeley, and Dezhung Rinpoche in Seattle, giving teachings in most places. The visit concluded with a weekend meditation course by both lamas in New Jersey.

The lamas returned briefly to Nepal and then headed out again, this time for their first visits to Australia and New Zealand and the first Kopan-style meditation course ever given in the West. Ven. Yeshe Khadro had gone ahead to help Tom and Kathy Vichta organize the course, which was held in Queensland. After the course, Lama was shown a piece of land nearby at Eudlo. This became Chenrezig Institute. Ven. Ann McNeil, who had accompanied the lamas to Australia, stayed behind to build the gompa and develop the center.

When the lamas returned to Kopan, we met with Rinpoche in the Kopan gompa and he told us about their first visit to the West, where Lama got to see a supermarket for the first time. In his teachings, Lama often used to use supermarkets as examples of excess; now he finally got to see one. The students also took the lamas to Macy’s in Manhattan so that they could see a big department store. Rinpoche told us how they looked for something to buy. “So I bought a belt,” he said. He bought a belt to hold up his shemdap (lower robe).

In the early 1970s, Kathmandu and India were quite primitive and did not have big supermarkets or nice modern things to buy. Kopan had neither electricity nor toilets. The motor roads were unpaved.

I was talking with Lama Yeshe before he left Kopan for America and told him about all the good food in the West, especially the cheese. At that time, you couldn’t get good cheese in Kathmandu, and Lama acted like he really liked cheese, like finally he and Rinpoche would get to eat some good food. Then, after acting interested, Lama looked at me and said, “I don’t care about cheese.”

These words had a big effect in my mind. I suddenly understood that the lamas were not going to the West with any interest in obtaining worldly happiness from good quality objects or sense pleasures. Lama did not care about that at all. All Lama cared about was bringing Dharma to the West and benefiting sentient beings.

At the same time, 26 years ago, Lama Yeshe started the International Mahayana Institute for his monks and nuns. In 1974, there were 15 Western monks and nuns at Kopan. Publishing began around the same time. One of our first publications was The Wish-Fulfilling Golden Sun of the Mahayana Thought Training, Rinpoche’s lam-rim textbook, which we used at the early Kopan courses. It was written down and edited by Nick Ribush and typed by me. I typed seven days a week. Each day, I began typing after breakfast and typed until 2 a.m. Then I would close the typewriter and go to my room to read prayers, recite mantras and so forth. I’d go to sleep at 4. I did this seven days a week. This was how I spent my first year as a nun.

Dr. Nick also published transcripts of Rinpoche’s Kopan course teachings. The teachings from the third, fourth and fifth courses were typed from handwritten notes and those from the sixth course from Sally Barraud’s shorthand and rudimentary cassette tapes. There was no tape recorder at Kopan in the very early days. Then I brought one back from New York and from then on we taped all the lamas’ teachings on it. I used to type most of the books, prayers, sadhanas and commentaries that we published onto wax stencils, and then we’d print them on a Gestetner duplicating machine that Lama had allowed us to buy in Kathmandu. The Kopan monks also used it for their Tibetan texts.

Within a few years this fledgling attempt at publishing the Dharma had a name, Publications for Wisdom Culture. Eventually, it grew into Wisdom Publications as well as, more recently, the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive. These days, the Archive is much more technologically advanced than it was at the beginning, with my portable tape recorder, weird cassettes, no electricity, almost dead batteries and prehistoric manual typewriters.

Interestingly enough, Wisdom’s first professionally published book, Wisdom Energy, contained the lamas’ teachings from the American tour of 1974, their first in the West.

So, 1999 was the 25th anniversary of that first trip to the West, and it also marked the beginnings of the FPMT as an international organization. Never in our wildest dreams would any of us back there at Kopan in 1974 have ever imagined that, before the end of the century, Lama and Rinpoche’s activities would grow to comprise more than 120 centers all over the world.

Actually, I have just received the latest issue of Mandala in the mail. Reading the news from all the FPMT centers, I cried, it was so overwhelming. In their world tours these past 26 years, Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche have done an unbelievable amount of work to bring the Dharma to people everywhere on earth. Reading about the Dharma activities of all the students connected to our centers is so incredible and amazing that I don’t have words to describe it.

In the summer of 1974, our lamas planted a small seed. That small seed has grown into a huge bodhi tree that gives shelter and nourishment to thousands and thousands of people all over the world. This is another benefit of bodhicitta, the bodhicitta of our gurus, and the virtuous thoughts of the thousands of people who have met Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche and given their lives to carrying out their holy wishes. No words can describe how great this is.

Lama Yeshe created many “golden flower students.” Thank you, Lama.

See you in the sky (as Lama would say).

Originally published in Mandala, March-April 2000. 

The Benefits of Doing Retreat

By Ven. Thubten Pemo

Ven. Thubten Pemo, Maitreya Instituut, Maasbommel, The Netherlands, 1986. Photo by Jan-Paul Kool. Photo courtesy of Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive.

The benefit of doing retreat is that one becomes a better person. A good human being. A good member of human society. One becomes better than one was before, gradually, one gives up any thoughts or wishes to give harm to other living beings. One helps, serves and benefits others with one’s body, speech, and mind.

The benefit of doing retreat is that one becomes more warm-hearted, more loving, gentle, generous, open-hearted, compassionate, patient and genuinely nice. A nice person. One becomes kind.

For more than thirty years I have listened to Buddhist teachings and attempted to understand them. In this retreat house I decided that the most important thing in our lives is kindness. To be kind. To everyone we meet. All the time. Everyone appreciates kindness. Everyone wants to receive kindness from us. Kindness is the meaning of life. Loving kindness. Compassion. Bodhicitta. These are the meaning and purpose of our human life.

His Holiness the Dalai Lama has said, “My religion is kindness.” Buddhism has thousands of teachings. His Holiness has condensed all these teachings into one word kindness. One word with vast meaning. To be kind is our life’s work, to WANT to be kind, to cultivate kindness, to express our loving-kindness when we interact with others. With eyes of loving-kindness to gaze upon another sentient being. To act with loving-kindness all the time. Cultivating this attitude of loving-kindness is the benefit of doing retreat.

I have known teachers who have this quality. When listening to oral teachings from a teacher whose voice was the sound of great kindness, merely to hear his voice brought tears to my eyes. I have seen holy teachers whose face was compassion. Their facial expressions cause my heart to explode.

The benefit of doing retreat is that one wants to become like one’s teachers and all the Holy Beings. One is inspired to practice Dharma. And one inspires others to practice Dharma. They also want to do retreat some day.

The benefit of doing retreat is that the practices purify one’s negative karma and accumulate vast merits. One is liberated from experiencing countless future sufferings. Every day one becomes closer to Enlightenment.

The benefit of doing retreat is that it gives one time to think about and understand the oral teachings one has heard the books one has read. Away from one’s busy life, one’s job, family and friends, one has more quiet, peaceful time for oneself, time to contemplate and study. Time to put into practice the teachings that one has received from one’s precious teachers, time to learn about oneself. Time to clearly see one’s thoughts and motivations.

The benefit of doing retreat is that one sees who one’s own mind creates problems and suffering. It appears to come from outside of oneself. Suffering happens because of the way one thinks. One makes oneself unhappy.

The benefit of doing retreat is that one has time alone to recognize one’s own mistakes and faults, and to correct them. By correcting one’s own mistakes and faults, one becomes a better person. In each year one is a little bit better than one was before. There is some improvement and other people notice the one has changed and is “better than before.” One has some good qualities that actually inspire other people to practice Dharma and attempt to meditate.

The benefit of doing retreat is that one has time to meditate on Bodhicitta, for the benefit of all sentient beings. To become a Buddha for them. Oneself cultivates the attitude of working for others, serving others, cherishing others, for them, to benefit them. For their happiness and freedom from suffering, oneself is practicing the path, one’s mind becomes closer to Bodhicitta, the mind of Enlightenment.

The benefit of doing retreat is that one puts effort into becoming less selfish. One meditates on the disadvantages and shortcoming of cherishing oneself. One meditates on the benefit of cherishing others. With a brave mind, with courage, one begins to decide, to want to cherish others more than oneself. Slowly one changes one’s attitude from cherishing oneself to cherishing others. Caring for others. Taking care of others.

Caring if other sentient beings are happy or sad. One is creating the causes of future suffering or of happiness. Caring if sentient beings are circling within the six realms of samsara or are free. One generates loving-compassionate concern for others and determination to help them in every way – to give them everything they need until they are Enlightened.

The benefit of doing retreat is that one sees clearly one’s mental afflictions and works to overcome them. One works are lessening and abandoning, overcoming one’s attachment, anger, hatred, pride, jealousy, ignorance and so forth.

Before one was following the mental afflictions and allowing them to continue and increase. Even being happy when one’s affliction arises – as if it is something “good” for oneself.

In retreat, one applies antidotes to these harmful mental afflictions. One works hard to overcome them. When the antidotes are effective, one’s mind becomes more peaceful. It is not easy to overcome one’s mental afflictions – they go away and then they return. They are sneaky and tricky. Difficult to recognize and to overcome.

The benefit of doing retreat is that gradually, slowly one’s wisdom increases. One sees one’s fantasies. One sees the hallucinations that one’s mind creates. One begins to recognize the hallucination AS hallucination, instead of as true, as real. This brings some peace to one’s poor exhausted mind.

The benefit of doing retreat is that it gives one time to develop one’s positive qualities. Virtuous thoughts give one more happiness and less suffering in life. One experiences mental happiness that is not dependent upon sense pleasures, not dependent upon something “good” happening to oneself.

The benefit of doing retreat is that sometimes one experiences satisfaction and contentment. Less desire. Less craving. Less attachment. Less agitation. One becomes less “freaked out” and disturbed by things, people, places, and so forth.

The benefit of doing retreat is that one begins to get SOME little bit of control over one’s wild mind. The mind which runs everywhere – searching for happiness. Trying to avoid whatever is unpleasant. A pleasure and pain that is somewhere outside of oneself.

The benefit of doing retreat is to being to find happiness within oneself. Inner Joy – Joy and happiness that are there. Somewhere. One did not experience it before. It was difficult to find happiness amidst all the suffering, amidst all the garbage of one’s own mind.

There is some joy and happiness from within and one KNOWS that it is possible for one’s own mind to experience every happiness from the smallest, up to the greatest bliss of full Enlightenment. It is possible for one to practice the teachings that lead to this.

One’s Holy teachers have practiced this path. And oneself can do it, too. With Bodhicitta. For the benefit of all the kind mother sentient beings.

The ultimate benefit of doing retreat is that oneself becomes a Fully Enlightened Buddha. Equal in realizations with all other Buddhas, guiding numberless sentient beings to Enlightenment. With countless emanations to benefit sentient beings. To attain that noble goal, it takes many lifetimes of study and meditation. It is unbelievable hard work.

In the meantime, one can be Kind.

Written by Ven. Thubten Pemo at Land of Calm Abiding. August, 2006.

Ven. Thubten Pemo, a New Yorker, was among the first students of Lama Thubten Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche. Ordained by Kyabje Ling Rinpoche in 1974, she spent most of the time since then studying and practicing in India. Holder of a mystical mirror-reading divination lineage and renowned for her wish-fulfilling jola (a type of bag often carried by monks and nuns). Ven. Pemo passed away in March 2023 in California, USA.