Portrait of Lama Yeshe, Manjushri Institute, England,1982. Photo courtesy of the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive.

Around Christmas time between 1971 and 1975, Lama Yeshe gave several talks related to Christmas to the Western students at Kopan Monastery, Nepal, in case some of them were missing their families and being at home at that festive time of year. These talks, and another given on Christmas Day, 1982, at Istituto Lama Tzong Khapa during Lama’s teachings on the Six Yogas of Naropa, have been collected into the book Silent Mind Holy Mind.

As is our custom this time of year, we share an excerpt from Silent Mind, Holy Mind. Please enjoy this timeliness teaching from Lama Yeshe on the subject of Giving.

Reflections on Christmas

By Lama Yeshe

This is the week of Holy Jesus’s birth, and I suggest that in honor of this special event we make some sort of celebration. But we should try to make it meaningful. It should not be some kind of physical sensation, bringing only more confusion and superstition to our mind.

For a Christmas celebration to be a good one, it must be of a truly religious nature. Jesus came to this Earth and presented his teachings, but worldly beings completely disregard this fact. For them Christmas means— first and foremost—shopping, spending money, buying presents and creating confusion. Such confusion is entirely of our own making. We have the power to make Christmas meaningful, peaceful and truly religious, but instead of using this power we succumb to worldly negative energy. We go shopping to buy presents, but generally this is not done with anything even resembling a loving attitude. We think, “I really must buy something for my sister because if I don’t give her anything, maybe she won’t like me anymore. Maybe she won’t give me anything either.” Or, “I better not get my friend a cheap present or I might not get anything valuable back from him next year.” Such thoughts are extremely negative, leading to nothing but further dissatisfaction. They are totally involved with egotistic and immature notions about what true happiness is. They have nothing whatsoever to do with religion.

True religion brings peace and satisfaction to the mind. Actions that arouse only confusion serve no religious function at all. They stem instead from a political mind that thinks, “If I give this, I’ll get that in return.” Such a mind is extremely immature and selfish. It delights when many presents are received and is depressed when expectations go unfulfilled. What difference, then, is there between such a mind and that of a small child? We consider ourselves to be grown up, but our actions and attitudes show us to be little different from our children. They exaggerate the importance of receiving gifts, and so do we. In fact, their exaggerated expectations—their mind of confusion and dissatisfaction—develops largely from watching us.

If we were to act in a consistently mature and meaningful way, our children would also become peaceful. We sometimes think that they are naturally berserk and that we are something special, but this is not so. Check up and see exactly what happens when a holiday approaches. We are the ones who create the commotion. The first thing that happens at the beginning of a holiday is that husband and wife, uncle and aunt and so forth begin to fight with one another. Can you imagine that? Be honest and investigate the truth of this. And nearly all their fights are over material possessions. This is especially true at Christmas time. I am not trying to be excessively negative; just check up and see if this is true or not. Holiday bickering has so much jealousy in it: “Let me see, what did you get? What did he get?” Such a dualistic mind is totally submerged in selfishness and wrong conceptions.

This deluded type of behavior is not common merely to one culture. It can be found everywhere. Similarly, the antidote to this confusion is not taught merely in Buddhism. All religions strive to counter unsatisfactory, confused attitudes and bring us peace of mind. Please continue to read the full teaching as well as a lively question and answer session! 

The 2024 edition of Silent Mind Holy Mind has been expanded to include 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. Edited by Jon Landaw and Nicholas Ribush. Go to the Contents page to find links to these teachings on the LYWA website. You can also download a free PDF file.

We are also happy to share a video of Lama Yeshe offering a Christmas teaching in1982 at Istituto Lama Tzong Khapa in Pomaia, Italy: 

Foundation for the Preservation of Mahayana Tradition (FPMT), is a Tibetan Buddhist organization dedicated to the transmission of the Mahayana Buddhist tradition and values worldwide through teaching, meditation and community service.