Wisdom Energy: Basic Buddhist Teachings

By Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche

Wisdom Energy is a simple and compelling introduction to Buddhism by two Tibetan lamas renowned for their insight and skill in teaching Westerners. Containing an entire meditation course, it goes to the heart of basic Buddhist practice and discusses the meaning and purpose of meditation, the causes of dissatisfaction and unhappiness, and the methods for subduing them and gaining control over our minds and lives. Originally published in 1976, Wisdom Energy still preserves the power, humor, and directness of the lamas's first teaching tour of North America, giving the reader the feeling of an intimate audience with two highly respected teachers.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wisdom Publications
• Release date: Jan 14, 2012
• ISBN: 9781614290469

Lama Yeshe

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, Nepal, 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, recognized as the incarnation of Lama Yeshe by His Holiness the Dalai Lama in 1986, and, as the monk Lama Tenzin Osel Rinpoche, began studying for his geshe degree in 1992 at the reconstituted Sera Monastery in South India. Lama’s remarkable story is told in Vicki Mackenzie’s book, Reincarnation: The Boy Lama (Wisdom Publications, 1996). Other teachings have been published by Wisdom Books, including Wisdom Energy; Introduction to Tantra; The Tantric Path of Purification (Becoming Vajrasattva) and more.Thousands of pages of Lama's teachings have been made available as transcripts, books and audio by the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive, and most are freely available through the Archive's website at LamaYeshe.com.

Reviews for Wisdom Energy

[sevster-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Beautifully written. Each chapter is a talk or a teaching given on varied subject matters that flow cohesively into a deep understanding of Buddhist principals. Highly recommend it.

[jdhomrighausen · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

[Wisdom Energy: Basic Buddhist Teachings] by [[Lama Yeshe]] and [[Lama Zopa Rinpoche]]Finished 7/19/12This book is a collection of talks given by these two lamas on a tour of the U.S. in the 1970s. Although the teachings in the book are much the same as what I am learning in my Buddhism classes here at Rangjung Yeshe Institute in Nepal, the way they are presented is very different. Lamas Yeshe and Zopa tend to keep a lot of the more technical terms and lists of practice aspects out of the book and focus more on the basics: learning how to train the mind, how to deal with attachment and grasping, how to approach studying the dharma.What I find most important about the dharma to me now is looking at how many of the thoughts and concepts we create about ourselves and the world around us are really reified delusions - things we invent but think are real. So we dislike another person for 'their' traits when in fact we project those traits onto them. We feel like we're unable to do something because we create a self-definition based on our inability. Seeing how this process of delusion creates and recreates itself in the mind is fundamental to being free from ignorant thoughts. Most importantly, the dharma is something to be taken in, internalized, reflected and lived out, not just memorized once and mastered in a formulaic way.Overall, a useful book. Too bad Lama Yeshe has passed.Rating: 5/5