Fall 2025 Community Practice

Fall 2025 Community Practice
Medicine Buddha Prayers for Healing

An Afternoon of Community Practice and Prayer

We warmly invite you to a special afternoon of healing and reflection through the practice of the Medicine Buddha, guided by Nyingma Institute deans Lama Palzang and Pema Gellek. Together, we will engage in traditional Tibetan prayers, the recitation of the Medicine Buddha mantra, and periods of silent sitting.

The Medicine Buddha, Bhaiṣajyaguru, is the embodiment of the healing qualities of all the Buddhas, revealing the power of wisdom and compassion that resides within all beings. His presence brings relief from suffering, restores balance and well-being, and reminds us of the innate wholeness and luminous clarity at the heart of our being. Through prayer and mantra, we invoke the power of deep aspiration to dispel the causes of illness and confusion, and to bring about healing at the most subtle levels, for ourselves, for others, and for all sentient beings.

You are welcome to bring the names or photos of loved ones in need of healing, whether for physical, emotional, or spiritual well-being, or those who have passed on, to be included in the circle of prayers. We will dedicate the merit of our practice to them.

Through this practice, we gently cultivate the capacity for purification and renewal, helping to dissolve obscurations and release the patterns that bind us. Opening to the healing light of the Medicine Buddha, we may come to recognize it as the radiance of our own awakened nature, shining forth for the benefit of all beings.

Registration

When:  Saturday, October 4, 2025 from 2 – 5 pm 

Where: Padmakara Garden (or New House Meditation Room, depending on weather conditions) 

Schedule: 

  • 2:00 – 3:30 pm / Group practice 
  • 3:30- 3:40 pm / Brief break 
  • 3:40 – 4:45 pm / Group practice 
  • 4:45 pm / Tea and snacks 

 

Mantra Accumulation 

We warmly encourage students to begin accumulating Medicine Buddha mantras in advance. Please send your total mantra count by Friday, October 3, the day before the event, to . This is an excellent way to begin gathering your attention and intention. 

 

Practice Group

For those interested, Pauline Yu will be facilitating a weekly Medicine Buddha Practice Group in September leading up to this event on October 4. You are invited to attend the practice group as a way to strengthen your practice. Sessions will consist of guided visualization, mantra, and silent sitting.

Our mission is to share the healing wisdom of the Nyingma tradition and reveal a path of inner freedom. The Nyingma Institute is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. Donate or volunteer today!

© 2025 Nyingma Institute / 1815 Highland Place, Berkeley, CA 94709 / Non-Profit Tax ID: 94-3081194

A Tribute to Tibet

On December 6, 2025, Nyingma Institute will be hosting the 22nd annual Taste & Tribute, a benefit dinner for the Tibetan Aid Project featuring 60 guests, 5 courses prepared by the renowned Korean Buddhist nun Jeong Kwan Seunim, and Live and Silent Auctions.

All proceeds support the continuity of Tibet’s wisdom tradition. Your participation puts Tibetan-language texts into the hands of monks, nuns, and laypeople; fills libraries across the Himalayan regions; supports education; and keeps this body of knowledge alive for the world’s benefit. 

 

Learn More

Our mission is to share the healing wisdom of the Nyingma tradition and reveal a path of inner freedom. The Nyingma Institute is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. Donate or volunteer today!

© 2025 Nyingma Institute / 1815 Highland Place, Berkeley, CA 94709 / Non-Profit Tax ID: 94-3081194

In Loving Memory of Barr M. Rosenberg

In Loving Memory of Barr M. Rosenberg

With tender hearts, we share the passing of our beloved Barr Rosenberg, one of Tarthang Rinpoche’s oldest students and most generous supporters. After a fall, hospitalization, and a brief illness, Barr passed peacefully at his home in Odiyan on February 2, 2025, at 10:14 AM. 

Barr’s extraordinary life encompassed the heights of academic and professional achievement with the depths of spiritual altruism. A legendary economics professor and a pioneering innovator in quantitative financial analysis, he brought the same penetrating intellect to his study of the Dharma. His rare ability to dwell patiently in the realm of formless abstract concepts allowed him to bridge the worlds of analytical thinking and spiritual understanding in profound ways. 

For close to twenty years, he served as co-dean of the Nyingma Institute alongside Sylvia Gretchen, touching many lives through his teachings. Together, Barr and his late wife, June Rosenberg (who passed in 2022), lived a life of devoted practice and service. 

Barr embodied the highest altruistic mind, with a boundless sense of care for his community, family, and friends. We rejoice in a life dedicated to the Buddhadharma, animated by his gentle vision of the interconnectedness of all beings. His mastery of worldly knowledge, skillfully channeled toward the highest spiritual endeavors, had a historic impact in the preservation of Tibetan culture and the Dharma at a most critical time. 

Whatever knowledge, insight, or inspiration you received from Barr, we encourage you to offer prayers, dedicating it to his auspicious transition. 

Inspired by Barr’s example, may we aspire to live with kindness, goodwill, and generosity beyond measure. May all beings abide in the light of perfect compassion and transcendent wisdom. 

Image of Barr Rosenberg

Our mission is to share the healing wisdom of the Nyingma tradition and reveal a path of inner freedom. The Nyingma Institute is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. Donate or volunteer today!

© 2025 Nyingma Institute / 1815 Highland Place, Berkeley, CA 94709 / Non-Profit Tax ID: 94-3081194

Join us at Taste & Tribute 2024

Taste & Tribute 2024

On September 22, 2024, Nyingma Institute will be hosting the 21st annual Taste & Tribute, a benefit dinner for the Tibetan Aid Project featuring 60 guests, 5 courses prepared by 5 amazing chefs, and Live and Silent Auctions.

All proceeds support the continuity of Tibet’s wisdom tradition. Your participation puts Tibetan-language texts into the hands of monks, nuns, and laypeople; fills libraries across the Himalayan regions; supports education; and keeps this body of knowledge alive for the world’s benefit.

 

Learn More / Tickets

Our mission is to share the healing wisdom of the Nyingma tradition and reveal a path of inner freedom. The Nyingma Institute is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. Donate or volunteer today!

© 2025 Nyingma Institute / 1815 Highland Place, Berkeley, CA 94709 / Non-Profit Tax ID: 94-3081194

Stories of Life and Death

Stories of Life and Death

November 2, 2022 

by Laurie Hopman 

We teach our children ‘the facts of life’—when do we learn ‘the facts of death?’

Over the course of my life, death became a companion to life. Like most people I had experiences of illness in myself or in family members. 

As a physician, I became party to those intense times in many, many people’s lives. I worked hard to fend off sickness and death. This life [and my vocation as a doctor] is my dharma practice, and I have had the best job in the world, filled with joy and opportunity. The ‘facts of death’ became familiar with repetition.

I discussed with my patients their wishes for end of life care, and I recall smiling inside when a man told me he didn’t need anything in particular because he had decided that he was going to die in his sleep. I have seen people die in agony, I have seen people die unaware, I have seen people die peacefully and surrounded by love.

I thought about all those stories, and what I know from over 30 years of experience working as a physician, but the story that feels most mine to tell is my own. Though I saw impermanence so frequently, I still grew comfortable in my expectations, so accustomed to my own chronic illness and to all the suffering I saw every day that I relegated my [own] death to ‘later.’ 

Then suddenly, it was me who was dying right now. It was 2017. I was attending a retreat at the Nyingma Institute, as I had done once or twice a year since the 1990s. Suddenly I was ill, and in less than a day, with no warning came overwhelming abdominal pain, vomiting and blood. In the middle of the night I had an ambulance ride to the hospital, and my doctor-brain knew exactly what was happening to me as an ulcer ruptured and blood and digestive juices poured into my abdominal cavity. No drugs relieved the pain. With my condition deteriorating rapidly, I knew I might or might not survive.

At that moment I received the most precious gift I can imagine. I had a precious dharma friend, who took my wallet, clothes and phone, and held me and chanted quietly with me amidst all the beeps and noises of the ER. She helped me move my mind that was crazed with pain and chant the Vajra Guru mantra, and hold my concentration there when there was nothing else left that I could do. She was prepared, and she gave me support. In ways I hadn’t always clearly planned, I had prepared and practiced. I couldn’t have been in a better place to experience this crisis. 

By sharing what I know, using my medical knowledge and practicing compassion, as well as my personal experiences, I hope to ease suffering, reduce pain and fear, help people live longer and more satisfying lives, open up space for joy and love. Planning for death and knowing what to expect helps alleviates fear and gives us support. And it is only part of the story, for practice — learning how to relax deeply, how to work with mind, emotions, body, and senses — builds the habits of mind we can rely on. I treasure teachings from the Buddhist tradition to prepare for the time of death because I know the value of that support, and how much I need it. 

After all, ’the facts of death’ are as much part of living as ‘the facts of life,’ and they can help us see what is truly precious about each moment, as well as to face ourselves with less fear, more peace, and a deep abiding gratitude and love for the universe and opportunities we have before us. 

3-Day Program

Healing, Dying, and Awareness

Dates: November 18-20th, 2022

Instructors: Laurie Hopman, MD, Olivia Hurd, Anita McNulty, Lama Palzang, and Pema Gellek

 

Learn More

Our mission is to share the healing wisdom of the Nyingma tradition and reveal a path of inner freedom. The Nyingma Institute is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. Donate or volunteer today!

© 2025 Nyingma Institute / 1815 Highland Place, Berkeley, CA 94709 / Non-Profit Tax ID: 94-3081194

Do I Need an “I” to Grow Potatoes?

 

Here is a poem that I organized — yes, organized, as not one word of the poem is mine! During the session on Monday, I wrote down all of the group members’ reflections, including yours, and organized them into a poem (I am a sometime poet, sometime published). I think the poem expresses the journey we were and are on, our experiences along the way, and our deepest learnings. As the poem is everyone’s words, and therefore everyone’s poem, I hope you will send it out to all faculty and students. — Jerry Garfield, May 19, 2022

DO I NEED AN “I” TO GROW POTATOES?

Comments by faculty and students reflecting their nine months journey
in the vastness of Tarthang Tulku Rinpoche’s
“Knowledge of Freedom”

Unnoticed, your hair is growing!

Not-knowing is something to really pay attention to
As a becoming quality of blossoming.
Give yourself this moment to take the time, slowing down.
Wake up and feel your whole life!

We are always in direct experience.
The immensity of freedom in not-knowing!

My mind is everywhere I am.
My “I” has changed in ways I cannot describe.
In the presence of layers of conditioning and patterning
Everything is changing, impermanent.

How does my self-thing really work?
Is it OK to look at things differently?
What is knowing? What is knowledge?
Who is doing the asking?

Inquiry felt more like looking from one side of my busy life
To my other, more calm side.
I felt my heart…
I felt my heart!

Amidst the transitory moments of experiencing openness
I practice what I know:
To question what I see, what I hear, and what I do.
I am flowing.

The next step is the next step.
Not-knowing, while trusting and receiving this moment—
This is intimate knowledge! 

My fundamental ignorance is not a personal thing.
Fear is a gateway—a beacon!
To right myself amidst all the tumult,
I pull myself back from being a runaway train.
What comes to me, I have to work with it.
How can I look at this differently?

Maybe looking at it differently, it will be different?
Let life unfold naturally. This body has no expectation.

To realize this is, of itself, very liberating—
A gradual transformation that is almost not noticeable.

This feeling dimension is new—
More room and more space!
Spaciousness allows me to feel more connected with myself and with life.

I go more deeply, with slowness.
Walking together, loyalty of everyone,
Traveling as a group; meditation as a gift—
Not something I have to do.

Trusting the teaching, and myself, by learning through the teaching:
This is a new kind of trust within me.
What a lovely taste!

How many words there are!
How many I don’t need!

I have opened more the door that is myself.

 

Our mission is to share the healing wisdom of the Nyingma tradition and reveal a path of inner freedom. The Nyingma Institute is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. Donate or volunteer today!

© 2025 Nyingma Institute / 1815 Highland Place, Berkeley, CA 94709 / Non-Profit Tax ID: 94-3081194