Dear All,
Welcome to the final newsletter of 2024. As we rapidly approach the Winter solstice after which, ever so gradually, the northern hemisphere turns back to the light again, we look back over the year gone by in a letter from Lama Zangmo, and look forward to some of the events coming up in the New Year.
Winter Closure - as the natural world has withdrawn back into itself, our hardworking volunteers also need a break. The Centre's doors will close after the evening meditation on Friday 20th December and re-open as usual on Wednesday 8th January at 5.00 pm.
The Tibetan Doctor will next be available in KSDL on the weekend of the 14th - 15th December. To make an appointment for a consultation please contact Doctor Soktsang directly. If you want to check Dr Soktsang's availability in 2025, the dates of his attendance at the Centre are now up on the website.
Welcome to the final newsletter of 2024. As we rapidly approach the Winter solstice after which, ever so gradually, the northern hemisphere turns back to the light again, we look back over the year gone by in a letter from Lama Zangmo, and look forward to some of the events coming up in the New Year.
Winter Closure - as the natural world has withdrawn back into itself, our hardworking volunteers also need a break. The Centre's doors will close after the evening meditation on Friday 20th December and re-open as usual on Wednesday 8th January at 5.00 pm.
The Tibetan Doctor will next be available in KSDL on the weekend of the 14th - 15th December. To make an appointment for a consultation please contact Doctor Soktsang directly. If you want to check Dr Soktsang's availability in 2025, the dates of his attendance at the Centre are now up on the website.
Residential Volunteers needed - especially if you can bake cakes! It takes a lot of work to keep the Centre open, and all of it is done by volunteers. Like a duck, it may look very peaceful and tranquil on the surface, but there's a fair amount of paddling going on underneath! In a building this size there is always something that needs doing and our volunteers do a pretty diverse range of activities from managing the office, helping run the tea room, cooking, cleaning public areas as well as preparing rooms. For those with more specialist skills and/or knowledge, there are other avenues to explore. If you are interested in living at the Centre as a full-time volunteer, please visit the website for more information and an application form.
What's coming in 2025?
Oh, there's plenty! Let's kick off with....
An Introduction to Meditation with Lama Zangmo on Saturday, 18th January. A particularly good course for when you realise that you've already broken all your New Year's resolutions and are suffering from post seasonal holiday blues! Here's your opportunity to start addressing that wobbly mind.
Then we have a range of Tibetan language courses, all starting on Wednesday 8th January.
New to Tibetan? Then you might like to start with our 8-week beginners' course in which you will start to become familiar with the Tibetan alphabet and start to read and write.
The Lower Intermediate class is for those who already know the alphabet and want to expand their reading and writing practice and develop their grammar.
Finally, for those a little more advanced still, there is the Tibetan Language Study - The Songs of Milarepa, in which you can learn the fundamentals of translating by studying the 100,000 songs of Milarepa. Don't worry, you'll not be expected to translate all 100,000 in this 8 week course!
Looking forward to the beginning of February we have a Medicine Buddha weekend of practice and instructions with Lama Zangmo. There will be some instructions on the visualisations, meditations and benefits of this practice, but the emphasis will mainly be on getting familiar through having plenty of time for actual practice on both days.
To find out what else is going on, and to get those dates in your diaries, just visit our "What's on" pages on the website.
Now, to step away from activities at the Centre for a moment, there's a fascinating article about Tara Rokpa therapy training in Zimbabwe on the Khyentse Foundation website.
Tara Rokpa therapy was developed by Choje Akong Tulku Rinpoche, the co-founder of Samye LIng and....so much more! Rinpoche was an utterly remarkable man who, while being so quiet and unobtrusive in his outward appearance and presentation made a difference to so many lives. If you'd like to know more, then read on below to find out about our screening of the documentary "Akong: a remarkable life".
On 27th April there will be a further opportunity to find out more about the sort of man Akong Rinpoche was. We will be welcoming Barbara Pfeiffer from ROKPA German who will share her memories of travelling with Rinpoche in the Tibetan areas for at least a month each year, from 2004 to 2012.
During Barbara's visit, there will also be an opportunity to support the monks and nuns of Akong Rinpoche's monastery through a skills auction, which we will send more information about in the January newsletter. In the meantime, anyone who would like to offer their skills for the auction is very welcome to contact the Samye Dzong London Office.
To subscribe or unsubscribe, that is the question- If you're feeling overwhelmed by emails and this newsletter isn't meeting your needs, there is an unsubscribe button at the end of every newsletter. While we hope you don't want to leave our list, we're not going to be holding a gun to anyone's head- not least because it doesn't really fit in with the precepts about non-violence! And thank you for subscribing in the first place.
Finally, whether you choose to stay on our mailing list or not, let me wish you all the best for the holiday season and the New Year. See you in January!
All the best,
David Bates
Newsletter Editor
Reflections on another year gone by - a letter from Lama Zangmo
Dear Friends,
Greetings from Kagyu Samye Dzong London.
As we are coming to the end of 2024, I wanted to try to put a simple summary
of the year into words and describe what has been accomplished here, but it is
not easy….
I look at my worn out diary and it has definitely been a busy year. Many Dharma courses have been offered and countless people have passed through the doors of the Centre. We had an exceptional and precious visit from our Abbot Lama Yeshe Rinpoche in July, where he gave Refuge and blessings to many of his older students as well as new, many of whom brought their own young children to meet him for the first time. How fortunate we are to have known him for all this time!
We also had special visits and teachings from Karma Lhabu Drupon Khen Rinpoche from Thrangu Sekhar retreat, and Khenpo Lekthong from Gyaltsap Rinpoche’s monastery, as well as Khenpo Tashi from Thrangu Monastery in Nepal. All of them great bearers of the torch of Dharma which illuminates and dispels the darkness of confusion. Thanks to the efforts of Lama Katen, Deputy Abbot of Kagyu Samye Ling, it has been a year rich in Dharma teachers and teachings.
Students need teachers, but teachers without students are not much benefit, so also worth mentioning is a large group of dedicated Samye Dzong London students who finished an eighteen month’s course this year on Gampopa’s text Jewel Ornament of Liberation. A long term course on Nagarjuna’s Letter to a Friend is starting in 2025, as well as a course on mind training, so hopefully the Dharma knowledge of everyone attending is growing steadily.
I would like to thank everyone who have supported Samye Dzong London through their kindness by dedicating their time, skills and financial support, or by simply holding us in your thoughts and prayers. Your help is invaluable and much appreciated even when we don’t always manage to express our gratitude in person.
Choje Akong Tulku Rinpoche, our Founder, always stressed the importance of having a long term vision and establishing the Dharma in the West for future generations, not just for ourselves. May the benefit of the Dharma spread far and wide.
I look forward to seeing you in 2025.
With best wishes for your health and happiness,
Lama Zangmo.
Akong - a remarkable life - screening with the Director
You are invited to join us at 4.00 pm on Saturday 12th January for this remarkable movie of A Remarkable Life about the Founder of Kagyu Samye Ling monastery and Tibetan Buddhist Centre.
We are fortunate to be joined by Chico Dall'Inha, the films Director, Editor & Producer, who will introduce the film and take questions at the end.
This is the first ever documentary film about the inspirational life of Chöje Akong Tulku Rinpoche, a Tibetan Tulku and one of the first Tibetan Lamas to come to this country.
Through his powerful message of loving-kindness and compassion and his humanitarian work in the UK and around the world, Akong Rinpoche has benefitted the lives of countless people. This film aims to make his inspirational life story available to future generations.Â
This documentary is a must-see if you have not, and a treasure to watch again for the second, third, fourth time together with members of the community who knew him!
For more information and to book your seat, please visit the event page on the website.
Medicine Buddha weekend - 1st/2nd February, 2025 - with Lama Zangmo
The practice of Medicine Buddha, or Sangye Menla in Tibetan, is a profound Vajrayana method to engender health and well-being for oneself and others.
Over this practice weekend Lama Zangmo will give some instructions on the visualisations, meditations and benefits of this practice, but the emphasis will mainly be on getting familiar through having plenty of time for actual practice on both days.
The Medicine Buddha Sadhana is an effective way to balance the physical, mental and spiritual health of ourselves and others. It can be of great help to all practitioners and is particularly popular amongst those in the medical profession. The main motivation of the Medicine Buddha is to remove the sufferings of beings in general, and especially the physical and mental suffering.
Ideally one should have received the Medicine Buddha empowerment, however, you can still attend the instructions without the empowerment as long as you have taken Refuge.
Please contact the office if you'd like to stay in the Centre overnight.
For more information, and to book your seat, please visit the event page on the website.

We all know how this will end - by Leyla
Hi! This is Leyla from A Day Well Spent, a newsletter seeking pathways to more purposeful living....Â
On Saturday my brother and I hung out for the full day, an occurrence that doesn’t happen often enough. We had a really great time. But we didn’t go for brunch, visit an exhibition or play a sport together.Â
How we chose to spend the day was by attending a series of talks from various professionals, from morning until early evening, about their experience around death and dying. It had been in the calendar for months.
‘Yeah, starting your weekend with an 8 hour lecture about death is an interesting way to spend your time,’ his paediatrics junior doctor friend had messaged him, whose profession exposes her to more than her fair share of death.Â
It was a fair comment.
I only knew this day was even a thing thanks to lucid dreaming teacher, Buddhist and bestselling author, Charlie Morley. Charlie is part of the community at the centre and happened to live around the corner from it at the time. On the day I interviewed him, the death and dying day had just passed and he had been one of the speakers.
His mother had passed away just a few months before.
‘A day all about death and dying? Sounds delightful…’ I grimaced
‘It’s more of a we’re all going to die so let’s live our lives vibe, rather than oh no we’re all going to die sad face vibe. It’s a really uplifting and empowering day. You should come along next year.’
I’m not a Buddhist and the event is open to anyone and everyone. So at the end of our interview recording, I vowed to myself that I would go to the death and dying day in 2024. I knew my brother would be interested and open to it too. And so that’s how our past Saturday came to be.
The day was uplifting, empowering, informative, poignant, thought-provoking, generous, comforting and enlightening. It truly felt like a day well spent. And I would highly recommend anyone to attend next year.
The menu descriptions in the tea room are worth it alone......
Many thanks to Leyla for allowing us to publish this extract here, and her full article on the Centre's website. It originally appeared in her newsletter "A Day Well Spent - with Leyla Karim". You can also read the full article on the Centre's website.