Teaching on The Four Thoughts with Lama Rinchen Palmo [English]

Why join this teaching?

The four thoughts  are very powerful and productive  because they lead us to examine what we’ve been doing with our lives and show us how to align our actions with our values and goals. The four reminders may also be translated as the four thoughts or reflections that transform the mind or turn it around. How so? Because they turn the mind away from its narrow limitations towards a deeper and more spiritually authentic life- whatever your belief system (or none!) These four thoughts are often prescribed as the first things we should contemplate when we begin to connect with the Buddhist teachings.

What are these four thoughts? 

They are the preciousness of our human life; its impermanence; karma—actions and results; and the suffering inherent in our experience of the world. 

In this teaching, Lama Rinchen Palmo will explore these Buddhist teachings, and the practice of them. More specifically, these four thoughts are:

• Thinking about our precious human life, and what it can achieve.
• Thinking about impermanence, and the inevitability of death.
• Thinking about karma, how our actions affect our future.
• Thinking about uncertainty, the problems, the suffering, and the happiness that never lasts, throughout uncontrollably recurring rebirths, samsara.

Lama Rinchen Palmo

Of French descent, Lama Rinchen Palmo is a highly experienced meditation teacher who has spent over 12 years in retreat and has previously assisted with the supervision of the long retreats on Holy Isle. She is specialized in the Vajrayana practices of Tibetan Buddhism and has led many retreats on Arya Tara. She is one of the three Western female lamas who have been appointed within the Samye Ling mandala and is well known for her compassionate and down-to-earth style of teaching. She currently resides in Belgium where she divides her time between the Samye Dzong Brussels Centre and the Samye Meditation Garden retreat centre in the countryside near the French border, which promotes both outer and inner ecology.

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​​Join us each morning to learn more. For our French-speaking community, these same teachings will be repeated at 2pm to 5pm each day.