Contentment and Ambition:
Balancing Relaxed Contentment with a Drive for Full Awakening
with Yangsi Rinpoche
Yangsi Rinpoche invites us to take on the mental attitude that is the very best environment for nurturing wisdom: contentment combined with ambition. In his chapter on patience from The Bodhisattva’s Guide to the Way of Life, Shantideva describes dissatisfaction as an unsettled, ungrounded mental state which is the main fuel for full-blown anger. Rinpoche adds a contemporary twist to this classical description of dissatisfaction—that we are continually pulled outside of ourselves to fulfill what we perceive to be an absence or lack. Viewing our minds as the very source of dissatisfaction and contentment is a life’s journey, and easier to say than to put into practice. Join Geshe Lharampa Yangsi Rinpoche as he points to ways we can settle dissatisfaction, care for ourselves while developing contentment, and adopt a gently ambitious, relaxed-yet-driven energy that will allow us to see ourselves—and each other—as we really are.
Additional Materials
Prayers:
Prayers for Teachings – Yangsi Rinpoche – June 2024 (Desktop-Friendly PDF) (Mobile-friendly PDF)
Short Long life Prayer for Yangsi Rinpoche (PDF)
Recording
About the Teacher
Yangsi Rinpoche was recognized as the reincarnation of Geshe Ngawang Gendun, a renowned scholar and practitioner from Western Tibet, at the age of six. Rinpoche trained in the traditional monastic system for over 25 years, and in 1995 graduated with the highest degree of Geshe Lharampa from Sera Je Monastery in South India. He then completed his studies at Gyume Tantric College, and, in 1998, having the particular wish to benefit Western students of the Buddhadharma, Rinpoche came to the West to teach and has traveled extensively throughout America and Europe. Rinpoche was a resident teacher at Deer Park Buddhist Center in Madison, Wisconsin for five years, and is currently the Spiritual Director of Ganden Shedrup Ling Buddhist Center in San Juan, Puerto Rico and Spiritual Director of Dharma Friendship Foundation in Seattle, Washington. He founded Maitripa College in 2005 in Portland, Oregon. Rinpoche is the author of Practicing the Path: A Commentary on the Lamrim Chenmo, published in 2003 by Wisdom Publications. Rinpoche teaches in English, and is admired wherever he travels for his unique presentation of the Dharma, his interest in and enthusiasm for Western culture, and his evident embodiment of the wisdom and compassion of the Buddhist path.
