I started this blog in 2008 at the beginning of my three-year retreat at Palpung Thubten Choling monastery in New York, with Lama Norlha’s permission, as a way to keep in touch with fellow practitioners at Palpung Samten Choling, PTC’s affiliated center in New Hampshire, where I had served as resident instructor for seven years before retreat. With no phone, internet or email, I wrote the posts and snail-mailed them to be posted online. I wrote about one post a month the first year, and only a handful in years two and three once the practices got really intense and we spent long periods in complete silence.

After my retreat ended in April 2011, I started up again, posting only occasionally until 2017, when I started an online class, at the request of our Key West center, on Togme Zangpo’s 37 Practices of a Bodhisattva. The blog then became a home base for our class. With the onset of the covid-19 pandemic in 2020 and increasing online commitments, I let the blog slide again, and have only just picked it up again in January 2026, as an aid to practice of the six paramitas for one of the sanghas I work with, Palpung Shenpen Tharchin in Richmond, Virginia, my home town, which I moved back to shortly after my retreat ended, to help my mother, who was in the early stages of dementia at that time. These days I’m back in New Hampshire, living near the next generation of our family and enjoying time with my granddaughter. 

My aspiration is to use the teachings I’ve received through the kindness of my teachers to help fellow dharma students develop a personal practice and apply the traditional yet timeless teachings of the Kagyu lineage to their own life experience. I see my role as that of a friend or mentor encouraging others who share my enthusiasm for studying the Buddha’s teachings, reflecting on them, and developing a daily practice of meditation. In the words of Geshe Jampa Tegchok, commenting on verse 6 of the 37 practices: “Good companions also include our fellow Dharma students at our Dharma center or monastery. We listen to the teachings, discuss the teachings to eliminate doubts, and meditate and practice together. By supporting us along the path and encouraging us when we feel discouraged, our Dharma friends help us transform our minds in a positive way and progress on the path to enlightenment.”

You will find here a number of posts about what a three-year retreat is like, a lot of “Dharma pep talks,” and a study guide to the 37 practices of a bodhisattva, created as a way for participants in the 2017-2018 online study group to keep up when they missed a class and also, hopefully, as a support for anyone who is interested in studying this invaluable text. (We went on to study  Gampopa’s Ornament of Liberation, but the study guide for that is sadly incomplete, though I do hope to get back to it.)

Wishing you a swift path to awakening, free from obstacles.

Linda Jordan, aka Lama (Yeshe) Chodron

PS I no longer regularly teach classes online, but I do offer Meditation Lab, a guided meditation and study group hosted by our Washington DC sangha the first two Sunday mornings of most months. For more information and access to our Zoom sessions, please visit the Palpung-DC website.