What is a Medicine and Compassion Retreat?
The Medicine and Compassion retreats help people in caregiving professions and life situations develop their compassion in a way that can make it more stable, vast, and effortless.
The curriculum is based on the book, Medicine and Compassion, by Chokyi Nyima Rinpoche and David R Shlim MD. The upcoming retreats will be taught by David R Shlim MD and Lama Oser. Lama Oser was trained in Chokyi Nyima Rinpoche’s monastery, and has become one of his top teachers. Each retreat will also have a special emphasis on developing a personal meditation practice. One-on-one tutoring from Lama Oser will help the retreatants gain confidence in their own method of training in compassion.
Upcoming retreats
***Due to the COVID-19 Pandemic, all of our Medicine and Compassion Retreats have been postponed.***
We had planned to have a retreat this June in Doncaster, England, one this fall in Jackson Hole, Wyoming and one in Bhutan in the spring of 2021. These retreats are still very much on our mind and will be held when the risk of infection has disappeared, and international travel has returned to normal.
In the meantime, we encourage you to subscribe to our newsletter. We will continue to release our ongoing series of short Medicine and Compassion videos with Phakchok Rinpoche, David R Shlim MD, and Lama Oser. A new video is released each week, adding to the library of already available videos. We will release a total of 52 videos this year. We will also keep everyone updated on the Medicine and Compassion Retreats via the newsletter.
If you have any questions about the retreats, please email Dr. Shlim.
Medicine and Compassion Retreat: Jackson Hole, 2018
Medicine and Compassion Teaching Videos
“If you’re curious to hear highly intelligent, humorous and direct Buddhist philosophy from a traditionally trained practitioner/master/internatio
– Kit Deslauriers, World Class Skier and Adventurer
About the Video Series
This video series was filmed at The Medicine and Compassion Retreats in Jackson Hole, featuring Phakchok Rinpoche, a reincarnate Tibetan Lama who lives in Nepal, Lama Oser, a lama from the same monastery, and David R Shlim MD.
Each video stands by itself, and the series is in no particular order. Watch and be inspired to pursue your own journey to compassion. To see all teaching videos go to: https://vimeo.com/medicineandcompassion
Phakchok Rinpoche
Phakchok Rinpoche is a reincarnate Tibet Buddhist teacher of the same lineage as Chokyi Nyima Rinpoche. He teaches meditation and Tibet Buddhist philosophy throughout the world.
Lama Oser
Lama Oser is a senior monk at Chokyi Nyima Rinpoche’s monastery in Kathmandu. He has trained under many Rinpoches, and is one of only two lamas of his lineage actively teaching meditation and Tibetan Buddhist philosophy to a western audience.
History of the Medicine and Compassion Project
The roots of The Medicine and Compassion Project began when I was working in Kathmandu, running a small clinic that specialized in the care of foreigners. During that time, I heard that a Tibetan Buddhist monastery was having some trouble getting health care for the monks, so I offered to run a free clinic there once a week to see whoever was sick.
In the fall of 1984, I was taken to meet the head of the monastery, Chokyi Nyima Rinpoche, who at age 33, was a year younger than myself. That was the beginning of a thirty-five-year relationship that has led to what is now called “The Medicine and Compassion Project.”
I slowly realized that Chokyi Nyima Rinpoche was able to help guide me in my life, through romantic struggles and the pressures of running the clinic. Eventually, what had started as a nice kind of friendship evolved into seeing Chokyi Nyima Rinpoche as my teacher, instructing me in mediation technique and philosophy. The side effect, at the time, of learning to have a calmer mind, was that my compassion increased in a way that I had not foreseen. The change in my ability to be calm and kind and open with patients was striking enough that I began to envision putting on a conference in the West, with Chokyi Nyima Rinpoche as the only speaker. It would be called, “Medicine and Compassion.”
Treating sick Monks in Kathmandu, 1985
I nursed that dream for more than ten years until the conference finally took place in 2000, in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where I had moved with my family. A second conference was held there in 2002. I then spent four years transcribing and editing the audio tapes from the conferences into a book called Medicine and Compassion. The book was published by Wisdom Publications in 2004. A second edition came out in 2015.
Another Medicine and Compassion conference with Chokyi Nyima Rinpoche was held at the Harvard School of Public Health in 2005, and a fourth one was held in Cologne, Germany in 2007 to mark the launch of the German translation of the book. The book has since been translated into Spanish, Catalan, Italian, Russian, Czech, and Chinese.
Chokyi Nyima Rinpoche with my son in Kathmandu, 1991
After the last conference, Chokyi Nyima Rinpoche became too busy with all of his worldwide teaching responsibilities to do another Medicine and Compassion conference. Still the interest in compassion’s effects on medicine continued, so I began to get invitations to give talks on Medicine and Compassion, in hospitals and conferences all around the world. This sowed the seed of the possibilities of training in compassion, but the individual lectures were not followed up at the time with further learning opportunities. This led to the idea of bringing doctors and nurses together in a remote, beautiful place to do a Medicine and Compassion Retreat. This came together when Phakchok Rinpoche, the nephew of Chokyi Nyima Rinpoche, offered to teach the 5-day retreat. I rented a ranch in Jackson Hole and had 25 participants in 2017. I did it again with Phakchok Rinpoche in 2018. In 2019, a third retreat was held with Lama Oser, a senior monk at Chokyi Nyima Rinpoche’s monastery.
Phakchok Rinpoche teaching at the second Medicine and Compassion Retreat, 2018
“I feel that it’s critical at the present time to invest more effort into systematically developing love and compassion. If we could advance the cultivation of love and compassion to the extent we have developed technological improvements, the entire world community would benefit immeasurably.”
-Chokyi Nyima Rinpoche,
From Medicine & Compassion
Chokyi Nyima Rinpoche
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A guide to the virtues of compassion, and how one can learn to train one’s innate capacity for compassion
Medicine and Compassion is the first book to present authentic Tibetan Buddhist teachings tailored for a Western professional audience. Beyond encouraging compassion in healthcare givers, the book explains the nature of compassion, and how we can train during our lives to make our compassion more stable, inclusive, and effortless. A collaboration between a reincarnate Tibetan lama and an American doctor, the book is taught in simple language, but with profound meaning. The ideal book for any person looking to give their own compassion a boost
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Get the free study guide companion to Medicine & Compassion
Medicine and Compassion is easy to read, but occasionally difficult to understand. The new Study Guide is designed to augment the book, reviewing chapter-by-chapter the key points, and helping to place them in context. The Study Guide can also be used to study Medicine and Compassion in a group setting.