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All of the monks of Sera Je Monastery are offered three nutritious meals daily through the Sera Je Food Fund.
Every day, the Sera Je Food Fund offers three vegetarian meals to all of the monks studying at Sera Je Monastery (with an additional 800 monks from the Sera Je School joining for breakfast). The fund currently offers 8,300 meals every single day.
The amount of food required for this offering is astounding. For example, a typical month’s worth of meals requires, among many other ingredients:
- 98 gallons of cooking oil
- 2,601 pounds of flour
- 2,280 pounds of rice
- 36 bottles of soy sauce
- 5,300 bananas
- 510 bundles of green vegetables
Monks helping prepare one of the daily meals offered through the Sera Je Food Fund.
It costs approximately US$280,000 to offer three meals every day to all of the monks.
If you would like to contribute to the Sera Je Food Fund, you may offer any amount you are able.
- US$10: Provides three vegetarian meals a day to one monk for one month
- US$120: Provides three vegetarian meals a day to one monk for one year
- US$780: Provides three vegetarian meals a day to all 2,500 monks for one day
- US$5,460: Provides three vegetarian meals a day to all 2,500 monks for one week
- US$280,000: Provides three vegetarian meals a day to all the 2,500 monks for one year
Some of the nuns of Tashi Chime Gatsal Nunnery.
The building site of the new ten rooms for the nuns of Tashi Chime Gatsal Nunnery.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche recently raised US$20,000 for the Tashi Chime Gatsal Nunnery, Nepal, for the building of ten rooms for the nuns’ accommodation.
The offering was made from a number of extremely kind benefactors in Singapore.
Providing quality housing for Sangha is a priority for Rinpoche, he also recently offered $US50,000 toward the building of rooms for monks at a monastery in East Asia.
Building is underway for the nuns the new accommodation.
In addition, very year since 2009, Lama Zopa Rinpoche has sponsored the nuns of Tashi Chime Gatsal Nunnery to complete one and now two 100 million mani retreats (100 million recitations of the mantra OM MANI PADME HUM). In addition to the 100 Million Mani Retreats, Rinpoche is offering all the cost of food to all the nuns for this period as well as the cost of a very qualified geshe to stay during the retreat in order to give lam-rim teachings. One of these retreats is offered through the kindness of a benefactor, and the other through the Lama Zopa Rinpoche Bodhichitta Fund.
In addition to this, Kopan Monastery has offered robes to all of the nuns of Tashi Chime Gatsal Nunnery.
Please rejoice in this continued support to the nuns of Tashi Chime Gatsal Nunnery.
You are welcome to offer any amount to the Lama Zopa Rinpoche Bodhichitta Fund
Please enjoy this short video of Land of Medicine Buddha’s Great Prayer Wheel being turned by many. This incredible prayer wheel contains over 170 billion mantras as well as many sets of texts.
The Great Prayer Wheel at Land of Medicine Buddha.
In this touching video, Lama Zopa Rinpoche meets the children of the Ngari Institute of Buddhist Dialectics in Ladakh, India. Rinpoche is listening to the children reciting many prayers that they have memorized. Lama Zopa Rinpoche, through the Lama Zopa Rinpoche Bodhichitta Fund, is sponsoring all the food for the children this year. This is the second year that Rinpoche has offered this.
Remember the Guru’s Kindness
By Lama Zopa Rinpoche
The following advice was given by Lama Zopa Rinpoche in response to requests by students to help them understand how best to prolong the life of the guru, and how to avoid obstacles that can cause him sickness and a shortened life. Previously published in Mandala, April 1989.
Most important is to remember with feeling the guru’s kindness and to follow his advice; then to remember one’s mistakes and confess them.
Long-life pujas purify negative karma and accumulate merits (generally speaking life can be lengthened by accumulating merit). But the best kind of long-life puja is not just the ritual but to cherish the advice, with the thought correctly devoting to the virtuous friend, and looking at the guru from one’s own side to be the Buddha and remembering his kindness; feeling regret for not practicing properly in the past and making a decision to practice better in the future: generally speaking, in the ordinary sense, to be a better person.
The heaviest effect on the guru’s life is degenerating or breaking the first root tantric vow, i.e. when belittling the guru (meaning giving him up as an object of respect). Also having anger or heresy to arise in the mind toward the guru, particularly heresy. When there is heresy, the mind is barren like a desert, having no faith and nothing can grow. This can cause the holy mind to be disturbed, like a sadness.
Sometimes there can be students who request secret tantric teachings, and not having devotion can cause the guru (in the context of very secret teachings) to break samaya, because the teacher has difficulty to say no. But if the student has the sincere thought to try to develop and keep the vows, etc. then it’s good, although, of course, it may be difficult to keep all the vows because the student’s mind has not even the realization of impermanence and death!
Harmonious sincerity in obtaining advice can inspire the guru, giving him the interest to have the intention to pray in an attempt to have a longer life, even if from the guru’s side there is not the complete capability to control the elements.
It is important to be aware that the student’s breaking of the root tantric vows, samaya and so forth is also a danger for themselves, resulting in sickness and even their lives to be shortened, not to mention suffering in future lives. But of course, as explained in the teachings, any degeneration or breaking of the three levels of vow can be purified through confession, etc.
So these things can cause the guru to take disease and pass away early; this is a dependent arising. This can happen because of the karma of the group, e.g. [they are] my gurus, they don’t have karma but they can show [the] appearance.
In conclusion, a lot depends on how well the student practices Dharma, how much self-cherishing thought there is which causes harm to oneself and others!
I don’t think the problem has so much to do with the fact that the students don’t know what is the cause of the guru taking disease and passing away early. For some students the cause is not being thoughtful and not taking the opportunity to change the life for the better, i.e. not putting the teachings into practice.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche making an offering to a beggar on the way up to Vulture’s Peak, India, March 2014. Photo by Andy Melnic.
The sheer volume of compassionate activity undertaken by Lama Zopa Rinpoche every year, day in and day out, is astounding. The Lama Zopa Rinpoche Bodhichitta Fund was established to enable Rinpoche’s kindness and generosity to flourish around the world.
You can now have all news from this fund delivered to your email inbox. Subscribe here and never miss a thing!
Lama Zopa Rinpoche and Sangha offering animal liberation practice at Kachoe Dechen Ling, Aptos, CA, USA. November 2013, Photo by Ven. Thubten Kunsang.
When Lama Zopa Rinpoche is at his residence in Calfornia, Kachoe Dechen Ling, he often joins in the weekly animal liberations that the Sangha do on behalf of all who are sick. These liberations include extensive prayers and practice, according to Rinpoche’s advice, with emphasizes taking the animals around holy objects (At Kachoe Dechen Ling they are taken around the stupa which, itself, has many smaller stupas and tsa-tsas lining every edge), and blessing them with mantras and water blessed by mantra before they are released.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche and Sangha offering animal liberation practice. November 2013, Photo by Ven. Thubten Kunsang.
In these photos, Lama Zopa Rinpoche is carrying worms that have been liberated (these worms would have been used as bait for catching fish). Rinpoche is carrying them with this right arm, which is still healing following Rinpoche’s stroke, so this practice also serves a form of exercise. The Sangha circumambulate, chant mantras and prayers and offer incense. The animal liberation practice is typically offered in the afternoon, but often when Rinpoche is in the house it can happen very late at night.
You can learn more about the Animal Liberation Fund and offer your support.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche offering puja.
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Lama Zopa Rinpoche circumambulating the stupas on the way to front door of Kachoe Dechen Ling, October, 2013. Photo by Ven. Roger Kunsang.
Every day, Sangha at Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s residence in Aptos, CA, make three long life and 13 Mitukpa tsa-tsas as well as three small Kadampa stupas which are filled with a roll of the Four Dharmakaya Relic Mantras. These are dedicated to any person who is sick with prayers that they may immediately recover, be liberated from samsara, and may achieve enlightenment quickly. In addition, on the eighth day of the Tibetan month, three Eight Medicine Buddhas tsa-tsas are also made. On the thirtieth, one 12-inch (30-centimeter) tall Padmasambhava tsa-tsa is made.
After the tsa-tsas and stupas are made they are used in other stupas that many people circumambulate when visiting Kachoe Dechen Ling. All the stupas and tsa tsas that are made are utilized in this way, given to others to use, or they go inside larger stupas that are being built. As each tsa-tsa is an image of a buddha it is created and cared for with utmost respect at all times.
Rinpoche has commented often on the benefits of holy objects and how stupas can be used on the path to enlightenment.
You can offer any amount to the daily holy object creation at Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s residence.
IVY Nyung-Na participants with the beautiful altar set up for this special practice.
One of Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s vast visions for the FPMT organization is to sponsor 1,000 Nung-Nä retreats. About this retreat practice Rinpoche commented, “Nyung-Näs take such a short time, but bring strong purification. So many eons can be purified in this life; it makes it so easy to have attainments.”
Nyung-Nä practice is an intensive 2-day purification retreat that includes fasting, precepts, prostrations, prayers, mantra recitation, and offerings. Nyung-Nä is a practice based on the deity, 1,000 armed Chenrezig, the Buddha of Compassion, and is extremely powerful for healing illness, purifying negative karma, and opening the heart to compassion.
1,000 Armed Chenrezig by Peter Iseli
O Arya Compassionate-eyed One
Who is the treasure of compassion
I request you please listen to me.
Please guide myself mothers and fathers
In all six realms to be freed quickly
From the great ocean of samsara.
I request that the vast and profound
Peerless awakening mind may grow.
With the tear of your great compassion
Please cleanse all karmas and delusions.
Please lead with your hand of compassion
Me and migrators to fi elds of bliss.
Please, Amitabha and Chenrezig,
In all my lives be virtuous friends.
Show well the undeceptive pure path
And quickly place us in Buddha’s state.
—- From the Concluding Ceremony, Nyung-Na Practice Manual
Institut Vajra Yogini (IVY) in France is now hosting the third set of 108 Nyung-Näs, with four people trying to do the full 108, some of them being sponsored by Lama Zopa Rinpoche himself through the Bodhichitta Fund. From November through the beginning of March, an amazing 73 participants have accumulated 572 individual Nyung-Näs. This is something incredible in which to rejoice!
You can read commentary from Lama Zopa Rinpoche about this powerful practice courtesy of the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive.
FPMT Education Services has published a Nyung Nä practice manual with everything you need to complete this retreat. It can be purchased on the FPMT Foundation Store.
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Lama Zopa Rinpoche and one of the beautiful Namgyälma boards being used to bless sentient beings in the Pacific Ocean and all who come into contact with it.
In addition to the weekly animal liberations offered by the Sangha at Kachoe Dechen Ling – Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s California residence, Lama Zopa Rinpoche has requested the Sangha to also make weekly trips to the Pacific Ocean in order to bless all the beings living in the ocean, by using large Namgyälma mantra boards. This practice benefits all sentient beings in the ocean as well as all who touch the ocean, swim in the ocean, surf, etc. The Pacific Ocean is the world’s largest ocean (69,375,000 square miles) so by blessing this ocean, the benefit spreads far and wide. As well as blessing the sentient beings in the ocean and those who interact with the ocean, extensive practice involving visualization and mantra recitation is also done in accordance with advice from Lama Zopa Rinpoche. An excerpt from this beautiful practice, the abbreviated Yeshe Kadra practice:
From the introduction:
Pretas suffer heavily of hunger and thirst – not finding even a drop of water or a spoonful of food for hundreds of thousands of eons; incredible exhaustion; disappointment; heat and cold, etc. In particular, the pretas experience three types of obscurations: outer, inner, and obscurations related to food and drink. This practice of “Yeshe Karda” is a practice whereby every single preta, of all the different types of pretas, receives drink.
From the actual practice:
For all pretas, whom the Omniscient Mind sees, this ocean of water appears as nectar. All pretas see it as an ocean of milk; they drink it and are fully satisfied. It liberates them from all sufferings, defilements, and the causes of sufferings – karma and delusions, including the specific sufferings of pretas. All these are purified and they actualize the whole path to enlightenment.
The practice is dedicated to all beings, especially for the long life of our precious gurus and and with Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s recommended dedication practices.
Here you can see Rinpoche doing this very practice with Sangha
About the Namgyälma mantra, Lama Zopa Rinpoche has said:
“Namgyälma is one of the five powerful deities that manifested to purify negative karma. The benefits of reciting the five powerful mantras are mind blowing. If you recite the mantras for anyone who has been born in the lower realms, it has the power to liberate them into a pure land and so forth. That’s an incredible thing. The mantra when written can be put on the head of a person or animal who has passed away. Or you can chant this mantra and then blow on water or sand, which you throw over the body to purify. These mantras are very important and powerful in the jangwa prayers.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche, Sangha and students using the Namgyälma boards to bless all who come into contact with the Pacific Ocean.
“Before reciting the mantra one can do the seven-limb prayer. Then make a request to Namgyalma for oneself and all sentient beings to be completely purified of all negative karmas and all those who are already in the lower realms to be immediately born in the pure land, where they can attain enlightenment, or to receive perfect human rebirth, meet the pure Mahayana teachings and be guided by perfectly qualified Mahayana gurus. Also, all the different negative karmas of sentient beings causing war, earthquakes, famine, disease, etc. to be purified, to not happen again in the future.
“Generate strong compassion. Recite the long mantra several times and then the short mantra. As you recite the mantra, visualize nectar beams are emitted, purifying the negative karmas of every sentient being since beginningless rebirth. They all receive the blessings of Namgyälma.”
Extracted from advice given by Lama Zopa Rinpoche following the tsunami tragedy, Kachoe Dechen Ling, December 28th 200.
Long Namgyälma Mantra
Further Reading/Resources
- Mandala Publications, “Lama Zopa Rinpoche Blesses All Sentient Beings in the Ocean “
- Practices of Namgyälma hardcopy collection of practices
- Namgyälma Mantra Card
- Namgyälma Mantra Decal Stickers
- Namgyälma Protection Amulet
You are welcome to contribute any amount to this weekly practice: