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Lama Zopa Rinpoche at Kachoe Dechen Ling, Aptos, California, June 2014. Photo by Ven. Roger Kunsang.
Advice from Lama Zopa Rinpoche, recently shared on fpmt.org:
“If it was possible, I should offer you each trillions of dollars for learning about Buddhism. This means your mind is open for real happiness, to be free from the gross suffering in the three lower realms and even not to be satisfied with the temporary happiness of the three upper realms. Most importantly, once you can meet and practice Dharma, this frees you from samsaric happiness, which is only suffering; and Dharma can give you full enlightenment, peerless happiness. Learning Dharma and practicing it is so important for yourself as well as others, countless others, as once you can achieve enlightenment, you can free countless living beings – all living beings – from the oceans of suffering. So you can see there is nothing more important than this: to learn Dharma and practice. …”
You can read the full advice and find more advice on the “Advice from Lama Zopa Rinpoche” page.
More information, photos and updates about FPMT spiritual director Lama Zopa Rinpoche can be found on Rinpoche’s homepage. If you’d like to receive news of Lama Zopa Rinpoche via email, sign up to Lama Zopa Rinpoche News.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche doing an incense puja at Kachoe Dechen Ling, Aptos, California, US, May 2014. Photo by Ven. Thubten Kunsang.
In a recent post on the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive, you can read Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s advice on how to transform depression into the path of enlightenment:
“Depression can be a good thing, because it is a sign of purification, of having practiced Dharma.
“There are different levels of how negative karma is purified. With the first level, you never experience the suffering results of your actions. With the second level, you experience these results, but rather than experiencing the suffering result of the negative action for many eons in the lower realms – the hell, hungry ghost or animal realms – instead, the result manifests in this life in the form of some problem, such as depression, a toothache or headache, or being criticized by people and so forth. Unbelievably negative karma manifests as just this problem or even as bad dreams or nightmares; often in the form of sickness, failure in business, or some disaster in your family or in your relationships – other people treating you badly or abusing you; and also in the form of depression.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche doing incense puja at Kachoe Dechen Ling, Aptos, California, US, May 2014. Photo by Ven. Thubten Kunsang.
“This way you never have to experience the heavy suffering for an incredible length of time, therefore, experiencing this depression is a positive thing. This can be related to whatever problems you have, so you feel positive and happy about them. You should understand all the rest of your problems, whatever you have, in this same way.
“Then there’s the next level of purifying karma. By experiencing this [suffering result] now, you don’t have to be reborn in the lower realms, or maybe for a very short time and the suffering is very light. For example, when you throw a stone on a rock, it hits in one second, like snapping your fingers. Similarly, in that way, all those heavy sufferings for a great length of time are finished instead, by experiencing this suffering now. If you compare that to the experience of heavy suffering for an incredible length of time, it’s very positive, very good. It’s fantastic!
“There’s no question that the problems experienced in the human realm are an incredibly great comfort, even a pleasure, compared to those extremely heavy sufferings in the hell, hungry ghost and animal realms. So now that negative karma that we don’t have to experience is really fantastic. …”
You can read the complete post “Advice on Transforming Depression,” part of “Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s Online Advice Book,” on the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive.
A stupa surrounded by tsa-tsas at Kachoe Dechen Ling, Aptos, California, May 2014. Photo by Ven. Thubten Kunsang.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche is the spiritual director of the Foundation for the Preservation of Mahayana Tradition (FPMT), an organization dedicated to preserving Mahayana Buddhism through offering the Buddha’s authentic teachings and to facilitating reflection, meditation, practice and the opportunity to actualize and directly experience the Buddha’s teachings. Sign up to receive news and updates.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche speaking to the FPMT European Regional Meeting participants, Istituto Lama Tzong Khapa, Pomaia, Italy, June 17, 2014. Photo by Sirianni.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche gave advice on working for centers in May 2012 at Tushita Meditation Centre:
“Sometimes people who are working at centers only think of the problems – problems, problems, problems. Maybe it makes them feel sick. Their heart becomes very dry, very uninterested. [However,] if you know how to think, it’s really unbelievable. The highest merit is collected and there is the greatest purification by working for the center. Otherwise, you might think, ‘Oh, maybe I’ll go and work in the hospital, there’s much more merit from doing that.’ You see, when you don’t think of Dharma, when you completely forget that the Dharma is the only way to really benefit sentient beings, to liberate them from suffering, then you start thinking things like, ‘Oh, maybe I’ll go and help in a children’s camp, that’s more beneficial.’ People think like that.
“This is a recent letter that I wrote that I thought would be helpful for others:
“Thank you very, very much for working for the center, arranging facilities and so forth. The Dharma center is to benefit sentient beings, to free them from the oceans of samsaric suffering, all the sufferings, and bring them to enlightenment. So you working for the center means that. …”
Read the complete advice and find other advice from Rinpoche on fpmt.org.
More information, photos and updates about FPMT spiritual director Lama Zopa Rinpoche can be found on Rinpoche’s homepage. If you’d like to receive news of Lama Zopa Rinpoche via email, sign up to Lama Zopa Rinpoche News.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche giving the oral transmission of the
Vajra Cutter Sutra on Vulture’s Peak, Bihar, India, March 2014. Photo by Andy Melnic.
In response to a query by a student who was advised to sponsor a recitation of the Kangyur
(the teachings of Buddha) but could not afford it, Lama Zopa Rinpoche dictated two
powerful names of buddhas to recite. By reciting these names one receives the same benefit of having read the Kangyur and of having read and listened to all the Buddha’s teachings of sutra and tantra.
You can download this practice for free.
Wisdom Publications is happy to make available, after many years out of print, The Essential Nectar, translated by Martin Willson. The root text, by Yeshe Tsondru, is one of the 18 great Lam-rim texts. This book contains the root text and a commentary by Geshe Rabten, one of Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s gurus.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche recommends The Essential Nectar to be used in one’s daily Lam-rim meditation cycle. Rinpoche has offered advice about setting up a daily practice utilizing this text.
Exploring crucial points on the path to enlightenment, “Stages of the Path” literature continues to hold its place as one of the great treasures of Buddhist thought. In this volume, Geshe Rabten presents a structured explanation of the popular and practical text, The Essential Nectar of Holy Doctrine, by the eighteenth-century scholar Yeshe Tsöndrü. Geshe Rabten’s teachings reveal how we may see life’s great value and, by taking up the profound practice described herein, make the most of its abundant opportunity.
The FPMT Foundation Store is delighted to carry this most precious book.
Rinpoche circumambulating the stupa in the back yard of Kachoe Dechen Ling, California, USA.
FPMT Education Services is pleased to release two new essential advices from Lama Zopa Rinpoche:
Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s Advice on Circumambulation is a short practice that can be done to make one’s practice of circumambulating holy objects as powerful as possible.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s Advice on Guru Devotion is a short and poetic composition in which Lama Zopa Rinpoche outlines the essence of guru devotion, including a beautiful dedication.
Both of these new advices are vailable through the FPMT Foundation Store as free downloads.
Rinpoche choosing flowers for offerings, Aptos, California, May 2014. Photo by Ven. Roger Kunsang.
“The purpose of having this precious human body is not simply to achieve happiness for oneself, but to eliminate the suffering of all other beings and to bring them happiness as well,” Lama Zopa Rinpoche instructs in his book Transforming Problems Into Happiness, published by Wisdom Publications. “This is the purpose of each of our lives. This human body is precious because with it you have the capacity and opportunity to pursue spiritual development in order to serve other living beings.
“Everyone wants happiness; no one wants suffering. The happiness we need is not just ordinary, fleeting happiness; what we really need is ultimate happiness, the unsurpassed, unshakable happiness of enlightenment. When people go shopping, for example, they want the things that are the best, that will last the longest; in the same way, everyone wants the longest-lasting, highest happiness. According to their understanding of what level of happiness is achievable, everyone attempts to obtain whatever is, in their view, the highest happiness.
“The Buddha’s teachings, called the Dharma, tell us the highest happiness achievable is enlightenment. The only reason anyone would not want to achieve enlightenment is that they lack Dharma wisdom. Lacking Dharma wisdom means simply being unaware that there exists a happiness higher than ordinary happiness. Anyone who has encountered the Dharma and studied it sincerely knows that one can be liberated from the bondage of suffering and can experience peerless happiness, that one can put an end to all obscurations, and that one can attain all the realizations of a buddha. Of course a person who knows these things can be achieved wants to achieve them. …”
You can read more from this excerpt on Wisdom Publication’s website.
More information, photos and updates about FPMT spiritual director Lama Zopa Rinpoche can be found on Rinpoche’s homepage. If you’d like to receive news of Lama Zopa Rinpoche via email, sign up to Lama Zopa Rinpoche News.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche teaching at the Light of the Path Retreat, Black Mountain, North Carolina, US, May 2014. Photo by Ven. Roger Kunsang.
Living in the Path, an FPMT study program, is continually evolving with course materials drawn from Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s “Light of the Path” retreat teachings, an annual event hosted by Kadampa Center in North Carolina, USA. The initial courses are organized around edited transcripts and short video clips from these teaching events.
FPMT Education Services is happy to announce we have a new free module available to you! The Seven Limb Prayer module is comprised of Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s precious teachings about the benefits related to each limb and how to practice each of the seven limbs in the most effective way. The seven-limb prayer is found in almost every practice text, particularly those related to guru yoga. This concise and powerful method was taught by the Buddha as a means to accumulate merit and purify negativities, creating the causes for success in practice, service, and daily life.
These teachings are extracted from the Light of the Path Retreat, September 2010, and from a letter of personal advice from Lama Zopa Rinpoche to a student dictated in March 2012.
To Access the Free Seven Limb Prayer Module (LP Instruction 03)
1. Go to the Online Learning Center website.
2. If this is your first time using the site, you will need to create a login account for accessing the Online Learning Center. Instructions on how to do this can be found in the “Getting Started Guide.”
3. If you already have a login account, or after you have created a new account, you can then enroll in LP Instruction 03 using the enrollment key of: preliminary07
4. You can access the course here.
5. The “Getting Started Guide” also contains useful information on the technical requirements for the site, information on updating your profile and setting your user preferences and on navigation within the site.
6. Please contact the site administrator at onlineedu@fpmt.org if you have any questions or queries.
Please also note that as a Friend of FPMT at the Dharma Supporter level or higher, one can receive access to all programs and content on the Online Learning Center.
We hope you enjoy the online course!
Geshe Jampa Gyaltsen and Ven. Yonden performing the Nolsang incense puja at Kopan Monastery, Nepal.
FPMT Education Services is delighted to make available an important incense offering ritual (nolsang) which is a translation of Padmasambhava’s The Divine Blue Water Clearing Away Contamination. This practice has been made available at the request of Lama Zopa Rinpoche for students who need it.
The ritual is used to purify contaminations that arise from ignorance, broken commitments, disturbing thoughts and emotions, as well as a variety of other negativities which cause obstacles, illness and misfortunes to oneself, others and the environment.
Available in eBook, a4 and letter booklet formats.
Khadro-la, August 2011. Photo by Philippe Garric.
Rangjung Neljorma Khadro Namsel Drönme first appeared to the international FPMT community through “Interview with a Dakini.” She’s since become known through the assistance she has been offering Lama Zopa Rinpoche since he manifested a stroke in 2011 and also through serving as an oracle at the Kalachakra initiation given by His Holiness the Dalai Lama in Bodhgaya, India, in January 2012. Here she talks about integrating lam-rim into daily life.
“In ordinary life, gaining wealth, food and shelter brings some pleasure at a physical level but not at a mental level. The worst suffering is mental suffering. Therefore, we have no choice but to learn how to transform such suffering. To do this, one needs to transform the mind. Wealth, rank and position can never handle or deal with mental suffering. Even having a large number of friends or guardians does not help because when faced with mental suffering, nothing can help except for mind-training.”
From Mandala October-December 2009.
Mandala brings you news and advice of Lama Zopa Rinpoche and of activities, teachings and events from over 160 FPMT centers, projects and services around the globe. If you like what you read on Mandala, consider becoming a Friend of FPMT, which supports our work.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche at Buddha Amitbha Pure Land, WA, April 2014. Photo by Ven. Thubten Kunsang
Light of the Path Retreat 2014, which takes place Sunday 3pm, May 4 to Sunday Noon, May 18, 2014, at YMCA Blue Ridge Assembly in Black Mountain, NC, is the third of a 5-year series of teaching retreats led by Lama Zopa Rinpoche based on Lama Atisha’s text, Lamp for the Path to Enlightenment.
You can enjoy all of these teachings in real time on live streaming video!
Please do take advantage of this opportunity to experience this retreat, even if you are unable to make it to North Carolina to attend in person.
Additionally, many resources and materials have been developed from the previous precious retreat teachings:
- All teachings from the 2009, 2010 and 2014 are available on the FPMT Online Learning Center.
- MP3 audio and mp4 video files are available for download in the Light of the Path Retreat Materials 2010: text, audio, video course. This course also contains the root text and other information associated with the retreat, including reviews, guided meditations, and the complete transcript of the retreat.
- The Living in the Path online program has been created from the Light of the Path retreat teachings of 2009 and 2010. Organized into structured modules you will find this, and other, programs on the FPMT Online Learning Center.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche does prostrations at Vulture’s Peak, the site of Buddha’s first teaching, India, February 2014. Photo by Ven. Roger Kunsang.
Calling the Guru from Afar is a heartfelt request for blessings to realize all the stages of the path to enlightenment, as well as a meditation on the nature of the guru.
FPMT Education Services is pleased to make available Lama Zopa Rinpoche chanting the long version of this prayer.
Also available as a free download is a practice booklet containing the long and short versions of Calling the Guru from Afar as well as Practicing Guru Devotion with the Nine Attitudes which is a short meditation that helps to develop the correct attitude toward one’s teacher.
The practice booklet is available in PDF & ebook format.