receive our newsletters
join Friends of FPMT
Study & Practice News
Lama Zopa Rinpoche explaining in a video interview the path to enlightenment and how fortunate all are, Osel Labrang, Sera Je Monastery, India, January 2014. Photo by Ven. Roger Kunsang.
“Think, ‘How fortunate I am that I am able to offer (service) in the present, in the future,’ so rather than taking it as a burden, follow the bodhisattvas’ path. Follow the bodhisattvas’ attitude – that’s the way to achieve enlightenment. So in that way you achieve enlightenment very fast, without taking many eons. So the stronger compassion you have, how much good heart you have, you are able to achieve enlightenment quicker. So how much you are able to offer service to sentient beings, that much negative karma, so many eons of negative karma gets purified and you collect inconceivable merit and so that makes you able to achieve enlightenment quickly – quicker.”
– Lama Zopa Rinpoche from “Rejoice in Your Efforts,” new from the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive.
Learn more about FPMT spiritual director Lama Zopa Rinpoche and his beneficial activities by visiting Rinpoche’s homepage, where you will find links to Rinpoche’s schedule, new advice, recent video, photos and more.
Lama Yeshe at Grizzly Lodge 1980. Photo by Tom Waggoner, courtesy of Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive.
“Now, this is very important: when we start by focusing on the essence of thought, or consciousness, which is formless and colorless, like space, we give ourselves access to recognizing the way our ego interprets our self, or I. When we investigate that further, we come to the conclusion that there’s no such self. It’s a big zero, and that is the universal truth of emptiness, or nonduality. Our ego’s interpretation, our concrete conception, of the I, which appears to be indestructible in nature, is false. It’s a wrong view. When you think, ‘I want to be happy; I don’t want to suffer,’ ask yourself the question, ‘Where is that I?’ Wherever you are, whatever you’re doing, ask yourself that question.”
– Lama Yeshe, from “Ground Zero: Emptiness as the Basis for Deity Yoga” on the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive
Learn more about FPMT founder Lama Yeshe on his homepage on fpmt.org. Many more teachings from Lama Yeshe are freely available from Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive.
Medicine Buddha painting by Peter Iseli.
Compiled from various teachings by Lama Zopa Rinpoche, Benefits of Medicine Buddha Mantra and Practice details the many blessings associated with engaging in Medicine Buddha practice.
FPMT Education Services is happy to freely offer this compilation.
The Medicine Buddha encompasses all the buddhas. This means that when we practice the seven-limb prayer and make offerings with the seven limbs, we receive the same merit as we would if we had made offerings to all the buddhas. Similarly, when we recite the mantra of Medicine Buddha, we collect unbelievable merit just as when we offer the seven-limb practice to Medicine Buddha.
—Lama Zopa Rinpoche
The FPMT Lineage series is comprised of books of Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s teachings on the graduated path to enlightenment (lam-rim) drawn from his four decades of discourses on the topic based on his own textbook, The Wish-fulfilling Golden Sun, and several traditional lam-rim texts. The books in general are arranged according to the outline of Pabongka Rinpoche’s Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand.
The first in this series is Heart of the Path and the second is How to Practice Dharma: Teachings on the Eight Worldly Dharmas. The Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive is now actively working on the next book in the series, Rinpoche’s teachings on impermanence and death.
Basic Program Guidelines 2013: The new, entirely revised edition, is now available online!
The new edition of the updated and revised Basic Program Guidelines for Implementation is now available online.
The Basic Program Guidelines 2013 web page (members area login required) presents the document in separate parts with contents listed, to make it easy to find and access the specific advice you need for your Basic Program. Please explore!
PLEASE NOTE: The Basic Program CD is no longer in use, and the old edition BPGuidelines2006 that was included on the CD should no longer be used. The Basic Program materials pages (in English, French and Spanish) are accessible for Basic Program implementing centers and teachers from the FPMT Affiliates Area.
Basic Program in English to start in Australia
Western teacher Jampa Jaffe will teach the second Basic Program at Vajrayana Institute, Ashfield, NSW, Australia, starting February 2014. Jampa was the teaching assistant for the first FPMT Masters Program at Istituto Lama Tzong Khapa, Italy.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche teaching at Kopan Monastery on how important it is to serve others, Nepal, December 1, 2013. Photo by Ven.Roger Kunsang.
“… When you abandon harm to others, you receive so much happiness from others, from life to life, for 100 lifetimes,” Lama Zopa Rinpoche advised. “Just by abstaining from harm to others one time you receive benefit for 100 lifetimes. By practicing the morality of not stealing, you receive wealth for 100 lifetimes. By practicing charity one time, you will enjoy good results in hundreds and thousands of lifetimes. In the Arya Sanghatasutra it is said that by practicing generosity once to a sentient being you will gain enjoyment for 80 or 80,000 eons. With a good heart, if you benefit somebody, you will receive enjoyment for 100 lifetimes, since karma is expandable. From one virtue, you experience the result for so many lifetimes or for so many times in one life.
“Firstly, you should think that sentient beings are wish-fulfilling jewels. Secondly, you should be the wish-fulfilling jewel to other sentient beings in daily life. This is very important. Even if you are not working or you are in a cave, not seeing anybody, not even an insect, you should editate on bodhicitta. You should think how precious sentient beings are. And think, “I must do the same.” This is an excellent way to live life, especially living a busy life with others. By living life with this attitude, it is the happiest life and most meaningful life. There will be nothing to be scared of in the future. Life is like sunshine in the future.
“I presented the above in relation to Dharma and Buddhism – how others will feel if you are a wish-fulfilling jewel to others. If you become a wish-fulfilling jewel to others, as a result, others will become a wish-fulfilling jewel to you. This can be explained on this basis. …”
— Excerpted from “Attitude for Offering Service,” a letter written by Lama Zopa Rinpoche, April 2008
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 pointing out the dorje of Padmasambhava to Tom Truty and friend, Kopan Monastery, Nepal, November 29, 2013. Photo by Ven. Roger Kunsang.
FPMT spiritual director Lama Zopa Rinpoche returned to Kopan Monastery on November 22. Since arriving, Rinpoche has offered teachings to students attending the month-long November course on lam-rim, circumambulated at Swayambhunath and received many visitors among other activities. FPMT Education Services director Tom Truty visited Rinpoche in late November. This is a particularly fruitful time for FPMT Education Services as Merry Colony, former director and who continues to work for the department, is also at Kopan, affording them all the opportunity to connect and discuss FPMT Education’s past and future.
FPMT Education Services materials are all produced under the guidance of Rinpoche. This includes practice books, education programs like Discovering Buddhism and Living in the Path, translations of important texts and much more.
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.
Kadampa Stupa at Kachoe Dechen Ling, Aptos, CA, USA. Photo by Whitney Dafoe.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche translated Padmasambhava’s Instruction on Offerings to Stupas, which details the benefits of prostrating to, making offering, circumambulating , and offering service to stupas.
Translations Available:
One of Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s Vast Visions for FPMT is to build 100,000 stupas around the world. The Stupa Fund was established in 1992 with the aim of providing the resources needed to fulfill Rinpoche’s wishes.
If you would like to contribute to the Stupa Fund, you may donate any amount.
All those who with virtue help the stupa will, in all lives, enter into the perfect path of the ten virtues, never be separated from the support of virtuous friends, and achieve all the realizations they wish.
—- From Padmasambhava’s Instruction on Offerings to Stupas
As 2013 enters its final months, the time is arriving to begin planning for 2014.
Since 1999, the Liberation Prison Project has produced the Liberation Calendar, a Tibetan lunar calendar which includes dates and information about more than thirty kinds of practice days and auspicious and inauspicious days for each month.
The calendar is prepared by astrologer Ngawang Thartho based on the Tibetan Medical and Astrological Institutes calendar, with additional advice from Lama Zopa Rinpoche, Spiritual Director of FPMT, and Geshe Ngawang Dakpa, astrologer lama of FPMT’s Tse Chen Ling in San Francisco.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche reads texts and meditates while flying, November 22, 2013. Photo by Ven. Roger Kunsang.
A pilot once asked to have his photo taken with Lama Zopa Rinpoche. “I began to think about what [the pilot] could do for safety as he flies the plane, not only for his own safety but for the safety of the hundreds of passengers on the plane,” Rinpoche said. “I told the pilot that if you carry Buddha’s relics when you travel it has the power to stop any inauspicious thing that could cause danger and difficulties (such as it being the wrong astrological date, at the wrong time, etc.).
“I also suggested he carry the Diamond Cutter Sutra – it offers great protection. This sutra is the heart teaching of the 84,000 teachings of the Buddha, and is about realizing the perfection of wisdom, the teachings on emptiness. This realization is what liberates sentient beings from all the causes of samsara, which are delusion and karma, and even the subtle defilements. By eliminating these you can enlighten so many beings and liberate them from all the sufferings of samsara. All of this comes from this sutra, which teaches the path of wisdom realizing emptiness. So, it is a great blessing and protection to have this text on an airplane. …”
From “Advice for Flying,” posted on Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive, November 2005.
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.
Masters Program students (left to right): Ven. Tiziana Losa, Jacob Fisher, Yaniv Sagi, Marina Brucet, Hans Burghardt, Yumi Terada and Joan Dombón, Istituto Lama Tzong Khapa, Pomaia, Italy, July 2013. Photo courtesy of ILTK.
The 2008-2013 class of the FPMT Masters Program have “just completed their final exams with the intention to enter retreat in 2014,” Olga Planken, Basic Program and Masters Program coordinator for FPMT Education Services, reported to Mandala this week.
Mandala recently featured an interview with five students from the 2008-2013 cohort before their exams had taken place, answering questions about the challenges and benefits of completing the extensive program and what they were looking forward to in the future:
Students from the 2008-2013 FPMT Masters Program cohort sit for their final exams, 2013. Photo courtesy of www.facebook.com/mpretreat.
What do you hope to gain from the culminating one-year retreat?
Marina: I really hope to be able to integrate some of the things we’ve learned during the Masters Program into myself, to gain deeper understanding of the Dharma and of myself, and to set the basis to stabilize and start transforming my mind at a deeper level, a task that I hope will not only be done during the retreat but will continue for the rest of my life. As I see it, it’s the only way to effectively be of benefit to others.
Yumi: I hope to be able to develop some inner qualities that can be really used to help others.
Ven. Tiziana: I feel the need now to have more time to reflect on what I have been studying. Reflection and meditation are essential to gain experience of what we have learned. I am feeling very fortunate to have this rare opportunity.
Jacob: The opportunity to really be in a perfect environment for meditation, and the chance to try and really become this Dharma that we’ve been studying.
Hans: The integration at a deeper level of some of the subjects we’ve studied, and an increased wish to do long retreats.
Masters Program students are now making preparations for their one-year retreat. As part of the preparations, seven of the students have created a fundraising campaign to make it possible for them to be supported during their retreat. So far they have raised €37,800 (US$50,800).
After Masters Program students successfully complete their retreat, they graduate from the program and are then eligible to apply to become FPMT registered teachers. As reported in “The Need for Qualified Teachers” (Mandala April-June 2013), FPMT registered teachers serve as much-needed instructors at FPMT centers around the world, offering authentic Dharma instruction and helping fulfill the wishes of Lama Zopa Rinpoche for education within FPMT. Several resident teachers in FPMT centers today were trained in the FPMT Masters Program’s first cohort, including Don Handrick, Thubten Norbu Ling, US; Sixte Vinçotte, Institut Vajra Yogini, France; Emily Hsu, Gyalwa Gyatso Buddhist Center, US; and Wai Cheong Kok, Vajrayana Institute, Australia.
Masters Program graduates also serve in various other roles to support FPMT education programs, such as teaching assistants, tutors, and coordinators for Masters and Basic Programs, both residential and online, and several teach Discovering Buddhism.
To learn more about the fundraising campaign to finance Masters Program students on their one-year retreats, visit their webpage: Support the rEvolution. You can also connect with the students on their Facebook page.
Mandala brings you news 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.
Yangsi Rinpoche, Maitripa College, Portland, Oregon, US, February 2009. Photo by Marc Sakamoto.
Founder and president of Maitripa College Yangsi Rinpoche talks about the development of mindfulness in the August-September 2007 issue of Mandala:
In order to have a faultless practice of calm abiding, we need to develop very strong concentration supported by very strong mindfulness and wisdom. Wisdom in this case refers to the function of mind called introspection, which acts as a kind of security guard for the mind – watching for faults or weaknesses that may arise in our concentration. We should train in the mindfulness possessing three qualities. Our mindfulness must be able to remember the aspect of our object of concentration. It must have the ability to hold that aspect, and it must not be distracted by other objects.
You should seek to develop a concentration that is stable and lasting. In order to be able to bring this about, mindfulness is very important. Of course, even in terms of our ordinary perception, every primary mind is accompanied by five determining factors, one of which is mindfulness. …
From Mandala August-September 2007