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Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche near Lawudo Retreat Center, Nepal, 1970. Photo by Terry Clifford and courtesy of Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive.
We are so pleased to share FPMT International Office’s Annual Review 2021: Sharing and Preserving the Dharma in a Changing World. The year 2021 continued to bring many uncertainties, fears, threats, and changes to the world in which we live. As evidenced by this year’s online annual report, despite the challenges, we continued our work to help fulfill the wishes of FPMT’s founders Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche. This includes activities such as offering access to Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s precious teachings, helping keep the international community connected and informed, providing guidance and structure to our affiliates, facilitating charitable giving to many worthy initiatives, and disseminating the Dharma around the world.
Please join us in this overview of some of our more notable accomplishments as an office and organization this past year. You will also find new valuable advice from Lama Zopa Rinpoche for the entire organization, an inspiring and personal letter from CEO Ven. Roger Kunsang, and a photo gallery of some of this year’s many activities and achievements.
Please view our 2021 annual report and join us in rejoicing in another year of helping to actualize Lama Yeshe’s and Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s wishes for the FPMT organization and the world.
Please note, the FPMT Annual Review 2021 is available only online:
fpmt.org/fpmt/annual-review
FPMT International Office is Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s office and works daily to achieve its mission of “preserving and spreading Mahayana Buddhism worldwide by creating opportunities to listen, reflect, meditate, practice, and actualize the unmistaken teachings of the Buddha, and based on that experience, spread the Dharma to sentient beings.”
Lama Zopa Rinpoche blessing a goat saved from the butcher that now lives at the Animal Liberation Sanctuary, Khachoe Ghakyil Ling, Nepal, 2020. Photo by Ven. Lobsang Sherab.
Throughout the year, FPMT International Office offers a gift giving option that raises support for a few of our Charitable Projects.
Example of Give a Gift e-card
Contributions, which you make on behalf of someone else, can be made to social projects in India and Nepal; offerings to Sangha; the building of new stupas, statues, and other holy objects; and showing kindness to vulnerable animals.
International Office in return provides a gift card to you that can be personalized with the names of the giver and recipient, and a short highlight about the benefits of the project supported. These cards are offered in print for mailing and also as digital e-cards that can be emailed.
Since 2015, the Give a Gift That Helps Others program has raised US$15,303 for the Social Services Fund, Supporting Ordained Sangha Fund, Holy Objects Fund, and Animal Liberation Fund, and surely brought smiles to grateful recipients.
You can Give a Gift That Helps Others through the FPMT website:
https://fpmt.org/projects/fpmt/give-a-gift/
Lama Zopa Rinpoche at Kopan Monastery, November 2020. Photo by Ven. Lobsang Sherab.
2020 presented new and profound challenges around the world and the FPMT organization was no exception. FPMT International Office, also known as Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s office, adapted to the new pandemic reality and continued our work to help fulfill the wishes of FPMT’s founders Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche. We assisted efforts to actualize Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s vast vision for the organization and supported 114 centers and forty-seven study groups in thirty-nine countries. We kept thousands of students connected to Rinpoche, the global FPMT community, and opportunities to learn and practice Dharma.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche—who usually tours the globe each year, visiting FPMT centers, projects, and services—has remained at Kopan Monastery in Nepal since March 2020. Rinpoche continuously engages in beneficial activates and that remains unchanged. But instead of giving teachings in front of large groups of students, Rinpoche offered ninety recorded video teachings from his room at Kopan during 2020 and also took part in an incredible number of pujas to help protect from and mitigate the harm of the novel coronavirus, as well as many other auspicious and beneficial activities.
We offer an account of our work this year in the FPMT International Office Annual Review 2020: Transforming Challenges into the Path. In it, you will find an overview of Rinpoche’s activities in 2020 and highlights of International Office’s work on behalf of Rinpoche and all in the FPMT organization. These highlights include updates on new Dharma materials, translations, and programs; news on activities supporting FPMT centers, projects, and services; and reports on the charitable projects overseen by the office, which offered more than US$3.7 million in 2020. We also share updates from FPMT Inc. CEO Ven. Roger Kunsang and the FPMT Inc. Board of Directors.
The Annual Review also shares new advice from Rinpoche. Given the great difficulties of our time, Rinpoche’s advice is priceless and so relevant. For too long we have focused our energy on trying to fix the outside world to ease our discomfort and suffering, Rinpoche explains. But if we don’t give priority to working on changing and developing our inner world through learning and practicing Dharma, we will not see any beneficial results—our efforts will go nowhere and our suffering will not end.
May we take a moment as an international community of Dharma practitioners to rejoice in all the ways we are transforming our current problems and obstacles into the path to enlightenment. May the merits we accumulate from rejoicing be dedicated so that we become most helpful to all beings and continue our work to fulfill the wishes of our Spiritual Director, Lama Zopa Rinpoche.
We invite you to read FPMT Annual Review 2020: Transforming Challenges into the Path, now available in an online format. Please note, the FPMT Annual Review 2020 is available only online:
https://fpmt.org/fpmt/annual-review/annual-review-2020
FPMT International Office is Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s office and works daily to achieve its mission of “preserving and spreading Mahayana Buddhism worldwide by creating opportunities to listen, reflect, meditate, practice, and actualize the unmistaken teachings of the Buddha, and based on that experience, spread the Dharma to sentient beings.”
Lama Zopa Rinpoche and Khadro-la, Kopan Monastery, July 1, 2020. Photo by Ven. Lobsang Sherab.
In our July FPMT International Office e-News we bring you news about:
- The special long life puja offered to Lama Zopa Rinpoche
- New books by Lama Zopa Rinpoche
- Heart Sutrathon on FPMT’s International Sangha Day
- The Happy Toolbox for Kids
….and more!
Have the e-News translated into your native language by using our convenient translation facility located on the right-hand side of the page.
The FPMT International Office e-News comes from your FPMT International Office. Visit our subscribe page to receive the FPMT International Office News directly in your email box.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche recording one of his recent video teachings from his room at Kopan Monastery, Nepal, April 2020. Photo by Ven. Tenzin Tsomo.
The June FPMT International Office e-News is ready for you!
This month we bring you news about:
- Rinpoche Helping Us to Practice Dharma Now
- How the FPMT Organization Began
- Helping You Become an Inner Professional
- FPMT Charitable Projects
…and more!
Have the e-News translated into your native language by using our convenient translation facility located on the right-hand side of the page.
The FPMT International Office e-News comes from your FPMT International Office. Visit our subscribe page to receive the FPMT International Office News directly in your email box.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche making water offerings, Kopan Monastery, Nepal, April 2020. Photo by Ven. Roger Kunsang.
We hope you enjoy our May FPMT International Office e-News.
This month you’ll find news about:
- Now is the Time to Practice Dharma
- How the Merit Box Helped Centers in Need
- New e-Books
- How you can help the Spanish Translation Service
…and more!
Have the e-News translated into your native language by using our convenient translation facility located on the right-hand side of the page.
The FPMT International Office e-News comes from your FPMT International Office. Visit our subscribe page to receive the FPMT International Office News directly in your email box.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche reading Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive’s newly released Big Love: The Life and Teachings of Lama Yeshe, Kopan Monastery, Nepal, April 2020. Photo by Ven. Roger Kunsang.
We hope you enjoy our April FPMT International Office e-News, out now!
This month we bring you news about:
- Why Lama Zopa Rinpoche is teaching regularly (on video) at this time
- Our Annual Review 2019: Coming Together to Practice Dharma
- How FPMT centers are continuing to serve during the pandemic
*New* – when you hover your cursor over images in the e-News, now you will see the message “click to view full sized image.”
Have the e-News translated into your native language by using our convenient translation facility located on the right-hand side of the page.
The FPMT International Office e-News comes from your FPMT International Office. Visit our subscribe page to receive the FPMT International Office News directly in your email box.
In these difficult times, it is especially important to remember the powerful practice of rejoicing. “Among the virtues, rejoicing is the best, because it is the easiest one to practice. It simply involves our mind thinking, and the merit we accumulate is infinite,” Lama Zopa Rinpoche explains in the teaching “Rejoicing Is the Best” (published by the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive in May 2016).
International Office, also called Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s office, helps fulfill the vision of FPMT’s founders Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche, assists with the actualization of Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s vast vision for the FPMT organization, and supports 165 centers, projects, and services in 40 countries that comprise the international FPMT network.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche during visit to bless all the beings in the Caspian Sea, Russia, October 2019. Photo by Ven. Lobsang Sherab.
“Billions of thanks for your kindness, for working for, volunteering at, and supporting in various ways FPMT centers, projects, and services,” Lama Zopa Rinpoche writes in this year’s annual review.
“The main benefit of the centers is to offer Dharma teachings, teaching compassion; teaching from where suffering comes and from where happiness comes; teaching about karma, about how to stop negative karma and how to practice virtuous actions, which cause all the happiness up to enlightenment: the happiness of this life, the happiness of future lives, the ultimate happiness of liberation from samsara, and then the peerless happiness of enlightenment, which is everlasting happiness, with total cessation of the obscurations and completion of the realizations (sang gye).
“Achieving enlightenment is especially to liberate all the sentient beings from the oceans of samsaric suffering forever and lead them to peerless happiness, with cessation of the gross and subtle defilements and completion of the realizations. This is most important. This is what sentient beings need; this is their most important need.”
In addition to advice from Rinpoche, the FPMT Annual Review 2019 includes updates from FPMT Inc. CEO Ven. Roger Kunsang and Board of Directors Chair Andrew Haynes. We also share an overview of Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s tireless Dharma activities and highlights of International Office’s work on behalf of Rinpoche and all in the FPMT organization.
May we take a moment as an international community of Dharma practitioners to rejoice in all the ways we have come together to practice Dharma and fulfill the wishes of our Spiritual Director, Lama Zopa Rinpoche. May the merits we accumulate from rejoicing be dedicated so that we become most helpful to all beings.
We invite you to read FPMT Annual Review 2019: Coming Together to Practice Dharma, now available online in eZine and PDF formats. (Please note, the FPMT Annual Review 2019 is available in digital format only.)
https://fpmt.org/fpmt/annual-review/#archive
See photo highlights from Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s 2019:
https://fpmt.org/teachers/zopa/gallery/#2019
FPMT International Office is Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s office and works daily to achieve its mission of “preserving and spreading Mahayana Buddhism worldwide by creating opportunities to listen, reflect, meditate, practice, and actualize the unmistaken teachings of the Buddha, and based on that experience, spread the Dharma to sentient beings.”
Geshe Tenzin Loden (Institut Vajra Yogini, France), Lama Zopa Rinpoche, Domo Geshe Rinpoche, and Geshe Tenzin Tenphel (Istituto Lama Tsong Khapa, Italy), South India, February 2020. Photo by Ven. Roger Kunsang.
Welcome to the March FPMT International Office e-News!
This month we bring you news about:
- New Page with Resources for the Coronavirus Pandemic
- Prayers and Practices for the Benefit of All
- New Issue of Mandala magazine!
- LRZTP 8 Concludes, LRZTP 9 is Prepared
…and more.
Have the e-News translated into your native language by using our convenient translation facility located on the right-hand side of the page.
The FPMT International Office e-News comes from your FPMT International Office. Visit our subscribe page to receive the FPMT International Office News directly in your email box.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche at Kopan Monastery, Nepal, March 2020. Photo by Ven. Lobsang Sherab.
In these challenging and anxious times, FPMT International Office offers our prayers and best wishes to all who are navigating uncertainty and change during the coronavirus pandemic.
We have created a page of resources and advice related to this crisis in order to make it as easy as possible for you to find recommended practices, prayers, online study and practice resources, and news about Lama Zopa Rinpoche and from around the FPMT organization.
This page will be updated as new advice and news become available and should be consulted as an up-to-date resource for Dharma practice during the time of this pandemic.
Find advice from Lama Zopa Rinpoche, Dharma study materials, and other updates on “Resources for the Coronavirus Pandemic” page on FPMT.org:
https://fpmt.org/fpmt/announcements/resources-for-coronavirus-pandemic/
Lama Zopa Rinpoche is the spiritual director of the Foundation for the Preservation of Mahayana Tradition (FPMT), a Tibetan Buddhist organization dedicated to the transmission of the Mahayana Buddhist tradition and values worldwide through teaching, meditation and community service.
His Holiness the Dalai Lama recently met with Lama Zopa Rinpoche, with Ven. Roger Kunsang, India, January 2020. Photo courtesy of the Office of His Holiness the Dalai Lama.
Welcome to the February FPMT International Office e-News.
This month we bring you:
- Warm Losar (Tibetan New Year) Greetings!
- Reminder of Rinpoche’s Schedule
- News of Action Needed with your Merit Box
- FPMT Service Seminar News
- News of an Honour Awarded to an FPMT Director
…and more!
Have the e-News translated into your native language by using our convenient translation facility located on the right-hand side of the page.
The FPMT International Office e-News comes from your FPMT International Office. Visit our subscribe page to receive the FPMT International Office News directly in your email box.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche, Bodhgaya, India, January 2020. Photo by Ven. Roger Kunsang.
In the January FPMT International Office e-News, we bring you news about:
- The Official Long Life Puja for Lama Zopa Rinpoche
- Rejoicing in Another Year of Animal Liberation
- A New Translation of the FPMT Ethical Policy
…and more!
Have the e-News translated into your native language by using our convenient translation facility located on the right-hand side of the page.
The FPMT International Office e-News comes from your FPMT International Office. Visit our subscribe page to receive the FPMT International Office News directly in your email box.