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Advice from Lama Zopa Rinpoche
“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.”
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Lama Zopa Rinpoche replied to a student who had concerns about health and having given back their ordinations vows, which led to them feeling very isolated and depressed and being unable to study or practice:
“If you can study lam-rim, that should be the main teaching – just like the wandering ascetics, the monks whose only belonging is the Lamrim Chenmo. They don’t have anything else, don’t carry anything but the lam-rim, so like that. So that is the main one to study, to meditate on – the lam-rim. You have to actualize this, otherwise we will suffer. Without realizations on guru devotion, renunciation, bodhichitta, right view and particularly tantra, you will be suffering in samsara endlessly. Do you want to do that? I don’t think so.
You should know it’s not just practice for this lifetime. The practice becomes preparation for all your lives, so eons, eons, eons, all your future lives, to go to a pure land, then enlightenment, to be free from samsara, enlightenment and then to benefit all sentient beings and enlighten them. Don’t think you are alone.” …
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Lama Zopa Rinpoche typed up this advice on his iPad, and asked that it be made widely available:
“Practicing patience doesn’t mean that if someone asks you to immediately kill a gigantic lady, the size of Mount Meru or the size of a louse, you do everything that the person asks. It is not like that! What it means is that in your heart you feel or think that this person is the most kind, the most precious, the most dear one. This is what guru Buddha has taught – you need to practice patience with somebody, because the person who is called ‘enemy,’ the one who has anger towards you, then if you practice patience towards that person and don’t get angry back, then that person gives you the most precious thing, enlightenment, the state of omniscient mind. With that person you can bring the numberless sentient beings to enlightenment, free them from the oceans of samsaric sufferings and bring them to full enlightenment. So this becomes the reason to practice patience.”
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“The whole point of our FPMT education programs is not to produce ‘sharp minds’ but to ‘subdue the mind.’ Between an intelligent, sharp mind and a good heart, a good heart is the most important. Without a good heart it is only possible to become an arhat. Good heart means subduing the mind.
Subduing the mind is the whole essence, as then enlightenment is possible. The ultimate purpose of life, the reason for living, why we eat and drink, sleep, work, and do listening, reflecting, and meditating is to free the numberless suffering sentient beings from each suffering realm and bring them not only to ultimate happiness, liberation, but to full enlightenment. “
Lama Zopa Rinpoche recorded the following conversation with a student directly on his iPad in November 2013. The student was sharing the news that gold was being offered to the spire of the Mahabodhi Temple in Bodhgaya, and Rinpoche was telling the student to rejoice, as jealousy only causes suffering, not happiness.
“Tell people this: hell, enlightenment, samsara, nirvana, every day happiness and suffering, come from one’s own mind. Thinking this way leads to hell, thinking that way leads to enlightenment. Every day happiness and suffering as well as samsara and nirvana all depend upon what concept we generate.
So therefore, it becomes so important to always generate positive concepts, positive ways of thinking. This is Dharma practice.”
Rinpoche recently finished a brand new teaching and translation on the benefits of offering to stupas – Padmasambhava’s Instruction on Offerings to Stupas. It is quite an amazing, monumental work, which took Rinpoche more than two months to complete, and which Rinpoche would like to be used far and wide. The text details the benefits of circumambulating, and prostrating, making offerings, and offering service to stupas. The booklet is available in eBook, booklet letter, and A4 formats as well as in Italian.
Holy objects, including stupas, are very important to Rinpoche and the FPMT for enabling students to create merit on their path to enlightenment. Building 100,000 stupas around the world is one of Rinpoche’s Vast Visions. Please enjoy the very inspiring collection of information and photos of the 48 stupas completed so far!
You will find more advice from Rinpoche about holy objects below.
“The initial reason why people come to a Dharma center is not for the food but for the teachings and meditations; they are a little bored with the lives they have and are looking for something new. However, the conditions at the center, and especially the food, are a very important support for the teachings and meditations. Sometimes in the past when I would teach on impermanence, the hells and the eight worldly dharmas, people would get scared and leave; but if the food was good, they would stay. That’s one way to keep them!
So I will explain a short meditation for cooks.” …
Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s recent pithy advice, reported by Ven. Roger Kunsang (@rogerkunsang) via Twitter:
“What makes death very difficult – worldly concerns, the 8 worldly dharmas , attachment! What helps – good heart!”
“Don’t let personal problems become center problems or other’s problems!”
“When someone is making you angry, don’t put the practice off to later, practice patience now! Later may never come.”
“Your Guru gives you teachings and then puts you in the situation so you have to practice that… lojong.”
Lama Zopa Rinpoche has been commenting very specifically this year about the need for FPMT students to actualize the lam-rim teachings and achieve realizations. Rinpoche’s main wishes are to organize a special group of lam-rim retreatants and to encourage others to follow a year-long lam-rim meditation schedule:
”Now what is needed are people who will sacrifice their lives, as they did in India, Tibet and Nepal, not just to study the Dharma like at a college or university, but to actualize the teachings in a monastery or isolated place. In Tibet, the mountains were full of caves like ants’ nests, where people would go to practice without distraction This is how Buddhism really comes alive – when it is not just words, not just scholars, but really living Buddhism. When study and realization come together, Buddhism will really last. Wow, then like an ocean in the heart and the mind, it will spread and be preserved. Otherwise, if it is just like learning in a college, it won’t last long. That’s like throwing tsampa on water: It stays on top and doesn’t sink – it is shallow. For Buddhism to really be preserved in the West as it was in Tibet and India, we need people who will sacrifice their lives to completely actualize in the heart what was explained by the Buddha We need to realize all of this in our hearts in the West.”
In 2007, Lama Zopa Rinpoche shared what he and some FPMT students did to benefit the millions of turkeys that are killed in the U.S. for Thanksgiving Day. Rinpoche has long been a proponent of vegetarianism and thanks anyone who works to reduce the amount of meat they eat. Rinpoche suggests two practices that are beneficial for our friends the turkeys.
“I made a divination as to what would be the most beneficial thing to do for the turkeys and found that Medicine Buddha puja came out best, so the Sangha at Kachoe Dechen Ling, Fabrizio Pallotti and I did an extensive Medicine Buddha puja for them.
“Another possibility could have been for us to do prostrations to the Thirty-five Buddhas, reciting these buddhas’ names with prostrations, to purify the negative karma of the turkeys and all other sentient beings, including the people who killed the turkeys, but in this case it came out better to do Medicine Buddha puja.”
From Mandala February-March 2008.
The following advice was given by Lama Zopa Rinpoche in March 2011 at Land of Medicine Buddha, California, USA:
In the prayers before teachings, it is important to always include the powerful prayer to dispel obstacles for the center, which comes at the end of the Heart Sutra. The prayer is called “Extensive Dispelling of Hindrances (according to the Heart Sutra)”. Kirti Tsenshab Rinpoche recited this very short prayer, which is very good to recite at the end of the Heart Sutra. Also, when a great lama comes, this prayer should be recited to dispel all harm for the centers, the lama, and everybody there. If the lama recites it, that is so good for the center, such a rare opportunity.
Regarding Lama Chöpa Jorchö, it seems sometimes centers don’t want to do all the additions, so these are the essential things that are really, really good to do, and what I am recommending as a minimum*:
- Take the bodhisattva and tantric vows (after verse 37).
- Definitely need to do the “Special Request for the Three Great Purposes” as part of the mandala offering, most especially the line about requesting to pacify all outer and inner obstacles. Almost everyone has obstacles to practice Dharma, outer and inner obstacles, so this prayer of the three great purposes pacifies outer and inner obstacles. This is regarded as very important.
- Then it is good to do nine rounds of Migtsema recitation and here you have to do the visualization for purification as part of the requests: “five-colored nectar beams flow forth from the Guru’s holy body and mind and those of all sentient beings.” In Kopan, they always include this when doing Lama Chöpa.
- Recite the “Nine Attitudes of Guru Devotion.” This is very important always to do because so many people work in the center so this is to remind them, so they can rejoice, feel happy, that it is a great thing. Also, if they are having problems, having negative thoughts towards the Guru, then this is like an atomic bomb for that; reciting, thinking about, and meditating on the “Nine Attitudes of Guru Devotion” can immediately pacify that.
- Chant the tonglen verse (verse 95). This is so people can meditate on the meaning; it gives the chance to meditate.
So it would be extremely good to always include as a minimum these practices each time you do Lama Chöpa at the centers and of course it is best to do all (or as many as possible) of the additions including rejoicing and Samayavajra and/or Vajrasattva. Especially when so many people come to the center, because then they learn by the way, so it is so good. It’s like food, having many different salads to choose from.
With much love and prayers,
Lama Zopa
*These practices are marked in the Lama Chöpa Jorchö text itself along with other optional practices highly recommended by Lama Zopa Rinpoche.
Learn more about Lama Zopa Rinpoche, spiritual director of the Foundation for the Preservation of Mahayana Tradition (FPMT), and Rinpoche’s vision for a better world. Sign up to receive news and updates.