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Advice from Lama Zopa Rinpoche
His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Lama Zopa Rinpoche, Blue Mountains, Australia, June 2015. Photo by Ven. Thubten Kunsang.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche has recently said that in order to purify our karma students can do the following practices dedicated for the health and long life of His Holiness the Dalai Lama:
- “Prayer to Guru Rinpoche to Clear Away Obstacles on the Path” (“Barche Lamsel”): the long or the short version
As many people have already been doing and continue to do the long Kshitigarbha mantra to pacify earthquakes, they can also dedicate this practice to His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s long life.
His Holiness is currently resting after receiving treatment at the Mayo Clinic in the United States. He will resume his teaching schedule in March 2016.
On February 4, His Holiness recorded a video message for Losar, Tibetan New Year. His Holiness speaks to Tibetans in Tibet and in exile as well as friends and supporters worldwide from Rochester, Minnesota, US. His Holiness speaks in Tibetan with English subtitles.
More information, photos and updates about FPMT spiritual director Lama Zopa Rinpoche can be found on Rinpoche’s webpage on FPMT.org. If you’d like to receive news of Lama Zopa Rinpoche and FPMT via email, sign up to FPMT News.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche on the beach in California, November 2015. Photo by Ven. Thubten Kunsang.
“Lama Zopa Rinpoche has been bringing it up many, many times and feels that this is extremely important: it is inevitable an earthquake will happen in California and according to Rinpoche it seems next year is quite possible. Rinpoche has checked and below are some things that need to happen as soon as possible,” Ven. Roger Kunsang wrote in an email that went out to FPMT centers, projects and services in California in early November.
“The below needs to be completed by February 2016,” he wrote:
- 1,800,000 recitations of the long Kshitigarbha mantra done as part of a Kshitigarbha practice.
- Taking the Eight Mahayana precepts 300 times.
- Performing the extensive Medicine Buddha puja – ongoing.
- Reading of the Tengyur four times – to be done at Sera Je Monastery.
“We need to accumulate 163,099 mantras weekly – 23,300 daily – by January 31 in order to meet the goal,” said Ven. Tenzin Tsomo at Land of Medicine Buddha. By Tuesday, November 17, about 8,200 long Kshitigarbha mantras have been accumulated.
Kshitigarbha
The advice was given to Bay Area students to do these practices, but Rinpoche said that students around the world can also participate with the mantra accumulation, sending in their counts. “Basically, we need a lot of people to help contribute mantras. To give you an idea, if everyone is willing to commit 21 mantras a day, we still need over 1,000 people,” Ven. Tsomo said.
FPMT Bay Area centers have created a website with more information and ways to make pledges and report mantra recitations; contribute to the Tengyur recitations; and report the taking of the Eight Mahayana precepts. For more and to participate go to:
www.pacifyearthquakes.org
Lama Zopa Rinpoche compiled a new Kshitigarbha practice that is available as a free PDF download for people to do who want to contribute their recitations of the Kshitigarbha long mantra. There is also an MP3 of Rinpoche chanting the long Kshitigarbha mantra.
Rinpoche said that the dedication for all the above practices should be to pacify all earthquakes in California, Nepal and worldwide as well as the normal FPMT dedications.
More information, photos and updates about FPMT spiritual director Lama Zopa Rinpoche can be found on Rinpoche’s webpage. If you’d like to receive news of Lama Zopa Rinpoche and FPMT via email, sign up to FPMT News.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche at Land of Medicine Buddha, California, US, October 2015. Photo by Ven. Thubten Kunsang.
After returning to the United States from South America in early October, Lama Zopa Rinpoche visited Land of Medicine Buddha where he gave this dynamic, seven-minute talk on the significance of Dharma centers.
You can listen to the audio recording of this advice by clicking on the player or clicking on this link:
https://fpmt.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/22/why-we-need-dharma-centers-audio/151006-011-LZR_LC-talk-part-3c_Dharma-Centres.mp3
This audio was recorded during Lama Chopa tsog at Land of Medicine Buddha, Soquel, California, US, on October 6, 2015.
More information, photos and updates about FPMT spiritual director Lama Zopa Rinpoche can be found on Rinpoche’s webpage. If you’d like to receive news of Lama Zopa Rinpoche and FPMT via email, sign up to FPMT News.
Offerings and scores of images of the 35 Buddhas of Confession in Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s room at Buddha Amitabha Pure Land, Washington, US, June 2015. Photo by Chris Majors.
A student wrote Lama Zopa Rinpoche:
You asked me to read an article about how to transform depression into the path and also to concentrate on purification practices like confession to the Thirty-five Buddhas. I did not faithfully do them every day. However, I would like to thank you as you told me my depression and sufferings are a result of purification, of me trying to do something about Dharma.
Since I took refuge, everything in my life has gone wrong: my relationships, my health and my ability to work. I woke up each day and was fearful, wondering how I could cope with another day. However, while all these problems were manifesting, I had incredible opportunities to do retreat and to meet with a lot of holy beings who guided me personally. I also had, and still have, the opportunity to study Dharma. The most important thing, I feel, is that I am glad that I did not give up my lama.
Now after all these years of things going wrong, I suddenly realized that I am happy that all these have happened. It became so clear that everything—friends, relatives, this world and even my body—are all sufferings. I don’t think this is renunciation, but at least now I am recovered from depression and have started to reclaim my life: to eat right, to sleep right, and to start to have the energy and mind to take care of my personal household matters and work hard. Anyway, I just want to thank you and tell you that I truly am happy that I had all of these sufferings. They groomed me for who I am now
Rinpoche responded:
My very dear, precious, kind, wish-fulfilling one,
Thank you very much for your kind letter and I’m so happy that you realized all the difficulties you have been through are positive.
Generally, the whole lam-rim is thought transformation, but there is thought transformation separate from the lam-rim. That thought transformation is when you utilize obstacles to practicing Dharma on the path to enlightenment–then you don’t have obstacles to practice Dharma! You use any difficulties like this for sentient beings to achieve enlightenment, not just temporary happiness and for yourself to achieve enlightenment. It’s unbelievable, most unbelievable and makes your life—even your death—most beneficial for sentient beings. This is what really we should practice.
The Kadampa Geshe Khamlungpa said among his advices: “This present small suffering being experienced purifies past negative karma (collected from beginingless past lives). Therefore, there will be happiness in the future. Therefore, rejoice in the suffering.” This means that experiencing suffering is very good, positive—that’s what he is saying. This is Kadampa Geshe Khamlungpa’s advice. So, all the usual complaints against you then are very positive.
Any praise, any good things are a cause for delusion to rise, so that’s no good and the opposite to renunciation. The bodhisattva Togme Sangpo has advised that whether you experience good or whether you experience bad, it’s all to use for enlightenment. It all depends on which label you chose to give. If you give a bad label to everything, everything becomes bad, becomes lung. So it’s very, very, very good that you took everything, that you understood everything as a way to achieve enlightenment. The way you think helps the mind to be more satisfied; everything brings peace of mind; everything becomes Dharma. That’s very wise; that’s REAL wise. Even for top political people in the world, I don’t think they know this. Take it as positive.
Thank you very much. Have a good life.
With much love and prayers,
Lama Zopa
Scribed by Ven. Sarah Thresher, Root Institute, Bodhgaya, India, February 2015. Edited by Mandala for inclusion on FPMT.org.
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.
One of hundreds of buddha statues at Buddha Amitabha Pure Land, Washington, US, July 2015. Photo by Chris Majors.
A student was going through relationship problems and Lama Zopa Rinpoche offered some advice on how to think while experiencing them:
All the problems are very good because they purify negative karma accumulated in the past. All those difficulties and problems in your life purify past very heavy negative karmas collected in many past lifetimes. And, by purifying those, you will experience much happiness in the future like the sun shining. So, it’s positive.
Remember, you received so many teachings for a long time, and especially on Chöd practice. Chöd should be not just chanting, but practice, especially dealing with all these problems that you are experiencing, difficulties you can utilize as the quickest way to achieve enlightenment for yourself and then free the numberless sentient beings from oceans of samsaric suffering and bring them to peerless happiness, the state of omniscience.
[Contemplate:]Should even all the beings of the three realms without exception
Become angry at me, humiliate, criticize, threaten, or even kill me,
I seek your blessings not to be agitated, but to complete the perfection of patience
That works for their benefit in response to their harm.
There are also some teachings on patience I have given at Root Institute I will send you.
The essence is what is explained in Lama Chöpa:
Even if the environment and beings are filled with the fruits of negativity,
And unwished for sufferings pour down like rain,
I seek your blessings to take these miserable conditions as a path
By seeing them as causes to exhaust the results of my negative karma.
Please take time to think of the meaning.
Scribed by Ven. Sarah Thresher, Root Institute, Bodhgaya, India, March 2015. Edited by Mandala for inclusion on FPMT.org.
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.
Hundreds of tsa-tsas at Buddha Amitabha Pure Land, Washington, US, June 2015. Photo by Chris Majors.
A student completed Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s advice of accumulating 200,000 Vajrasattva mantras and wrote Rinpoche to let him know. Rinpoche responded with thanks and teachings on the power of bodhichitta:
My very dear, most precious, most kind, wish-fullfilling one,
Thank you a billion, million, zillion times for following my advice and doing a 200,000-Vajrasattva retreat and for now doing OM MANI PADME HUM. I’m sure that you must be doing it with a bodhichitta motivation to free sentient beings – numberless hell beings, hungry ghosts, animals, humans, suras and auras – from oceans of samsaric suffering and bring them to the state of omniscience, sangye, elimination of all the obscurations and completion of all the realizations. In that case, with each OM MANI PADME HUM and Vajrasattva mantra, you are purifying the obscurations created over beginningless rebirths and collecting more than skies of merit.
Lama Atisha said in the Lamp of the Path to Enlightenment, quoting the Sutra Requested by Pachin [verses 16-17]:
“If somebody offers buddha fields, buddha worlds, equaling the sand grains of the river Ganga (here, ‘equaling the number of sand grains of the river Ganga,’ when it talks about the benefits of bodhichitta, ‘the river Ganga’ doesn’t mean the Indian river Ganga, it means the Pacific Ocean, the sand grains of the Pacific Ocean) filled up with the seven different jewels like gold, diamonds, sapphires, etc., and offers that to the buddhas, but then somebody puts the palms together at the heart and simply generates bodhichitta, this offering is greater and it has no limit.”
What it is saying is, for example, if you offer buddha worlds filled with the seven different jewels equal to the number of sand grains in your hand, even that merit is beyond our understanding. We can’t figure that merit out. That is unbelievable, unbelievable – most unbelievable merit. Now, here, it is talking about buddha worlds equaling the number of sand grains of the Pacific Ocean filled up with seven different jewels, so there’s no way we can understand the merit. It’s amazing, amazing, amazing, amazing, amazing.
Now, somebody simply puts their hands at the heart and thinks: “May I achieve full enlightenment in order to free all the sentient beings from the oceans of samsaric suffering and bring them to a state of omniscience.” This creates more than skies of merit – much, much, much, greater than the previous example. The merit from the previous example becomes very small by comparison, even though it’s beyond our conception.
Therefore, you have so much to rejoice about in this life.
Thank you so much,
With much love and prayers,
Lama Zopa
Scribed by Ven. Sarah Thresher, Root Institute, Bodhgaya, India, March 2015. Edited by Mandala for inclusion on FPMT.org.
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.
One of hundreds of buddha statues in Lama Zopa Rinopche’s altar room at Buddha Amitabha Pure Land, Washington, US, July 2015. Photo by Chris Majors.
A student asked Lama Zopa Rinpoche a question:
I’m doing my best for my parents and family at this juncture, but we’re going through a very difficult time now. My dad’s business failed and has since chalked up a huge debt. He can’t afford to pay the debt; anytime now, once the bank seizes the property, we’ll be homeless. They are already in their late 60s, turning 70. I don’t think they can face the failure and take it in stride. I’m so sad and stressed out that I can’t do much for them. I’m watching over them for fear that they have suicidal thoughts.
Rinpoche responded:
My very dear, most precious, most kind, wish-fulfilling one,
I got your emails. If you tell your father that there is no need to commit suicide, that I dedicate all my merits to him and to the family, that’s like money, good karma, good luck. He should read, if he can, the Vajra Cutter Sutra three times. Also, I have made prayers. If you can, pass that message to your father, even though he doesn’t like Buddhism or Buddhists. But just pass along the message.
Courage is so important. Committing suicide when some problem comes and you don’t know how to deal with it comes from mental exaggeration. That’s a very ignorant thought that does not think about the next life, that does not allow one to think of the next life. There is continuation of consciousness. Even though the body stops, there’s a continuation of consciousness. Because we are born with suffering, that means there was life before this one. There was life before and this is the result of that life. There was suffering then, so there is suffering now. If the previous life were free from suffering, the oceans of samsaric suffering and their causes – delusion and karma – then in this life there would be no suffering, only ultimate happiness. So the suffering from beginningless lives goes back like this.
If it’s 100 percent certain you are going to go to a pure land or even a perfect human rebirth in the next life, it’s okay to die. But mostly we go to the hells, hungry ghost realm, or animal realm. The suffering there would be the greatest suffering. For example, compared to one small spark of hell fire – to describe how hot it is if it were up here – the entirety of fire from the human world put together, that hotness, is like falling snow or air conditioning. This is just an example of lower realm suffering, especially the hells. Wow, wow, wow, wow; you can’t imagine, you can’t imagine; you can’t imagine. How unbelievable it would be if you were born not in a major hell, but in a secondary one, the hell realm in lava.
So committing suicide is like deceiving yourself to immediately join with the heaviest suffering of the hells after this life. This life – even if you have those failures that are believed in in the West, that are made so much by attachment and delusion – is incredible peace. Committing suicide is like completely deceiving yourself with ignorance. Whenever suicidal thoughts come, the remedy is to think of reincarnation, the continuation of life.
With much love and prayers,
Lama Zopa
Scribed by Ven. Sarah Thresher, Root Institute, Bodhgaya, India, February 2015. Edited by Mandala for inclusion on FPMT.org.
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.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche teaching at a Minh Dang Quang Temple, a Vietnamese temple in Sydney Western suburbs of Sydney, Australia, June 2015. Photo by Ven. Roger Kunsang.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche wrote this letter to a student who had just become a nun:
My most dear, precious, kind, wish-fulfilling one,
Thank you for your kind email, I am sorry for the long delay.
You becoming a nun is unbelievable, unbelievable, unbelievable … thank you a billion, zillion times. Thank you very much. Try to know the vows and live in the vows – that is the foundation for all the path to enlightenment. That is the basis for the bodhisattva vows and the bodhisattva vows are the foundation for the tantric vows. The bodhisattva vows are to achieve enlightenment for numberless sentient beings, to free the numberless sentient beings from the oceans of samsaric suffering and bring them to full enlightenment. The tantric vows are to achieve full enlightenment as quickly as possible, even in one lifetime in degenerate times, and so you can enjoy life. This is the way to make life most happy and beneficial for all sentient beings.
Thank you very much.
With much love and prayers,
Lama Zopa
Scribed by Ven. Sarah Thresher, Root Institute, Bodhgaya, India, March 2015. Edited by Mandala for inclusion on FPMT.org.
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.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche at Lama Chopa Tsog offering in Buddha House, Australia, May 2015. Photo by Ven. Roger Kunsang.
A student wrote that she had cancer that was removed, but the surgeon said it had spread. The doctor advised getting chemotherapy. The student requested advice from Rinpoche on what she should do.
My most dear, most precious, most kind, wish-fulfilling one,
Sorry for the long delay. I checked your question and chemotherapy is very good. When you have treatment, every time when you take medicine, think that the purpose is to be able to benefit numberless sentient beings. This is what you should think even during normal times, whenever you do treatment or take medicine. That makes it – all the expenses – worthwhile.
With much love and prayers,
Lama Zopa
Scribed by Ven. Sarah Thresher, Root Institute, Bodhgaya, India, February 2015. Edited by Mandala for inclusion on FPMT.org.
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.
1000-Armed Chenrezig, Kachoe Dechen Ling, Aptos, California,November 2014. Photo by Chris Majors.
A student wrote Lama Zopa Rinpoche with a serious confession: “My forefathers have done very heinous sins, which is the major cause of suffering in our family now. My grandma’s father and his friends a long, long time ago killed a monk by forcibly driving him to jump into a river, where he drowned. That monk was passing our village to go back to Tibet after pilgrimage, but my grandma’s father and his friends stopped him on his way and took all his belongings and killed him. I am very ashamed to tell this story, but I have faith that I can stop all this suffering with the help of Rinpoche’s advice ….”
You need to do 10 x 100,000 [i.e., 1 million] OM MANI PADME HUMs urgently, not just to purify your negative karma, but also the negative karma of those who killed the monk and the whole family. Recite OM MANI PADME HUM without a distracted mind. Visualize 1000-Armed Chenrezig, huge like a mountain and radiating light. From Chenrezig beams of compassion are sent out to those family members who killed the monk, to yourself and to all your family. That’s the main thing. Then at the end of each mala, think that the beams purified all sentient beings: the numberless hell beings, numberless hungry ghosts, numberless animals, numberless humans, numberless suras and asuras. They all become Chenrezig, including your family members. As you recite OM MANI PADME HUM, mainly concentrate on your family: beams are continually emitted from Chenrezig, purifying them, and then at the end of each mala, think all sentient beings are purified and become Chenrezig. Then again, do purification; continue like that.
And if you can build one statue of 1000-Armed Chenrezig, the size should be 32 inches (80 cm), for the monk, those who killed the monk, the rest of the family and all sentient beings.
My mother used to do 50,000 mantras a day but when she was close to dying, one year before she died, she said she couldn’t do that much. Because she recited all those OM MANI PADME HUM mantras, she had more compassion than me, even though she couldn’t read even one letter because she didn’t know the Tibetan alphabet.
With much love and prayers,
Lama Zopa
Scribed by Ven. Sarah Thresher, Root Institute, Bodhgaya, India, March 2015. Edited by Mandala for inclusion on FPMT.org.
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.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche, Mahabodhi Stupa, Bodhgaya, India, March 2015. Photo by Andy Melnic.
In the past, a student of Lama Zopa Rinpoche killed his parents during a psychotic episode. Rinpoche gave him practice advice then and later the student wrote back, “These days, I do practice as you advised me to: Vajrasattva practice, prostrations to the 35 Buddhas, listening to the Sanghata Sutra, reading the Diamond Cutter Sutra. I also do Tara and the two mantras plus one hour and thirty minutes of meditation on the cushion. For the 35 Buddhas, I don’t do prostrations because of physical problems; I only do the recitation with my hands folded. Is that good enough? Also, I’m asking if I can practice tantra now or not.”
My most dear, most kind, most precious one,
One very good thing is that when you put your hands together to prostrate, visualize your body huge like a mountain range and think that you are prostrating with many bodies from all ten directions to the lam-rim merit field which has the 35 Buddhas there. Or, just to the 35 Buddhas. Or, even just to Buddha, but, the numberless direct and indirect lineage lamas; the numberless deities of four classes of tantra; the thousand buddhas of this fortunate eon; the bodhisattvas; the 16 Arhats and so forth; the dakas and dakinis and Dharma protectors are all in the Buddha whose essence is the guru. One is many and many are one. Then, visualize bodies filling all the Earth prostrating from all directions, huge bodies like a mountain range. If you have received the initiation of 1000-Armed Chenrezig, you can visualize that, if not, then just your ordinary body. If you visualize like that, you get the same merit as having done that many prostrations with that many bodies. This is specific advice from Lama Tsongkhapa – the way to collect the most extensive merit.
Regarding your question on tantra, any of the lower tantra initiations are OK. That’s very good. And I want to say billion, trillion, zillion times thanks now that you have no fear and your mind is developed and you are making your life most beneficial – especially most beneficial for your parents – not only to be free from the oceans of samsaric suffering, but also to achieve the peerless happiness of enlightenment. It is so good that you are inspiring others and also inspiring your psychiatrist to learn meditation. I wish that all the people in the world who create negative karma like this would change and make their lives better, more meaningful for those people who get killed.
With much love and prayers,
Lama Zopa
Scribed by Ven. Sarah Thresher, Root Institute, Bodhgaya, India, March 2015. Edited by Mandala for inclusion on FPMT.org.
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.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche, MAITRI Charitable Project, Bodhgaya, India, February 2015. Photo by Ven. Thubten Kunsang.
”We have achieved a lot in Dharma education and study,” Lama Zopa Rinpoche said in March 2015 while visiting Root Institute in India. “Now we have to put effort in attaining the path. I don’t mean just doing three-year retreat and counting a certain number of mantras, but attainment of the path through the lam-rim. Realizations don’t have to come from being in formal retreat. One can achieve them while working and studying with meditation on the lam-rim. One can be doing business and studying and meditating on the lam-rim. You can have a family and job and be meditating on the lam-rim. The main thing now is attainment.”
Scribed by Ven. Roger Kunsang. Edited by Mandala for inclusion on FPMT.org.
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.