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Lama Zopa Rinpoche News
Lama Zopa Rinpoche teaching at the Kopan Course, Kopan Monastery, Nepal, December 2015. Photo by Ven. Roger Kunsang.
“Whether you have time for practice or meditation or not, or to do prayers, mainly depends on your interest,” Lama Zopa Rinpoche says in Cherishing Others: The Heart of Dharma, the fourth volume in a Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive series drawn from the 24th Kopan course in 1991. “If your interest is more in parties or watching TV and other things like this, there’s a lot of time for those things. You find a lot of time for sleeping, for talking, for gossiping and things like this but you can’t find time to recite even one mala of a mantra or do one meditation on the lam-rim. It’s basically a question of which one you have more interest in.
“It’s not that time is truly existent. It’s not that it’s coming from the side of time. It’s a question of interest. It’s a question of how important you feel it is to help other sentient beings, with bodhichitta. It depends on how much you feel renunciation, renouncing the suffering of samsara, is important or how much you feel the meditations on impermanence and death, the lower realms and so on, are important. It depends on that.”
Find Cherishing Others: The Heart of Dharma on the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive: http://bit.ly/cherishing-others
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.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche cutting the cake offered for his 70th birthday at Kopan Nunnery, Nepal, December 3, 2015
All of Kopan Monastery and Nunnery’s monks and nuns offered Lama Zopa Rinpoche a cake and sang “Happy Birthday” to Rinpoche. Originally, they wanted to come up and offer a khata to Rinpoche, but Rinpoche said instead that he would go to Kopan Nunnery and offer an oral transmission to them. There, he offered an oral transmission of “Calling the Guru from Afar” and the “Four Mindfulnesses.”
Celebration of Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s 70th birthday, Kopan Nunnery, December 3, 2015
The small monks also sang “Happy Birthday.” Rinpoche cut the cake, saying the knife was like a wisdom sword cutting ignorance. Rinpoche did extensive offering practice. Then all the Kopan monks and nuns were offered a piece of cake. All of the Kopan November course students also offered Rinpoche a birthday cake, but they could not have any as they all had taken precepts.
Rinpoche arriving at Kopan Nunnery for the birthday celebration, Nepal, December 3, 2015
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 official FPMT long life puja, Kopan Monastery, December 2, 2015. Photo by Ven. Roger Kunsang.
On December 2, Ven. Roger Kunsang shared on Twitter this photo of Lama Zopa Rinpoche receiving the official FPMT long life puja at Kopan Monastery, Nepal. In the photo, specially selected dancers representing the five-colored dakinis petition the lama to remain and teach for the benefit of all.
An elaborate display of devotion towards a spiritual guide, comprising heartfelt prayers and praises, and a procession of symbolic offerings, the long life puja is one of the most moving ceremonies in Tibetan Buddhism. The purpose of the long life puja is for students to purify the mistakes that occur in relation to their teacher, and to create the causes and conditions to continue to receive benefit from that teacher for a very long time.
Rinpoche is scheduled to be in Kopan Monastery until December 5.
You can support long life pujas for His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Lama Zopa Rinpoche by making an offering to the Long Life Puja Fund.
Ven. Roger Kunsang, Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s assistant and CEO of FPMT Inc., shares Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s recent pith sayings on Ven. Roger’s Twitter page. (You can also read them on Ven. Roger’s Facebook page.)
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 via email, sign up to receive FPMT News.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche, Kopan Monastery, Nepal, November 2015. Photo by Ven. Roger Kunsang.
On December 1, Ven. Roger Kunsang shared on Twitter two new photos of Lama Zopa Rinpoche at Kopan Monastery, Nepal, where he is teaching during the annual month-long November course.
In the photo above, Rinpoche is “explaining the story of Bodha and Swayambhu stupas and their amazing, unbelievable benefits!”
Students from around the world have come to hear Rinpoche and receive his guidance, including several people from Spain, who offered Rinpoche a Basque-style beret and requested him to come and teach there soon.
Rinpoche is scheduled to be in Kopan Monastery until December 14.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche in Basque-style beret with Spanish students, Kopan Monastery, Nepal, November 2015. Photo by Ven. Roger Kunsang.
Ven. Roger Kunsang, Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s assistant and CEO of FPMT Inc., shares Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s recent pith sayings on Ven. Roger’s Twitter page. (You can also read them on Ven. Roger’s Facebook page.)
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 via email, sign up to receive FPMT News.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche, Kopan Monastery, Nepal, November 2015. Photo by Ven. Roger Kunsang.
On November 25, Ven. Roger Kunsang shared on Twitter this photo of Lama Zopa Rinpoche at Kopan Monastery “checking some of the collection of relics destined for the heart of the Maitreya statues in India.”
The statues are part of the two Maitreya Projects in Bodhgaya and Kushinagar, India.
Rinpoche has advised that all touring collections of relics that were once part of the 15-year-old Maitreya Loving Kindness Tour should be placed on permanent display for the benefit of pilgrims while the statues are under construction.
While at Kopan Monastery, Rinpoche will give teachings during the annual Kopan November course.
Ven. Roger Kunsang, Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s assistant and CEO of FPMT Inc., shares Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s recent pith sayings on Ven. Roger’s Twitter page. (You can also read them on Ven. Roger’s Facebook page.)
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 via email, sign up to receive FPMT News.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche meeting with senior monks and nuns after arriving at Kopan Monastery, Nepal, November 2015. Photo by Ven. Roger Kunsang.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche offered this advice about karma in a letter to a student, recently published on the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive (LYWA). He emphasized the importance of living in pure morality and of understanding the suffering of this life.
I would just like to inform you of a most important subject. When we die, the mind continues and the body separates. The consciousness continues or migrates in two ways. There is not a third way.
If the virtue collected is strong, the result is rebirth as a human or as one of the worldly gods, or rebirth in the pure land of a buddha, which has everything that is incredible, incredible and most beautiful. There we receive teachings from the Buddha and we see the Buddha. There, it is zillions and trillions of times more beautiful than the beach that people find beautiful in the world. It’s amazing, incredible. Once we are born there, for example, in Amitabha’s pure realm, we are never again born in hell, or in the hungry ghost or animal realms. In some pure realms we become a buddha, having complete cessation and all realizations, peerless happiness. That’s the most perfect, peerless happiness. If we’re really looking for happiness and wish to cause numberless beings to achieve this peerless happiness with higher wisdom, we can achieve this.
The other way is if negative karma is stronger, we are born in the lower realms, the evil-gone realms. If there is the cause, then we are born in hell or as a hungry ghost or an animal. It is called “evil-gone” because “evil” is the cause and “gone” is the result. If we are born in the lower realms, the suffering is most unbelievable, unbelievable, unbelievable, unbelievable, unbelievable. That result and why it is such a heavy result is because of karma, which is a Sanskrit word. The cause is a heavy negative action. For example, to give an idea, even if all the human beings’ fire is put together, a tiny fire spark of hell is 66 times hotter. Compared to one fire spark of hell, all the human fire put together is like an air conditioner, or a snowflake.
What is called karma in Sanskrit, is translated as action in Tibetan. … If we practice Dharma, that is how we can purify all those past lives’ karma, thus we don’t have to experience the result. Without Dharma it is not purified. Similarly, as a human, if we have met Dharma, our negativity can be purified. If not, then we cannot purify. …
Continue to read Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s explanation “Karma and Its Results,” part of the LYWA’s “Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s Online Advice Book”:
https://www.lamayeshe.com/advice/karma-and-its-results
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.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche, Vajrapani Institute, California, November 2015. Photo by Ven. Thubten Kunsang.
“[T]he whole thing about whether (service to others) becomes a burden or whether it becomes a pleasure for you, it depends on your attitude,” Lama Zopa Rinpoche taught at a May 2003 teaching at Institut Vajra Yogini in France. “Whether it becomes a burden or becomes pleasure, joy, to do this depends on your motivation. If you have taken it as a burden, with the motivation of self-centered mind, then there is nothing to enjoy in the life. With that motivation, with that kind of attitude everything becomes a burden in your mind; your mind doesn’t feel enjoyment, everything becomes suffering. Everything becomes problem. Nothing to enjoy in the life.
“But with the other motivation ‘I am here to serve others,’ in everyday life having that attitude, ‘I’m the servant for all sentient beings, all the people at the center, wherever, in the family or office, whatever, for all the people, all the rest of sentient beings, to cause them happiness.’ The loving kindness, compassion attitude, universal responsibility – the attitude which I mentioned before, so with this positive mind cherishing others, with this bodhisattvas’ view, then so much joy, and the more responsibility you have, you can see that you are beneficial. You can see you are meaningful, you see yourself as beneficial to others, you see yourself as useful for others. You see yourself, your life as a need for others. The more you take responsibility or the more you have responsibility then you see that you’re more needed by others. So you see you are more useful to others. Then there is so much in which to rejoice. So much to rejoice in.”
Lama Zopa Rinpoche continues in “Rejoice in Your Efforts,” from the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive.
https://www.lamayeshe.com/article/rejoice-your-efforts
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 Zopa Rinpoche on the beach to do blessing for all the sentient beings in the ocean, California, October 2015. Photo by Ven. Roger Kunsang.
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.
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.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche arriving at Kopan Monastery, November 2015. Photo by Ven. Thubten Kunsang.
“One thing is guru devotion. First, you do it like this, you can do like this, tsöl je kyi nyong wa, generating or developing the experience of the lam-rim – the experience of the graduated path to enlightenment – with effort. Tsöl je kyi nyong wa, [the experience] with effort, maybe, let’s see, do it for a few months. Maybe one year… Divide one year, and do one, two, or three months – whatever, you decide – on guru devotion, on the basis of the outlines. Read the commentary and on the basis of the outlines, do meditation. During those months, you go through the outlines. Whatever is not finished today, then you do it tomorrow. So you can go back again. [This is] tsöl je kyi nyong wa, developing the experience with effort,” Lama Zopa Rinpoche teaches in the module “Advice for Realizing Lam-rim,” which is part of Living in the Path, FPMT Education Services’ essential lam-rim program as taught by Rinpoche.
“So, you can divide the year. That is tsöl je kyi nyong wa, developing the experience with effort. After that, when you think, ‘Now, if I really meditate, I can get realization,’ oh, then at that time you train your mind in tsöl me kyi nyong wa, without effort, in the effortless experience…”
To learn more about Living in the Path and to study the lam-rim more in-depth, visit the program’s page on FPMT’s Online Learning Center: http://onlinelearning.fpmt.org/course/index.php?categoryid
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.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche at Gyalwa Gyatso (Ocean of Compassion) Buddhist Center, Campbell, California, US, November 2015. Photo by Kurty Wong.
“Even if other people don’t practice the good heart, still we should practice the good heart because we want happiness and we don’t want suffering,” Lama Zopa Rinpoche taught at Kopan Monastery in Nepal in June 2011. “Even if other sentient beings don’t practice the good heart or they try to harm us, cause us loss, kill us and so forth, if we practice only the good heart from our own side – if we are kind and only benefit others with our body, speech and mind or at the very least we don’t cause harm to other sentient beings, then we will experience happiness.
“As a result of one act of kindness, the good heart, we will experience the result, happiness, for thousands of lifetimes. From that one act of kindness, benefiting someone with our body, speech and mind or at least not harming another, the result is happiness. This is the result, even if we are looking only for our own happiness.
“Generating the good heart helps all sentient beings, and at least not harming sentient beings purifies instantly our negative karmas and defilements created from beginningless rebirth and we collect unbelievable merit.”
From the advice “The Good Heart Is the Root of Happiness” published by the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive: https://www.lamayeshe.com/advice/good-heart-root-happiness/.
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 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, Rio de Janiero, Brazil, September 2015. Photo by Ven. Thubten Kunsang.
“The appearances of this life [are such that] we always think, ‘Oh I’m going to live for a long time’ always, even on the same day when you are going to have an accident, the same day you are going to have an accident or going to get sick with a heart attack or whatever,” Lama Zopa Rinpoche teaches in the module “Advice for Realizing Lam-rim,” which is part of Living in the Path, FPMT Education Services’ essential lam-rim program as taught by Rinpoche
“Suddenly you are going to have a heart attack, but that same day from the morning when you get up, ‘Oh, I’m going to live for many years,’ you think like that. Even five minutes before a car accident in which you die, ‘Oh, I’m going to live for many years.’ It is cheating you, the concept of permanence.
“If you meditate on the impermanence of life, then you stop thinking you will live long and following the concept of permanence, then you see life is very short. Because of that, that makes you able to practice Dharma and complete the realizations.”
To learn more about Living in the Path and to study the lam-rim more in-depth, visit the program’s page on FPMT’s Online Learning Center: http://onlinelearning.fpmt.org/course/index.php?categoryid=5
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.