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Lama Zopa Rinpoche News and Advice
Most Secret Hayagriva Tsog Kong offered for Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s long life, Kopan Monastery, Nepal, June 2020. Photo by Ven. Lobsang Sherab.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche continues his video teachings from Kopan Monastery in Nepal. Here is a summary of the most recent teaching:
This video starts with an introductory clip of a Losar video of Lama Zopa Rinpoche talking about a quote on the benefits and results of practicing virtue. The quote was on a card sent by His Holiness the Sakya Trichen. Rinpoche then reminds us to please enjoy our life by transforming our body, speech, and mind into virtue as much as possible.
Rinpoche begins the teaching explaining that any bad, unfavorable, or undesirable conditions can be transformed into the path to happiness—not just temporary happiness, but ultimate happiness. Bad conditions, and even the happiness you experience, can be utilized in this way. This prevents us from using our precious human life like toilet paper, a total waste.
By harming others, you will get sick, Rinpoche explains. This includes killing animals for food or for business. Seeing the suffering of animals causes us to generate compassion and reminds us to practice Dharma.
This perfect human rebirth is so precious. The purpose of this life is not just to achieve happiness, or the blissful state of peace for oneself, but to benefit others.
For example, prostrating or making offerings to a statue of Buddha creates far more merit than just seeing a statue.
Tibetans make water bowl offerings to holy object because it doesn’t cost anything and it doesn’t cause pride to arise. If an offering costs a lot of money, pride can develop rather than rejoicing. In this way, offering water can become a pure offering and you collect a lot of merit. Water is wet, so offering it helps the mind become soft, rather than selfish and hard like a rock. With a soft mind one can develop loving kindness, bodhichitta, and the ultimate good heart.
Extensive water bowl offerings are made every day at Buddha Amitabha Pure Land, Washington State, US; Kachoe Dechen Ling, Aptos, California, US; Ganden Do Ngag Shedrup Ling, Mongolia; Amitabha Buddhist Centre, Singapore; Kopan Monastery, Nepal; and elsewhere.
Offering water bowls creates far more merit than simply seeing a holy object. Instead of thinking that the offering bowls contain water, which is how it appears to the human mind, you can create even greater merit by thinking that the offering bowls contain the purest nectar, which is how the offering appears to a buddha.
In Tibet, you can put the water that has been offered into a garden or clean ground. Because it is blessed water, you can’t put it in a dirty road or somewhere unclean. However, in the West, many houses don’t have gardens. So in this case, the sink where one washes up is the only place it can go, but not in a toilet, which would be very disrespectful.
By offering flowers to holy objects this creates the cause to have a beautiful body and to have a holy body that sentient beings never get bored of seeing.
By offering incense to holy objects this creates the cause to have pure morality from life to life. Incense is usually better than offering perfume because some perfumes cause attachment to arise.
By offering light to holy objects this creates the cause to develop wisdom; it eliminates ignorance. Offering light also creates the cause to have a beautiful body. Offering light is very important because ignorance causes us to suffer in the lower realms. When you see animals, you can generate compassion. Those born in the lower realms continuously suffer and create negative karma day and night.
By offering food to holy objects this creates the cause to have a long life, an increase in enjoyments, and immortality.
By offering music to holy objects this creates the cause for millions of people to be attracted to the sound of your voice, to have perfect holy speech, and to achieve all the qualities of the holy speech.
There is no difference at all between making offerings of water, flowers, incense, light, food, music, etc. to an actual buddha and making offerings to a statue of a buddha.
We invite you to go deeper into the topics presented here, plus many others, by watching Rinpoche’s video and reading the full transcript of Rinpoche’s teaching.
Watch Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s teaching “This Perfect Human Body Is So Precious Because You Can Use It to Make Offerings“:
https://youtu.be/ZUzLwDX6Ndk
- Read the transcript of Rinpoche’s teaching
- Resources on Holy Objects
- Dedication verses for COVID-19 Crisis Teachings
Find more advice and video teachings by Lama Zopa Rinpoche from Kopan Monastery and also links to videos in translation, transcripts, MP3s, and more:
https://fpmt.org/fpmt/announcements/resources-for-coronavirus-pandemic/advice-from-lama-zopa-rinpoche-for-coronavirus/
Practice advice from our teachers, Dharma study-from-home opportunities, and more can be found on the page “Resources for the 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.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche on a Zoom call with many FPMT resident geshes, center directors, national and regional coordinates, and other staff, on Saka Dawa, Kopan Monastery, Nepal, June 2020. Photo by Ven. Lobsang Sherab.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche continues his video teachings from Kopan Monastery in Nepal. Here is a summary of the most recent teaching:
This teaching begins with video of an online “Zoom” mandala offering to Lama Zopa Rinpoche from many of the FPMT resident geshes, center directors, national and regional coordinators, and other staff. The offering was made on Saka Dawa and those on the video call made a heartfelt request for Rinpoche to live long and continue teaching, and also thanked Rinpoche for all he does. Rinpoche showed viewers cuddly toys on which he had written mantras and teachings about the emptiness of self. Rinpoche offered “numberless” thanks to all the people at FPMT centers, projects, and services around the world for the beneficial work they do. The offering was organized by Yangsi Rinpoche from his home in the United States and was made on behalf of the entire FPMT organization, including those not able to join the call.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche begins this teaching by reminding us that if we have the karma to get the coronavirus, it is not possible to escape it. The virus came from the mind, due to karma. Many have the mistaken view that anything that helps or harms the mind comes from outside. This view believes that the methods to stop the harm and to achieve happiness are only dealing with the outside world, while forgetting about the mind. The main work is in the mind.
It is a huge mistake believing everything in life comes from outside. Rinpoche says we should not try to retaliate against the harm we think of as coming from outside. That is only continuing to create the cause for future harm. By harming others—human beings, animals, even the tiniest creatures—you are continuously creating the cause to receive harm. You think you are doing this (harming others) for your happiness, but that is totally wrong.
The basic method to stop harm is to change your mind from a negative mind to a positive mind.
We have to understand that this human body is so important so that we take care of this body and don’t treat it like garbage.
Continuing on from Rinpoche’s last teachings, Rinpoche discusses the benefits of prostrating to holy objects, including that you create greater merit prostrating to a holy object than you do by seeing it. Because of this, it is good to have many holy objects as possible inside and outside of the home. This is why gompas and temples have so many statues—it’s a very simple way to generate merit by treating holy objects properly. Everyone who sees these holy objects in your home (even an enemy!) will leave with oceans of merit.
Think that all holy objects you see are manifestations of your root guru. Think that they manifest as a holy object to purify the negative karma that makes you be born in the lower realms, to free you from the lower realms, to free you from samsara, to free you from lower nirvana, and to bring you to enlightenment. If you think this, with your palms together in prostration mudra, and go around the holy object (circumambulate), you feel connected and don’t view them as if you were just in a museum. This is the proper way to engage with holy objects.
We invite you to go deeper into the topics presented here, plus many others, by watching Rinpoche’s video and reading the full transcript of Rinpoche’s teaching.
Watch Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s teaching “You Create Greater Merits by Prostrating to a Holy Object Than by Seeing It”:
https://youtu.be/NufyhxIa8S8
- Read the transcript of Rinpoche’s teaching
- Advice for Prostrations from Lama Zopa Rinpoche
- Resources on Holy Objects
- Dedication verses for COVID-19 Crisis Teachings
Find more advice and video teachings by Lama Zopa Rinpoche from Kopan Monastery and also links to videos in translation, transcripts, MP3s, and more:
https://fpmt.org/fpmt/announcements/resources-for-coronavirus-pandemic/advice-from-lama-zopa-rinpoche-for-coronavirus/
Practice advice from our teachers, Dharma study-from-home opportunities, and more can be found on the page “Resources for the 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.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche at Kopan Monastery, Nepal, May 2020. Photo by Ven. Lobsang Sherab.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche often speaks about solar and lunar eclipses, which are considered auspicious for practice and provide opportunities for accumulating increased merit.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche reminds students that the merit generated is multiplied by one hundred million on solar eclipses and by seven hundred thousand on lunar eclipses, and that the multiplying effect of eclipses occurs regardless of whether the eclipse is partial or full. Also, Rinpoche advises that the merit multiplying effect does not last the whole calendar day and that merit making activities should be carried out during the time of the eclipse itself.
Whether or not an eclipse is visible and its local timing depends on where a student is on Earth. Websites like timeanddate.com can help students determine when there is an opportunity to practice during an eclipse.
Upcoming solar eclipse: June 21, 2020 (This eclipse is at its maximum at 6:41 UTC.)
In November 2019, Rinpoche wrote out specific advice for eclipses:
… So what can you do on these days?
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- You can rejoice in your, other sentient beings’, and the buddhas’ three times’ merits.
- You can read the Vajra Cutter Sutra, Chanting the Names of Manjushri, and King of Prayers.
- You can meditate on emptiness, and especially meditate on bodhichitta, with whichever technique.
- You can do Lama Chopa. At either the beginning of Lama Chopa or during the lamrim section, you can meditate on emptiness.
- Whatever activity they are doing at your local FPMT center, you can join them.
- Of course, you can do self-initiation—that is the best one.
- You can do prostrations by reciting the Thirty-Five Buddha prayer.
- You can make more offerings or help sentient beings more. Liberate animals or, with bodhichitta, practice charity to people or animals—you can do whatever you can.
- Recite OṂ MAṆI PADME HŪṂ with bodhichitta.
- Of course, don’t forget that the best practice is bodhichitta, tonglen.
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Keep this advice, especially in order to educate and help others, the numberless sentient beings ….
Any other meritorious activities advised by Lama Zopa Rinpoche are also good to do on solar eclipses. In the video “Advice for Saka Dawa Duchen,” Rinpoche discusses additional ideas for virtuous activities to complete when merit is multiplied, such as during solar eclipses, as well as the source of Rinpoche’s knowledge about the merit multiplying effects of certain days throughout the year:
To learn more about merit multiplying days, watch “Advice for Saka Dawa Duchen” on YouTube and find a transcript of the video on FPMT.org:
https://youtu.be/xYWCFIwZgTk
You can read more about practices specifically recommended by Rinpoche for solar and lunar eclipses, and other merit multiplying days:
https://fpmt.org/teachers/zopa/advice/practice-on-the-four-great-holy-days/
Check “Dharma Practice Dates” for information on auspicious days for practice:
https://fpmt.org/media/resources/dharma-dates/
Acquire your own copy of the Liberation Prison Project calendar through the Foundation Store:
https://shop.fpmt.org/2020-Liberation-Tibetan-Calendar-PDF-Dowloadable-Format-_p_3252.html
Through comprehensive study programs, practice materials, and training seminars, FPMT Education nourishes the development of compassion, wisdom, kindness, and true happiness in individuals of all ages.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche showing one of the plush toys that has had mantras and drawings added to it, Kopan Monastery, Nepal, June 2020. Photo by Ven. Lobsang Sherab.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche continues his video teachings from Kopan Monastery in Nepal. Here is a summary of the most recent teaching:
At the start of this video, Lama Zopa Rinpoche shows us how to visualize conventional and ultimate bodhichitta while making momos!
Rinpoche begins the teaching explaining that we can turn every action we engage in into a bodhichitta motivation by cultivating the thought of cherishing others. By doing this you not only create skies of merit, every action becomes a cause for enlightenment.
This perfect human rebirth is so precious. We can offer Dharma teachings to sentient beings. By giving one verse of teachings to a sentient being with compassion, you collect more merit than offering a great-thousand-fold universe filled with the seven types of jewels or gold to buddhas. And teaching Dharma to two sentient beings? Double that! Imagine those who are busy going around the world giving teachings to many—the human rebirth provides incredible opportunities. Even reciting a mantra to an animal such as a dog one time, this is priceless. Your Dharma practice is not only for yourself, it is so important for numberless sentient beings.
Human beings, from presidents and billionaires to beggars, do not understand the feelings of other sentient beings. Thousands of animals are killed every day for food, people not only eat them, but also make money off of this. People have the mistaken view that this is a good thing, that there is nothing wrong, that these beings are for their pleasure. They never think about the suffering of the animals and that they also want happiness. They don’t realize that these beings, who have been their mother sentient beings for eons, are objects of compassion, not simply objects of pleasure.
This perfect human rebirth is so precious. We can use it for prostrations. Every time you prostrate, however many atoms are covered by your body—from your feet to the length of your hair—that many times you create the karma to be born as a wheel-turning king for one thousand lifetimes. You can achieve supreme enlightenment even by prostrating with one hand, bowing your head or body, and prostrating with a distracted mind. There are eight benefits to putting your hands together in prostration to a holy object. You will receive a perfect body, have perfect surrounding people (those who do not cause obstacles or troubles for you), live in pure morality, have devotion, have a brave mind, achieve the arya path, and achieve enlightenment. This is just from putting your palms together when you see a holy object such as a stupa, statue, your guru, and so forth. There is no difference between making offerings to an actual buddha and making offerings to a statue of a buddha. Putting your palms together in the prostration mudra when you see a holy object is an incredible way to be free from the problems of samsara.
If you understand Dharma, you can make your human body most beneficial.
Rinpoche then continues giving the lung for Sutra of Great Liberation up to page 29.
We invite you to go deeper into the topics presented here, plus many others, by watching Rinpoche’s video and reading the full transcript of Rinpoche’s teaching.
Watch Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s teaching “This Perfect Human Body Is So Precious Because You Can Use It to Do Prostrations”:
https://youtu.be/dskazWzEhXE
- Read the transcript of Rinpoche’s teaching “This Perfect Human Body Is So Precious Because You Can Use It to Do Prostrations”
- Cultivating Mindfulness of Bodhichitta in Daily Activities by Lama Zopa Rinpoche
- Advice for Prostrations from Lama Zopa Rinpoche
- Resources on Holy Objects
- Dedication verses for COVID-19 Crisis Teachings
Find more advice and video teachings by Lama Zopa Rinpoche from Kopan Monastery and also links to videos in translation, transcripts, MP3s, and more:
https://fpmt.org/fpmt/announcements/resources-for-coronavirus-pandemic/advice-from-lama-zopa-rinpoche-for-coronavirus/
Practice advice from our teachers, Dharma study-from-home opportunities, and more can be found on the page “Resources for the 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.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche during Lama Chopa on Saka Dawa, Kopan Monastery, Nepal, June 2020. Photo by Ven. Lobsang Sherab.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche continues his video teachings from Kopan Monastery in Nepal. Here is a summary of the most recent teaching:
This video begins with Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive director Dr. Nicholas Ribush talking about his path to meeting Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche at Kopan Monastery in Nepal in 1972. He gives a brief history of the monastery, the beginnings of FPMT publishing, the beginnings of the International Mahayana Institute (IMI), and how the FPMT organization itself was started.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche starts his teaching discussing the benefits of the Sutra of Great Liberation, which Rinpoche had planned to continue offering the lung of in this video, but ran out of time at the end. (Please continue to watch these teachings for the continuation of the lung of this sutra.)
Rinpoche explains that the general subject of these teachings is lojong (thought transformation) in the context of the coronavirus pandemic, about which many people are scared and full of fear and worry.
What one can do with this precious human rebirth is unbelievable! You can purify the negative karma to be born in the lower realms. You can become free from the lower realms, receive a higher rebirth, and be free from samsara completely through Dharma practice. Further, by practicing bodhichitta and great compassion with this human rebirth, you can achieve enlightenment and become able to free numberless sentient beings from the oceans of samsaric sufferings and bring them to enlightenment. This is incredible.
We are so fortunate to be born in this world, where the complete teachings of Buddha exist. By correctly pleasing the virtuous friend, you will meet the virtuous friend in this and all lifetimes, and receive the complete and unmistaken teachings (Dharma). Every second you correctly follow the virtuous friend, you receive higher rebirth, ultimately finish the sufferings of samsara, and then achieve enlightenment. By depending on the virtuous friend, we can even achieve enlightenment in a brief lifetime—this is an incredible opportunity. When you correctly follow the virtuous friend, numberless buddhas are so pleased, like how a mother would feel to see someone helping their child. If you please the virtuous friend with a devotional mind, you can achieve enlightenment in this lifetime. Even a foolish person could do this through strong devotion.
If you have made a Dharma connection with a virtuous friend and received teachings, even two or three words of a mantra such as OM AH HUM, you are supposed to view that virtuous friend as the Buddha. You have the freedom to purify all of your negative karma by pleasing the virtuous friend. When you follow the virtuous friend’s advice, it is as if you have done hundreds of thousands of prostrations and mandala offerings. However, if you make mistakes in following the virtuous friend, your mind will never change and you create heavy negative karma.
Rinpoche then briefly commented on the benefits of bodhichitta, explaining there is “no end” to the merit one creates by generating bodhichitta in each action. He then discusses the unbelievably unfathomable benefits of taking refuge, explaining, “If the merits of taking refuge were materialized, even the three-thousand-fold galaxies could not contain them.”
Rinpoche closes with the message that due to the precious opportunity of being born a human, following the virtuous friend, generating bodhichitta—there’s no space in the mind for depression. Whether or not the virus harms you or is a blessing depends on the mind.
Rinpoche will continue his lung of Sutra of Great Liberation in the next video.
We invite you to go deeper into the topics presented here, plus many others, by watching Rinpoche’s video and reading the full transcript of Rinpoche’s teaching.
Watch Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s teaching “Always Remember the Benefits of Correctly Following the Virtuous Friend“:
https://youtu.be/xxiri2vYflM
- Read the transcript of Rinpoche’s teaching “Always Remember the Benefits of Correctly Following the Virtuous Friend”
- Big Love: The Life and Teachings of Lama Yeshe, recently published by Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive
- Dedication verses for COVID-19 Crisis Teachings
Find more advice and video teachings by Lama Zopa Rinpoche from Kopan Monastery and also links to videos in translation, transcripts, MP3s, and more:
https://fpmt.org/fpmt/announcements/resources-for-coronavirus-pandemic/advice-from-lama-zopa-rinpoche-for-coronavirus/
Practice advice from our teachers, Dharma study-from-home opportunities, and more can be found on the page “Resources for the 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.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche taking blessings from the Sutra of Great Liberation, which he started to an give oral transmission of on Saka Dawa, Kopan Monastery, Nepal, June 2020. Photo by Ven. Roger Kunsang.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche continues his video teachings from Kopan Monastery in Nepal. Here is a summary of the most recent teaching:
Lama Zopa Rinpoche begins this teaching reminding us that our precious human rebirth is more precious than a whole sky filled with wish-granting jewels. With the precious human life, one is able to plant the seed of virtue, supreme enlightenment.
If one has good karma, whatever is wished for can be achieved. However, even skies of wish-granting jewels can’t purify negative karma and give you a perfect human rebirth, liberation from samsara, and enlightenment. With this perfect human rebirth, you can do these things, you can purify negative karma, which causes birth in the lower realms. Due to this opportunity, it is the time to do one’s best: to not be lazy, not be distracted. Right now we are so attached to this life. We have attachment, anger, ignorance, pride, jealousy, and all the delusions. We are experts at following these, all aspects of a selfish mind. We don’t see the mistakes of this or how all of the suffering in samsara comes from I-grasping ignorance. In this way, we are a slave to self-cherishing. The self-cherishing mind is like a dictatorship.
You found a precious human rebirth and this is so precious, unbelievable. So don’t waste it! Doing so is similar to food becoming poison and causing death, like using your human body and life to become firewood in hell.
When the guru is sweet and speaks nice words, gives presents, we are happy and we like them. But if the guru scolds us or they are displeased with us, the tendency is to give them up, throw them away like garbage. How can we achieve enlightenment, or even renunciation, if we give up the guru when the guru does something that our self-cherishing thought doesn’t like?
According to Phabongka Dechen Nyingpo in Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand, there are eight benefits of correctly following the guru:
- You become closer to enlightenment.
- You please all the buddhas.
- You don’t get harmed by maras and evil friends.
- All your delusions and wrong concepts naturally stop.
- All your paths, bhumis, and realizations increase more and more.
- In all lifetimes you are never without virtuous friends.
- You don’t fall down into the lower realms.
- All your temporary and ultimate wishes succeed effortlessly.
Conversely, not following the guru has the following eight shortcomings, also according to Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand:
- If you criticize the guru, you criticize all the buddhas.
- For however many seconds you get angry at your guru, you will be reborn in hell for that many eons.
- Even if you practice tantra, you can’t achieve the sublime realization.
- Even if you practice tantra with much effort, it is like achieving hell and so forth.
- The qualities you didn’t generate before are not generated and the qualities you generated in the past are lost.
- In this life, you are tormented by diseases and so forth.
- In your next lives, you wander in the lower realms for eons and eons.
- In all lifetimes, you will be without virtuous friends.
At the conclusion of this video, Rinpoche gives the lung of Sutra of Great Liberation up to page 22 in the Tibetan text. Rinpoche says he will continue giving the lung of this sutra, a little at a time.
We invite you to go deeper into the topics presented here, plus many others, by watching Rinpoche’s video and reading the full transcript of Rinpoche’s teaching.
Watch Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s teaching “Do Your Best in This Life!“:
https://youtu.be/tUyfKZOjo6s
- Read the transcript of Rinpoche’s teaching “Do Your Best in This Life!”
- Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand by Phabongka Dechen Nyingpo
- Dedication verses for COVID-19 Crisis Teachings
Find more advice and video teachings by Lama Zopa Rinpoche from Kopan Monastery and also links to videos in translation, transcripts, MP3s, and more:
https://fpmt.org/fpmt/announcements/resources-for-coronavirus-pandemic/advice-from-lama-zopa-rinpoche-for-coronavirus/
Practice advice from our teachers, Dharma study-from-home opportunities, and more can be found on the page “Resources for the 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.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche and Kopan monks doing Lama Chopa on Sakadawa, Kopan Monastery, Nepal, June 2020. Photo by Ven. Lobsang Sherab.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche continues his video teachings from Kopan Monastery in Nepal. Here is a summary of one of the teachings Rinpoche gave on Saka Dawa this year:
This video begins with part two of Geshe Losang Sherab’s brief history of becoming the Kopan Monastery chant leader (umze) and the evolution of the annual Great Prayer Festival (Monlam) held at Kopan Monastery at the beginning of every lunar new year
To the deluded mind, delusions feel good, Lama Zopa Rinpoche tells us at the beginning of this teaching. For example if one becomes angry due to an enemy—someone who has caused you harm or criticized you—and you harm that person back or kill them, such as in war, you are praised for your anger. But every being has been kind to you again and again from beginningless rebirths, harming anyone with attachment and feeling good about it is an act of craziness.
Anger is so dangerous for the immune system and creates no protection for the body. It blocks blood circulation and can cause one to have a heart attack. In this way, the danger of death is caused by the mind. Alternatively, rejoicing in a situation, even one that is challenging or harmful, relaxes your body and makes your mind so free and happy.
From our own side, we can practice rejoicing in the face of harm; but from the side of the other person, they should practice self-discipline. Because you are practicing rejoicing at the situation, it might look as though that the other person can do whatever they wish, including harming others. Rinpoche clarifies, it is not like that. If it harms others, that person should stop. While we can’t control what that person does, we can control what we do. And by rejoicing and sustaining a happy mind, the body is relaxed and it is much more comfortable.
Similarly, Rinpoche expressed that FPMT has the responsibility to serve people and take care of them as well as possible, but at the same time, those going to an FPMT center, project, or service for meditation or retreat should also practice contentment with what is offered. This is practicing renunciation: less desire, more contentment and satisfaction.
By practicing self-discipline and contentment, you can bring peace to the world rather than being like a firecracker full of anger.
On the topic of impermanence, Rinpoche warns that everyone who is alive now will one day be dead. This includes famous people and holy beings—all transmigratory beings who are living now, at some point in the future, will no longer be here, just their names will remain. We continuously see people dying but we don’t believe we will die. We believe in the concept of permanence. We have to think: “Sooner or later, I will not be here.” One’s whole family will also be gone. Since we are all running toward death, there is no point in being attached to our wealth or objects of desire. There is nothing to be attached to if you think about how fast we are running toward death. Since you have to leave everything behind, why be attached to dream-like objects of desire? This human life is like water dew on top of grass—it can drop at any time. When death happens is uncertain. It can happen any time.
We invite you to go deeper into the topics presented here, plus many others, by watching Rinpoche’s video and reading the full transcript of Rinpoche’s teaching.
Watch Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s teaching “One Day Only Our Names Will Be Left“:
https://youtu.be/Jnj8u4PTo9c
- Read the transcript of Rinpoche’s teaching “One Day Only Our Names Will Be Left”
- Dedication verses for COVID-19 Crisis Teachings
Find more advice and video teachings by Lama Zopa Rinpoche from Kopan Monastery and also links to videos in translation, transcripts, MP3s, and more:
https://fpmt.org/fpmt/announcements/resources-for-coronavirus-pandemic/advice-from-lama-zopa-rinpoche-for-coronavirus/
Practice advice from our teachers, Dharma study-from-home opportunities, and more can be found on the page “Resources for the 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.
View from the top of Kopan Monastery, Nepal, May 2020. Photo by Ven. Lobsang Sherab.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche continues his video teachings from Kopan Monastery in Nepal. Here is a summary of the most recent teaching:
This video begins with Geshe Losang Sherab explaining how he came to be the Kopan Monastery chant leader (umze), and he also discusses a brief history of the annual Great Prayer Festival (Monlam) held at Kopan Monastery at the beginning of every lunar new year. This was part one of Geshe Sherab’s explanation, the rest of the story will be continued.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche starts this teaching introducing us to some variations in understanding Buddha’s enlightenment from the perspectives of the different scopes and then discusses how the Buddha showed the twelve deeds in different worlds according to the karma of sentient beings.
Rinpoche explains that merit is multiplied 300,000,000 times on Saka Dawa, the 15th day of the month of Saka Dawa, which is the day of Buddha’s birth, enlightenment, and passing into the “sorrowless state” (parinirvana). Because Saka Dawa combines these three special days, the possibility to create merit is unbelievable. Due to this, it is very important for one to use this opportunity to do “everything the best!”
The concept of permanence has been cheating us since beginningless rebirths. We have this concept that we are going to live long, but this concept of permanence cannot be trusted and is the reason why we are still suffering. Rinpoche suggests that instead of spending a lot of money on a funeral, which brings us “not one single benefit,” we could give that money to others through charity and create the cause to experience happiness from life to life.
Rinpoche’s Advice for Practice on Saka Dawa
- Meditate on the lamrim.
- Rejoice in the merits created by yourself, other sentient beings, and all the buddhas.
- Generate bodhichitta and especially do tonglen practice (exchanging self with others).
Rinpoche explains that doing tonglen practice is “the best.” Each time you take on all of the suffering, problems, and delusions from other the sentient beings (which are numberless), you collect skies of merit.
Rinpoche then discusses how to properly do tonglen practice:
With compassion, take all the suffering and the causes of suffering, and give that to the self-cherishing thought, thereby destroying it. Absorb this into your heart in the form of dark smoke. You give this to your real enemy: the self-cherishing thought, which has made you suffer since beginningless rebirths in samsara, Rinpoche explains. Take all the suffering and the causes of suffering and use them like a bomb or a missile to destroy the self-cherishing thought.
With compassion, take suffering and the causes of suffering, and give that to your I-grasping ignorance, thereby destroying it. The self-cherishing thought that cherishes the “I” that you believe exists as real from its own side—that is destroyed.
Meditate on emptiness for a little while. Meditate on loving kindness and then do the giving practice by giving your body, enjoyments, and merits to numberless sentient beings. Through this, sentient beings get what they want, and they also get what they need.
- Read Heart Sutra, Diamond Cutter Sutra, Sanghata Sutra, and Sutra of Golden Light.
- Do Chenrezig Practice and recite OM MANI PADME HUM mantra.
- Do Vajrasattva practice.
- Do self-initiation or tsog.
Great Holy Days of the Buddhist Calendar
- The Fifteen Days of Miracles (Days 1-15 of Month 1; Day 15 is called Chotrul Duchen): Guru Shakyamuni Buddha shows miraculous powers in order to subdue six Tirthika, or non-Buddhist teachers, who lacked faith in him, and to inspire more faith in his followers.
- Saka Dawa (Day 15 of Month 4): Guru Shakyamuni Buddha’s birth, enlightenment, and parinirvana.
- Chokhor Duchen (Day 4 of Month 6): Guru Shakyamuni Buddha’s first teaching.
- Lhabab Duchen (Day 22 of Month 9): Guru Shakyamuni Buddha’s return to Earth from the god realm Thirty-Three after teaching Dharma for several months to the gods there, including his mother, Mayadevi, who had died a week after Buddha’s birth and been reborn there.
We invite you to go deeper into the advice Rinpoche has offered here by watching Rinpoche’s video and reading the full transcript of Rinpoche’s teaching to receive the full instruction.
Watch Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s teaching “Advice for Saka Dawa Duchen“:
https://youtu.be/xYWCFIwZgTk
- Read the transcript of Rinpoche’s “Advice for Saka Dawa Duchen”
- “Lama Zopa Rinpoche Describes the Multiplying Effects of Saka Dawa”
- Learn more about lamrim practice
- Find links to the sutras mentioned in this video and additional resources related to sutra recitation
- Find links to the mantras mentioned in this video and additional resources related to mantra recitation
- Chenrezig practice
- Vajrasattva practice on the FPMT Foundation Store
- Tsog practice on the FPMT Foundation Store
- Dedication verses for COVID-19 Crisis Teachings
Find more advice and video teachings by Lama Zopa Rinpoche from Kopan Monastery and also links to videos in translation, transcripts, MP3s, and more:
https://fpmt.org/fpmt/announcements/resources-for-coronavirus-pandemic/advice-from-lama-zopa-rinpoche-for-coronavirus/
Practice advice from our teachers, Dharma study-from-home opportunities, and more can be found on the page “Resources for the 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.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche watching the live webcast of His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s Avolokiteshvara empowerment, Kopan Monastery, Nepal, May 2020
Lama Zopa Rinpoche continues his video teachings from Kopan Monastery in Nepal. Here is a summary of the most recent teaching:
Lama Zopa Rinpoche begins this teaching explaining how his current video teaching series from Kopan Monastery started, due to the virus and having to stay in one place rather than traveling the world to give teachings. He thanks everyone who has been listening to the teachings on video and reminds us that the general idea of these teachings is lojong (thought transformation).
Due to old habits, we can spend our whole life distracted by attachment, anger, ignorance, pride, jealousy, and all the delusions, thus wasting our precious and perfect human life. But now, Rinpoche explains, we have the opportunity to learn Dharma through the internet without needing to travel.
His Holiness the Dalai Lama is giving live teachings online (including for Saka Dawa). Many other great teachers are also teaching online. This is a chance to receive the Dharma thanks to technology without having to spend money on travel. Technology can bring great benefit but, of course, also great harm and can be a waste of time, depending on how you use it.
The antidote to wasting our lives is to practice pure Dharma, meaning without attachment to the eight worldly concerns, without grasping to the pleasures of this life. To renounce that is to practice pure Dharma. We can do this by meditating on the lamrim, especially the graduated path of a lower capable being, which is renunciation of this life and the pleasures and happiness of this life—to see these as suffering and the causes of suffering.
Attachment to the pleasures of this life not only makes your life meaningless, it also creates negative karma. Since beginningless rebirths we have been following attachment; that’s how strong the habit is. To break this habit, we must meditate on perfect human rebirth and its usefulness, and how it is difficult to find again. We have to remember death and impermanence, which defeats the enemy of attachment to the pleasures of this life. Meditating on impermanence and death is not just for beginners.
Those who haven’t met Dharma, don’t realize they are wasting their lives under the control of attachment, clinging to the pleasures of this life. If you use technology in the wrong way, you can totally waste your life and the lives of others. Even if you think it is enjoyment to spend so much time on technology (such as the iPad), if done with a poisonous mind, with attachment, anger, your “enjoyment” is not enjoyment at all because actions arising from ignorance, anger, and attachment are non-virtue, and necessarily create negative karma.
Every day, every minute, every second you have the freedom to achieve happiness by thinking in a positive way. You can change, no matter how “bad” you are. We can use Milarepa’s life as inspiration for this. By following the guru’s advice, one can say goodbye to samsara.
To generate compassion, you need to know the suffering of the six-realms sentient beings. For example, pretas, a type of being, have bodies that are dry, and they can’t find food or drink for tens of thousands of years. Due to their karma, even if they see water, or green plants, their gaze dries the water up and makes it disappear. They have mouths the size of the eye of a needle, but stomachs as big as a mountain. Even if they do receive food or drink, it cannot fill up their stomachs. There is also a second type of preta, which has flames coming from its mouth. A third type of preta has knots in its neck. The pretas all have unmanageable, unbearable suffering. Rinpoche makes charity to the three different types of pretas.
We invite you to go deeper into the topics presented here, plus many others, by watching Rinpoche’s video and reading the full transcript of Rinpoche’s teaching.
Watch Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s teaching “How to Avoid Wasting Your Life and the Sufferings of Pretas“:
https://youtu.be/YKNAayMudMA
- Read the transcript of Rinpoche’s teaching “How to Avoid Wasting Your Life and the Sufferings of Pretas.”
- Rinpoche mentions Medicine Buddha practice, which can be found in A Brief Meditation-Recitation on Guru Medicine Buddha
- Rinpoche also refers to the practice Offering Water Charity to the Pretas
- Dedication verses for COVID-19 Crisis Teachings
Watch His Holiness the Dalai Lama LIVE!
Watch a live webcast of His Holiness the Dalai Lama leading a ceremony for cultivating the awakening mind from his residence in Dharamsala, HP, India on June 5, 2020, beginning at 9:00 a.m. IST. (This is 4:30 a.m. BST on June 5 in London, UK; and 8:30 p.m. PDT on June 4 in Los Angeles, California, US. Other times can be found using Time Zone Converter.) People are requested to please follow social distancing rules while viewing the live webcast.
For links to the live webcast, live translations in thirteen languages, the schedule of upcoming webcasts, and more:
https://www.dalailama.com/live
Find more advice and video teachings by Lama Zopa Rinpoche from Kopan Monastery during the coronavirus pandemic and also links to videos in translation, transcripts, MP3s, and more:
https://fpmt.org/fpmt/announcements/resources-for-coronavirus-pandemic/advice-from-lama-zopa-rinpoche-for-coronavirus/
Practice advice from our teachers, Dharma study-from-home opportunities, and more can be found on the page “Resources for the 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.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche taking precepts from the altar before giving precepts, Kopan Monastery, Nepal, May 25, 2020.
Screenshot of YouTube video.
Students wishing to take the eight Mahayana precepts on the merit multiplying day of the fifteenth day of Saka Dawa, which is June 5 this year, may watch a specially created video of Lama Zopa Rinpoche offering the precepts.
During his recent videos from Kopan Monastery, Lama Zopa Rinpoche gave a three-hour teaching in which he offered the eight Mahayana precepts with commentary, giving special permission to receive the lineage of the eight Mahayana precepts from Rinpoche to anyone who wishes to do so.
The opportunity to receive precepts from Lama Zopa Rinpoche is precious. In order to fully receive the lineage, it is necessary to actually take the precepts. To help facilitate this, we’ve created an hour-long version of the video of Rinpoche offering the precepts specifically for students to watch, take the precepts, and receive the lineage.
When giving his teaching on the precepts, Rinpoche emphasizes how fortunate we are to have met the Mahayana teachings, and to learn and practice Dharma. However, we don’t take advantage of the opportunities we have. Rinpoche explains that we get taken away by wave upon wave of attachment, ignorance, and anger, and that we are completely under their control, so much so that our human life is wasted. Therefore, every day, every hour, every minute, and every second, it is so important for us to use our perfect human rebirth to practice Dharma.
“Taking the eight Mahayana precepts is a way to make life meaningful, to take its essence all day and night, by taking vows,” Lama Zopa Rinpoche has taught. “It is so simple. It is just for one day. Just for one day. It makes it so easy.”
The eight Mahayana precepts can be taken on any day of the year, but their karmic effects are particularly powerful on merit multiplying days. The full moon day, or fifteenth day of the month, of Saka Dawa is one of the four great holy days of the Tibetan Buddhist calendar, commemorating Shakyamuni Buddha’s enlightenment and parinirvana. Any actions done on this day, both auspicious and harmful, are magnified in their power. Karmic results are multiplied by one hundred million, as cited by Lama Zopa Rinpoche in the vinaya text Treasure of Quotations and Logic. This year’s fifteenth day of Saka Dawa, June 5, also falls on a lunar eclipse, multiplying karmic results by a further seven hundred thousand times. With so much merit being generated, please remember to also rejoice!
Watch Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s and take the eight Mahayana precepts:
https://youtu.be/RUM_lVmU09M
The eight Mahayana precepts are taken from early morning until sunrise the next day. Therefore, this video is meant to be watched early in the morning, before dawn. Together with Rinpoche, you will go through the Ritual for Taking the Eight Mahayana Precepts.
To receive the lineage, it is necessary to repeat the words of the following prayers after Lama Zopa Rinpoche:
- Prayer for Taking the Precepts
- Commitment Prayer to Keep the Precepts
- Mantra of Pure Morality
- Prayer to Keep Pure Morality
Please be aware that by taking the lineage of the eight Mahayana precepts from Lama Zopa Rinpoche, Rinpoche will become one of your gurus.
Links to resources for this video:
- Video transcript, which includes the practice Ritual for Taking the Eight Mahayana Precepts and Rinpoche’s instructions
- Ritual for Taking the Eight Mahayana Precepts PDF Audio
- Rinpoche’s three-hour teaching on the eight Mahayana precepts recorded on May 25, 2020, which in addition to offering the precepts includes extra commentary, meditations, and chanting
- Living in the Path, an FPMT Education program, offers a free module on the eight Mahayana precepts, which includes additional text, video, and audio materials
Learn about Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s recommended practices for the fifteenth day of Saka Dawa:
https://fpmt.org/edu-news/recommended-practices-for-the-fifteenth-day-of-saka-dawa-june-5/
Find more advice and video teachings by Lama Zopa Rinpoche from Kopan Monastery during the COVID-19 crisis and also links to videos in translation, transcripts, MP3s, and more:
https://fpmt.org/fpmt/announcements/resources-for-coronavirus-pandemic/advice-from-lama-zopa-rinpoche-for-coronavirus/
Practice advice from our teachers, Dharma study-from-home opportunities, and more can be found on the page “Resources for the 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.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche blessing all the beings in Palmer Lake, Washington, US. Photo by Ven. Holly Ansett.
Even in difficult times, we can engage in activities to bless and care for animals.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche offers us inspiration to do this as he has blessed animals and beings living in the water around the world, including in many of the world’s great oceans, seas, and lakes from New Zealand to California, South East Asia to Eastern Europe.
But you can bless animals in your local region as well. In 2019 while visiting Buddha Amitabha Pure Land, in rural Washington state in the United States, Rinpoche visited a nearby lake to offer blessings there.
Rinpoche and Sangha recorded video of the activities that they engaged in to bless the beings in the lake. Sangha had prepared food and water to offer as well as mantras and flags for the small boat that they take out on the water.
In the video, Rinpoche explains the various ways to bless all the beings in the lake with mantras and blessed substances. Then Rinpoche and Sangha take small boats on to the lake and do the blessings.
Watch Lama Zopa Rinpoche explain How to Bless the Beings in a Lake:
https://youtu.be/LdRLS828eHE
FPMT Education Services has collected Rinpoche’s advice and practices to benefit animals. Students can learn more online:
https://fpmt.org/education/prayers-and-practice-materials/benefiting-animals-practices-and-advice/
Read more stories about Lama Zopa Rinpoche blessing animals on FPMT.org:
https://fpmt.org/tag/animals/
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 teaching on Vesak from his room at Kopan Monastery, with Khen Rinpoche Geshe Chonyi, Nepal, May 2020. Photo by Ven. Lobsang Sherab.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche continues his video teachings from Kopan Monastery in Nepal during the coronavirus pandemic. Here is a summary of the most recent teaching:
This video begins with a continuation of Khen Rinpoche Geshe Thubten Chonyi’s life story and brief history of Kopan Monastery.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche begins this teaching reminding us that we are unbelievably fortunate to be alive today. So many people died today, but we are still alive.
Buddha taught a method to become free from sickness, old age, and death, which is the whole path to enlightenment. Without Dharma, we have no method to become free from dissatisfaction; but by knowing that everything comes from the mind, we have great freedom because everything is in your hands.
Within FPMT we teach individuals where suffering and happiness comes from, we teach them about karma. This is the most important thing and those working for the organization need to recognize this—whether you are a director, volunteer, whatever. It is all part of your practice to help sentient beings meet the Dharma by making it available, and it is “sooooooo important!”
All negative experiences, including the coronavirus, came from the mind. Without understanding karma, we continue to create the causes for more problems, including more viruses. Because we haven’t died yet, there is still a lot we can do, such as meditating on bodhichitta, emptiness, and renunciation—even reciting a mantra one time.
The motivation for listening to the teachings should be the wish to achieve enlightenment in order to free numberless sentient beings from the oceans of samsaric sufferings and bring them to peerless happiness, full enlightenment, by oneself alone. And all of the lamrim—the teachings on the graduated path to enlightenment—is lojong. When your mind becomes lamrim, your mind becomes lojong.
When you see others buying nice things, living in nice environments, or enjoying nice partners, you must rejoice rather than have jealousy. You can think, “How wonderful it is that this person has happiness.” Jealousy causes us to experience hell, even while in the human body. Particularly with those we have a physical connection to, the suffering of jealousy with partners can cause the mind to completely freak out. This jealousy comes from cherishing the “I.”
Rinpoche shares this quote from Lama Tsongkhapa’s Lamrim Chenmo: “The ignorance grasping the ‘I’ as real exaggerates. Then on that basis, by exaggerating good and bad, attachment and anger arise.” You can prove that there are mistakes with this type of thinking by using logic. The object—in this case a husband, girlfriend, or so forth—does not exist as you think it does. You are viewing it according to your view of “I”-grasping ignorance, which is a selfish mind, a mind of attachment, of anger. We are like children when we think like this—thinking our husband, girlfriend, or so forth belongs to us. This is similar to how a child would make a house in the sand and say, “This is my house!” And once the house is destroyed, the child cries. They cry because they believe it is real. We are like this too.
By realizing lamrim we achieve enlightenment; and by rejoicing we say goodbye to jealousy and anger.
When people make mistakes, remember that this is due to ignorance. Otherwise, we become angry at the person and wish to harm or destroy them. When we think that they made their mistake due to ignorance, it helps compassion arise and brings peace to the situation. Delusions make mistakes, not sentient beings. Therefore, getting angry at the person—criticizing, or harming them—is not logical. We have to respect others the same way we respect Buddha because Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha came from sentient beings. As well, achieving enlightenment comes from the kindness of sentient beings.
We are all in the process of dying, running toward our death. So while some people are dying of cancer or from this virus, we think, “But I am alive! They are dying, but I am alive.” In reality, we are in the same process of death. Since the second we are born, we are constantly moving toward our death. In the morning you could be involved in conversations, but by the evening your body could be dead. By remembering impermanence and death, you conquer laziness, and everything you do becomes holy Dharma.
We invite you to go deeper into the topics presented here, plus many others, by watching Rinpoche’s video and reading the full transcript of Rinpoche’s teaching.
Watch Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s teaching “Jealousy Comes from I-Grasping Ignorance, and We Are All in the Process of Dying”:
https://youtu.be/vhyaOxYBlNI
- Read the transcript of Rinpoche’s teaching “Jealousy Comes from I-Grasping Ignorance, and We Are All in the Process of Dying.”
- Dedication verses for COVID-19 Crisis Teachings
For students who watched His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s webcast of the Avalokiteshvara empowerment on May 29-30, 2020, here is a link to the Arya Avalokiteshvara Singhanada (Exalted Lion’s Roar Chenrezig) mantras:
https://fpmt.org/wp-content/uploads/education/prayers-and-practice-materials/mantras/avalokiteshvara_singhanada_rinjung_gyatsa_a5.pdf
Find more advice and video teachings by Lama Zopa Rinpoche from Kopan Monastery during the COVID-19 crisis and also links to videos in translation, transcripts, MP3s, and more:
https://fpmt.org/fpmt/announcements/resources-for-coronavirus-pandemic/advice-from-lama-zopa-rinpoche-for-coronavirus/
Practice advice from our teachers, Dharma study-from-home opportunities, and more can be found on the page “Resources for the 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.