Lama Zopa Rinpoche News and Advice

Lama Zopa Rinpoche holding Teddy Tulku during a group photo with Sangha at the end of the lam-rim retreat in Mexico, September 2015. Photo by Ven. Thubten Kunsang.

“Cherishing others is the door opening, opening the door for all the qualities, infinite qualities. Cherishing oneself is opening the door for all the problems, obstacles, for all these qualities, obstacle for all these qualities that we are talking about, all these desirable objects, obstacles, opening the door for problems, opening the door for all the obstacles.”

– Lama Zopa Rinpoche, from “The Benefits of Purification Practice” on Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive (lamayeshe.com), Jinsiu Farlin Center, Taipei, Taiwan, 1994 

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 with students from Centro Shiwa Lha blessing the ocean and all the creatures in it, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, September 2015. Photo by Ven. Roger Kunsang.

As Lama Zopa Rinpoche travels around the globe, he regularly finds time in this busy schedule to go to beaches, piers and even ferry boats to bless the ocean and all the sentient beings living in it. One time in California, Rinpoche and a large group of students were asked to leave a wharf where they were blessing the beings using a special Namgyalma mantra boards because they didn’t have the required permission. The next day, Rinpoche wrote a letter:

“Just as the fisher people get permission, we also request the state parks for this permission. Within this great democratic country, which gives so much happiness to others, please grant permission to bless the ocean and liberate all the animals and fish in the ocean, to free them from the suffering of rebirth, old age, sickness and death, and to help them achieve total liberation from suffering and attain the state of omniscient mind, the peerless happiness.”

For more see “Permission to Bless Sentient Beings in the Ocean” on the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive and FPMT.org stories on the Namgyalma mantra and blessing animals.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche checking the Namgyalma mantra on the newly made board for blessing beings in the ocean, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, September 2015. Photo by Ven. Roger Kunsang.

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 with participants in the Mexican retreat, Guadalajara, Mexico, September 2015. Photo by Drolkar McCallum.

Karla Ambrosio, national coordinator of FPMT Mexico, shares this report after Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s recent retreat to the country in September 2015. The retreat was called “Essential Nectar” and took place at Casa de Ejercicios Espirituales de Puente Grande, a Jesuit retreat center just outside of Guadalajara:

The root text for the retreat was the poem written by Yeshe Tsöndru, a 19th-century Gelug lama from Sera Me Monastery. During the eight-day retreat, Rinpoche taught lam-rim, showing how we might see life’s great value and, by taking up the profound practice based on bodhichitta and emptiness, make it most beneficial.

As Rinpoche did in his last visit in 2008, the retreat began with detailed teachings on the nature of reality and continued with the three aspects of the path and heart advice on guru devotion. During the retreat, Rinpoche emphasized the importance of purification, collecting merit and develop a good heart.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche arriving at the beginning of a teaching session during the lam-rim retreat in Mexico, September 2015. Photo by Ven. Roger Kunsang.

About 300 people attended the retreat and around 20 people took refuge with Lama Zopa Rinpoche on the last evening. FPMT Mexico hosted and organized the retreat with Centro Khamlungpa, which offered heartfelt service through 30 volunteers. Most remarkable is the great organization job done by Dunia Cárcamo and Ramón Lara from Centro Khamlungpa, as well as Ven. Paloma Alba, whose great experience and service as FPMT Latin America regional coordinator is priceless.

The event was especially meaningful because of the diversity of the attendees: new Dharma students from different Tibetan Buddhist traditions and schools within Mexico; FPMT center directors, study group coordinators, SPCs, board members and students from all over the country; visitors from North and Latin America; Sangha members – and even three babies still in the womb!

Lama Zopa Rinpoche on the teaching throne during the lam-rim retreat, Guadalajara, Mexico, September 2015. Photo by Ven. Thubten Kunsang.

Some of the elder students expressed several times that the retreat had been one of the best, mostly because of the warm feeling of the Mexican people and the truly heartfelt service offered by the volunteers. Such an amazing opportunity for rejoicing!

The news about His Eminence Choden Rinpoche manifesting the appearance of passing away was an incredible teaching on impermanence, correct guru devotion and pure view. Lama Zopa Rinpoche emphasized the importance of the tsog offering as a way of purifying negative karma created in relation to the guru. Rinpoche said Lama Chöpa tsog is especially powerful if it can be performed on the same day as the guru’s passing away.

Karuna Cayton, Jhampa Shaneman and Jacie Keeley sharing stories, Mexico, September 2015. Photo by Nancy Torres.

Long-time students Karuna Cayton, Jhampa Shaneman and Jacie Keeley also shared some of their stories about studying and working with Lama Yeshe.

During the retreat, FPMT Mexico offered the translation of Rinpoche’s 2008 lam-rim teachings – Tu mente crea tu realidad. The book was edited by Alejandra Almada and Ven. Paloma, and published by Ediciones Dharma. Those precious teachings are also available in English at Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive.

FPMT Mexico centers and study groups had a meeting with Rinpoche at the end of the retreat. After more that eight years of a great learning process, the Mexican mandala offered Rinpoche a constitution for a legal civil association. Rinpoche shared some advice with the directors, coordinators and SPCs, who committed to offer service with bodhichitta. 

FPMT Mexico comprises four centers (Khamlungpa in Guadalajara, Bengungyal in Aguascalientes, Rinchen Zangpo in Torreón, Yeshe Gyaltsen in Cozumel) and five study groups (Padmasambhava in Durango, Vajrapani in Huatulco, Khedrup Sangye Yeshe in Morelia, Chekawa in Uruapan and Thubten Kunkyab in Mexico City). New groups will be formalized in Salamanca and Veracruz, and some upcoming groups will be developed in Puebla, Puerto Vallarta and San Luis Potosí.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche with the directors and SPCs of the four FPMT centers and five FPMT study groups of Mexico, and also Ven. Paloma Alba from Spain, Guadalajara, Mexico, September 2015. Photo by Ven. Lobsang Sherab.

Video recordings of Rinpoche teaching at the “Essence of Nectar” retreat will be made available as soon as possible on FPMT.org’s “Rinpoche Available Now” page.

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 giving a public teaching organized by Centro Shiwa Lha, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, September 2015. Photo by Ven. Lobsang Sherab.

“Anybody who wants peace in the world should read the Golden Light Sutra,” Lama Zopa Rinpoche teaches. “This is a very important practice to stop violence and wars in the world. The Golden Light Sutra is one of the most beneficial ways to bring peace. This is something that everyone can do, no matter how busy you are, even if you can read one page a day, or a few lines and in this way continually read the Golden Light Sutra.

“The holy Golden Light Sutra is the king of the sutras. It is extremely powerful and fulfills all one’s wishes, as well as bringing peace and happiness for all sentient beings, up to enlightenment. It is also extremely powerful for world peace, for your own protection and for the protection of the country and the world. Also, it has great healing power for people in the country.

“For anyone who desires peace for themselves and for others this is the spiritual, or Dharma, way to bring peace that doesn’t require you to harm others, doesn’t require you to criticize others or even to demonstrate against others, yet can accomplish peace. Anyone can read this text, Buddhists and even non-Buddhists who desire world peace.

“This also protects individuals and the country from what are labeled natural disasters of the wind element, fire element, earth element and water element, such as earthquakes, floods, cyclones, fires, tornadoes, etc. They are not natural because they come from causes and conditions that make dangers happen. They come from past inner negative thoughts and actions of people, and from external conditions. …”

You can read Rinpoche’s complete advice on reciting the Golden Light Sutra for world peace on FPMT.org, where FPMT Education Services has created a Golden Light Sutra resource page. On this page you can find links to more advice; videos of Rinpoche giving the oral transmission of this precious sutra; and PDFs of the sutra in 14 languages: https://fpmt.org/education/prayers-and-practice-materials/sutras/golden-light-sutra/.

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 doing prayers at the 9/11 Memorial in New York City, US, September 2015. Photo by Ven. Lobsang Sherab.

“Actually, there’s no outside enemy. There’s a reason why people give harm to us, get angry with us or criticize us. There’s a reason, there’s a cause for that, and that cause is our mind,” Lama Zopa Rinpoche taught at Kopan Monastery in December 2008. “For anybody, in any situation, even if a mosquito is biting us, the cause is our mind – attachment, anger, and of course no question about the root, ignorance. There’s no question, that’s the root. Ignorance – the concept holding things, the I and the aggregates as truly existent, which means the self-cherishing thought – that’s the real root.

“In the past we harmed others with these negative thoughts. We made mistakes, we did unrighteous actions and harmed others. What is happening now is the result of that. This mosquito biting us, that person who doesn’t like us even from the first time he saw us, that person who scolds us, even that unknown person who gets angry at us though we’ve never met before – all these things are just results, just creations of this mind. They are caused by this mind, by these negative thoughts, especially the self-cherishing thought.

“Actually, all these things are just like tools used by the people who are angry at us or who criticize us. All these things are like tools. The real enemy is our own self-cherishing thought, this ego, this ignorance, which causes anger, attachment and these delusions. The other things are like tools, like the stick that an angry person beats us with. The real reason is our own negative thought.

“It is very helpful to remember this when somebody is angry with us, scolding us or talking about our mistakes. If we can remember this at that time; that the situation is a tool, used by these negative thoughts. This is happening now because in the past we harmed that person, we did some wrong action to that person. The harm they are doing now is just a tool. The main enemy is our own negative mind. …”

Read the complete teaching “Don’t Get Angry at the Stick” on the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive: https://www.lamayeshe.com/article/dont-get-angry-stick/.

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. Visit https://fpmt.org/.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche offering a mandala during tsog puja, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, September 2015. Photo by Ven. Roger Kunsang.

“The very highest meaning of tsog is to join method and wisdom,” Lama Zopa Rinpoche said about the tsog ceremony in the advice “Tsog Offering Practice” on the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive. “The real meaning of experiencing tsog is the transcendental wisdom, non-dual great bliss – the wisdom of emptiness, the non-duality of that, and uniting these two. That is the very essence of tsog. It is the offering of that experience, oneself experiencing it, the male and female heroes and heroines, of which the essence is the guru deity, and oneself also experiencing that, as the guru deity. The real meaning of tsog is integrating method and wisdom, the transcendental wisdom, non-dual bliss and voidness (this is the secret meaning).

“The need for the actual tsog substances is to develop the very heart of the Mahayana and tantric path, that brings enlightenment in one brief lifetime of these degenerate times, because it ceases the defilements quickly, including the actual negative imprints left on the mental continuum by the delusions, and is the quickest way to collect extensive merit, which takes three countless great eons on the paramita path to collect to achieve enlightenment. Here, in a brief lifetime of these degenerate times, using the transcendental wisdom of non-dual bliss and voidness to increase this, one needs to enjoy these tsog substances.

“This is the principal method of the circle of tsog, to gain general attainments, and it is the principal method to restore samaya, tantric vows, pacify obstacles, and is the main cause for achieving Heruka and Vajrayogini’s pure land – Tharpo Kachoe (Pure Sky Enjoyment). This is the principal cause to be born there. Therefore, one should practice offering tsog. …”

You can read the more extensive commentary by Rinpoche in “Tsog Offering Practice” on the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive: https://www.lamayeshe.com/advice/tsog-offering-practice/.

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 the end of the weekend lam-rim retreat in Colombia, September 2015. Photo by Ven. Lobsang Sherab. Rinpoche is wearing a traditional Colombian-style teaching robe offered to him by students.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche arrived in Brazil earlier this week after concluding a weekend lam-rim retreat in Colombia, organized by Centro Yamantaka. 

Rinpoche will be teaching in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, giving a public talk on September 25 and leading a lam-rim retreat September 26-27. Both events are being organized by Centro Shiwa Lha. For details on the event, visit http://www.lamazopabrasil.org/. 

You can watch a live webcast of the teachings at the links below.

Public talk “Compassion in a Hostile World,” September 25, 7:30-9:30 p.m. local time (UTC-3), in English:
http://livestream.com/FPMT/BR2015

Public talk “Compassion in a Hostile World,” September 25, 7:30-9:30 p.m. local time (UTC-3), in Portuguese (organized by Centro Shiwa Lha):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2qjsaD9mM0

Lam-rim Retreat, September 26-27, in English:
http://livestream.com/FPMT/BR2015

Lam-rim Retreat, September 26-27, in Portuguese (organized by Centro Shiwa Lha):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=My6x-eOxDMU

High quality video recordings of Rinpoche’s teachings in Colombia and Brazil will be made available as quickly as possible on FPMT’s Rinpoche Available Now page.

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 blessing the Atlantic Ocean and all the creatures in it. A Sherpa ex-monk who has climbed Mount Everest five times assists Rinpoche, New York, US, September 2015. Photo by Ven. Losang Sherab. Rinpoche recited many mani mantras and blessed the bottles of water, which he then poured into the bay.

“The meditation on bodhichitta that you said you are doing is the best practice, that makes you achieve all the realizations and attain enlightenment in the quickest way,” Lama Zopa Rinpoche wrote to a student who had written to thank Rinpoche for bringing him so much happiness through his publications. “It is also the quickest way to free the sentient beings from the oceans of samsaric suffering and bring them to full enlightenment. Especially if you are doing the practice of bodhichitta with tong-len – taking numberless sentient beings’ suffering and the causes of suffering into your heart, onto yourself, and destroying the self-cherishing thought as well as the ignorance, the root of your samsara, the oceans of suffering of samsara. The real I, which is the false I, which is like a dream, like a hallucination, an illusion – like thinking the reflection of your face in the mirror or on the ocean is a real face – that is destroyed, that is realized to be empty, as it is empty. So you can do a short meditation on emptiness like this. Meditate on shunyata, emptiness only.

“When you take the sufferings of others, do so with compassion. When you dedicate to others, your body is in the form of numberless wish-granting jewels and all sentient beings receive whatever they want from that, and they achieve the dharmakaya and rupakaya. Dedicate all your enjoyments and all your belongings to the numberless six realm sentient beings, so they receive everything they want and achieve the dharmakaya and rupakaya. Then you dedicate all your past, present and future merits and their results, as well as all the good things in this life and in your next rebirth. Dedicate all the enjoyments in good rebirths from life to life, then the everlasting happiness of nirvana, and next, the ultimate happiness, the peerless happiness, the total cessation of all the obscurations and completion of all the realizations. So you dedicate all of this to numberless hell beings, numberless hungry ghosts, numberless animals, numberless human beings, numberless asuras, numberless suras and numberless intermediate state beings. And from that they achieve everything, the dharmakaya and rupakaya.

“When you take the suffering and its causes – wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow – this is the most powerful purification. Negative karmas and obscurations collected from beginningless rebirths are purified. It is most amazing, most amazing, most amazing, most amazing, most amazing! …”

Read the rest of Rinpoche’s letter with advice on tong-len practice on the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive: https://www.lamayeshe.com/advice/tong-len-practice.

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 ease in New York City, US, September 2015. Photo by Ven. Roger Kunsang.

“I think the most important thing is that you’re happy. Not just in the Western way, feeling happy with excitement and attachment, but inner happiness,” Lama Zopa Rinpoche said in May 2015. “I’m talking about the happiness that you can develop from life to life, up to enlightenment. This happiness can be completed; it is so meaningful. Whatever you do in the world, this is the essence. This happiness is Dharma; it is happiness which can be continued and developed.”

You can read more from Lama Zopa Rinpoche on inner happiness and making life meaningful on the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive (https://www.lamayeshe.com/).

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. Visit https://fpmt.org/.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche at the 9/11 Memorial in New York City, US, September 2015. Photo by Ven. Lobsang Sherab.

“As explained by the fully enlightened being, Shakyamuni Buddha, from his own experience, by meditating on the reality or ultimate nature of the I, the five aggregates, the twelve doors of the senses, the eighteen elements and other phenomena, and actualizing the wisdom understanding the very nature of these things, this is the main weapon, like an atomic bomb, to destroy the very root of all problems,” Lama Zopa Rinpoche taught in Florence, Italy, in 1990, as published by the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive. 

“Without the wisdom directly realizing the ultimate nature or emptiness of the I, aggregates and all the rest of the phenomena, there is no way to eliminate the root of all our problems. There is no way to eliminate the sufferings of birth, old age, sickness and death, or the worry and fear of meeting undesirable objects and separating from desirable ones. The root of all these difficulties we go through in our life cannot be eliminated without wisdom. No matter what other realizations we have, whether of tantra or even bodhichitta, until we are able to actualize the wisdom realizing the ultimate nature of the I and so forth, the root of the whole problem cannot be eliminated. Only by having this wisdom can we eliminate the root of the entire samsaric suffering.

“Without achieving this wisdom realizing emptiness, no matter what other realization we have, there is no way we can end the suffering of samsara, no way to reach the end of the entire problem, which means no way to achieve liberation. Once we achieve liberation, it is impossible to experience suffering again. The root of the entire problem is the ignorance not knowing the ultimate nature of the I and aggregates. No other realization can directly eradicate this ignorance – only wisdom. Therefore, listening, reflecting and meditating on the ultimate nature of everything is the most important thing.

“To think about emptiness for even one second is very fortunate. Going beyond hallucination and touching the ultimate nature for even one second is great purification. So many heavy negative karmas are purified just by that. A sutra mentions that even questioning whether there is such a thing as emptiness or not shatters samsara into pieces. This expresses how powerful meditation on the ultimate nature of things is.

“The teachings also say that simply generating the wish to experience the Middle Way view of emptiness purifies many heavy negative karmas, such as the ten non-virtues and even the five uninterrupted negative karmas, which are the heaviest among all the negative actions. The five are killing your present-life father or mother, causing blood to flow from a tathagata or a buddha, killing an arhat, and causing disunity among the Sangha. These negative karmas are called ‘uninterrupted’ because immediately after death one is born in hell, without any other rebirth intervening. So, even this very heavy negative karma can be purified by generating the wish to understand the ultimate nature or shunyata. …” 

You can read the entire teaching “Actualizing the Wisdom Realizing Emptiness” at this link: https://www.lamayeshe.com/article/meditation-emptiness-and-tong-len-taking-and-giving.

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 teaching in Mexico, September 2015. Photo by Ven. Thubten Kunsang.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s teachings in Colombia during September 18-20 will be webcast live. 

On Friday, September 18, Rinpoche gives a public talk on “Pacifying Inner and External Chaos” in Bogotá, Colombia. The talk is scheduled to begin at 7 p.m. local time (UTC-5). 

On September 19-20, Rinpoche will give teachings during a weekend lam-rim retreat. Teachings are scheduled for 4 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. local time.

You can watch Rinpoche teach in Colombia on FPMT’s Livestream page: 
https://livestream.com/FPMT/COL2015

Centro Yamantaka, the FPMT center organizing these events, made special arrangements to have high-speed internet at the retreat location so that the teachings can be webcast live and watched by students internationally.

For updates on teaching times and to watch the live webcast, visit the above link. You can also sign up for webcast updates from Livestream by clicking the the green “Follow” button on the Livestream page.

After the event, high quality video recordings of the teachings will be made available as quickly as possible on FPMT’s Rinpoche Available Now page.

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 arriving at the retreat in Guadalajara, Mexico, September 2015. Photo by Ven. Lobsang Sherab.

“What differentiates Buddhism from other religions is COMPASSION for every single sentient being.” — Lama Zopa Rinpoche from “Compassion is of the Upmost Need”

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.