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Lama Zopa Rinpoche News and Advice
Lama Zopa Rinpoche reading Lekshe Nyingpo while circumambulating the Mahabodhi Stupa, Bodhgaya, India, February 2015. Photo by Ven. Roger Kunsang.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche arrived at Root Institute in Bodhgaya, India on February 2. Ven. Sarah Thresher recently shared some of Rinpoche’s beneficial activities with Mandala:
Much work has been done on improving Rinpoche’s house [at Root Institute]. A library has been constructed on the roof to house the entire Kangyur and Tengyur. It is a beautiful time of year weather wise; the Root Institute gardens are full of flowers, and it is very peaceful at the center and at the Mahabodhi Stupa.
The purpose of Rinpoche’s visit is to do some retreat, but the first week has been spent resting and going to the stupa. Usually, Rinpoche goes to the stupa just before closing time, but that doesn’t seem to bother the guards who pull back the big heavy gates to let Rinpoche and entourage enter. I have seen the soldiers respectfully saluting Rinpoche as he enters and leaves. Following him is a gathering of students, and we always seem to accumulate more.
Mahabodhi Stupa, Bodhgaya, India, February 2015. Photo by Ven. Roger Kunsang.
Rinpoche has been taking the opportunity to recite Lama Tsongkhapa’s Lekshe Nyingpo (Essence of Eloquence) while doing korwa (circumambulation). He started this last year, but didn’t finish. First we do bodhichitta motivation, then the circumambulation mantras and then we start walking while reciting mantras and prayers, trying to keep mindfulness that the stupa is all the ten directions buddhas and bodhisattvas whose essence is His Holiness the Dalai Lama. When we finish the korwa and leave the stupa, Rinpoche will very respectfully and deliberately offer 10 rupees to each beggar outside on the way to the car. Sometimes they grab at the money, but I’ve also seen them touch Rinpoche’s feet with respect and devotion. It’s obvious to everyone that Rinpoche is a holy being; ordinary actions become extraordinary in his presence.
A few days after arriving, Rinpoche was on the way to the gompa to make offerings to the holy objects when he saw the discussion group from the Introduction to Buddhism course. He asked if anyone had a question and then spent nearly an hour explaining emptiness and the essence of Buddhism.
Three days ago, Rinpoche started teaching on patience. On arrival at Root, he translated a text by the Kadampa masters with simple practical advice on patience. Then he announced he wanted to teach on the text. The gompa is full each day and so far we have not gone beyond an explanation of the Diamond Cutter verse which is in the preliminary prayers to the teaching: “Look at all phenomena like a star, a faulty vision, a butter lamp, etc.” Rinpoche has been using this to teach on emptiness and subtle dependent arising, giving techniques that can be applied continually in everyday life to meditate on emptiness. “We are living a totally false life till we realize emptiness … the whole world is hallucinating,” Rinpoche said. “Your whole day, your whole life is lived in total hallucination. You must know that. You must realize that. Then you can meditate on emptiness.”
Learn more about Lama Zopa Rinpoche, spiritual director of the Foundation for the Preservation of Mahayana Tradition (FPMT), and Rinpoche’s vision for a better world. Sign up to receive news and updates.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche teaching on patience at Root Institute, Bodhgaya, India, February 2015. Photo courtesy of Ven. Sarah Thresher.
“If you are patient, you don’t get angry at sentient beings,” Lama Zopa Rinpoche wrote in a letter to a student who was experiencing the impact of his anger. “In that way, sentient beings only receive peace and happiness from you. Each time you stop being angry, by practicing patience, this becomes your most practical contribution to world peace. It brings so much peace and happiness to your own world, mind, and heart. For others, it brings peace and happiness, not only in this world, but for all living beings. If you are able to practice patience in this life, it will be much easier in future lives. By developing your mind in patience through the continuity of lives, you will bring happiness to all living beings.
“Also, each time you come closer to completing the perfection of patience, it means you are getting closer to enlightenment, and much closer to bringing all sentient beings to enlightenment. So, you can see that each time you practice patience, there are long-term results. This is the power of the mind. Not only can you bring sentient beings temporary peace, but also full enlightenment.
“… You have a great opportunity to gain experience in patience. Each time you wake up, you must plan this – especially today! And be mindful when a circumstance occurs that provokes anger. If you don’t make a firm plan in the morning, you won’t remember the teachings when anger comes up.”
You can read the complete teaching ‘Dealing with Anger’ and find links to other advice on “Anger” on the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive. Other advice from Rinpoche can be found on the page “Advice from Lama Zopa Rinpoche” on FPMT.org.
Learn more about Lama Zopa Rinpoche, spiritual director of the Foundation for the Preservation of Mahayana Tradition (FPMT), and Rinpoche’s vision for a better world. Sign up to receive news and updates.
Screen shot from “Lama Zopa Rinpoche – Lawudo – 1969” by Georges Luneau.
Alexis Benelhadj, an FPMT student at Institut Vajra Yogini in France, recently helped digitize an old roll of film donated by Georges Luneau, who in 1969 recorded Lama Zopa Rinpoche at the home of his previous incarnation in Lawudo, located in the Solo Khumbu region of Nepal. Georges’ silent 30-minute film is both haunting and transcendent, and is a precious and rare opportunity to see a 23-year-old Rinpoche, who is from the same area, visiting the meditation cave of the Lawudo Lama and the surrounding land.
Watch “Lama Zopa Rinpoche – Lawudo – 1969” on YouTube.
In the present day, Lawudo Gompa and Retreat Centre offers serious students an opportunity to do retreat in the remote and rarefied beauty of the Himalayas.
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 and Dagri Rinpoche near Istituto Lama Tzong Khapa, Pomaia, Italy, June 2014. Photo by Ven. Thubten Kunsang.
“‘Calling the Guru from Afar’ was composed by Pabongka Dechen Nyingpo, the great yogi of Heruka Chakrasamvara, which is a manifestation of the kind, compassionate Shakyamuni Buddha,” Lama Zopa Rinpoche instructed during a teaching on guru devotion given in Singapore in 1992 and recently posted on the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive. “‘Calling the Guru from Afar’ combines guru yoga practice and lam-rim. It is a very effective way to do direct meditation on the three principal aspects of the path and the two stages of highest yoga tantra, because this prayer came from this great yogi Pabongka Dechen Nyingpo’s own experiences. …
“On the morning of the New Year I think it is very good, either with the family together in front of the Buddha or at the center, to read the prayer at the end of the Chöd practice. This prayer describes Buddha’s lives as a bodhisattva and his practice of the six paramitas. He gave his life to other sentient beings. When he was a king he gave his whole family and all his possessions to other sentient beings. He also made charity of his body to a family of starving tigers. He gave his life to blood-sucking spirits and made a prayer that the spirits become his disciples in their next life. This is why these spirits became the four monks to whom Buddha gave his first teaching, the four noble truths, in Sarnath. Before, they were spirits that sucked blood from the Buddha in his past life as a bodhisattva; he used that to dedicate that he would be able to give teachings to them in their next life.
“There are many stories there in that prayer. When there was an epidemic disease and many hundreds of thousands of people were dying, the bodhisattva manifested as a particular fish whose flesh became the medicine to cure that disease. By eating the fish, the people in that country then recovered from that epidemic. At another time, when many hundreds of thousands of fish were dying, in a past life as a bodhisattva, Buddha recited a particular buddha’s name and liberated them all.
“There are many different stories of the Buddha’s past lives as a bodhisattva, where other sentient beings with vicious attitudes harmed Buddha, but in return he only benefited them. It is very good for the family to read together such stories in front of Buddha together, and then to be able to live life with a sincere, open heart toward all other sentient beings, thus to make your life beneficial. That is the best way to make your life happy and to find satisfaction now and at the time of death. It benefits everybody – the family and all other sentient beings – for enlightenment and everything else.
“This practice is very beneficial and could either be done with the family or at the center. After taking refuge and generating bodhichitta, the four immeasurables, the seven-limb prayer, and a short mandala offering, you could then read these short bodhisattva life stories. It is a very good way of reminding us how to live our life. It reminds us of the purpose of life and how to make our life beneficial for all sentient beings. It then makes the New Year a very good new year and very meaningful.
You can read the complete teaching and find links to other advice on “Calling the Guru from Afar” on the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive. FPMT Education Services offers an audio recording of Lama Zopa Rinpoche chanting the prayer as well as the practice text.
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 Tushita Mahayana Meditation Centre, New Dehli, India, January 2015. Photo courtesy of Tushita Mahayana Meditation Centre’s Facebook page.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche gave teachings and an oral transmission of the Golden Light Sutra at Tushita Mahayana Meditation Centre in New Dehli, India, between January 25-31. Ven. Sarah Thresher, who was there, shared the following:
“Rinpoche gave five teachings on the Golden Light Sutra. Ven. Kabir Saxena requested the transmission a few days after Rinpoche arrived, and Rinpoche immediately agreed. We were all very happy because of the enormous benefits the sutra has. In fact, Rinpoche was giving the transmission when US President Barack Obama was in Delhi attending Indian Republic Day. The idea was that Rinpoche would start the transmission and continue whenever he passes through Delhi. So far we reached into Chapter 7, ‘The Four Great Kings.’
“Attendance was very good, despite the late hours, and Rinpoche preceded each day of transmission with a teaching. The gompa [at Tushita Mahayana Meditation Centre] has been newly painted and decorated and it was full with Indians, Westerners and Tibetans. Most of the people attending lived in Delhi and Rinpoche commented on the new surge of interest in Buddhism that is now taking place with more and more young educated Indians taking a serious interest in Buddhist studies as they look for answers to the problems they have in their lives.”
Recitation of the Golden Light Sutra is one of Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s Vast Visions for FPMT. FPMT Education Services has created a resource page to help you learn more about and start reciting the Golden Light Sutra.
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.
Altar detail at Kachoe Dechen Ling, Aptos, California, 2014. Photo by Chris Majors.
“At the beginning, when the Sangha was flourishing, Lama Yeshe got all the monks and nuns to take turns to cook for the other Sangha members. Ven. Pemo didn’t know how to cook, so when it was her turn, she put some vegetables in oil and then served them raw,” Lama Zopa Rinpoche said in November 2014 to Ven. Ailsa Cameron.
“If you know how to make food, it is very beneficial. The highest benefit – bringing great purification of negative karma and delusions and collecting merit – is to offer delicious food to the guru. You can also make so many people happy by making delicious food for them.
“So, bodhisattvas learn anything to benefit sentient beings.”
Scribed by Ven. Ailsa Cameron, November 2014, Bendigo, Australia. Lightly edited by Michael Jolliffe for inclusion on FPMT.org.
More advice from Rinpoche can be found on the page “Advice from Lama Zopa Rinpoche” on FPMT.org.
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 Lama Zopa Rinpoche News.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche, Amitabha celebration day, Buddha Amitabha Pure Land, Washington, US, August 2014. Photo by Ven. Sherab.
In August 2014, Lama Zopa Rinpoche spent some time at Buddha Amitabha Pure Land in the United States. While there, he explained on camera some of the ways he and Buddha Amitabha Pure Land residents benefit local birds with a very special bird feeder and bird bath.
The roof of the large bird feeder has painted on it the mantra from the sutra Pagpa Chulung Rolpai Do, which purifies 100,000 eons of the birds’ negative karma just by seeing it, and the Lotus Pinnacle of Amoghapasha mantra, which purifies 1,000 eons of the birds’ negative karma when they pass underneath it for food. (You can find these mantras embroidered on the Precious Mantra Hat available through the Foundation Store.)
Just offering the birds seed blessed with mantras is incredibly helpful, Rinpoche commented, because the blessings benefit the birds’ bodies and minds and it means that the birds look for less insects to eat, which not only protects the insects from death, but also reduces the amount of killing karma the birds accumulate.
The bird bath is similarly beneficial as it is filled with water blessed by a mantra of Padmasambhava and crushed mani pills to help the birds achieve enlightenment.
At the end of the video, Rinpoche mentions that residents at Buddha Amitabha Pure Land also make charity of food and Dharma to the various ant nests around the property using How to Make Charity to Ants, a text compiled by Lama Zopa Rinpoche and inspired by a text written by Ngulchu Dharmabhadra, a well-known yogi and lineage lama.
Find more videos of Lama Zopa Rinpoche on FPMT.org.
Learn more about Lama Zopa Rinpoche, spiritual director of the Foundation for the Preservation of Mahayana Tradition (FPMT), and Rinpoche’s vision for a better world. Sign up to receive news and updates.
Photos of His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Lama Yeshe on the throne next to Lama Zopa Rinpoche at the retreat in Australia, October 2014. Photo by Ven. Thubten Kunsang.
“Up to now, what we have been able to accomplish, benefiting this world in various ways, is, I think, basically through the kindness of the guru: His Holiness, who is the only object of refuge of all sentient beings and the originator of all sentient beings’ happiness; and then, secondly, the founder of this organization, Lama Yeshe, whose holy name is extremely rare to mention, who is kinder than all the three time buddhas; and then the kindness of many other gurus,” Lama Zopa Rinpoche has taught. “So, what we have been able to accomplish so far depends on how much guru devotion practice we did correctly, it is the result of that.”
These days, many FPMT students and students of Lama Zopa Rinpoche have not had the opportunity to see teachings from FPMT founder Lama Yeshe and to develop a connection with Lama Yeshe. Fortunately, there are videos available to watch online and on DVD. The Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive offers videos of Lama Yeshe on their website and on YouTube.
WATCH VIDEO: Lama Yeshe “Making the Most of Your Life”
In addition, there are many videos online of His Holiness the Dalai Lama.
So as we remember the kindness of these teachers, we can imagine in our minds their gestures and voices in addition to their images.
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 reciting the names of the 35 Buddhas during a long life puja at Kopan Monastery, Nepal, December 2104. Photo by Ven. Roger Kunsang.
In late November and early December 2014, Lama Zopa Rinpoche taught as part of the annual month-long Kopan course at Kopan Monastery in Nepal. Rinpoche’s teachings covered a variety of subjects. What follows is an excerpt from a lightly edited transcript and video extract:
How to take care of your life? How to take care of your life? Life used for anger, to harm others, to
harm others; that is what in the world people do. You use your life, your intelligence, all that you
learned from school, from kindergarten, school, college, university, your human body, that which you have been taking care of for years and years, from childhood time, your education and your wealth, you use them to harm others. You live your life for anger, to work for anger, to destroy the world, to harm others. Then you live your life with attachment, then also you harm other sentient beings. Then ignorance harms, of course, yourself and sentient beings. By following those three poisonous minds you harm yourself, you harm others. So much suffering. So much suffering.
Now, the way of taking care of life, the correct way of taking care of your life, is to be non-attached – a positive mind of non-anger, non-ignorance, and non-attachment should be there. So there is taking care of your life with satisfied, inner happiness, a fully satisfied mind renouncing samsara. A fully satisfied mind, a totally happy, fully satisfied mind of renunciation of this life and renunciation of samsara – this is taking care of your life with renunciation. …
Watch “How to Take Care of Your Life” on YouTube.
You can find more MP3 recordings, transcripts and short video excerpts of Rinpoche’s teachings from the Kopan course on FPMT.org.
Learn more about Lama Zopa Rinpoche, spiritual director of the Foundation for the Preservation of Mahayana Tradition (FPMT), and Rinpoche’s vision for a better world. Sign up to receive news and updates.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche teaching at Kopan Monastery, Nepal, December 2014. Photo by Ven. Thubten Kunsang.
In December 2014, Lama Zopa Rinpoche taught as part of the annual month-long Kopan course at Kopan Monastery in Nepal. Rinpoche taught on a variety of subjects, including how all things are “merely labeled by the mind.” What follow are a lightly edited transcript and video extract, made for Rinpoche Available Now, a new project from FPMT.org to bring Rinpoche’s major teachings to the public as they happen:
Another example. Okay. A design like this on a blackboard, a design like that is A. Okay? So you see A. You are taught A and you see A. You see A. But now go back, now you go back to your childhood time, now you back to your childhood time, to your childhood time before you were taught “This is A.” You go back to your childhood time before you learned A. So what you see at first is a design like this on the blackboard. Okay? It is just a design. You don’t see that “This is A.” You may be seeing A but you are not seeing “This is A.” You are not seeing that, you are not yet taught that. Because you are not taught that yet, so you see a design like this. Okay? Then your parents or teacher, somebody, introduces you, labels “A.” The person labeled “This is A.” They labeled it, they named it, from the mind. They taught you, so you believe it. Before that you see the base, you are not seeing “This is A.” You understand? It is very clear. You don’t see “This is A,” you see the base, just the base of the A. When you are taught by your parents or a teacher who label “This is A,” labeled by their mind “This is A,” then you follow, you believe that. Then your mind labels A. Then your mind merely… I want to add this one [word] even now: it is not only labeled but merely labeled A. Merely labeled A. Merely labeled A. Then after that… Your mind merely labeled A on that base that is like this, then after that, then there is the appearance of A. Then there is the appearance of A to you. Then you see A. Only then you see A. So your seeing A is dependent on first your mind labeling A, your mind merely imputing A, and that depends on somebody teaching you, introducing you, with their mind merely labeling A. So A came from your mind. You see? If you are not taught, if your mind does not merely label A, you don’t see “This is A,” at all. You see? That’s clear. Now the A that appears, that you see, came from your mind. Like that all phenomena came from your mind. Okay?
Watch “The Letter ‘A’: All Phenomena Come from the Mind” on YouTube.
You can find more MP3 recordings, transcripts and short video excerpts of Rinpoche’s teachings from the Kopan course on FPMT.org.
Learn more about Lama Zopa Rinpoche, spiritual director of the Foundation for the Preservation of Mahayana Tradition (FPMT), and Rinpoche’s vision for a better world. Sign up to receive news and updates.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche at Vulture Peak, India, March 2014. Photo by Andy Melnic.
“My very dear most kind precious [student],” Lama Zopa Rinpoche wrote to a student who had written to Rinpoche about his book How to Practice Dharma, published by the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive. “Skies of thanks for your discovering Dharma, trying to practice Dharma with every action. Thank you very, very much. That’s the real Dharma. Even in the monasteries studying so much extensive philosophy, but sometimes Dharma gets left out for some people. Looking like practicing Dharma, but not practicing Dharma.
“It is so precious what you have discovered, what you experienced. You discovered Dharma,
what Dharma is. Numberless thanks again.”
You can read the students letter and Rinpoche’s response as a PDF. More advice from Rinpoche can be found on the page “Advice from Lama Zopa Rinpoche” on FPMT.org.
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 Lama Zopa Rinpoche News.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche, Bangalore, India, March 2014. Photo by Ven. Thubten Kunsang.
“So, what is it that brings all that [Dharma] happiness?” Lama Zopa Rinpoche asks in The Joy of Compassion, a free ebook from Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive. “It’s cherishing sentient beings; living your life cherishing sentient beings. Not that I actually do this myself, but intellectually, it’s what I think. Cherish sentient beings first; put enlightenment second.
“Why do I say put enlightenment second? For example, when you go into the kitchen, you’re looking for food, not crockery; your motivation is not to get a plate but delicious food. You go into the kitchen with food on your mind. But although your main motivation is to get food, you do need something to put it on – unless you can carry soup in your hands! Anyway, I’m joking again.
“Of course, enlightenment is extremely important because without it you cannot work perfectly for sentient beings. You cannot be a perfect guide, knowing, seeing directly, every sentient being’s mind, level of karma, intelligence, wishes and characteristics, as well as the various methods that suit their individual dispositions. But what should be in your heart is sentient beings as the reason for your attaining enlightenment. The first priority in your heart should be the happiness of sentient beings; sentient beings in your heart. What should be the first thing in your heart, in your life, the goal of your life? Sentient beings.”
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.