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Participants at a 16 Actitudes workshop as part of Centro Yamantaka’s activities in Colombia. Photo by Olga Lucia Sierra.
In the October-December 2012 issue’s online content, the Foundation for Developing Compassion and Wisdom (FDCW) is highlighting two FPMT centers that are finding innovative, contemporary and authentic ways to communicate the essence of the Dharma teachings to children and young people using its educational initiative 16 Guidelines for a Happy Life.
“Centro Yamantaka has been running a successful 16 Guidelines-based children’s program for over three-and-a-half years with very positive results for the kids, families and the center. The project started because many of our students who have children wanted to share Dharma with their kids, but in a way that was fun and interactive…”
From Mandala October-December 2012
His Holiness the Dalai Lama at Rajagriha, India, January 2002. Photo courtesy of fpmt.org
If listening to Mandala is more your speed, check out the latest installment of our podcast “Mandala Talk.”
In this podcast: Have you ever thought about learning classical Tibetan? Are you curious about monastic textbooks? What do you think Buddhism will look like in a 100 years?
Listen to well known Tibetan teacher and translator Craig Preston talk about the joy of learning, the importance of studying Tibetan texts and the future of Buddhism in a lively conversation with Mandala editor Laura Miller.
Download the MP3 or listen online.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche, Lawudo, 1970. Photo courtesy of Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive.
Big Love, the long-anticipated authorized biography of Lama Yeshe written by Adele Hulse, provides an intimate portrait of FPMT’s founder. In 1979, an extensive teaching tour in Europe has been organized by Lama Yeshe’s burgeoning organization for Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche, but Rinpoche decides that he wants to stay at Lawudo, his hermitage in the mountains of Nepal, to meditate. To what lengths will Lama Yeshe and devoted students go to bring him to the West?
From Mandala October-December 2012
Tony Vickery-Howe and the nuns fire team, Khachoe Ghakyil Nunnery, Kathmandu, Nepal, May 2012
In May 2012, Tony Vickery-Howe spent one month offering training to the monks and nuns of Kopan Monastery and Khachoe Ghakyil Nunnery in Kathmandu, Nepal, in fire prevention and suppression, and in offering first aid to the injured. This was his second trip to Kopan to train “fire teams.”
The first edition of The Wish-Fulfilling Golden Sun of the Mahayana Thought Training (entitled then as The Wish-Fulfilling Golden Sun of the Mahayana Practise) published in 1972. Photo courtesy of Nick Ribush.
Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive’s Nicholas Ribush spoke with Laura Miller about the evolution of the Archive’s FPMT Lineage Series (of which Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s newest book, How to Practice Dharma: Teachings on the Eight Worldly Dharmas, is a part), and how its roots stretch all the way back to The Wish-Fulfilling Golden Sun, an early teaching text authored by Rinpoche.
From Mandala October-December 2012
FPMT News Around the World
Wednesday, September 12, 2012, is the second annual Mindfulness Day. All are encouraged to participate in this secular celebration by generating a more peaceful, compassionate mind and cultivating awareness and presence in daily life. Wisdom Publications, the sponsor of Mindfulness Day, is offering a discount on its ebooks on mindfulness, including The Mindful Writer by Dinty W. Moore. You can read Mandala’s recent interview with Dinty in this issue’s online content. To learn more about the day, visit the Mindfulness Day website.
For practitioners of Mahayana Buddhism, mindfulness practice also includes generating a strong attitude to benefit all beings. For those interested in reading FPMT spiritual director Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s advice on ways to increase and deepen your bodhichitta practice, visit Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive’s page on the Bodhisattva Attitude: How to Dedicate Your Life to Others by Lama Zopa Ripoche.
With 158 centers, projects and services around the globe, there is always news on FPMT activities, teachers and events. Mandala hopes to share as many of these timely stories as possible. If you have news you would like to share, please let us know.
His Holiness the Dalai Lama with Geshe Kelsang Wangmo and her mother, Dharamsala, India, April 2011. Photo courtesy of Geshe Kelsang Wangmo.
Geshe Kelsang Wangmo, a native of Germany, became the world’s first female geshe, signaling a new era for nuns. In her interview with Mandala, Geshe Wangmo talks about what brought her to a geshe program, her experiences there, and what’s in store for her future.
From Mandala October-December 2012
Cover: Rangjung Neljorma Khadro Namsel Drönme (Khadro-la) at Istituto Lama Tzong Khapa, Pomaia, Italy, July 2012. Photo by Sirianni.
Mandala’s October-December 2012 online content is now live!
While you wait to receive your print copy, please enjoy our newest online content featuring supplemental material only found online. Also, enjoy original online content including: a video interview with Geshe Ngawang Sonam, Hayagriva Buddhist Centre’s new resident teacher; an audio interview with Craig Preston, teacher and translator of classical Tibetan; and an excerpt from Journeys on the Silk Road, the story of the explorer Aurel Stein’s 1906-8 expedition to Caves of the Thousand Buddhas near Dunhuang, China.
For those not already signed up for the Friend of FPMT program at the Basic level, do so now and receive this issue of Mandala featuring an exclusive interview with Khadro-la. Offer ends September 30 or when the magazine sells out.
… I’d been craving on and off, since I was fifteen, for Death to come and take me the way the wind does a dry leaf out on its limb.1
Suicide is a great tragedy and behind each one is unbearable pain. Tong-len2 practice is about breathing in this pain, and to do that effectively, we need to be fully open to the experience of that pain. On my daily walk to the beach, I tried to imagine how it would appear to a suicidal person. It was a sparkly, windy day. A wild riot of waves threw themselves at the beach. The piercing cold from overnight storms was tempered by a late winter sun. I was exhilarated, but I had not yet imagined being in those other shoes. When I did, the brightness hurt my eyes. The wind was malignant. The waves taunted me endlessly. My walk became a fearful journey. Where were my enemies? That elderly couple walking towards me? Or were they hiding in the runnels of sand, newly created by the storm? Or leaving messages in the tangles of seaweed and driftwood? Everything threatened. And with each threat, the beach became more and more menacing.
I was glad that I was only imagining this overwhelming oppression and fear. I let it go and returned to that initial exhilaration. Merlin danced around and barked at me to play.
Why would anyone want to die?
Stephen Batchelor
“As long as there are people who wish to devote themselves to that path, the monastic vehicle will serve,” writes Stephen Batchelor. Former editor Nancy Patton gets Batchelor’s views on the development and place of monasticism in the West.
From Mandala September-November 2001
Ribur Rinpoche
Former FPMT executive director Massimo Corona talks to Ribur Rinpoche about monasticism in the West and how to maintain Buddhist monastic vows for the long-term.
From Mandala September-November 2001.
Joe Schoolcraft. Photo by Lore Caldwell.
Joe Schoolcraft’s skill and empathy came the hard way: drugs, alcohol, a gun to his own head in despair. Read how Joe’s own history with addiction inform his practice as a therapist.
From Mandala December 2001 – February 2002.