receive our newsletters
join Friends of FPMT
Mandala
If you would like to start your New Year purifying the negativities of this past year, Vajrasattva practice can help! “Giving Negativity a Body Blow” includes advice about Vajrasattva practice from Lama Zopa Rinpoche and Heruka Vajrasattva practice from Lama Yeshe. From Mandala February-March 2008.
“The Sanskrit word ‘Dharma’ refers to that which guides, or saves, our mind from suffering. However, there are thousands upon thousands of different types of suffering, and even within these, there can be many different kinds. For example, within illness, there are hundreds of different kinds.” From “What is Dharma” by Lama Zopa Rinpoche. First published in Mandala, April-June 2001.
As an original student of Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche, Dr. Nick Ribush, director of the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive, has played an integral role in the development of FPMT as we know it today. With Nick’s personal stories and anecdotes from the early days of the organization, this video is an enlightening and entertaining look at the origins of FPMT.
Ven. Robina Courtin has a way with words and is a fantastic story teller. In her latest addition to “Postcards from Robina,” her blog from travels around the world, she details her recent stays in India, New York and Boston.
- Beautiful mantras. Photo by Ven. Amy Miller.
Long-time student, Jane Seidlitz, treated Milarepa Center to her artistic Tibetan calligraphy by painting special mantras on panels around its stupa. Lama Zopa Rinpoche advised the center to have these mantras put on the back side of boards around the stupa. The boards already had the eight auspicious symbols painted on the front side. Rinpoche instructed Jane last year which mantras to include and said these mantras would be a huge blessing for all those driving by the stupa (as its positioned near a major highway) as well as for the entire region.
On December 14, 2011, Maitripa College’s Namdrol (Miranda) Adams suffered a rupture of blood vessels in the back of her brain. While she shows positive signs and is progressing daily at an excellent hospital in Portland, OR, USA, her condition remains quite critical.
“Advice from Lama Zopa Rinpoche: A Thousand Benefits.” From Mandala February-March 2008. “The benefit of the center is to learn Dharma practice which means purifying defilements and collecting merits/good luck/good karma; attaining the path to liberation and full enlightenment, and liberating numberless sentient beings from the oceans of samsaric sufferings and bringing them to full enlightenment.”
The late Tom Flynn wrote a yet-to-be published book on prayer from an ecumenical perspective. It has a very universal view – about the good heart, mind-training, virtue, and prayer as a form of meditation. Here is an excerpt, published in Mandala August/September, 2008.
We’re pleased to announce that the newest print magazine is in the mail. While you wait, please enjoy our newest online content featuring twenty topical new articles.
Gomo Tulku has released a new video “Don’t You Know” with Jidenna. Gomo says, “It is a tribute to everything going on in Tibet and a sobering reminder of how easy it is to get lost in our self-delusions.”
Mandala’s January-March 2012 online content is now live. In addition to supplemental articles to this issue’s main stories: The Passing of Khensur Rinpoche Lama Lhundrup Rigsel and Preserving the Foundations: Merry Colony and FPMT Education, there are several topical articles, including Jacie Keeley’s Road to Kopan story, not to be missed!
By Ven. Chönyi Taylor
|
Spider, spider burning bright |
|
|
In the center of my sight, |
|
|
What immortal hand or eye |
|
|
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?1 |
I was known in my family for my freak-outs with spiders. Australian Huntsmen spiders are large and hairy. Thank goodness I had never seen a tarantula. As a little girl, my imagination had spiders leaping on to me and killing me instantly. Even as I grew up, the knowledge that the Huntsmen are relatively harmless did absolutely nothing for the panic attacks they would trigger in me. I hated spiders. I feared them. I wanted the planet to be completely free from them. I was a true arachnophobe. (more…)