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Lama Zopa Rinpoche leading puja at Kopan Monastery, Nepal, 2020.
Saka Dawa falls on June 5 this year and is one of the four great holy days of the Tibetan calendar commemorating Shakyamuni Buddha’s enlightenment and parinirvana. June 5 is also an eclipse day this year.
The Puja Fund is sponsoring prayers and practices on behalf of FPMT for all students, volunteers and benefactors, and the entire world, on Saka Dawa. Normally we would be sponsoring a lot more pujas, but due to the current restrictions in South India, many of the monasteries are not able to offer the pujas at this time. We are so thankful that Kopan Monastery and Nunnery will still be doing pujas on Saka Dawa. These are the activities we are sponsoring this year:
PUJAS
- 100,000 recitations of Praises to the Twenty-One Taras
- Druk Chu Ma (sixty-four offerings to Kalarupa)
- Medicine Buddha Puja and King of Prayers
SUTRA PRINTING
Golden Light Sutra (6 x), Arya Sangata Sutra (10 x), Vajra Cutter Sutra (200 x) and Amitayus Long Life Sutra (20 x): printing will be done during the actual eclipse time with specific prayers that Rinpoche has recommended.
OFFERING TO HOLY OBJECTS, GURUS, AND SANGHA COMMUNITIES
The precious Jowo Buddha statue in Lhasa, Tibet.
Offerings of gold, robes, saffron, and umbrellas are made to holy statues located in Lhasa, Tibet; and the Boudhanath and Swayambunath Stupas. Also offerings are made to all of Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s gurus, and to all the IMI Sangha communities.
Using Saka Dawa to Create Merit in a Suffering World
Saka Dawa is such an incredibly auspicious and powerful time to practice and make prayers, especially right now with all the suffering in the world. This is a great opportunity to utilize this time in the best possible way, for the benefit of all beings. Anyone can mentally join in any of these pujas and offerings, by remembering them and rejoicing in them. Merely remembering what is happening and rejoicing in the offerings is so beneficial: the existence of the holy objects, the Sangha making prayers and students all over the world who are also are making prayers, as well as the activities and offerings happening in so many of the centers and online on Saka Dawa. By rejoicing in this you create so much merit and it is multiplied 100 million times. How fantastic! What an opportunity!
Thank you for your support to the Puja Fund. It is due to the kindness of so many that these ongoing prayers, pujas, and offerings can happen and in this way, hopefully bringing more peace and happiness in the world.
All are welcome to offer any amount to the Puja Fund so that these beneficial activities can continue long into the future.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s recent advice for practice on Saka Dawa: https://fpmt.org/edu-news/recommended-practices-for-the-fifteenth-day-of-saka-dawa-june-5/
Advice for eclipse days and Buddha multiplying days: https://fpmt.org/edu-news/advice-for-eclipse-days-and-buddha-multiplying-days/
Elders of Jampaling Elder’s Home, Dharamsala, India, joining in puja together.
Since 2016, the FPMT Social Service Fund has been supporting Jampaling Elder’s Home, situated in Dharamsala, India. This home was built to accommodate elders who are sixty and older and particularly vulnerable with no family to look after them as well as ex-army members who are scattered in different Tibetan settlements without appropriate facilities. This facility provides food, shelter, and medical services to 156 residents.
Since the lockdown and social distancing measures taken in India due to the COVID-19 crisis, all the elders, as well as staff, are doing well at this time.
Residents of Jampaling Elder’s Home receiving masks.
The Home Department of the Central Tibetan Administration has takes various precautionary measures to avoid the spread of the virus among elderly homes in India and Nepal including: the generation of guidelines to all these elderly homes; health workers have taken and recorded the temperature of elders daily; elders are not allowed to go out of the elderly home property at this time; daily needs for the elders are bought from the markets for residents; masks and advice on daily hygiene were distributed; advice from the medical experts was followed strictly; and outsiders are not allowed onto the property of the elderly homes.
The Home Department reports that they have had no issues or problems in the elderly homes in India and Nepal, including Jampaling Elderly Home. They share that they, “take special care of our elders since this deadly virus is a danger to this population.”
FPMT Charitable Projects will continue updating you on how elderly homes supported by FPMT Social Service Fund are navigating these challenging times.
All are welcome to support the Social Services Fund and help ensure grants to elderly homes can continue.
The grounds of Sagarmatha Secondary School, Chailsa, Nepal.
Since 2015, the Social Services Fund has been offering support to Sagarmatha Secondary School in Chailsa, Nepal. The school stands on what was once a Tibetan refugee camp. Under normal conditions, 170 students receive education there including 79 young lay students who live at the school hostel, and 25 young monks who live at Thubten Shedrup Ling Monastery, which shares the school grounds. Eleven teachers and one additional employee support these students.
The school has been closed since March 19 as per the Nepal lockdown in response to the COVID-19 crisis and the reopen date, like many places around the world, is uncertain.
Most of the children have gone back to their own homes or the homes of relatives and about 30 individuals, including teachers and staff, remain at the school. Due to the lockdown, some of the teachers from outside of the Solu Khumbu area are unable to go back to their homes. Since the teachers are staying at the school, they are giving regular classes to the monks as well as kids from the neighborhood. Children in grade 8 and grade 10 are having regular classes from the teachers who are staying at school because their final exam is given at the government level and the school has to complete their curriculum text book before the final exam.
Young students continuing their education during the COVID-19 lockdown.
During this lockdown period, the students are kept within the school and monastery compound which is restricted from outside visitors except for people from the neighboring village. Young monks and children are washing their hands regularly and thoroughly. Individuals in the village must be able to move freely within the limited area because of their responsibilities with farming and agriculture. Many locals work in the trekking industry but since there are currently no tourists in Nepal they have become jobless and some have offered to do volunteer work such as repairing the road and cleaning the facilities. During this period, the school is taking advantage of the time to do maintenance work and plant trees around the school area.
Sagarmatha Secondary School recently joined Kopan Helping Hands program to distribute food items for the poor and jobless villagers in the area.
All are welcome to support the Social Services Fund and help ensure grants to schools can continue.
FPMT Charitable Projects will continue updating you on how schools supported by FPMT Social Service Fund are navigating these challenging times.
As COVID-19 continues to impact individuals and communities, beneficiaries of charitable services aren’t as able to access the aid they are accustomed to relying on. Here we share an update on how Lamp of the Path NGO, Mongolia, is managing the current reality of this crisis.
A blind beneficiary of clothing from Lamp of the Path NGO.
Lamp of the Path NGO (LOP), part of Ganden Do Ngag Shedrup Ling, has offered social services to some of the poor and homeless living in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia since 2003. Its main program is a soup kitchen which offers food as well as free medical support through a health clinic, which reopened in 2017. LOP helps bring awareness to the epidemic of alcoholism in Mongolia and offers tuberculosis checkups for the disadvantaged in the area.
Lamp of the Path soup kitchen in operation, January 2020, prior to the COVID-19 restrictions.
The soup kitchen typically feeds 50-70 people daily from Monday through Friday and during the winter season, service is offered on Saturdays as well. In Mongolia, the quarantine came into effect on January 27 and impacted Lamp of the Path immediately and directly. They were not allowed to operate the soup kitchen and experienced frequent police check-ups, warning letters and kind reminders about not having any public activities.
In February, they arranged a “window soup kitchen” with distribution of food (mainly bread and instant noodle soup) through the window. This was successful before their beneficiaries stopped coming, perhaps due to fear of the virus.
Soup being made for Lamp of the Path’s “soup window.”
In the meantime, they have shared a substantial amount of food with another NGO who is providing shelter for former alcoholics and people with disabilities. Since March, in cooperation with government social workers, they initiated a home visit project. Every week those from the NGO, or caseworkers, visit five poor families and distribute food according to a list provided by social workers. They have increased the number of beneficiaries since April by allowing one representative of a family to receive takeaway of freshly made soup from the premises once a week, ensuring there is a 30 minute period between serving each family. In addition, they have distributed many items of second-hand clothing that were received from Switzerland to members of the Mongolian Blind Association.
Lamp of the Path’s plan for May is to provide food to thirty families with visually impaired members who are most affected by the quarantine. Ten of these families each have four or more small children with visually impaired parents who have lost their source of income. The need is quite great.
In good news, their vegetable garden project is expanding and they have prepared a plot for planting potatoes for the first time.
FPMT Charitable Projects will continue updating you on how social service projects around the world are navigating these challenging times.
Learn more about Lamp of the Path NGO: www.fpmtmongolia.org/lamp-of-the-path-ngo
As COVID-19 continues to impact individuals and communities, beneficiaries of charitable services aren’t as able to access the aid they are accustomed to relying on. Here we share an update on how MAITRI Charitable Trust in Bodhgaya, India, is managing the current reality of this crisis.
Distribution of aid at MAITRI Charitable Trust, May 7, 2020. Photo courtesy of Adriana Ferranti.
Since 1989, MAITRI Charitable Trust has been operating as a beneficial example of Dharma in action. MAITRI is a registered charitable trust in India working to support the poor and disadvantaged in the province of Bihar, India.
As MAITRI has a hospital for leprosy and tuberculosis patients and an animal shelter on campus, they have been bound to continue their work to keep their beneficiaries fed and taken care of. This means they must pick up their vegetables by driving to the farmers along back pathways early in the morning, and on alternate days, collecting their grains, lentils, etc., from a different supplier by motorcycle on back roads negotiating the police.
The grounds maintenance staff are local and able to come to work so that basic services can be ensured. This is more difficult for the office staff, who live father away and have had to abide by different pass-through schedules.
What has been seriously affected by the pandemic is the field work and their clinics, as only a few patients have dropped in to get their monthly rations or treatment.
Beneficiaries receiving care from MAITRI Charitable Project, May 7, 2020. Photo courtesy of Adriana Ferranti.
However, recently the paramedics have ventured out early in the morning for home delivery of treatment for current patients, particularly milk powder for malnourished babies.
MAITRI has been providing all the staff with face masks and daily Vitamin C to ensure safety.
MAITRI Director Adriana Ferranti gave the following recent report from Bodhgaya:
Mothers and babies receiving care from MAITRI, May 2020. Photo courtesy of Adriana Ferranti.
On May 7, the day of Buddha Purnima (Lord Buddha’s birthday), when great celebrations usually go on in the scorching heat for three days as pilgrims flock to Bodhgaya from all over India and the world, the Mahabodhi Temple remained closed to the public and only a few selected monks could offer prayers. The disappointment for the failed procession with patients and students and the 24 hour health camp was quickly replaced with a MAITRI-style celebration: the resumption of our field clinics, albeit in a humbler mode as the paramedics had to go by motorcycle and the clinic had to be over by 9 a.m. Thirty-six very happy patients attended the clinic and could finally resume treatment after one and a half months!
While this was going on in the field at 6:30 a.m. patients started arriving at MAITRI for their rations, both TB patients and mother-child care patients. They kept coming until 9:30 a.m., as the curfew would restart at 10 a.m. and enjoyed the recitation of mantras and sutras and the unusually balmy weather. Indeed, what a beautiful way to celebrate Buddha Purnima!
On May 9 the clinic had an attendance of 18 mothers-to-be and small children who had not received their treatment at home from the paramedical worker. Our patients still rely on us.
FPMT Charitable Projects will continue updating you on how social service projects around the world are navigating these challenging times.
Learn more about MAITRI Charitable Trust: www.maitri-bodhgaya.org/home
Jhado Rinpoche leading wrathful fire puja at Sera Je Monastery, January 29, 2020.
Recently Lama Zopa Rinpoche advised on particular pujas for those suffering due to the coronavirus. According to Rinpoche’s advice: a wrathful fire puja was offered by Jhado Rinpoche in South India at Sera Je Monastery, Hayagriva tsog kong was offered at Kopan Monastery and in Sera Je Monastery, and a number of other pujas were arranged in India and Nepal.
In addition to this, many pujas, prayers, and practices were arranged by the Puja Fund during the 15 days of Losar (one of the four great Buddha multiplying days). These prayers were offered by as many as 15,650 Sangha. Extensive offerings were made to specific powerful holy objects in Nepal, India, and Tibet; and offerings were made to Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s gurus as well as IMI Sangha communities around the world. All of these activities are dedicated to the success of the entire FPMT organization and all beings.
Monks at Sera Je Monastery offering puja as requested by Lama Zopa Rinpoche
May these extensive prayers and practices benefit all beings.
Individuals can read Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s advice to protect from the coronavirus.
All are welcome to offer any amount to the Puja Fund so that these beneficial activities can continue long into the future.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche in front of very precious Gur Rinpoche statue with continuously burning butter lamp, Chailsa, Nepal.
The FPMT Puja Fund sponsors continual butter lamp light offerings at Thubten Chöling and in front of a very precious Guru Rinpoche statue in Chailsa, Nepal.
The butter lamp offered at Thubten Chöling Monastery is in front of a shrine of Tulshig Rinpoche. Tulshig Rinpoche (1923-2011) was one of the main teachers of His Holiness the Dalai Lama and in 2010 became the official head of the Nyingma tradition.
Continuously burning butter lamp offered at Thubten Choling, in front of Tulshig Rinpoche.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche often explains the benefits of offering to holy objects and encourages extensive offerings around the world. “We are not aware of the limitless skies of benefits we achieve from the practice of offering, what we can achieve and enjoy from life to life,” Rinpoche has advised. “Even while you are in samsara, you enjoy good rebirths, wealth, and every happiness. Even just the samsaric perfections are amazing, without adding all those incredible realizations that allow us to offer deep benefit to sentient beings, liberating them from oceans of samsaric suffering and its cause, delusion and karma.”
Please rejoice in this continual offering at these holy places in Chailsa, Nepal.
The Puja Fund was established by Lama Zopa Rinpoche to provide resources for pujas and offerings dedicated to the long life of His Holiness the Dalai Lama and to the success of all the FPMT centers, projects, services, students, benefactors and those serving the organization in any way. You can learn more about the Puja Fund, or FPMT’s other extensive charitable activity.
Construction on Darpa Pandita Labrang, Sera Je Monastery, South India.
The Supporting Ordained Sangha Fund was pleased to help support the completion of the Darpa Pandita Labrang at Sera Je Monastery. Due to the increase in number of lamas living at this labrang, construction was needed to renovate the existing building and add a second floor to the structure.
Renovation and addition to the Darpa Pandita Labrang.
Darpa Pandita is an incarnation of a great Mongolian Lama, who was connected to the Most Secret Hayagriva lineage. Offering toward his labrang will make reasonable accommodation for the monks residing there possible.
Please rejoice in this support to the monks who rely on this labrang for housing.
“Offering to the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha is an unbelievable act,” Lama Zopa Rinpoche has explained. “It is important to remember this when you make an offering to the Sangha. Think that you are also offering to the Buddha and Dharma simultaneously.” Read Rinpoche’s full teaching on “Why Offering to the Sangha is so Powerful.”
Please learn more about the Supporting Ordained Sangha Fund and the ways it supports monasteries and nunneries around the world.
Some of the 1,000 statues of Shakyamuni Buddha that will be offered to His Holiness the Dalai Lama on behalf of the entire FPMT organization.
In August 2019 Lama Zopa Rinpoche shared that he planned to offer 1,000 statues of Shakyamuni Buddha to His Holiness the Dalai Lama on behalf of the entire FPMT organization. Amazingly, due to the kindness of so many people we were able to raise all the funds needed to sponsor the making of these statues, which also include filling, gold gilding, face painting, and consecration.
Monks of Kopan and Gyudmed Monastery offering puja to the finished statues.
Progress on this offering continues! All of the statues have now been completed and have arrived at Tushita Meditation Centre in Dharamsala, India. Each statue needs to be filled with mantras and consecrated, after that the actual offering to His Holiness will be arranged.
Backs of some of the statues that will be offered to His Holiness the Dalai Lama.
When Lama Zopa Rinpoche recently met with His Holiness in Bodhgaya, India, Rinpoche formally made the offering of the 1,000 statues. His Holiness immediately did consecration prayers with Rinpoche and the other monks for the 1,000 statues.
We will update when this most precious and auspicious offering is happening. Meanwhile, please rejoice that this is manifesting due to the kindness of so many including: the generous donors, Gen Tenpa Choden of Kopan Monastery, the Kopan and Gyudmed Monastery monks responsible for all of the filling and consecration, and Pema and all at Tushita Meditation Centre.
To help ensure grants like this continue toward holy objects, all are welcome to offer a donation of any amount to the Holy Object Fund.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche at Jamyang Buddhist Centre, London, UK, 2014. Photo by Ven. Thubten Kunsang.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche, through the Lama Zopa Rinpoche Bodhichitta Fund recently issued a grant for US$100,000 to Jamyang Buddhist Center in London, UK, for much needed repairs to the center and a new heating system. As the center is now forty-one years old, repairs and upkeep is a necessity.
The new Jamyang Buddhist Centre Leeds building. Photo courtesy of Tripadvisor.
Also issued from the Lama Zopa Rinpoche Bodhichitta Fund was a grant for US$100,000 to Jamyang Buddhist Center Leeds, UK, for their new 33,000 square-foot center. The new center will have a cafe, book store, meditation hall, and library. Community groups and charities will also be able to rent office and warehouse space at the center. This is a wonderful expansion for this twenty-three year old center.
Please rejoice that both of these centers have offered decades of service to the UK and will continue to thrive and benefit their communities (and all who visit) for many years to come.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche Bodhichitta Fund enables Rinpoche’s compassionate service to others to flourish. All the offerings from the fund are used toward the creation of holy objects and extensive offerings around the world; sponsoring young tulkus, high lamas and Sangha in India, Nepal, Tibet and the West; supporting FPMT centers, projects and services; sponsoring Dharma retreats and events; funding animal liberations and blessings, and many other worthy projects.
Nuns and lay children attending the school at Tashi Chime Gatsal Nunnery in Nepal.
Since 2009 sponsorship from the Practice and Retreat Fund has been offered to the nuns of Tashi Chime Gatsal Nunnery, Nepal, to complete one 100 million mani retreat (100 million recitations of the mantra OM MANI PADME HUM) every year and a kind benefactor sponsors a second.
In addition to the 100 million mani retreats, offerings are made to cover the cost of food for all during this period as well as an offering for a qualified geshe to stay during the retreat in order to give lamrim teachings. Additionally, in 2019, two nuns were also given funds necessary for important medical procedures and associated expenses.
There are currently eighty-five nuns living at the nunnery receiving a traditional Tibetan Buddhist education, as well as a modern western education in science, math, English, etc. Most of the nuns are under the age of twenty. The school at the nunnery is attended by forty nuns and twenty local children. Teachers include: three nuns, two lharampa geshes, and five lay teachers.
The nunnery sent the following message of thanks to FPMT International Office for the ongoing support: Thank you for the kind support so far and continuing to do this. Without your help, the nunnery will not last long.”
The nunnery has now completed nineteen 100 million mani retreats. One of Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s Vast Visions for the FPMT organization is to sponsor these retreats around the world.
Rinpoche explained, “[I would like] for the organization to establish 100,000 recitations of 100 million OM MANI PADME HUM mantras. This can be retreats of 100 million recitations, so 100,000 different retreats in different parts of the world and where it is happening, then for it to happen regularly, each year.”
Please rejoice in another year of these very precious retreats being completed at this nunnery in Nepal.
The Practice and Retreat Fund provides grants and sponsorships for students engaged in retreats such as 108 nyung nä retreats, 100 million mani retreats, recitations of sutras and long term retreat.
Young monks of Idgaa Choizinling, Mongolia.
The Supporting Ordained Sangha Fund offers sponsorship of daily lunch for the monks studying at Idgaa Choizinling Dratsang in Mongolia.
Idgaa Choizinling was established in 2003 through FPMT Mongolia due to the kindness of many benefactors. Idgaa is strongly connected to Sera Je Monastery in India and serves as a focal point of Buddhist learning in Mongolia. Since the monastery’s inception, FPMT has been offering food to the monks studying there. The cost of this offering for 2019 was US$9,000.
Of the total 60 monks, five have taken gelong vows, eleven have taken getsul vows, two have taken rabjung vows, and another 42 young monks are waiting for rabjung vows. More than 20 new students joined the monastery this year.
Last year the Supporting Ordained Sangha Fund also offered a US$470,000 grant for a much needed expansion of this monastery.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche has explained:
Giving to the Sangha is an incredible thing. One extremely poor person gave medicine and drink to four monks; they were not arhats, just ordinary monks. In the next life, that person was born as a very powerful and wealthy person. The karmic cause was very simple—just giving medicine and drink to four monks—but because karma expands, the result will be experienced over many lifetimes. If you offer to the powerful object of the Sangha with the motivation of bodhichitta, the result is even more powerful. You receive limitless skies of merit because you are thinking of benefiting numberless sentient beings—numberless hell beings, numberless hungry ghosts, numberless animals, numberless human beings, numberless sura beings and asura beings, and numberless intermediate state beings—and bringing them to enlightenment. You can imagine the merit you gain if you offer to the Sangha with the motivation of bodhichitta.
Monks of Idgaa Choizinling studying.
The Supporting Ordained Sangha Fund was established in the tradition of the extremely successful Sera Je Food Fund, which offered three nutritious meals daily to all the monks of Sera Je Monastery for over twenty-six years. Over this time, the food fund established an interest-bearing endowment that will continue to cover the cost of food for this program indefinitely. This fund is now broader in scope and offers support to monasteries, nunneries, and individual monks and nuns around the world including food, accommodation, health care, education and practice.
Supporting monks and nuns is one of the highest priorities for the FPMT organization, because the preservation of the Buddhadharma is dependent on the existence of Sangha.
Please rejoice in this offering of daily food to these earnest monks who study and practice so sincerely to keep Buddhism alive in Mongolia.
The Supporting Ordained Sangha Fund supports ordained monks and nuns as well as monasteries and nunneries by providing sponsorship for food, accommodations, educational needs, and health care for Sangha.