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IVY students have completed 580 nyung näs since November 2014.
One of Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s Vast Visions for the FPMT organization is to sponsor others to complete 1,000 nyung nä retreats. Institute Vajra Yogini (IVY), France, upon hearing this incredible vision of Lama Zopa Rinpoche, immediately started hosting 108 nyung näs retreats a year. Now halfway into the fourth set of 108 retreats there is so much to rejoice in. Currently six people are committed to completing the whole 108 nyung näs. Nine people have so far done eight nyung näs or more. 66 people have done at least one nyung näs. 81 different participants in total have participated in one or more nyung näs and an incredible 580 individual nyung näs have already been accumulated.
On average, there are between 7 to 15 people participating in each single session of the nyung näs.
The Lama Zopa Rinpoche Bodhichitta Fund is sponsoring a number of the people to do the 108 nyung näs and recently sent over US$8,000 toward the sponsorship of food and lodging for individuals undertaking this practice. The students are dedicating the merits of their practice to Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s long life, good health, and for the immediate fulfillment of all of Rinpoche’s wishes.
This practice is a trillion, billion times greater than becoming an Olympic champion. Doing so many nyung näs you become an unbelievable champion. This is what makes numberless buddhas and bodhisattvas most happy and brings sentient beings to enlightenment as quickly as possible.
—Lama Zopa Rinpoche, May 2007
In 2008 Lama Zopa Rinpoche wrote a letter to a student who had just completed 200 nyung näs and was continuing on to complete 1,000. Please enjoy an excerpt from that letter:
Lama Zopa Rinpoche, Washington, USA, July 2014. Photo by Ven. Lobsang Sherab.
Thank you for doing so many nyung näs….
What you have accomplished is really unbelievable, unbelievable, unbelievable! I wish I could do this some time, I think I have to meditate more on impermanence and death and on the lower realms and karma.
If you can finish these 1,000 it will be unbelievable, unbelievable. Shine [calm abiding] is just one small aspect of the path, but the nyung näs are a cause to achieve the path to enlightenment and to achieve all the qualities of Buddha, also so many eons of negative karma gets purified, 40,000 eons of negative karma are purified by just doing one nyung näs, then depending on how much compassion you generate and of course if you generate bodhichitta, then you can purify much more than that.
What you have done, the nyung näs, wow!! That is just amazing! A miracle, unbelievable, most unbelievable gift to His Holiness the Dalai Lama, to numberless buddhas and bodhisattvas, you can’t imagine how many hundreds of thousands of millions of many eons of negative karma that have gone by doing this, so many, many eons of negative karma have gone.
I hope you don’t feel you are missing the negative karma. I hope that you don’t fall asleep at night time and miss all those negative karmas. Sooner or later you will become a bodhisattva. So just like when someone wins soccer, when all the people jump up, clapping their hands, many tens of thousands of people clapping their hands, so in the same way all the buddhas and bodhisattvas are clapping their hands, from the ten directions, even from the pure lands.
This is your best offering, best service to sentient beings; this is how you collect most extensive merit. Doing all those practices, prostrations it is unbelievable purification, by reciting the names of the 35 Buddhas, Chenrezig meditation, recitation, by making offerings to Chenrezig, you collect the same amount of merit as having made offerings to all the buddhas, and then by taking the 8 Mahayana precepts on top … wow!!! Amazing, gorgeous!
Please download a free PDF, Praise and Prayer to Noble Avalokiteshvara in celebration of these amazing accomplishments by so many dedicated students who wish to support Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s Vast Vision.
Tremendous thanks to Francois and Violette and all at Institute Vajra Yogini for all they are doing to make the 108 nyung näs Vast Vision a reality, and also for supporting all the nyung näs participants, which is creating more bodhichitta in the world.
You can learn more about Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s Vast Vision for the FPMT organization, or about other beneficial activities of the Lama Zopa Rinpoche Bodhichitta Fund.
The dedicated nyung näs participants of IVY.