Education: The Heart of FPMT

Lama Zopa Rinpoche, Saviese, Switzerland, November 2018. Photo by Olivier Adam.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche gave advice regarding merit multiplying days such as the Fifteen Days of Miracles, Saka Dawa, Chokhor Duchen, and Lhabab Duchen. The next merit multiplying day is Saka Dawa on June 17, 2019.

On the day of Guru Shakyamuni Buddha’s turning the Wheel of Dharma, if you do one prostration while reciting the names of the Thirty-Five Buddhas, it becomes equal to having done 100 million prostrations while reciting the names of the Thirty-Five Buddhas. If you recite one Vajrasattva mantra, it becomes the same as having done the Vajrasattva mantra 100 million times. If you recite the Diamond Cutter Sutra (Vajra Cutter Sutra) one time, it becomes the same as having recited the Diamond Cutter Sutra 100 million times—so that much purification and you collect that many merits to quickly be free from samsara, and if the practices are done with bodhichitta, then to quickly achieve enlightenment.

Reading the Golden Light Sutra (Sutra of Golden Light), besides the personal benefits that creates, also brings so much peace in the world, for the Buddhadharma to last a long time, which means more sentient beings being able to meet the Dharma and to achieve enlightenment. Then, also reciting the Arya Sanghata Sutra, which brings success, including enlightenment. Each recitation becomes 100 million recitations—so please tell your parents and friends this.

This is the best way to help your parents and this really helps your parents. You can tell others this also and their friends. This really helps the world, to make a better world.

Please read my notes well. Don’t rush. Think about each word.

Also on these days, you can do tonglen—taking others sufferings and giving away one’s own happiness—then, also rejoicing. You can meditate on dependent arising (meaning, emptiness only) and develop bodhichitta. Of course, you can do self-initiation during this very special time according to the time in India.

If you want to know which lama and which text mentioned this, it was His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s and His Eminence Sakya Trizin’s guru—Chobgye Trichen Rinpoche. Rinpoche referred to Guru Shakyamuni Buddha’s teaching Dulwa Lung (‘dul ba lung) as saying that the number the merit multiplies by is 100 million. It is a great advantage to practice during these times; like for myself, who is the most extremely laziest person in this world.

Another very important practice to do on these days is taking the eight Mahayana precepts for one day until the next day at sunrise. That doesn’t mean necessarily until sunrise Indian time. It means sunrise at the place where you are; up until dawn, when the sun rises in your part of the world.

In case there are difficulties to keeping all eight precepts, perhaps due to work, for example, you can take the rest of the vows well. Taking the eight Mahayana precepts is so beneficial for world peace, for crops to grow well, to receive timely rains—all this is needed to make the world better. Then, there are incredible benefits for yourself. This is explained in the book of the eight Mahayana precepts. This is so important for your own life to be better and to make the world better, to bring benefit.

Written by Lama Zopa Rinpoche, August 2017, United States. Edited by Michael D. Jolliffe for publication on FPMT.org.

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.

Namgyalma Mantra Card

The Namgyalma mantra is extremely powerful and is the main mantra to purify and liberate beings from the lower realms, purify negative karma, and help those who are dying or have died either by chanting it in their ear or placing it on their body.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche has discussed many times its power and use to benefit sentient beings. The FPMT Foundation Store currently makes available several items featuring the Namgyalma mantra, including amulets, cards, and stickers. 

• The Namgyalma and Lama Atisha Protection Amulet is a printed mantra packet that contains the Namgyalma Mantra Wheel and the Lama Atisha Protection Mantra. In addition to the benefits taught by Lama Zopa Rinpoche for each mantra, keeping this amulet close to one’s body protects one from harm and mental pollution.

This amulet also contains these powerful mantras: the Phagpa Chulung Rolpai Do Mantra, which upon seeing, purifies 100,000 eons of negative karma and obscurations; the Wish-Granting Wheel Mantra, which purifies one thousand eons of negative karma for anyone that passes beneath it; and the Six Syllables of Clairvoyance Mantra, which after fifteen days upon seeing, purifies any heavy negative karma created in the past. 

• The Namgyalma Mantra Card (seen above) is a colorful modern take on the Namgyalma mantra and comes in two sizes.

• The Namgyalma Mantra Car Sticker is meant to be put on your car so that when insects inevitably die as you drive, the Namgyalma mantra helps to purify their negative karma and support their good rebirth.

In addition, the Foundation Store offers a Vairochana Mantra card. Lama Zopa Rinpoche has said, “Just by reciting this mantra one receives success, and one does not get harmed by weapons, fire, water, poisons, substances mixed with poisons, black magic, one cannot be harmed by kings, thieves, robbers, and so forth. Wherever this mantra is written and left, people do not receive sicknesses, harm and contagious diseases and will achieve the concentration called stainless light.”

The Foundation Store also offers Mantra Stickers—Protection From Negative Energies. There are three stickers available: the mani mantra, the Shakyamuni Buddha mantra, and also Kalachakra yantra.

Since all of these mantras are to be seen as holy objects, students are reminded to take care when placing the stickers, cards, and amulets, and demonstrate proper respect for them.

For more on mantras, visit FPMT Education’s “Mantra” resource page:
https://fpmt.org/education/teachings/texts/mantras/

Find more protection and practice items at the FPMT Foundation Store:
https://shop.fpmt.org/

Through comprehensive study programs, practice materials, and training seminars, FPMT Education nourishes the development of compassion, wisdom, kindness, and true happiness in individuals of all ages.

Students can now find two images—Wheel of Life and Guru Shakyamuni Buddha with the Seventeen Pandits—in PDF format.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche recommended in early 2019 that it would be good for FPMT centers, projects, and services to have access to a particular image of the Wheel of Life. Lama Zopa Rinpoche asked that a translated verse be included with the image.

The verse reads:

Energetically undertake THIS and renounce THAT. The one who engages in this Dharma that subdues the mind VINAYA. Like an elephant in a mud hut, destroys the domain of the Lord of Death. The one who is extremely conscientious and careful engages in this Dharma that subdues, thoroughly abandoning the wheel of birth and bringing suffering to an end.

This image of the Wheel of Life was painted at Tushita Meditation Centre, India, at Rinpoche’s request. The creation of the painting was overseen by Jhado Rinpoche.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche considers this particular image of the Wheel of Life to be correct.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche also recommended that it would be good for FPMT centers, projects, and services to have access to an image of Guru Shakyamuni Buddha with the Seventeen Pandits.

The Seventeen Pandits, according to “The Seventeen Pandits of Nalanda Monastery” by the late FPMT student and Buddhist scholar Dr. James Blumenthal, “refers to a grouping of seventeen of the most important and influential Mahayana Buddhist masters from India’s past.”

Find the downloadable images of Wheel of Life and Guru Shakyamuni Buddha with the Seventeen Pandits by donation in the Foundation Store:
https://shop.fpmt.org/Wheel-of-Life–PDF-_p_3203.html
https://shop.fpmt.org/Guru-Shakyamuni-Buddha-with-the-Seventeen-Pandits–PDF_p_3202.html

Through comprehensive study programs, practice materials, and training seminars, FPMT Education nourishes the development of compassion, wisdom, kindness, and true happiness in individuals of all ages.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche created the Flower Offering Card as a welcoming and explanatory sign for anyone visiting the gardens of his house in Aptos, California, United States. Rinpoche said that any student is welcome to use the same sign in front of their own offerings.

The card reads:

Every single flower here is offered to Buddha, Dharma and Sangha, on behalf of every single sentient being in each realm, numberless hell beings, numberless hungry ghosts, numberless animals in the numberless universes, every single fish in the ocean size as large as a mountain and ones who are so small that you can only see through a machine, numberless pitiful ants, numberless pitiful mosquitos, numberless pitiful maggots, slugs, tiny crabs at the beach and so forth, every animal, numberless human beings in different universes, numberless suras and asuras to be free from the oceans of samsaric sufferings and the causes and to achieve peerless happiness, the cessation of all the obstacles and completion of all the realizations.

This means every single flower is every sentient being’s offering and this is similar with the water offerings, it is offered from every sentient being and is every sentient being’s water offering.

Thank you very much.

Find the Flower Offering Card in the Foundation Store:
https://shop.fpmt.org/Flower-Offering-Card_p_2532.html

Through comprehensive study programs, practice materials, and training seminars, FPMT Education nourishes the development of compassion, wisdom, kindness, and true happiness in individuals of all ages.

Students can now find two texts—Meditations on White Tara and A Meditation on Orange Manjushri—in ebook and PDF formats.

Meditations on White Tara contains practices to strengthen and restore health and life-force energy. By relying on White Tara, students are able to accumulate merit and purify negative karma in order accomplish their aims. If one has experienced many health problems, accidents, depression, or a loss of vitality, the practices of White Tara might be helpful.

These White Tara meditations can also be done on behalf of oneself or others, and are frequently done to remove obstacles to the long lives and health of one’s gurus.

A Meditation on Orange Manjushri includes “A Meditation on Orange Manjushri,” a short sadhana written by the Fifth Dalai Lama as well as “Practice to Receive the Seven Types of Wisdom.” These practices are considered excellent for developing wisdom and clarity, improving one’s memory, and for understanding and explaining Dharma to others.

Through comprehensive study programs, practice materials, and training seminars, FPMT Education nourishes the development of compassion, wisdom, kindness, and true happiness in individuals of all ages.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche, Martigny, Switzerland, 2018. Photo by Olivier Adam.

Find lamrim resources—including teachings, commentaries, prayers, audio programs, comprehensive study programs, and year-long meditation schedules—on FPMT.org to assist your study and practice.

“The most unbelievably important thing in our life is lamrim,” Lama Zopa Rinpoche stresses in “Advice for Realizing Lamrim,” an online module within FPMT’s essential lamrim study program Living in the Path. “The practice of the three principal aspects of the path is the most important thing. This is the most important, more important than a job, money, or anything else in our life. It is the most important thing.”

In March 2013, Lama Zopa Rinpoche gave advice suggesting that students follow a lamrim outline and meditate on each subject for two weeks or one month until all subjects have been completed. “The amount of time for meditation is up to the individual, but the general advice is to finish the lamrim in one year,” Rinpoche said. “To meditate like this each year—wow, wow, wow! That would be great.”

To follow this advice, consider using FPMT Education Service’s lamrim schedule template—available as an Excel spreadsheet and PDF—to help you plan daily lamrim meditation over the course of a calendar year. The template was created on the basis of the book The Essential Nectar, a commentary by Geshe Rabten on The Essential Nectar of Holy Doctrine, an 18th-century lamrim text by Yeshe Tsöndru.

Flower offering, Buddha Amitabha Pure Land, Washington, US, August 2018. Photo by Ven. Roger Kunsang.

Find lamrim resources on FPMT.org:
https://fpmt.org/education/teachings/texts/lam-rim/

Through comprehensive study programs, practice materials, and training seminars, FPMT Education nourishes the development of compassion, wisdom, kindness, and true happiness in individuals of all ages.

Students can now find Recognizing the False I in PDF and ebook formats in the Foundation Store.

Recognizing the False I, written by Lama Zopa Rinpoche, is a commentary on and set of simple meditation techniques for identifying the object to be refuted—what Rinpoche calls “the false I”—during reflections on emptiness.

The text was specifically composed for students engaging in the self-generation portion—often called “the ultimate deity”—of kriya yoga tantric practices, such as nyung nas. The meditations can also be used by students during retreats on the Heart Sutra or any other retreat focused on emptiness.

Additionally, Rinpoche offers these techniques to all students in general to help them meditate on emptiness correctly during their daily practices.

Find Recognizing the False I by donation in the Foundation Store:
https://shop.fpmt.org/Recognizing-the-False-I-eBook-PDF-_p_3196.html

Through comprehensive study programs, practice materials, and training seminars, FPMT Education nourishes the development of compassion, wisdom, kindness, and true happiness in individuals of all ages.

In the complimentary Living in the Path module “Bodhichitta Mindfulness,” Lama Zopa Rinpoche shows students how to take the essence of our precious human life by transforming our normal daily activities—walking, washing, dressing, etc.—into a cause of enlightenment by doing them with a bodhichitta motivation to benefit all sentient beings.

“The sutra explains that in the morning when one wakes up, the very first thing to do when one wakes up from sleep is to think, ‘May all sentient beings achieve the dharmakaya.’ Lama Zopa Rinpoche teaches. “The minute you wake up, you should think that. Maybe the eyes are still closed, the mind woke up but the eyes are still closed—I’m joking—remember that.”

“Then when you get dressed, think, ‘May all sentient beings wear the dress of shyness and shame.’ …

“When you put on a belt, think, ‘May sentient beings’ minds be bound by the three higher trainings.’ These are the higher trainings of morality, concentration, and special insight. Because that is what is said in sutra, when you release a belt, think, ‘May sentient beings be freed from the bondage of karma and delusions.’

“When you lay down to go to bed, ‘May sentient beings achieve the dharmakaya.’ Then the same thing when you see a stupa. When you see a stupa or other holy object, think, ‘May all sentient beings achieve the dharmakaya.’ When you see a holy object such as a Buddha statue, ‘May all sentient beings achieve enlightenment quickly.’ You can dedicate like that.”

Lama Zopa Rinpoche cooking with Ven. Tharchin, Buddha Amitabha Pure Land, Washington, US, June 2018. Photo by Ven. Lobsang Sherab.

“Bodhichitta Mindfulness” is available through the FPMT Online Learning Center:
https://onlinelearning.fpmt.org/course/view.php?id=120

Living in the Path is an online lamrim program taught by Lama Zopa Rinpoche available through the FPMT Online Learning Center:
https://onlinelearning.fpmt.org/course/index.php?categoryid=5

Through comprehensive study programs, practice materials, and training seminars, FPMT Education nourishes the development of compassion, wisdom, kindness, and true happiness in individuals of all ages.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche designed the Purifying the Cause of Samsara door card as an easy way for students to regularly purify negative karma.

To use the card, place it above your door in order to benefit from the two main mantras it features. The mantra “OM HANU PAHASHA BHARA HE YE SVAHA,” when seen, purifies 100,000 eons of negative karma and obscurations. The Wish-Granting Wheel mantra, “OM PADMO USHNISHA VIMALE HUM PHAT,” when passed under, purifies 1,000 eons of negative karma and obscurations.

Rinpoche teaches that beings only receive the benefit of these door blessing mantras if they walk directly underneath them. With this in mind, Rinpoche recommends that students acquire a sufficient number of mantra cards to take up the width of the door frame.

Find the Purifying the Cause of Samsara door card by donation in the Foundation Store:
https://shop.fpmt.org/Purifying-the-Cause-of-Samsara–Above-the-Door-Mantra-Card_p_1752.html

Through comprehensive study programs, practice materials, and training seminars, FPMT Education nourishes the development of compassion, wisdom, kindness, and true happiness in individuals of all ages.

Composed and arranged by Lama Zopa Rinpoche at Kopan Monastery, Verses to Inspire Offerings is a frameable one-page offering prayer card that Lama Zopa Rinpoche suggests can be displayed in one’s gompa or home.

It reads in English and Tibetan:

While there is the Guru who is like a wish-granting jewel and the unimaginable wish-fulfilling tree,
And the ever-undeceiving Rare Sublime Ones who effortlessly fulfill all wishes,
Still to be dissatisfied and spend your body and wealth on what is non-virtuous and without meaning is so very foolish.

Dear Friends,
Once you have understood that wealth is like dew on the tip of a blade of grass
And that your friends, body and life are like a bubble,
Then you must engage in virtues such as making offerings to the Rare Sublime Ones while looking at them as the Guru
And extract the essence from your essenceless body and wealth.

Due to this merit may I and all others
Be able to make offerings to the Guru and the Three Jewels since they are our crown ornament.
By keeping my prayers and commitments,
And by means of listening, reflection and contemplation,
With Guru devotion and supreme bodhichitta,
May my life become fortunate, something meaningful and worthy of rejoicing,
And in this way, may I fulfill all the wishes of sentient beings.

Just as flies gather around dirty things,
Due to seeing samsara as pleasure,
So far I have accomplished only meaningless suffering,
Lacking any freedom to practice Dharma.
Now, with my body, speech and mind
I will engage in great meaningful actions for the welfare of others.
May the Guru please bless me to be able to do this.

Find the Verses to Inspire Offerings card by donation in the Foundation Store
https://shop.fpmt.org/Verses-to-Inspire-Offerings-Card-English-and-Tibetan_p_1737.html

Through comprehensive study programs, practice materials, and training seminars, FPMT Education nourishes the development of compassion, wisdom, kindness, and true happiness in individuals of all ages.

The Liberation Card for a Dying Person includes images and mantras that by merely seeing them help a dying person to purify negative karma and be led to enlightenment. The front of the card features ten mantras and ten images especially chosen to benefit someone at the time of death.

On the back of the card is a moving letter by Lama Zopa Rinpoche to assist the dying person at this most critical time. It reads:

My most dear kindest brother and sister,

Please look at these mantras quite often; especially, look at these mantras when you are leaving from this old body. Dear one, please don’t cling to anything and let yourself become completely free. In this most important moment of life, you don’t need to be afraid at all of being born in the lower realms and so forth. I give all my merits of the past, present, and future to you, to have a happy journey and a happy, wonderful, sunshining future. I give my big love to you. All the buddhas and bodhisattvas love you, and you are in their care. May anyone who sees these mantras be immediately reborn in the pure land where one can become enlightened or receive a perfect human body by quickly actualizing the causal vehicle, the three principles of the path, and the result vehicle, the secret mantra Vajrayana, based on correctly devoting and only pleasing one’s own holy guru.

You can also pray in this way: “May I take rebirth in whatever place is most beneficial for sentient beings, no matter where it is.”

To think this thought again and again is extremely good.

The other choice is to think: “May I be born in Amitabha’s blissful field to quickly benefit all sentient beings.”

Thank you.
With much love and prayers,
Lama Zopa

Find the Liberation Card for a Dying Person in English, Chinese, French, and Spanish by donation in the Foundation Store:
https://shop.fpmt.org/Liberation-Card-for-Dying-Person–English_p_409.html
https://shop.fpmt.org/Liberation-Card-for-Dying-Person–Chinese_p_445.html
https://shop.fpmt.org/Carte-de-libration-pour-les-mourants_p_781.html
https://shop.fpmt.org/Tarjeta-de-Liberacin-para-Moribundos_p_612.html

Through comprehensive study programs, practice materials, and training seminars, FPMT Education nourishes the development of compassion, wisdom, kindness, and true happiness in individuals of all ages.

Nuns take a pinch of chemar, a mixture of butter and roasted barley flour, in celebration of the new year, Kopan Monastery, Kathmandu, Nepal, February 2018. Photo by Ven. Lobsang Sherab.

The Fifteen Days of Miracles—from the first day of the Tibetan new year (Losar, February 5) until the fifteenth (February 19)—commemorate the special time when Guru Shakyamuni Buddha showed miraculous powers in order to subdue six Tirthika, or non-Buddhist teachers, who lacked faith in him, and to inspire more faith in his followers. It culminates on the full moon, the fifteenth day of the lunar calendar, which is the actual day of Chotrul Duchen.

Losar is traditionally celebrated for three days, during which Tibetans spend time with friends and family, eat, play games, and relax. A number of rituals and customs have developed around it, such as the eating of a special soup called “guthug” on the 29th day of the last Tibetan month of the year, two days before Losar. In the monasteries, there is a Losar tradition to do the extensive Palden Lhamo puja before dawn.

The Fifteen Days of Miracles are also a time for pilgrimage and intensive Dharma practice. During this period, many Tibetan monasteries, including Kopan Monastery in Nepal, hold a Great Prayer Festival—Monlam Chenmo—for several days or even weeks during which the Sangha recite prayers from morning until evening.

This year, Losar falls on February 5. The Fifteen Days of Miracles continue through Chotrul Duchen on February 19.

All fifteen days are merit multiplying days, when the merit of virtuous actions performed on these days is multiplied by 100 million, as cited by Lama Zopa Rinpoche from the vinaya text Treasure of Quotations and Logic.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche presides over Lama Chopa after the Palden Lhamo puja on the first day of Losar, Kopan Monastery, Kathmandu, Nepal, February 2018. Photo by Ven. Lobsang Sherab.

Advice Specifically for Losar

For FPMT, Losar is a special time as it commemorates the anniversary of FPMT founder Lama Yeshe’s parinirvana at dawn of Losar in 1984. Lama Zopa Rinpoche asks centers to offer students the opportunity to offer extensive Lama Chopa with tsog in honor of this anniversary. Lama Zopa Rinpoche says that one generates incredible merit by offering tsog on that occasion every year. This Losar marks thirty-five years since the passing of Lama.

Rinpoche also recommends that centers host annual events to introduce new students to Lama Yeshe. These events might include students who knew Lama Yeshe sharing their favorite stories, watching videos of Lama teaching, or reading stories about Lama.

Lama Yeshe, Lake Arrowhead, California, United States, 1975. Photo by Carol Royce-Wilder, courtesy of Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive.

Advice for the Fifteen Days of Miracles

Students can find Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s advice for the Fifteen Days of Miracles collected here. Advice for merit multiplying days in general can be found here. (Advice for merit multiplying days can also be found in French.)

If the members of your community decide to recite the Sutra of Golden Light on these special days, we invite them to report their recitations on the Sutra of Golden Light reporting page.

Losar Tashi Delek! Happy Tibetan New Year!

Please keep in mind: According to the late Ven. Choden Rinpoche, one of Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s teachers, observation of auspicious days should be according to the date in India, not the date in one’s home country. Therefore, when Lama Zopa Rinpoche is not in India, Rinpoche celebrates merit multiplying days and other auspicious dates according to the time in India.

Special thanks to the Liberation Prison Project for preparing this year’s Tibetan calendar. A limited view of the calendar is always available on “Dharma Practice Dates” as a courtesy to FPMT students around the world.

Through comprehensive study programs, practice materials, and training seminars, FPMT Education nourishes the development of compassion, wisdom, kindness, and true happiness in individuals of all ages.