Study & Practice News

Statue of Lama Tsongkhapa at Kopan Monastery. Photo by Tom Truty.

Lama Tsongkhapa Day, or Ganden Ngamchoe, is a celebration of the anniversary of Lama Tsongkhapa’s parinirvana. It is celebrated on the 25th day of the 10th month in the Tibetan calendar. This year, Lama Tsongkhapa Day falls on Friday, December 23.

Lama Tsongkhapa (1357-1419) was a Tibetan Buddhist master whose studies and meditations in all the major schools of Tibetan Buddhism resulted in the founding of the Gelugpa lineage. 

“In Gelug regions, Lama Tsongkhapa Day is definitely an important celebration,” shared Joona Repo, translation coordinator for FPMT International Office, in a recent email. “In Lhasa the Barkhor is packed with people circumambulating the Jokhang. 

“In India, people celebrate it too, of course. In Mundgod and Bylakuppe, they light up all the temples and assembly halls with Christmas lights.”

Offerings of lights on Lama Tsongkhapa Day (Ganden Ngamchoe), Lhasa, Tibet. Photo by Matt Lindén (mattlinden.co.uk).

There are many practices you can do to create merit on this special day! The main practice, recommended by Lama Zopa Rinpoche, is Lama Chöpa. The FPMT Foundation Store makes this practice available in hardcopy and as a downloadable PDF. If you are unable to do Lama Chöpa, Lama Tsongkhapa Guru Yoga is also recommended.

The Jokhang on Lama Tsongkhapa Day (Ganden Ngamchoe), Lhasa, Tibet. Photo by Matt Lindén (mattlinden.co.uk).

Additionally, there are other practices students are encouraged to do, as you are able. Consider some of the following:

English

• 1000 Offerings to Lama Tsong Khapa
• Extensive Offering Practice 
• “The Glorious One of the Three Worlds” (English Version of “Palden Sa Suma”)
• “A Hymn of Experience” by Je Tsongkhapa 
• “Destiny Fulfilled”
• “Prayer for the Flourishing of Je Tsongkhapa’s Teachings” (a4 version)
  “Prayer for the Flourishing of Je Tsongkhapa’s Teachings” (letter version)
• Lama Tsongkhapa’s Secret Biography 
  “Dependent Arising: A Praise to the Buddha”

French

• Prière pour le développement de Lama Tsongkhapa (lecture)
• Prière pour le développement de Lama Tsongkhapa (livret)

Tibetan

• 1000 Offerings to Lama Tsongkhapa 
• “Palden Sa Suma” (Tibetan Version of “Glory of the Triple Ground”)
• Lama Tsongkhapa’s Secret Biography

You can read more about this advice, plus a teaching from Lama Zopa Rinpoche about Lama Tsongkhapa Day.

Volunteers at Kadampa Center, North Carolina, USA, August 2016

What Is “Dharma Work?”

Any work done with the teachings of the Buddha alive in the heart is “Dharma work.” Some of us share the precious and uniquely challenging opportunity of working or volunteering for a Dharma organization. We might imagine a pure land of Dharma talk by the water cooler and pujas at lunch, but our jobs hardly feel holy all of the time. Whether rewiring the office for a new phone system, crunching numbers for our annual financial reports, helping a coworker navigate a divorce, or volunteering for sixteen hours straight at a fundraising event, we’ve all been pushed outside of our comfort zones and areas of expertise. 

“If you have many activities, many responsibilities, and if you think of this as a burden, then stress comes. Even if you are working, if you look at all this as burden, your mind is not happy. Lung and stress come, and your mind becomes so unhappy.” Lama Zopa Rinpoche explained during a talk to an FPMT center in 2003. “Rather than taking all of this as a burden, if you look at this as an opportunity to be useful, and see that you are useful for other sentient beings, and look at all these activities and responsibilities as a positive opportunity and think, ‘I am so fortunate to benefit others,’ then that’s one technique to stop squeezing the mind and developing lung (which also can bring high blood pressure and badly affect your health). Thinking of the benefit you are able to offer through all your work generates joy and happiness in your heart.”

The Inner Job Description Card (Mindfulness Practice Tool) was created to help you track your progress throughout the day as you attempt to develop your inner professional and subdue your outer expressions of ignorance, anger, attachment, selfish motivation, etc. As Lama Zopa Rinpoche explains, “You have all these external professions—how to do this, how to do that from school, college, university—but without inner professionalism: how to live life, how to do everything mentally, how to do everything—business, professional activity, whatever you do—with pure attitude, positive mind, non-ignorance, non-anger, non-attachment, especially with the non-selfish mind.”

Inner Job Description Cards

• Inner Job Description Card (Mindfulness Practice Tool) a4 format
• Inner Job Description Card (Mindfulness Practice Tool) letter format
• “How to Be a Real Professional” by Lama Zopa Rinpoche

Students can also attend the Inner Job Description Service Seminar when available. Find out more on our Service Seminar page.

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

Beautiful offerings to holy objects at Buddha Amitabha Pure Land, Washington State, USA. Photo by Chris Majors.

The creation of holy objects for world peace is a key priority among Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s Vast Visions for the FPMT organization. FPMT Education Services makes available many resources related to creating and offering to holy objects. 

Holy objects purify negativities and create merit for all who come into contact with them. Lama Zopa Rinpoche has explained, “My wish is for FPMT to build many holy objects everywhere, as many as possible. Making it so easy for sentient beings to purify their heavy negative karma and making it so easy for sentient beings to create extensive merit. Which makes it so easy to achieve the realizations of the path and so easy to achieve liberation and enlightenment.” 

Holy objects and extensive offerings at Kachoe Dechen Ling. Photo by Chris Majors.

Holy Object Resources

• Prayer Wheels
• Prayer Flags
• Relics
• Stupas
• Statues
• Thangkas
• Tsa-Tsas
• Information on microfilm for stupas and prayer wheels
• Guide for filling and consecrating your holy object
• To order Buddhist microfilm

Further Reading on Holy Objects

• Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s advice regarding holy objects can be found on his Advice Page as well as on the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive’s Online Advice Book.
• “Benefits of Having Many Holy Objects” by Lama Zopa Rinpoche
• “The Benefits of Making Prayer Wheels” by Lama Zopa Rinpoche
• Benefits and Practices Related to Stupas and Statues Part 1
• Benefits and Practices Related to Stupas and Statues Part 2
• Benefits and Practices Related to Stupas and Statues Part 3
• “An Essay on Relics” by Lama Zopa Rinpoche
• “Essential Mantras for Holy Objects” by Lama Zopa Rinpoche
• Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s Advice on Circumambulation compiled by Ven. Sarah Thresher
• Lama Zopa Rinpoche translated “Padmasambhava’s Instruction on Offerings to Stupas,” which details the benefits of prostrating to, circumambulating, making offerings, and offering service to stupas.
• The Wheel of Great Compassion: The Practice of Prayer Wheel in Tibetan Buddhism edited by Lorne Ladner, foreword by Lama Zopa Rinpoche

• Extensive auspicious offerings are made to holy objects by many FPMT centers, projects and services around the world. Please rejoice in some of this amazing activity. 

You can explore more resources and information about holy objects:
fpmt.org/education/practice/holy-objects

By contributing toward the building of statues, stupas, prayer wheels and large thangkas the Holy Objects Fund contributes to world peace and harmony in a very unique way.

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

Lama Zopa Rinpoche blessing and offering a meal in California, November, 2015

This time of year means, for many, an increase in festive meals celebrated with friends and family. There are a variety of ways to enjoy your meal while still practicing virtue.

FPMT Education Services makes available a collection of practices, Food Offering Practices, which includes an extensive food offering practice, general food offering prayers, and the yogas of eating food according to Hinayana, Mahayana sutra, and Mahayana tantra. 

Medicine Buddha, Kachoe Dechen Ling, Aptos, California, US, July 2014. Photo by Chris Majors.

Whatever your traditions this time of year, you can make each meal a meaningful offering for yourself and others. Enjoy!

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

Lama Zopa Rinpoche and Lama Yeshe conducting a long life puja at end of the First Enlightened Experience Celebration, Tushita Meditation Centre, Dharamsala, India, May 1982. Photo by Bill Kane.

Every organization has its own distinctive culture. Around the world, in FPMT centers, projects and services, reflected in policies, charitable giving, and educational programs, FPMT “Wisdom Culture” remains at the heart of all activity.

Wisdom Culture signifies a fusion of two perfectly unique presentations of Buddhist philosophy epitomized in the life-work of our founders, Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche. Their collective presentations are reflected in the “study-practice-service” teaching format perfected in the month-long Kopan meditation courses in Nepal, which began in 1971.

Lama Yeshe felt so strongly that Wisdom Culture defined FPMT that he included “for Wisdom Culture” in the names of early centers and projects. For example, Chenrezig Institute in Australia began as Chenrezig Institute for Wisdom Culture and Wisdom Publications, now in the United States, began as Publications for Wisdom Culture. 

The term “Wisdom Culture” is now not used as widely as it was during Lama Yeshe’s time. In this age of abbreviations and e-speak, it is possibly viewed as too lengthy an appendage to attach to center and project names. However, while Lama Yeshe’s vocabulary was sometimes unconventional, it was extraordinarily accurate. Lama Yeshe explained:

Lama Zopa Rinpoche and Lama Yeshe, Chenrezig Institute, Australia, 1975. Photo by Nick Ribush, restoration by David Zinn.

What we normally understand as the meaning of “culture” is the relative mind or spirit, the collective illusions of a certain land or people. It actually has nothing to do with the wisdom truth of Dharma. If we stretch the meaning we could say that Dharma is the “culture” of our progressively developing wisdom. I was brought up in a great culture that is two thousand years old. Now I am working with Westerners. I think the meeting of East and West is on a gross level, but could be worked progressively towards a finer level of understanding. I think we must work towards a wisdom culture.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s teaching methods typify a detailed, traditional presentation of Buddhism enlivened by Rinpoche’s yogi-like conduct. About the purpose of FPMT, Lama Zopa Rinpoche has said:

The conclusion is for all the people to practice the lamrim, which is the heart of Dharma. Especially to try to put all the effort to live with bodhichitta motivation, in particular to have kindness to others, which is the most essential practice. Aiming to have the realization of bodhichitta as our main goal, of course based on guru devotion.

Between Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche, we find the entire spectrum of possible ways in which to fully develop one’s highest potential. Wisdom Culture is rooted in the joy, love, and utter dedication to the service of others that both Lamas embody and inspire, as well as constant emphasis on navigating the road map of mental development outlined in the structured teachings of the “Graduated Path” or “lamrim.”

FPMT Wisdom Culture, which is a reflection of that spectrum, is summarized in the following way:

• Openness and breadth in presenting the Dharma. Lama Yeshe’s teaching style was non-traditional, yet completely pure in source and content. Lama Yeshe made the Dharma accessible according to the individual culture and needs of a particular student.

• Detail and depth of instruction. Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s teaching style emphasizes how to practice and make each moment deeply meaningful through an emphasis on guru devotion; bodhichitta motivation; intensive practices to purify negativities and accumulate merit; and actualizing the lamrim teachings in the heart, not just through intellectual study. 

• Constant practice of merit accumulation and purification. These practices are emphasized as essential to bringing temporal happiness and preparing the mind for realization.

• Reliance on tantra; encouraging students to have spiritual confidence.

• Respect and support for ordained Sangha. We consider ordained Sangha essential to the tradition.

• Cultivation of a close family feeling. FPMT is a worldwide family of practitioners, united by our culture, devotion to our teachers, and standard practice materials.

• Thinking big. Lama Yeshe taught: “Anything is possible. Everything is possible.”

• Big love. Cherishing others. Imparting a universal love for all beings. 

FPMT Education Services is dedicated to preserving and innovating integrated education programs, practice materials, and training seminars true to Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s unique tradition of Wisdom Culture.

Lama Yeshe teaching at University of California at Santa Cruz, 1978. Photo by Jon Landaw.

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

Shakyamuni Buddha with offerings, Kachoe Dechen Ling, California, USA. Photo by Chris Majors.

Lhabab Duchen, one of the four great holy days of the Tibetan calendar, takes place this year on Sunday, November 20.

Lhabab Duchen celebrates when Lord Buddha actually descended from the God Realm of Thirty-Three after teaching his mother and the gods living there Dharma for several months. As a Buddha Multiplying Day, karmic results of actions on this day are multiplied 100 million times. This amazing result is sourced by Lama Zopa Rinpoche to the vinaya text Treasure of Quotations and Logic.

Please keep in mind that 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 Buddha Days and other auspicious dates according to the time in India.

FPMT Education Services thought you might like a reminder of Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s recommended practices for these special days. Specific advice for practices to do on the Buddha Multiplying Days can be found on the FPMT website, including new advice to recite the Sutra for Remembering the Three Jewels. If you choose to recite the Sutra of Golden Light on this special day, you might like to report your recitations using the facility on the FPMT website, which you can find on the Sutra of Golden Light reporting page.

Special thanks to the Liberation Prison Project for preparing a Tibetan calendar with information on holy days and other important dates for avoiding or engaging in various activities.

Practice for Buddha Multiplying Days: fpmt.org/teachers/zopa/advice/practice-on-the-four-great-holy-days/

Sutra of Golden Light: fpmt.org/education/prayers-and-practice-materials/sutras/golden-light-sutra/

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

Lama Zopa Rinpoche recently updated the design of a Samantabhadra protection card for one’s wall. FPMT Education Services is pleased to make this protection card available as a printable PDF. 

Rinpoche advises, “By displaying this card, all the outer and inner evil enemies (living beings or bad feng shui) are stopped. It was said by Vajradharma, who is the all knowing one, that this instruction can stop any kind of harm, including the nine harms. By displaying this protection in the house, activities that take place in the house and have no meaning will become meaningful and virtue will be created. In this way, having this protection in the home becomes good feng shui, a way of creating an auspicious environment.” 

This protection comes from the great lama Thugyen Chokyi Nyima. According to Rinpoche, “It eliminates bad things, creates outer and inner success, and can also prevent all the bad extremes of the earth.” 

Regarding the artwork, Rinpoche explains, “The main deity is the Bodhisattva Samantabhadra, white in color, riding an elephant, his two hands carrying a container filled with piles of jewels. Above are the three types of deities: Chenrezig, Vajrapani, and Manjushri. On one side is Hayagriva and on the other is Lion-Faced Dakini. Below are the two kinds of garudas: Multi-Colored Garuda and Black Garuda.” 

The FPMT Foundation Store carries many items for one’s protection and the protection of others. 

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

Lama Tsongkhapa statue at Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s residence, Kachoe Dechen Ling, Aptos, California. Lama Tsongkhapa (1357–1419) is the founder of the Gelugpa school of Tibetan Buddhism. Je Tsongkhapa’s Lamrim Chenmo or The Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path is one of the most renowned Tibetan Buddhist classics. Photo by Chris Majors.

“The most unbelievably important thing in our life is lam-rim,” Lama Zopa Rinpoche teaches in the module “Advice for Realizing Lam-rim,” which is part of Living in the Path, FPMT Education Services’ essential lam-rim program. “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.”

FPMT Education Services would like to remind you of several lam-rim resources available to help you in this most important task of integrating the lam-rim into daily life:

We have created a webpage devoted to lam-rim with links to free resources and texts to assist you in your study and practice. 

Lama Zopa Rinpoche on the teaching throne during the lam-rim retreat, Guadalajara, Mexico, September 2015. Photo by Ven. Thubten Kunsang.

You can find “Lam-rim Is the Most Important Thing,” which includes a short video clip of Rinpoche teaching, on FPMT’s Online Learning Center:
http://onlinelearning.fpmt.org/mod/page/view.php?id=4536

Additionally, Lama Zopa Rinpoche gave advice suggesting that students follow a lam-rim 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 lam-rim in one year,” Rinpoche said. “To meditate like this each year—wow, wow, wow! That would be great.”

To help students follow this advice, we have created a schedule to help you plan daily lam-rim meditation sessions over the course of a calendar year. It was created on the basis of the book The Essential Nectar by Geshe Rabten, which is available through the Foundation Store. The schedule is available as an Excel spreadsheet and PDF.

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 Living in the Path module “Realizing the Lam-rim,” students can find “This Is Going to Happen to You,” a free course based on Pabongka Rinpoche’s Heart Spoon, one of the most graphic and heart-wrenching poems on death ever written.

The Heart Spoon, with its strong language and disturbing images, is a clear admonishment to stop postponing our practice of virtue and use our lives well. “It is meditation on impermanence and death that persuade us to practice Dharma,” Lama Zopa Rinpoche explains. “Otherwise, we will continue to wait for the perfect conditions, thinking, ‘Not now, but later I will practice Dharma.'” 

The text is meant to be “taken personally” and taken to heart. As Lama Zopa Rinpoche advises, it is best read, thinking, “This is going to happen to me.”

The course’s format encourages students to not only read and listen to Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s teachings, but to deepen their personal understanding and experience through meditation and practice. For this reason, course readings are interspersed with guidelines for meditation, for keeping the teachings present throughout the day with mindfulness practices, and for offering service to others.

In a 20-minute video, “This Is Going to Happen to You: The Inevitability of Death,” Ven. Amy Miller introduces Heart Spoon and discusses the nature of death and more. 

Watch “This Is Going to Happen to You: The Inevitability of Death” on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVW_owiEVAc&feature=youtu.be

All of the modules of Living in the Path program are available on the FPMT Online Center. This program is ideal for anyone who wishes to deepen their personal practice and develop the realizations of the path to enlightenment by relying on Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s heart advice and teachings. As the teachings often assume familiarity with the lam-rim, participants are recommended to have previously received teachings in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition.

Ven. Amy Miller (Lobsang Chodren) attended the one-month lam-rim November course at Kopan Monastery in Nepal in 1987 and ordained in 2000. She has offered service in a variety of FPMT centers since 1992 and has led pilgrimages to India, Nepal, Bhutan, and Sikkim. She has completed the FPMT Basic Program and is the co-author of Buddhism in a Nutshell and a contributor to Living in the Path. Ven. Amy is an FPMT registered teacher.

Living in the Path is an FPMT program taught exclusively by Lama Zopa Rinpoche, spiritual director of the FPMT. Plans are underway to also draw from the teachings of Lama Yeshe, FPMT’s founder, to offer a program that preserves the entire FPMT lineage.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche painting mantras onto rock, Manali, India, July 2013. Photo by Maya.

FPMT Education Services makes available many commonly used mantras, which students can download freely for their personal use. 

Mantras, meaning “mind protection,” are Sanskrit syllables usually recited in conjunction with the practice of a particular meditational deity. As they embody the qualities of the deity with whom they are associated, they bring benefit to all who see, touch, hear or speak them and can even help eliminate obstacles to one’s progress on the path.

For extensive advice from Lama Zopa Rinpoche about the benefits and protective qualities of particular mantras, please visit the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive for Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s Online Advice Book and FPMT.org for Advice from Lama Zopa Rinpoche.

If you are in need of mantras not listed on this page, feel free to contact FPMT Education Services at education@fpmt.org and we will do our best to get you what you need. 

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

Lama Zopa Rinpoche during a long life puja at Amitabha Buddhist Centre, Singapore, March 13, 2016. Photo by Piero Sirianni.

It is said that making sincere requests for one’s guru to live long and to continue teaching creates the causes and conditions needed to receive benefit from that teacher for a very long time. With this in mind, we wanted to remind you of the long life prayers we have available for Lama Zopa Rinpoche.

Rinpoche has suggested that “Bestowing Supreme Immortality” is particularly effective as it was composed by Rinpoche’s root guru, His Holiness Kyabje Trijang Rinpoche.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche and Khadro-la having tea after long life puja at Kopan Monastery, April 29, 2013. Photo by Ven. Roger Kunsang.

FPMT Education Services offers a number of other long life prayers for Lama Zopa Rinpoche on our website, all of which can be used in personal practice. We now have the long life prayer that Khadro-la (Rangjung Neljorma Khadro Namsel Drönme) spontaneously composed for Rinpoche’s long life available in English with Tibetan phonetics, Tibetan, Italian, Spanish, and Chinese. 

In 1989, Lama Zopa Rinpoche offered advice in response to requests by students to help them understand how best to prolong the life of the guru and how to avoid creating obstacles that can cause the guru sickness and a shortened life. 

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

The main topic of the Living in the Path module “Everything Comes from Mind” is summed up by Lama Zopa Rinpoche: “The view of Buddhism, Buddhist philosophy, the very foundation, the very essence, is that everything comes from your mind.” 

But how does everything come from mind? In this module, Lama Zopa Rinpoche explains that everything that appears to us comes from our karma–the mental factor of intention–as well as from our mind labeling phenomena and our mind projecting the hallucination of true existence on phenomena. The teachings also include a variety of methods to help stop anger and develop patience based on understanding karma and emptiness.

In a short video, “Mind: The Creator,” just one of several videos included in the module, Ven. Robina Courtin, in her usual engaging and dynamic style, introduces the Buddha’s explanation of mind and karma.

Watch “Mind: The Creator” on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YL_2yXFv-Mk

All of the modules of Living in the Path program are available on the FPMT Online Center. This program is ideal for anyone who wishes to deepen their personal practice and develop the realizations of the path to enlightenment by relying on Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s heart advice and teachings. As the teachings often assume familiarity with the lam-rim, participants are recommended to have previously received teachings in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition.

FPMT registered teacher Ven. Robina Courtin met Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche in 1976 and ordained in 1977. She has served as editorial director of Wisdom Publications, editor of Mandala magazine, director of the Liberation Prison Project, and now teaches extensively around the world.

Living in the Path is an FPMT program taught exclusively by Lama Zopa Rinpoche, spiritual director of the FPMT. Plans are underway to also draw from the teachings of Lama Yeshe, FPMT’s founder, to offer a program that preserves the entire FPMT lineage.