Study & Practice News

Lama Tsongkhapa (1357-1419), founder of the Gelug lineage.

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 on the Tibetan calendar. This year, Lama Tsongkhapa Day falls on Saturday, December 5.

There are many practices one can do to celebrate, and 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. Additionally, there are other practices students are encouraged to do, as they are able. 

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 Tsong Khapa’s Teachings” (a4 version)
  “Prayer for the Flourishing of Je Tsong Khapa’s Teachings” (letter version)
• Lama Tsongkhapa’s Secret Biography (C5 version)
• “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.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche blessing and offering a meal in California. November, 2015. Photo by Ven. Thubten Kunsang.

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 also 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. 

In a recent letter to a student who wanted to know how to bless food sold through a family business, Lama Zopa Rinpoche gave the following short practice:

Regarding your question about blessing the food, you recite OM AH HUM and visualize all the buddhas and bodhisattvas blessing the food with the qualities of holy body, speech and mind. This absorbs into the food where the food is. It is all absorbed into the food.

Then recite OM AH HUM.

Visualize that then every grain and part of the food is a blue HUM and into that numberless buddhas’ and bodhisattvas’ holy body, speech and mind all absorb into that. Then do that quite a number of malas of the mantra (OM AH HUM); the more you do, the better. The HUMs become the grains or food particles.

Then make a prayer to the merit field, Medicine Buddha, Tara and Chenrezig (but particularly Medicine Buddha) and pray that all the buddhas and bodhisattvas bless the food and that there never comes from it any side effects; it immediately purifies, the minute the food goes inside the mouth, it immediately purifies all the negative karmas collected from beginningless rebirths, not only that envy, but all diseases and spirit harms are purified. Also, pray that all realizations from guru devotion up to enlightenment are actualized, all the realizations are generated, especially bodhichitta, and it brings to all sentient beings perfect peace and happiness in this world. Then all the wishes of happiness and all successes – according to holy Dharma – are immediately received. All the wishes up to enlightenment are actualized.

That is what you should pray. You and everyone can do that meditation.

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 teaching at the Light of the Path Retreat, May 2014, Black Mountain, NC. Photo by Ven. Photo by Ven. Thubten Kunsang.

Living in the Path is an FPMT online and center-based program drawn exclusively from the teachings of Lama Zopa Rinpoche. In particular, it makes use of teachings given at events recorded by qualified media technicians using high quality video and audio equipment.

While the original modules of Living in the Path were developed on the basis of the Light of the Path retreats held in North Carolina, USA, in 2009 and 2010, new modules are being created to reflect the change in Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s teaching style that followed the manifestation of a stroke in 2011. Since then Rinpoche has been teaching with a force, animation, and speed that clearly transmits the urgent need for us to practice Dharma right now. 

Living in the Path was created primarily to transmit Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s very unique way of teaching the path to enlightenment. As such it provides access to Rinpoche’s heart advice on the particular practices he would like his students to do in their daily lives. It also offers Rinpoche’s instructions on why and how to do certain traditional prayers and practices for the purification of negative karma and the collection of merit. In addition, it makes available Rinpoche’s extensive teachings on the lam-rim topics in a format that encourages reflection, meditation, and practice. This is achieved by dividing the teachings into short segments, and supplementing them with guidelines for study and meditation, as well as mindfulness and service practices to be done throughout the day, all of which are based on quotations taken directly from Rinpoche’s teachings.

All the modules of Living in the Path consist of a combination of video excerpts and transcripts of the actual teachings. These are supplemented by video, audio, and text resources aimed at helping students understand and integrate the teachings into their minds.

Given that Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s teachings often assume familiarity with teachings in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition and, in particular, with the lam-rim teachings, students of Living in the Path should ideally have already done some basic introductory courses, such as Buddhism in a Nutshell and Meditation 101, and even some courses at an intermediate level, such as Discovering Buddhism. As Living in the Path is designed to encourage students to go deeply into the essential points of the path and to integrate them into their lives, this program can also be done in conjunction with other FPMT education programs, such as Discovering Buddhism, Basic Program, or Masters Program.

We invite you to visit Living in the Path on the FPMT Online Learning Center study, reflect, and meditate on Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s unique way of presenting the Buddhadharma.

The original modules of Living in the Path are currently being revised and new modules are gradually being created, many of which are offered free of charge. You are invited to visit Living in the Path on the FPMT Online Learning Center to see a full list of available modules.

Centers wishing to host this program can contact the FPMT Foundation Program Coordinator at fpc@fpmt.org. Please note that the teacher of Living in the Path is Lama Zopa Rinpoche and that modules are to be presented in centers by a registered FPMT teacher who is also a registered Living in the Path facilitator.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche turning the prayer wheels outside the Great Stupa at dusk, Australia, September 12, 2014. Photo by Ven. Thubten Kunsang

The creation of holy objects is a high priority among Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s Vast Visions for the FPMT organization. “My wish is for FPMT to build many holy objects everywhere, as many as possible,” Rinpoche explained, “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.”

A prayer wheel is a cylindrical wheel on a spindle made from metal. Inside the prayer wheel are many million or billions of the mantra of the Buddha of Compassion, OM MANI PADME HUM, printed on paper or microfilm. By turning the prayer wheel the mantra of compassion emanates and blesses the area and all beings.

Two of Mandala‘s current online features – “The Inside Story: Microfilm, Holy Objects, and the Passion of Tai Vautier” and “How Do Holy Objects Work?” – are excellent resources for exploring the power behind prayer wheels. The first, “The Inside Story” by Donna Lynn Brown, details the work and devotion of FPMT student Tai Vautier, who helped FPMT develop its own collection of sacred mantras on microfilm suitable for filling prayer wheels, statues, and other other holy objects. The second, “How Do Holy Objects Work?” by IMI monk Ven. Tenzin Legtsok, provides a robust introduction to the philosophical reasons behind the spiritual power of holy objects such as prayer wheels.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche has explained that he would like to sponsor the building of 100,000 prayer wheels for world peace (including prayer wheels under the ocean). The prayer wheels are to have a minimum height of six feet. Wherever a prayer wheel is built, it becomes a great blessing for that country.

You can find your own prayer wheel at The Foundation Store. 

FPMT’s Holy Objects Fund, provides the resources to create holy objects, such as prayer wheels, for world peace. 

More information about prayer wheels can be found on FPMT Education’s prayer wheels resource page. 

Students can access FPMT Education materials, prayers and practices in a variety of formats including eBooks. A wide selection of eBooks can be found at the Foundation Store and a growing number are being made available on the Amazon Kindle Store. 

An advantage of obtaining eBooks directly from the Foundation Store is that each order comes with a copy of the mobi, epub and PDF versions of each title which can be utilized according to your preferences on your various available devices. 

One benefit of purchasing from the Amazon Kindle Store is that your purchase will be available in your Kindle Cloud Library and can be sent to any device on which you are able to read Kindle books and your devices will sync, allowing you to pick up where you left off on any text on any of your devices. 

Two new eBooks available, Heart Advice for Retreat eBook and Lam Rim Prayers eBook will be especially useful to FPMT students. 

FPMT Education Services would like to sincerely thank Lynn Stevenson for her very generous work volunteering with converting titles to mobi and epub files. 

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 altar at Vulture’s Peak, Rajgir, India, October 2015. Photo courtesy of Ven. Sarah Thresher.

FPMT registered teacher Ven. Sarah Thresher shares the recent story of reciting the Sutra of Golden Light with friends at Vulture’s Peak in India, where the sutra is said to originate:

The first time we recited the Sutra of Golden Light at Vulture’s Peak it was almost by accident. Ven Dekyong from Root Institute suggested reading a few chapters after we finished the Heart Sutra, so we started and just kept on going. Despite the heat and exhaustion, it was mesmerizing to follow the narrative as chapter after chapter a succession of divine and holy beings – bodhisattvas, goddesses, the Four Great Kings, the Yaksha general and so on – rose up, paid homage to the Buddha and then pledged to protect, support and honor those who upheld the Sutra of Golden Light.

In mid-October we returned again – Ven. Dekyong, Ven. Katy Cole, Maura Harvey and myself – to recite the sutra for a third time in celebration of Maura’s 50th birthday. We dedicated everything for the long life of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, for Lama Zopa Rinpoche and, of course, for world peace. When we told Rinpoche, he replied, “Thank you very much. Tell everyone.”

Ven. Katy Cole, Maura Harvey, Ven. Sarah Thresher, and Ven. Dekyong after reciting the Sutra of Golden Light at Vulture’s Peak, Rajgir, India, October 2015. Photo courtesy of Ven. Sarah Thresher.

The regular recitation of the Sutra of Golden Light for world peace is part of Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s Vast Visions for FPMT. FPMT Education Services has created a resource page to help you learn more about and start reciting the Sutra of Golden Light. You can receive the oral transmission of the sutra, download the sutra in 12 languages, report completed recitations, share your experiences, and ask questions about the text itself.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s newest book from Wisdom Publications, How to Enjoy Death: Preparing to Meet Life’s Final Challenge Without Fear, has been compiled from years of Rinpoche’s teachings and has been lovingly edited by Venerable Robina Courtin. Here Lama Zopa Rinpoche provides detailed advice on how best to prepare ourselves to face the inevitable end of our own and our loved one’s lives with courage, grace, and a mind free of fear. With great care, Rinpoche explains what to do in the months, weeks, and days that precede death, as well as how to handle the moment itself and the mantras, prayers, and meditations that must follow the death of a loved one. All of the practices needed to preparedly face death are included in this book, making this an essential reference for Tibetan Buddhist practitioners, caregivers, hospice workers, or chaplains.

As Lama Zopa Rinpoche explains in the prologue:

“When suddenly one day one of your loved ones dies and you don’t know what to do to help, you’ll feel so confused, so lost. This made me think that knowing how to help others at the time of death is such important education to have. By providing the right support, the right environment, you can help your loved one die peacefully, with virtuous thoughts, and thus have a good rebirth.”

How to Enjoy Death will be printed and shipped in February 2016, but by pre-ordering from Wisdom now, you save $10 off the price and receive a PDF preview of the book. Additionally, a $5 donation for every order will be made to the Nepal Earthquake Support Fund which was established by FPMT International Office immediately following the devastating first earthquake to hit Nepal in April 2015, as a way for FPMT to help with immediate and long-term aid to affected regions. 

Lama Zopa Rinpoche has given extensive advice on preparing for death and caring for others at the time of death. You can access this advice and practices on fpmt.org/death. 

Living in the Path is unique among FPMT education programs in that it is taught exclusively by Lama Zopa Rinpoche. The online version of this program is currently undergoing extensive revision to divide it into “digestible bite-sized chunks” and make it easier to access the materials. New modules are also being developed based on Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s more recent teachings. 

Currently, Living in the Path features standalone modules organized within the following topics:

•  Heart Advice: Essential advice for practicing Dharma in daily life
• Practice Instructions: Why and how to do certain prayers and practices 
• Realizing the Lam-Rim: Teachings on the lam-rim topics and explanations of lam-rim texts 

All modules consist of video excerpts and lightly edited transcripts of teachings by Lama Zopa Rinpoche together with many additional resources.

Modules included in “Realizing the Lam-rim” also provide guidelines for study and meditation, as well as for mindfulness and service practices, all of which are based on quotations drawn from Rinpoche’s teachings. 

New modules include:

Advice for Realizing the Lam-rim

In this set of short videos drawn from teachings given in Bendigo, Australia in 2014, Lama Zopa Rinpoche provides step-by-step instructions on how to gain the realizations of the lam-rim: 1) study a lam-rim text thoroughly, 2) meditate to get the effortful experience, 3) meditate to get the effortless experience, 4) meditate until the realization is stable. A short guide provides a clear summary of Rinpoche’s teaching. 

Offering Food and Drink

At a picnic in Denmark in July 2015, Lama Zopa Rinpoche led one of his trademark extensive food offering practices with a motivation based on the three principal aspects of the path and offerings to the buddhas visualized in the four directions. Learn how to transform the actions of eating and drinking into an opportunity to create the causes for enlightenment. 

This is Going to Happen to You

This teaching is based on Pabongka Rinpoche’s Heart Spoon: Encouragement Through Recollecting Impermanence, perhaps one of the most graphic and heart-wrenching poems on death ever written. Guidelines for meditation and mindfulness practices encourage you to keep these teachings present throughout the day so as to continually remember: “This is going to happen to me.” 

These three modules of Living in the Path and many others are offered free of charge. 

We invite you to visit Living in the Path on the FPMT Online Learning Center and do what you always intended to do: study, reflect, and meditate on Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s unique way of presenting the Buddhadharma.

Foundation Service Seminar Facilitator Namdrol Miranda Adams, Maitripa College Dean of Education and Assistant to Yangsi Rinpoche.

For the first time ever, the Foundation Service Seminar (FSS) will be offered at Maitripa College in Portland, OR, USA. This two-part training will be offered over the course of two semesters in the format of one non-residential weekend intensive in the Fall and one in the Spring. The Fall weekend will take place October 30-November 1, 2015. The second part of the training will be held at Maitripa Spring 2016 (dates to be determined). To earn an FSS Certificate of Completion​ from FPMT, students must complete all of the hours of both weekend training sessions.*

The Foundation Service Seminar is a training created by FPMT specifically for those who are currently (or plan to) offer service in an FPMT center, project, or other environment. The Foundation Service Seminar explores how to best offer service utilizing the skills and resources available to us. The course is an opportunity to investigate a model of developing our own skills, and the skills of others, in relation to the purpose and mission of FPMT.

Foundation Service Seminar Facilitator Tom Truty, FPMT Director of Education Services.

Facilitators for this seminar are Namdrol Miranda Adams, Maitripa College Dean of Education and Assistant to Yangsi Rinpoche, and Tom Truty, FPMT Director of Education Services. 

The topics that will be covered include:

• our relationship to resources – both material and human
• communication skills and conflict resolution
• teaching according to the level of the student
• ways to maintain and develop our personal practice in the midst of service, and methods to prevent and cure burnout.

Discussions include “service” in terms of guru devotion, karma, compassion, and emptiness. Students will have the opportunity to use the Inner Job Description, a tool for developing what Lama Zopa Rinpoche calls the “inner professional,” and integrate the Dharma into our daily lives. The course includes group discussion and sharing of experiences, particularly of community service or other volunteer/service work, and introduces daily meditations as well as group practice as advised by Lama Zopa Rinpoche.

You can learn more about this training or register today! For more information about the Foundation Service Seminar and other training available, please visit the FPMT Service Seminars webpage. 

*One credit hour may be awarded per semester by Maitripa College for each completed weekend in addition to community service hours and student work completed outside the classroom instructional hours.

Portrait of Lama Zopa Rinpoche, New York, USA, August 2015. Photo by Edward Sczudlo.

FPMT Education Services is happy to make available two new translations from Lama Zopa Rinpoche.

“Song of the Four Mindfulnesses: Instructions for Meditation on the View of Emptiness, Causing a Rain of Siddhis to Fall” by the Seventh Dalai Lama is a beautiful hymn on the four mindfulnesses: mindfulness of the guru, mindfulness of bodhichitta, mindfulness of your body as divine, and mindfulness of the view of emptiness. The verse on bodhichitta reads:

In the prison of suffering of beginningless circling,
The six types of sentient beings, bereft of happiness, wander.
There are the fathers and mothers who have been kind to me.
Abandoning attachment and hatred, meditate on cherishing others and compassion.
Not letting your mind stray, place your mind being in the nature of compassion.
With unforgetting remembrance, hold your mind being in compassion.

“Requesting Prayer to Padmasambhava” by Rigdzin Jigme Lingpa is a prayer included in the Tibetan text tshes bcu’i phan yon gsol ‘debs, found in volume 12 of Jigme Lingpa’s Collected Works. This prayer begins:

E MA HO! You are the treasure of all the buddhas’ compassion: past, present, and future;
You are our supreme guide, liberating all three realms;
You are the one and only guide of every living being in Tibet;
Your kindness is incomparable, Great Ögyen.

You are welcome to download both of these new translations for your personal use and also peruse other prayers, practices and translations available to you. 

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 teaching at Mahamudra Centre, New Zealand. Photo by Ven. Thubten Kunsang, May 2015.

December 2015: Please note that this practice has now been revised and renamed by Lama Zopa Rinpoche as The Method to Transform a Suffering Life into Happiness (Including Enlightenment).

September 2015 Update Now Available: In this essential practice, Daily Meditation, Lama Zopa Rinpoche has carefully and kindly compiled, and in many cases provided translation for, the prayers, practices, and meditations needed to start one’s day, or activities, with a perfect Dharma intention and bodhichitta motivation. While mornings are an ideal time to set up one’s aspirations for the day, students are encouraged to engage in this practice at any time, whenever they are able.

The new Daily Meditation is a revision of the “Morning Prayers” included in Essential Buddhist Prayers Vol.1. This meditation includes a new version of the prayer “A Direct Meditation on the Graduated Path, Containing all the Important Meanings” translated by Lama Zopa Rinpoche, as well as a new translation of selected verses from Shantideva’s Bodhisattvacharyavatara by Lama Zopa Rinpoche. Other additions and new arrangements have been made to this meditation – it is a unique new practice from Lama Zopa Rinpoche updated September 2015. 

FPMT Education Services is pleased to offer this updated essential practice as a free download. A Vietnamese translation is now also available. 

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 writing mantras to go above a rabbit house located at Sera Je Monastery, India. Photo by Ven. Roger Kunsang, December, 2013.

FPMT Education Services makes available many commonly used mantras which students can download freely for their personal use. Recently added are His Holiness the Dalai Lama Name Mantras (there are two available), Lama Tsongkhapa Name Mantra, and Lama Zopa Rinpoche Name Mantra. 

For extensive advice from Lama Zopa Rinpoche about the benefits of reading, writing or reciting particular mantras, or how to engage with mantras to eliminate or reduce potential or ongoing obstacles, 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.