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Education: The Heart of FPMT
New Retreat Program at Vajrapani Institute!
FPMT Education Services is pleased to announce a new advanced retreat program created in response to Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s expressed wish for FPMT students to actualize the Lam-Rim, especially attain shiné (calm abiding) and bodhichitta.
This new program is being developed in conjunction with Vajrapani Institute, USA, to be held March 16 – March 30, 2013 at Vajrapani Institute’s California retreat center. The scheduled retreat will be the first of an annual event series which will encourage and support committed meditators within the FPMT to advance in their practice.
A program with such an ambitious mission must have a skillful leader qualified to guide students in a fruitful way. We are delighted that Venerable René Feusi has agreed to lead the inaugural March retreat. Ven. René has over twenty-three years of experience as a meditator, teacher and retreat leader following the experiential tradition of Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche.
Please see Vajrapani Institute’s website for more information and registration details.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche, Ksitigarbha Day at Land of Medicine Buddha, Soquel, California, U.S., September 15, 2012. Photo by Dionne Wilson.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche shares techniques for transforming life’s difficulties into spiritual strength in “Seeing Problems as Positive,” an excerpt from Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive’s How to Practice Dharma: Teachings on the Eight Worldly Dharmas.
“For worldly people the confusion caused by suffering only brings more suffering and confusion, but as Dharma practitioners we have the opportunity of making suffering extremely beneficial by using it to cut confusion rather than to create it. In order to achieve enlightenment we have to experience both physical and mental difficulties, but bearing such difficulties is incredibly worthwhile because by doing so we reach a state where all suffering ceases forever. As we progress along the path to enlightenment, problems become fewer and fewer and therefore whatever we experience at this time only helps to bring about the end of the suffering that has no beginning.”
From Mandala January-March 2013
Lama Zopa Rinpoche teaching at the Sixth Kopan Course, March 1974, when he gave his most extensive teachings on the eight worldly dharmas. Photo by Ursula Bernis.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche teaches extensively on “the dissatisfied mind of desire”:
“Whether we are a Dharma practitioner or not, every problem in life comes from our own mind, as does every happiness. The cause of suffering is not external; the cause of happiness is not external. It is within us, in our mind.
“The particular thing that has created all the problems of life is the dissatisfied mind of desire, the mind clinging to this life. We try to obtain the immediate happiness of this life through what we call the eight worldly dharmas: a desire for comfort, material things (such as gifts, friends and so forth), a good reputation and praise, and an aversion to a lack of comfort and material things, a bad reputation and criticism, or blame.”
This teaching is excerpted from How to Practice Dharma: Teachings on the Eight Worldly Dharmas, edited by Gordon McDougall.
From Mandala July-September 2011.
Dog warming in sun, January 2012. Photo by Phil Hunt.
Leah Richards, a veterinary nurse, has a deep love, compassion, and respect for all animals and hopes to be a veterinarian one day. While at the 2003 Kopan course, she asked Lama Zopa Rinpoche for guidance on what to do when asked to perform euthanasia on sick and suffering animals.
From Mandala October-November 2004.
Ribur Rinpoche
Former FPMT executive director Massimo Corona talks to Ribur Rinpoche about monasticism in the West and how to maintain Buddhist monastic vows for the long-term.
From Mandala September-November 2001.
In the spring of 1978, Jan Willis arranged for Lama Yeshe to teach a course on Tibetan Buddhism at the University of Californias Oakes College on the Santa Cruz campus during the spring trimester, which ran approximately from mid-March through the end of May. Photos by Jon Landa
FPMT founder Lama Yeshe gets to the heart of karma and the ways in which we act based on “hallucinated fantasy.”
“We often talk about how we waste our lives following the eight worldly dharmas – attachment to temporal happiness, receiving material things, being praised, and having a good reputation – and aversion to their opposites – discomfort, not getting things, being criticized, and notoriety. Each time we get involved with those, we create negative karma….”
From Mandala April-May 2004.
His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Photo by Alison Wright.
His Holiness the Dalai Lama shares his reasons for why war should be relegated to “the dustbins of history.”
From Mandala June-August 2003.
Lama Yeshe teaching, Yucca Valley, United States, 1977. Photo courtesy of Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive.
A few words from Lama Yeshe, the founder of FPMT, on the difference between the absolute and relative guru.
From Mandala June-August 2002.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche discusses how to benefit the dying and dead. This is important advice for an eventuality we must all face.
From Mandala September-October 1997.
FPMT offers support for support to Rinpoche’s students at the most crucial time of death by giving the names of students who die to His Holiness the Dalai Lama with the request for his prayers.
Lama Yeshe’s talk in Berkeley, California, in the summer of 1983 was given at a time when the world was in a state of anxiety about the threat of nuclear war.
From Mandala March-May 2002.
New prayer Remembering the Kindness of His Holiness the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan People by Lama Zopa Rinpoche.
Also available as an A4 booklet in French.
Watch Streaming Videos from the 2009 and 2010 Light of the Path Retreat on the Online Learning Center in five languages.
