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The Mahabodhi Stupa with gold offering on the pinnacle, Bodhgaya, India, January 2014. Photo by Ven. Roger Kunsang.
“Every time you look at holy objects – pictures of the Buddha, statues, scriptures, stupas – they plant the seed of liberation and enlightenment in your mental continuum. So every time you look at them they purify your mind. They plant the seed of enlightenment, which includes all the causes to achieve enlightenment. How? When you look at them they plant a seed or positive imprint on your mental continuum so that later when you meet Buddhadharma, either in this life or in future lives, you are able to understand the words and the meaning of the teachings. From that, you are able to practice the meaning of the Dharma you have understood, which causes you to cease the gross and subtle defilements by actualizing the path and then your mental continuum becomes omniscient mind. This is what is meant when we say that by seeing holy objects it plants the seed of enlightenment on the mind – it contains the whole path from guru devotion and the three principles up to the two stages of tantra and enlightenment. Seeing holy objects makes us actualize all of this as a result. This is the effect we get from seeing them and this is how they cause us to achieve enlightenment.”
– Lama Zopa Rinpoche, from “Why Holy Object Are Precious and Wish-fulfilling,” posted on fpmt.org
Learn more about Lama Zopa Rinpoche, spiritual director of the Foundation for the Preservation of Mahayana Tradition (FPMT), and Rinpoche’s vision for a better world. Sign up to receive news and updates.
Lama Yeshe with a parrot, Java, 1979. Photo courtesy of Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive.
“If you’re not tested, you take teaching after teaching and think you’re OK, but when you’re confronted with a difficult situation, it’s possible that you’ll find you’re not OK at all. So that’s why true Dharma practitioners welcome trouble. It gives them a chance to see if what they’ve been studying works or not, a chance to transform suffering into happiness. Otherwise you just go blithely along, completely out of touch with reality, thinking you’re OK when you’re not, because you haven’t actually been practicing Dharma at all.”
– Lama Yeshe, from “True Dharma Practitioners Welcome Trouble” on the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive
Learn more about FPMT founder Lama Yeshe on his homepage on fpmt.org. Many more teachings from Lama Yeshe are freely available from Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive.
Mahabodhi Temple and grounds at night, Bodhgaya, India, January 2014. Photo by Ven. Roger Kunsang.
“I think you are very fortunate to be able to come to Bodhgaya, where a thousand buddhas will descend, place their holy feet, display holy deeds, and achieve enlightenment. Guru Shakyamuni Buddha is the fourth of the thousand buddhas. The rest of the buddhas will descend here and will also display the twelve deeds, and the holy deed, achieving enlightenment.
“There is a place in Bodhgaya called the Vajra Seat. This ground is blessed. Before becoming enlightened, Buddha blessed this ground so it would not be destroyed or cracked, but would stay firm. It is said that there are no earthquakes in Bodhgaya because it is blessed by Buddha, and also that this will be the last place to exist when the world ends.
“On top of receiving the blessings from this holy place, where already four buddhas have descended, so many other enlightened beings, yogis, and great bodhisattvas have come here to do pilgrimage, to pray, and to bless this place.
“It is very good while you’re here to make as many circumambulations and prayers as you can under the bodhi tree and inside the temple in front of the Buddha. Even though it is said that the bodhi tree has been cut down three times, it has the same roots as at the time of the Buddha. …”
— Lama Zopa Rinpoche, advice given to a group of Russian students on the benefits of doing practice in Bodhgaya from the “Lama Zopa Rinpoche Online Advice Book” on the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive
Lama Zopa Rinpoche doing korwa at the Mahabodhi Temple, Bodhgaya, India, January 2014. Photo by Ven. Roger Kunsang.
More information, photos and updates about FPMT spiritual director Lama Zopa Rinpoche can be found on Rinpoche’s homepage. If you’d like to receive news of Lama Zopa Rinpoche via email, sign up to Lama Zopa Rinpoche News.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche teaching and giving oral transmissions to children from Ladakh at Sera Monastery, India, January 2014. Photo by Ven. Roger Kunsang.
“Your inspiration to practice Dharma is the most important thing in your life. Without Dharma there is no happiness, and there is no question that you can’t achieve enlightenment. You can’t liberate sentient beings from all the sufferings and causes and bring them to enlightenment. You can’t even achieve for yourself total liberation from samsara. All the happiness of future lives has to come from Dharma because it comes from past good karma, that which is Dharma. So, without Dharma, one can’t have any success in this life: success in business, marriage, or any happiness you want.
“So, the best thing to help others is Dharma, and the best thing to help oneself is Dharma. Among the best, most important things in this life is to meditate on the lam-rim and to have realizations –to complete the path to enlightenment and to make yourself fully qualified to liberate numberless sentient beings who are obscured and suffering and to bring them to peerless happiness and full enlightenment.”
– Lama Zopa Rinpoche, from “Advice for New Students” on the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive
More information, photos and updates about FPMT spiritual director Lama Zopa Rinpoche can be found on Rinpoche’s homepage. If you’d like to receive news of Lama Zopa Rinpoche via email, sign up to Lama Zopa Rinpoche News.
Tenzin Ösel Hita greeting Lama Zopa Rinpoche with Ven. Pemba Sherpa in the background, Land of Medicine Buddha, California, September 21, 2013. Photo by Chris Majors.
“Ultimately, the real guru is inside ourselves. We are our own guru, we are by ourselves. So it’s up to us to walk the path, always. We are born by ourselves in this body, and we will die by ourselves. There will be nobody who will take care of us afterwards in the sense like holding our hands and carrying us. We have to walk the path by ourselves.”
– Tenzin Ösel Hita, from “Teachings from the 45th Kopan Course,” given in 2012 at Kopan Monastery, on the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive
More information, photos and updates about Tenzin Ösel Hita, the recognized reincarnation of FPMT founder Lama Yeshe, can be found on Ösel’s hompage. If you’d like to support Ösel’s educational endeavors, visit the Big Love Fund.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche teaching and giving oral transmissions to children from Ladakh at Sera Monastery, India, January 2014. Photo by Ven. Roger Kunsang.
“The Destroyer Qualified Gone Beyond One (Bhagawan) said, ‘The bodhisattva does not follow many Dharmas. The bodhisattva holds one Dharma well and realizes it well. The whole Buddhadharma will be in the hand of that person.’ What is that Dharma? It is great COMPASSION. (From the Chenrezig Sutra Well-Condensed Dharma.)”
– Lama Zopa Rinpoche from “Compassion Is of the Utmost Need”
Lama Zopa Rinpoche is the spiritual director of the Foundation for the Preservation of Mahayana Tradition (FPMT), an organization dedicated to preserving Mahayana Buddhism through offering the Buddha’s authentic teachings and to facilitating reflection, meditation, practice and the opportunity to actualize and directly experience the Buddha’s teachings. Sign up to receive news and updates.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche explaining in a video interview the path to enlightenment and how fortunate all are, Osel Labrang, Sera Je Monastery, India, January 2014. Photo by Ven. Roger Kunsang.
“Think, ‘How fortunate I am that I am able to offer (service) in the present, in the future,’ so rather than taking it as a burden, follow the bodhisattvas’ path. Follow the bodhisattvas’ attitude – that’s the way to achieve enlightenment. So in that way you achieve enlightenment very fast, without taking many eons. So the stronger compassion you have, how much good heart you have, you are able to achieve enlightenment quicker. So how much you are able to offer service to sentient beings, that much negative karma, so many eons of negative karma gets purified and you collect inconceivable merit and so that makes you able to achieve enlightenment quickly – quicker.”
– Lama Zopa Rinpoche from “Rejoice in Your Efforts,” new from the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive.
Learn more about FPMT spiritual director Lama Zopa Rinpoche and his beneficial activities by visiting Rinpoche’s homepage, where you will find links to Rinpoche’s schedule, new advice, recent video, photos and more.
Lama Yeshe at Grizzly Lodge 1980. Photo by Tom Waggoner, courtesy of Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive.
“Now, this is very important: when we start by focusing on the essence of thought, or consciousness, which is formless and colorless, like space, we give ourselves access to recognizing the way our ego interprets our self, or I. When we investigate that further, we come to the conclusion that there’s no such self. It’s a big zero, and that is the universal truth of emptiness, or nonduality. Our ego’s interpretation, our concrete conception, of the I, which appears to be indestructible in nature, is false. It’s a wrong view. When you think, ‘I want to be happy; I don’t want to suffer,’ ask yourself the question, ‘Where is that I?’ Wherever you are, whatever you’re doing, ask yourself that question.”
– Lama Yeshe, from “Ground Zero: Emptiness as the Basis for Deity Yoga” on the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive
Learn more about FPMT founder Lama Yeshe on his homepage on fpmt.org. Many more teachings from Lama Yeshe are freely available from Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive.
Medicine Buddha painting by Peter Iseli.
Compiled from various teachings by Lama Zopa Rinpoche, Benefits of Medicine Buddha Mantra and Practice details the many blessings associated with engaging in Medicine Buddha practice.
FPMT Education Services is happy to freely offer this compilation.
The Medicine Buddha encompasses all the buddhas. This means that when we practice the seven-limb prayer and make offerings with the seven limbs, we receive the same merit as we would if we had made offerings to all the buddhas. Similarly, when we recite the mantra of Medicine Buddha, we collect unbelievable merit just as when we offer the seven-limb practice to Medicine Buddha.
—Lama Zopa Rinpoche
The FPMT Lineage series is comprised of books of Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s teachings on the graduated path to enlightenment (lam-rim) drawn from his four decades of discourses on the topic based on his own textbook, The Wish-fulfilling Golden Sun, and several traditional lam-rim texts. The books in general are arranged according to the outline of Pabongka Rinpoche’s Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand.
The first in this series is Heart of the Path and the second is How to Practice Dharma: Teachings on the Eight Worldly Dharmas. The Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive is now actively working on the next book in the series, Rinpoche’s teachings on impermanence and death.
Basic Program Guidelines 2013: The new, entirely revised edition, is now available online!
The new edition of the updated and revised Basic Program Guidelines for Implementation is now available online.
The Basic Program Guidelines 2013 web page (members area login required) presents the document in separate parts with contents listed, to make it easy to find and access the specific advice you need for your Basic Program. Please explore!
PLEASE NOTE: The Basic Program CD is no longer in use, and the old edition BPGuidelines2006 that was included on the CD should no longer be used. The Basic Program materials pages (in English, French and Spanish) are accessible for Basic Program implementing centers and teachers from the FPMT Affiliates Area.
Basic Program in English to start in Australia
Western teacher Jampa Jaffe will teach the second Basic Program at Vajrayana Institute, Ashfield, NSW, Australia, starting February 2014. Jampa was the teaching assistant for the first FPMT Masters Program at Istituto Lama Tzong Khapa, Italy.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche teaching at Kopan Monastery on how important it is to serve others, Nepal, December 1, 2013. Photo by Ven.Roger Kunsang.
“… When you abandon harm to others, you receive so much happiness from others, from life to life, for 100 lifetimes,” Lama Zopa Rinpoche advised. “Just by abstaining from harm to others one time you receive benefit for 100 lifetimes. By practicing the morality of not stealing, you receive wealth for 100 lifetimes. By practicing charity one time, you will enjoy good results in hundreds and thousands of lifetimes. In the Arya Sanghatasutra it is said that by practicing generosity once to a sentient being you will gain enjoyment for 80 or 80,000 eons. With a good heart, if you benefit somebody, you will receive enjoyment for 100 lifetimes, since karma is expandable. From one virtue, you experience the result for so many lifetimes or for so many times in one life.
“Firstly, you should think that sentient beings are wish-fulfilling jewels. Secondly, you should be the wish-fulfilling jewel to other sentient beings in daily life. This is very important. Even if you are not working or you are in a cave, not seeing anybody, not even an insect, you should editate on bodhicitta. You should think how precious sentient beings are. And think, “I must do the same.” This is an excellent way to live life, especially living a busy life with others. By living life with this attitude, it is the happiest life and most meaningful life. There will be nothing to be scared of in the future. Life is like sunshine in the future.
“I presented the above in relation to Dharma and Buddhism – how others will feel if you are a wish-fulfilling jewel to others. If you become a wish-fulfilling jewel to others, as a result, others will become a wish-fulfilling jewel to you. This can be explained on this basis. …”
— Excerpted from “Attitude for Offering Service,” a letter written by Lama Zopa Rinpoche, April 2008
Lama Zopa Rinpoche is the spiritual director of the Foundation for the Preservation of Mahayana Tradition (FPMT), an organization dedicated to preserving Mahayana Buddhism through offering the Buddha’s authentic teachings and to facilitating reflection, meditation, practice and the opportunity to actualize and directly experience the Buddha’s teachings. Sign up to receive news and updates.