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Lama Zopa Rinpoche with Khyongla Rato Rinpoche, Root Institute, Bodhgaya, India, 2018. Photo by Ven. Lobsang Sherab.
We are saddened to share the news that Khyongla Rato Rinpoche peacefully passed away in Dharamsala, India, on May 24, 2022.
Khyongla Rato Rinpoche was a reincarnate lama and scholar of the Gelugpa order of Tibetan Buddhism, who was born in 1923 in the Dagyab region of Kham, in southeastern Tibet. In 1928, senior Gelugpa monks divined that a five-year-old boy living in this remote part of Tibet was the reincarnation of the ninth Khyongla. On his sixth birthday, monks on horseback took him from his parents’ home to a monastery some distance away where he was installed as its spiritual head.
For over three decades, he lived the life of a monk, studying at the most famous monasteries in Tibet and earning the Lharampa Geshe degree. In 1959, along with thousands of monks as well as His Holiness the Dalai Lama, he fled the Chinese army on foot over the Himalayas to safety and to a radically different life in India, Europe, and eventually the United States.
In 1975, Khyongla Rato Rinpoche founded The Tibet Center, in New York City, US.
On May 24, 2022, The Tibet Center shared the following announcement:
“Venerable Khenpo Rinpoche Nicholas Vreeland is with him and is currently performing prayers along with Rato monks in Rinpoche’s presence. His Holiness’ office has been informed and [His Eminence] Venerable Ling Rinpoche is advising Venerable Vreeland. Venerable Vreeland asks us to kindly say prayers on Rinpoche’s behalf and we will have a further statement in the near future.”
Khyongla Rato Rinpoche was a teacher of FPMT Spiritual Director Lama Zopa Rinpoche, who received many oral transmissions from him over the years. In recent years, Khyongla Rato Rinpoche also visited FPMT’s Root Institute and Tushita Meditation Centre, both in India.
On May 24, 2022, Lama Zopa Rinpoche and Kopan Monastery offered Lama Chopa puja for the fulfillment of all the wishes of Khyongla Rato Rinpoche.
The passing of this highly respected teacher is a great loss for his students and the world. Please pray for the continuation of his good works far, far into the future.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche with Khyongla Rato Rinpoche, Root Institute, Bodhgaya, India, 2018. Photo by Khen Rinpoche Nicholas Vreeland.
UPDATE: Khen Rinpoche Nicholas Vreeland shared photos of Khyongla Rato Rinpoche’s passing in the post “Rinpoche Has Departed” on his website.
FPMT.org brings you news of Lama Zopa Rinpoche and of activities, teachings, and events from over 150 FPMT centers, projects, and services around the globe. If you like what you read, consider becoming a Friend of FPMT, which supports our work.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche with senior monks and nuns doing Tara puja at Tara Temple in Kathmandu, Nepal, April 2022. Photo by Ven. Lobsang Sherab.
Welcome to the May 2022 edition of our e-news! This issue features news, updates, resources, opportunities, and causes for rejoicing including:
- An important update on prayers to do for Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s health
- New teachings and advice from Lama Zopa Rinpoche
- An opportunity for free books for FPMT centers from the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive
- Newly available materials from the FPMT Foundation Store
- Opportunities and changes within the organization
And much more!
Please enjoy this month’s e-news in its entirety.
Have the e-News translated into your native language by using our convenient translation facility located on the right-hand side of the page.
Visit our subscribe page to receive the FPMT International Office News directly in your email inbox.
Geshe Thubten Rinchen giving an oral transmission at Kopan Monastery, Nepal, April 2022. Photo by Ven. Lobsang Sherab.
From April 15 to May 9, 2022, about 390 monks and nuns from Kopan Monastery and Khachoe Ghakyil Ling Nunnery, as well as a few others from various locations, received precious oral transmissions (lungs) from Geshe Thubten Rinchen, a great hidden yogi and the main teacher of Sera Mey and Tashi Lhunpo monasteries. The lungs were a transmission of parts of the five great texts that are the curriculum of Sera Je Monastery and some of the other great monasteries.
The three weeks of oral transmissions ended with an auspicious long life puja for Geshe Thubten Rinchen on May 10. Please rejoice!
Geshe Thubten Rinchen during the long life puja offered to him, Kopan Monastery, May 2022. Photo by Ven. Lobsang Sherab.
Geshe Rinchen was born in 1937 and became a monk at age thirteen at Sera Mey Monastery in Lhasa, Tibet. He fled in the aftermath of the 1959 Tibetan uprising against the Chinese army. Like many other Tibetan monks, he ended up at Buxa Chogar, the camp established for 1,500 exiled Tibetan monastics in Buxa Duar, West Bengal, India. This is where he met Lama Zopa Rinpoche. Geshe Rinchen first started teaching at Buxa Chogar and continues to teach to this day.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche and Geshe Thubten Rinchen, Boudhanath, Nepal, April 13, 2022. Photo by Ven. Roger Kunsang.
Geshe Rinchen is both a learned scholar and a true practitioner, who consistently demonstrates great humility. He offers not only traditional monastic teachings, but also advice on retreats and rituals.
Geshe Rinchen spoke clearly and slowly, enunciating every single word while giving the transmission, which made it easy to follow without distraction. It was notable for everybody in attendance that the gompa was quiet and still with participants intensely listening to every word. In his introduction, Geshe Rinchen said that there are three ways of receiving an oral transmission. The best way is if the receiver understands every word and its meaning because this equals the benefit of receiving both the commentary and the oral transmission. It seems those in attendance tried very hard to achieve this.
Geshe Rinchen’s visit was a truly remarkable opportunity for the Kopan community. As the number of living masters who came from Tibet has dwindled, Geshe Rinchen, at age eighty-six, continues to share our precious lineage. He has already transmitted the Buddha’s teachings to thousands of others, some of whom have become upholders of the Dharma themselves. This time, about 150 nuns from Khachoe Ghakyil Ling Nunnery attended the lungs, twenty-one of whom will be going for the geshema degree this year.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche during the long life puja offered to Geshe Thubten Rinchen, Kopan Monastery, Nepal, May 2022. Photo by Ven,. Lobsang Sherab.
This event at Kopan Monastery was very inspiring for all in attendance. Lama Zopa Rinpoche had asked Geshe Rinchen several times to give these lungs to the Kopan community, and it is a great blessing that Geshe Rinchen offered them. These lungs will hopefully be continued very soon for the benefit of all. May this lineage continue to be passed from the hearts of teachers to students for millennia to come.
Please watch this short video of Geshe Rinchen offering part of one of the oral transmissions to the Kopan community.
FPMT.org brings you news of Lama Zopa Rinpoche and of activities, teachings, and events from over 150 FPMT centers, projects, and services around the globe. If you like what you read, consider becoming a Friend of FPMT, which supports our work.
Namgyalma mantra board used for blessing sentient beings in Phewa Lake being held by Nawang Sangey and Dawa Sherpa, the former manager of Ganden Yiga Choezin, Pokhara, Nepal.
Wherever we go we can benefit sentient beings, Lama Zopa Rinpoche frequently reminds us. In fact, there are many ways to benefit animals, who may suffer in the animal realm not just for this one lifetime but for many eons. As Buddhists, our job is to cherish all sentient beings, including even the tiniest (and most irritating!) among us, such as mosquitoes, or those we cannot see easily such as beings living underwater.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche has talked about many ways to benefit sentient beings according to the conditions in which they live. We can benefit them by offering blessed water and food, reciting prayers and mantras to them, playing sutras for them to hear, taking them around holy objects, and so forth. We can also build holy objects that animals can circumambulate to collect merit.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche blessing all the beings in Palmer Lake, Washington, US. Photo by Ven. Holly Ansett.
Since 2016, Sangha at Buddha Amitabha Pure Land in Washington state have been using Rinpoche unique methods to bless the beings at nearby lakes. Following a recent visit to Pokhara, Nepal, where Rinpoche took time to bless beings in Phewa Lake, Rinpoche requested Ganden Yiga Choezin Pokhara, a satellite group of Kopan Monastery, to begin this practice once a month as well. They enthusiastically have taken on this practice. They recite the Namgyalma mantra and then let the mantra board float on the water to bless all the beings as the boat travels. They also offer blessed food to the fish, perform a bath offering puja, recite prayers, and play audio of Lama Zopa Rinpoche chanting.
Please enjoy a video of various aspects of this practice as it is done by Ganden Yiga Choezin for beings residing in Phewa Lake:
In 2019, while blessing beings on Palmer Lake in Washington, US, Lama Zopa Rinpoche explained the various ways one can benefit the water creatures with mantras and blessed substances:
You can read other accounts of Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s unique methods of blessing beings in water to get inspired to perhaps incorporate benefiting animals into all of your aquatic activities.
FPMT.org brings you news of Lama Zopa Rinpoche and of activities, teachings, and events from over 150 FPMT centers, projects, and services around the globe. If you like what you read, consider becoming a Friend of FPMT, which supports our work.
Screenshot of the Meridian Trust website homepage.
For more than three decades, the Meridian Trust has been using film and video to document Buddhist teachings and traditions around the world. The UK-based organization has collected an archive of more than 3,500 hours of footage, including rare recordings of the generation of Tibetan lineage holders who first went into exile. Meridian Trust was founded by Geoff Jukes, a long-time British student of Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche, and manager of some of the biggest names in the British music industry.
Screenshot of the Meridian Trust’s “category” section of their new website.
Now, Meridian’s precious and inspiring content is reaching an even wider audience with their new website. Director of Projects Kaska Phuntsok and Administrative Director Emma Lewis have been working with Copenhagen-based web developers We Add Motion to transform Meridian’s film streaming site.
The new site hosts Meridian’s historic film and video archive as well as new content. The team has spent the last two years editing almost forty years’ worth of Dharma materials—eighty-nine collections—jointly with the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives. This content is now presented in a simple and clear way through easy-to-navigate categories, such as for culture and teachers, enabling visitors of the site to find what they are looking for (or perhaps didn’t realize they were looking for!) with ease.
Screenshot of the Meridian Trust’s website.
One video FPMT students might particularly appreciate is “Extracting the Essence,” which is two interviews with Lama Yeshe, recorded in 1982 and 1983. In the video Lama Yeshe tells his personal life story and how his involvement with Western Buddhist students evolved, including the development of the FMPT organization. Lama Yeshe also responds to questions about his personal vision for the future development and consolidation of Dharma centers in the West and gives detailed practical advice on how to extract the essence of Buddha’s teachings as they become integrated into our Western way of life.
About the new website, Meridian Trust writes, “The responses we have received so far have been heart-warming. We hope the result will delight Dharma students. We are looking forward to bringing more content into our translations area, continuing our filming work, and promoting the site, to bring the message of Tibetan Buddhism compassion and wisdom to a new audience.”
You can read more about the history of the Meridian Trust and its connection to FPMT in Vickie Mackenzie’s in-depth story, “Preserving the Past for Future Generations: The Meridian Trust Documents the Tibetan Buddhist Tradition as It Grows in the West.”
Visit the Meridian Trust online to watch videos and learn more about the video archive.
FPMT.org brings you news of Lama Zopa Rinpoche and of activities, teachings, and events from over 150 FPMT centers, projects, and services around the globe. If you like what you read, consider becoming a Friend of FPMT, which supports our work.
Recently, host Daniel Aitken welcomed special guests Ven. Robina Courtin and Ven. Thubten Chokyi to discuss their work with the Liberation Prison Project, an FPMT international project founded in 1996 dedicated to supporting students around the world in prison who wish to study Dharma. Since its inception, LPP has helped thousands of prisoners worldwide connect with the Buddha’s teachings and develop a sincere practice of Buddhism.
Daniel’s conversation with Ven. Robina and Ven. Chokyi covers many topics, including the foundation and development of the Liberation Prison Project, how students provide support to prisoners through the project, and moving examples of prisoner experiences. They also talk about Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s book Enjoy Life Liberated from the Inner Prison; LPP’s Liberation Tibetan Calendar, Dharma Journey pilgrimages and other fundraising efforts; and the news that the Liberation Prison Project is looking for a new director.
Please listen now to this informative and highly energized conversation.
Learn more about the Wisdom Podcast and explore other episodes of the podcast.
For the past twenty-six years the Liberation Prison Project has been a lifeline for people in prison worldwide, who turned to it for Buddhist books and spiritual advice in an effort to find meaning in life when everything else was lost.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche with a picture of Lama Tsongkhapa that Rinpoche likes very much, Kopan Monastery, Nepal, February 2022. Photo by Ven. Roger Kunsang.
Welcome to the April 2022 edition of our e-news! This issue features news, updates, resources, opportunities, and causes for rejoicing including:
- News of Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s recent activities
- Links to new video teachings from Lama Zopa Rinpoche
- Rejoicing in our 2021 Annual Review which is now available
- News about offering food to the monks of Gyudmed Monastery
- Opportunities and changes within the FPMT organization
And much more!
Please enjoy this month’s e-news in its entirety.
Have the e-News translated into your native language by using our convenient translation facility located on the right-hand side of the page.
Visit our subscribe page to receive the FPMT International Office News directly in your email inbox.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche and Khen Rinpoche Geshe Chonyi attending the inauguration of the Maya Daya Clinic at Karuna Hospital on March 5, 2022. Photo by Ven. Lobsang Sherab.
Maya Daya Clinic, established in 1992 at the foot of Kopan Hill, is one way Kopan Monastery has been actively serving their local community. At that time of inception, there was very little medical care in the area, with doctors and pharmacies only accessible in Boudhanath, a forty-five-minute walk away. The aim of the clinic was to provide basic healthcare for the local population, with a doctor and nurse available three days a week and regular access to medical supplies at the clinic’s pharmacy. In the years since then, the clinic has benefited thousands of local patients as well as the monks and nuns of Kopan and of other monasteries.
With the need for basic medical care in the local area now well covered by other clinics and pharmacies, Maya Daya Clinic, in cooperation with Karuna Hospital, is taking the next step in its development. The clinic will serve the local community by providing free dialysis to those with chronic kidney disease in a comfortable environment. This is an incredible achievement for Kopan Monastery to be able to offer support to the local community in this way.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche visiting the new dialysis wing of Karuna Hospital, Maya Daya Clinic, March 5, 2022. Photo by Ven. Lobsang Sherab.
With the slogan of “Compassionate care to all beings suffering from ailments,” Karuna Hospital started its service in 2019 in Kathmandu with a twenty-four bed capacity. In a short amount of time, the hospital has provided many specialty services in the areas of neurology and neurological surgery, gastrointestinal surgery, child and maternity care, urology and nephrology, plastic surgery, and orthopedics. The hospital, which is operating at international standards, is well equipped to handle most serious cases with a dedicated team of specialist doctors and trained paramedical staff. The Maya Daya Clinic is now part of the extension of Karuna Hospital and is able to benefit from this excellent modern facility.
Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is a major public health problem worldwide and is associated with considerable morbidity and mortality. CKD is a newly recognized public health problem in Nepal. The estimated prevalence of CKD is around ten percent in urban areas of Nepal. This number is expected to increase as the major contributing causes for CKD, such as diabetes and high blood pressure, are increasing at an alarming rate across the country. It is estimated that almost 2,900 Nepalese develop end stage renal disease (ESRD), requiring renal replacement therapy (RRT) every year. Dialysis is part of RRT and is essential for patients suffering from ESRD. The cost of supporting the treatment of ESRD patients undergoing dialysis is 2,500 NPR (about US$21) per session, which can add up to 15,000 NPR to 20,000 NPR per month (about US$123 to US$165).
With more than twenty percent of the population of Nepal falling below the poverty line, it is impossible for many to afford this expensive though lifesaving treatment. In time, thanks to the leadership of Kopan monk Ven. Sangye Tenzin, this new clinic will be entirely free for patients with the help of government funding for treatments.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche attended the recent inauguration of the clinic on March 5, 2022, and offered a statue of Buddha for the front of Karuna Hospital. Rinpoche also designed a beautiful image of Shakyamuni Buddha with mantras for the clinic (seen in the image above).
Please enjoy this video of Rinpoche visiting Maya Daya Clinic, the new dialysis wing of Karuna Hospital, which will be managed by Kopan Monastery:
Kopan Monastery continues to offer valuable support to the local community, and this new phase for Maya Daya Clinic is the latest in their social service and healthcare efforts. Rejoicing in the generosity of others is an easy and powerful way to participate in acts of charity. As Lama Zopa Rinpoche so often says, it also creates “limitless skies of merit.”
You can read about how Kopan Helping Hands offered crisis relief at the start of the pandemic.
FPMT.org brings you news of Lama Zopa Rinpoche and of activities, teachings, and events from FPMT centers, projects, and services around the globe as well as from students, teachers, and others in the FPMT community. If you like what you read, consider becoming a Friend of FPMT, which supports our work.
Offerings in front of the Tara altar in the Losang Dragpa Centre gompa, Malaysia, 2022. Photo courtesy of Losang Drakpa Centre.
Pik-Pin Goh, director of Losang Dragpa Centre (LDC), the FPMT center based in Petaling Jaya, Malaysia, read the recently published advice from Rinpoche on the uncountable benefits of Tara practice and was inspired to share how LDC has been doing overnight Tara practice. Here’s what Pik-Pin wrote:
We are proud to announce that this year marked the tenth anniversary of our “Overnight Praises to the Twenty-one Taras” event. Our former resident teacher, Geshe Tenzin Zopa, initiated the first overnight recitation of “Praises to the Twenty-one Taras.” And since 2013, this night of community practice has become an annual event.
We organize the event in the first quarter of the year, usually before Losar. There is an abundance of extensive offerings, including packets of blessed rice, set up at our Tara altar. With the practice and offerings, LDC members can accumulate immense merit and purify negativities, removing any obstacles that may come up for the year.
The event begins at 10 p.m. and ends the next morning at 7 a.m. There are four sessions, each two hours long with short breaks in between. More than a hundred people attended the first and second sessions. And at least ten people attended the whole night.
At each overnight event, participants recite “Praises to the Twenty-one Taras” at least 108 times and offer tsog using the Tara Purification Night sadhana. Thus over the last ten years, we have collectively accumulated 1,080 times of recitation, and the virtues collected have been dedicated to the long life of our gurus and the success of FPMT centers and world peace. In addition, we also do a monthly Tara puja, where twelve recitations of the praises are done by about twenty students.
During the pandemic, the overnight Tara practice has been done over Zoom with extensive offerings, but only a few people, in the gompa, Losang Dragpa Centre, Malaysia, 2021. Photo courtesy of Losang Dragpa Centre.
In 2019, we were honored to have more than twenty Tibetan Sangha from various traditions in Malaysia attending in person in the LDC gompa. The unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent restrictions have not deterred us from organizing the overnight Tara practice. We successfully did the event on Zoom in 2021 and 2022, with overwhelming participation, including friends from Indonesia and Australia.
All the virtue collected for organizing and participating in this special Tara practice is dedicated to the long life of our gurus and the swift fulfillment of their holy wishes. All the challenges, including mental sinking, faced during the recitation, may they purify our past negative karmas and remove obstacles from our practice in cultivating the fifth perfection, concentration, and achieve the state of calm abiding.
Auspicious Rice Jar offering in front of the Tara altar in the Losang Dragpa Centre gompa, Malaysia, 2022. Photo courtesy of Losang Drakpa Centre.
You can learn more about Losang Dragpa Centre by visiting their website.
Find more resources to support your Tara practice in the Foundation Store.
FPMT.org and Mandala Publications brings you news of Lama Zopa Rinpoche and of activities, teachings, and events from 150 FPMT centers, projects, and services around the globe. If you like what you read, consider becoming a Friend of FPMT, which supports our work.
Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche near Lawudo Retreat Center, Nepal, 1970. Photo by Terry Clifford and courtesy of Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive.
We are so pleased to share FPMT International Office’s Annual Review 2021: Sharing and Preserving the Dharma in a Changing World. The year 2021 continued to bring many uncertainties, fears, threats, and changes to the world in which we live. As evidenced by this year’s online annual report, despite the challenges, we continued our work to help fulfill the wishes of FPMT’s founders Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche. This includes activities such as offering access to Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s precious teachings, helping keep the international community connected and informed, providing guidance and structure to our affiliates, facilitating charitable giving to many worthy initiatives, and disseminating the Dharma around the world.
Please join us in this overview of some of our more notable accomplishments as an office and organization this past year. You will also find new valuable advice from Lama Zopa Rinpoche for the entire organization, an inspiring and personal letter from CEO Ven. Roger Kunsang, and a photo gallery of some of this year’s many activities and achievements.
Please view our 2021 annual report and join us in rejoicing in another year of helping to actualize Lama Yeshe’s and Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s wishes for the FPMT organization and the world.
Please note, the FPMT Annual Review 2021 is available only online:
fpmt.org/fpmt/annual-review
FPMT International Office is Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s office and works daily to achieve its mission of “preserving and spreading Mahayana Buddhism worldwide by creating opportunities to listen, reflect, meditate, practice, and actualize the unmistaken teachings of the Buddha, and based on that experience, spread the Dharma to sentient beings.”
Dr. Giorgio Armato.
Dr. Giorgio Armato, 74, died at home in Genoa, Italy, on January 21, of cancer.
Dr. Giorgio Armato graduated from the Faculty of Medicine and Surgery in Genoa, Italy, and specialized in oncology. He met Lama Zopa Rinpoche in 1975 and spent many years at Kopan Monastery in Nepal. Among his many achievements, he first built an emergency room in Kopan itself and another at the foot of the hill. He then built a small three-story hospital there, thanks to his own work and donations from friends.
In his practice in Genoa, Giorgio helped and cared for the poor and needy, and he went on missions to offer surgical operations in Zaire, Burundi, Madagascar, Guatemala, and Nepal.
Friend Ven. Siliana Bosa shared, “Giorgio was very devoted to Lama Zopa Rinpoche, and he loved Kopan. He had a strong connection also with the Catholic church and often, during his summer holiday, went to Africa with a Franciscan organization to do surgical operations in areas of great conflict.”
Dr. Giorgio Armato at Kopan Monastery, Nepal, with Khensur Rinpoche Lama Lhundrup, his sister Graziella, a doctor, and a nurse, 1999.
“He put others before himself and helped many people with acupuncture and gave all the offerings he received to people in need. Giorgio had a good sense of humor. Because of his broken English, he would say [the Italian word] ‘allora’ every few words, and so in Kopan they called him Doctor Allora. His main practices were Medicine Buddha and Vajrayogini, which helped him to face the last months of his sickness with serenity. He actually told me that he was not afraid to die, so he had a peaceful departure,” Ven. Siliana said.
Ven. Lucia Bani shared, “Giorgio has been a dear Dharma friend for many years and for many years he was my sponsor. Giorgio was a man of few words but many actions. He was honest and sincere, and totally dedicated to help others. He was an example of great strength especially for how he faced his illness and death. He never complained, remained serene, and had a mind always ready to ask, ‘How are you?’ Giorgio had a meaningful life and left with great dignity and courage. What a wonderful gift!”
With thanks to Dr. Giorgio’s sister, Graziella Armato, for providing details for this obituary.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche requests that students who read obituaries pray that the person mentioned finds a perfect human body, meets a Mahayana guru, and becomes enlightened quickly, or be born in a pure land where the tantric teachings exist and they can become enlightened.” While reading obituaries we can also reflect on our own death and impermanence prompting us to live our lives in the most meaningful way. More advice from Lama Zopa Ripoche on death and dying is available, see Death and Dying: Practices and Resources (fpmt.org/death/).
To read more obituaries from the international FPMT mandala, and to find information on submission guidelines, please visit our new Obituaries page (fpmt.org/media/obituaries/).
Maitreya Project Trust Director Virginia Roche with His Eminence Ling Rinpoche during a visit to the Maitreya Buddha Project Kushinagar property, October 2021.
Ling Rinpoche blessing the Maitreya Project land as Virginia Roche explains the project to him.
The creation of Holy Objects for World Peace is an important aspect of Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s vast vision for the FPMT organization. As part of this, Rinpoche envisions the creation of many statues of Maitreya Buddha, the future Buddha, around the world. Currently, there are two separate projects to build large Maitreya Buddha statues in India, one in Bodhgaya, Bihar, and one in Kushinagar, Uttar Pradesh.
We are pleased to share some news and causes for rejoicing from Maitreya Buddha Project Kushinagar, including an auspicious visit from His Eminence Ling Rinpoche in October and news of some new initiatives that will benefit the local community.
In October 2021, while His Eminence Ling Rinpoche was in Kushinagar as a special guest of the Indian Prime Minister Modi at the inauguration of a new international airport, Lama Zopa Rinpoche invited him to visit the Maitreya Buddha Project Kushinagar site. Virginia Roche, Maitreya Project Trust director, made the necessary arrangements for this special visit. While on the premises, Ling Rinpoche offered special prayers and pujas in the gompa, and received an update from the director about the entire project, its history, challenges, and current situation.
When asked for advice about the project, Ling Rinpoche expressed that the most important thing to be done to actualize the project as soon as possible is to help the local community in any way that could benefit them. This is the same advice offered by Lama Zopa Rinpoche. The director was also able to receive valuable advice from influencers, government administrative officers, and politicians. Inline with the advice received, the following initiatives are being pursued:
Kopan Monastery monks blessing the land at Maitreya Buddha Project Kushinagar.
Weekly Income Generating Program for Rural Women: Social Enterprise initiatives that could help rural women earn a livelihood.
Vocational Training for Men: To reskill or upskill unemployed male members of the local community and teach them a trade like carpentry, painting, bricklaying, and plaster work; and also support and facilitate placing them in jobs and eventually to also provide them with jobs within Maitreya Buddha Project Kushinagar when construction begins.
Education for Children: To make progress in local higher education and encourage good job placement, it is important for every individual to know English. Maitreya Buddha Project Kushinagar would like to facilitate English courses to students and adults wishing to learn this important language. There are other NGOs that offer such programs. So the idea is to either align with and request them to deliver these learning programs or for Maitreya Buddha Project Kushinagar to provide them through volunteer programs.
Local Evening Clinic: To provide evening doctor consultation and treatment to local poor and needy individuals in and around the project site. Maitreya Buddha Project Kushinagar is in the process of shortlisting doctors who could visit at least two times a week for a few hours initially to offer consultation and treatment to the sick and needy.
Maitreya Buddha Project Kushinagar Meditation Center.
Since 2018, the following highlights have been completed:
- Completion of land fencing for 250 acres
- Construction of gompa/ meditation center
- Construction and completion of site office
- Construction of three guest accommodations
- Construction of bathing rooms and toilets for large gatherings of over 100 visitors
- Planting of 15,000 trees in Kushinagar
- Purchase of vehicles for site
Map of the Maitreya Buddha Project Kushinagar site.
Of course, along with the causes for rejoicing and forward movement, there have also been quite a few challenges as well. Director Virginia Roche remains optimistic that the obstacles faced should be expected given the magnitude of this project, which is being built on the land where Shakyamuni Buddha showed the aspect of passing away. She shares, “One of the lead officers on the assignment of this project was a student of Lama Zopa Rinpoche, and if it wasn’t for him and all his struggle, the project would not have even come this far. I would really like to express my deep gratitude to all students and benefactors. Thank you for coming this far.”
You can learn more about the Maitreya Projects and read stories in particular about the Maitreya Buddha Project Kushinagar on FPMT.org.
To learn more about the incredible holy objects of FPMT and offer support, visit the Holy Objects Fund page:
fpmt.org/projects/fpmt/holy-objects-fund