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

Lama Zopa Rinpoche in Pokhara, Nepal, December 2021.

Welcome to the March 2022 edition of our e-news! This issue features news, updates, resources, opportunities, and causes for rejoicing including:

• An update on the long life puja offered to Lama Zopa Rinpoche on March 11
• Teachings and excerpts from Lama Zopa Rinpoche
• Rejoicing in new holy objects created for the success of FPMT and all beings
• A list of new resources available in the Foundation Store
• News about 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.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche, Pokhara, Nepal, December 2021. Photo by Ven. Roger Kunsang.

Losar Tashi Delek!

Happy Tibetan new year to all our dear friends!

With love from Lama Zopa Rinpoche and everyone at FPMT International Office.

Read more about Losar, the Fifteen Days of Miracles, and what practices to do during this auspicious period, which begins on March 3 this year!

The Liberation Tibetan Calendar 2022: Year of the Water Tiger 2149 is now available. Many thanks to the Liberation Prison Project for continuing to produce this calendar, which also supports the work of the project. A limited view of the calendar is always available on “Dharma Practice Dates” as a courtesy to FPMT students around the world.

We Invite New Friends for the New Year

Each year during the auspicious time of Losar and the Fifteen Days of Miracles, we like to encourage our Friends of FPMT program—it’s a way to be a part of the far-reaching work of our global Foundation and freely enjoy many of the Dharma resources you are generously helping to reach others.

Friends of FPMT supporters have complimentary access to our online study programs like Discovering Buddhism, Heart Advice for Death & Dying, and Basic Program, downloadable materials from FPMT Education Services, ebooks from Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche, the Mandala Magazine e-archive, the 2022 Liberation Calendar, and more.

We’re hoping to welcome at least 108 new Friends during these fifteen merit-multiplying Buddha Days. Learn more about the Friends program and giving levels.

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.

Telo Tulku Rinpoche looking through Nalanda Monastery Workshops’s catalog of silicone tsa-tsa molds, Moscow, Russia, November 2021. Photo by Nima-Handa.

The Tsa-tsa Workshop, an educational project of Ganden Tendar Ling Center, the FPMT center in Moscow, Russia, has been teaching the tsa-tsa making practice since November 2019. Center director Andrey Lomonosov shared the following update on the workshop.

At the beginning of 2021, a community from Kalmykia asked us to help make tsa-tsas for the construction of a temple complex in the village Ketchenery. Kalmykia is a republic in Russia where Buddhism is the primary religion. Ketchenery is special because it is the birthplace of Geshe Ngawang Wangyal (1901-1983), who played a key role in introducing Tibetan Buddhism to the West. In 1958, Geshe Wangyal established the first Tibetan Buddhist Dharma center in the United State, where leading Western scholars such as Robert Thurman, Jeffrey Hopkins, and Alexander Berzin studied. The temple complex that is being built in Ketchenery is on a site that His Holiness the Dalai Lama personally chose and consecrated when he visited Kalmykia thirty years ago.

Image of temple complex planned for Ketchenery, Kalmykia

For the construction of the temple complex, it was necessary to produce 10,000-12,000 tsa-tsas by the end of 2021. Local residents make tsa-tsas from clay, but it is difficult for them to make a large amount without the help of others. At the beginning of 2021, we began making tsa-tsas for Ketchenery as group practices on weekends.

Making tsa-tsas in Ketchenery, Kalmykia, Russia, May 2021. Photo by Nima-Handa.

In May 2021 by the blessing of Telo Tulku Rinpoche—who is the Shadjin Lama of the Kalmyk Republic (Head of Kalmyk Buddhists) and the representative of His Holiness the Dalai Lama in Russia, Mongolia, and Commonwealth of Independent States countries—a group of eight volunteers led by Nima-Handa, the coordinator of the workshop, went to Ketchenery to make tsa-tsas on site. It took eighteen hours to drive from Moscow to Ketchenery by car. The volunteers brought with them all the necessary equipment—silicone molds, plaster, paints, as well as books that the Ganden Tendar Ling Center presented  to the villagers. During one week, the volunteers were able to make about 1,500 tsa-tsas. It was intended for them to stay longer and make more, but, unfortunately, due to the outbreak of the pandemic in the village, the volunteers had to return to Moscow.

Telo Tulku Rinpoche looking at tsa-tsas, Moscow, Russia, November 2021. Photo by Liana.

In Moscow, we continued to make tsa-tsas for Ketchenery. In September the directors of Ganden Tendar Ling decided to rent a special room for the workshop that allowed people to make tsa-tsas not only on weekends but on other days as well. Every week around twenty people engaged in making tsa-tsas in our workshop.

On November 28, Telo Tulku Rinpoche visited the workshop to consecrate the next batch of ready-made tsa-tsas before being sent to Kalmykia. It was a great honor for the volunteers to receive Rinpoche in the workshop. We talked in detail about the process of making a tsa-tsas from plaster and showed him all of our tools and materials. Rinpoche was very pleased with our success and noted that this is a real contribution to the revival of Buddhist art in Russia, lost during the years of repression in the last century. Rinpoche recommended that next year we should travel to Kalmykia to train local residents in the practice of making tsa-tsas.

By the end of 2021 the total quantity of tsa-tsas sent to Kalmykia exceeded 3,000 pieces. We were very happy to make our contribution to fulfilling the wish of His Holiness Dalai Lama to build a temple complex in the village Ketchenery in Kalmykia. Our special thanks to Nalanda Monastery Tsa-Tsa Workshop, which supported us in learning the practice of making tsa-tsas.

Telo Tulku Rinpoche with Tsa-tsa Workshop volunteers, Moscow, Russia, November 2021. Photo by Nima-Handa.

To learn more about Ganden Tendar Ling Center, visit their website:
https://fpmt.ru/

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 Zopa Rinpoche at Chandragiri Hill Resort, Nepal, November 2021. Photo by Ven. Roger Kunsang.

We are pleased to share our February e-News with you! 

This issue features news, updates, resources, opportunities, and causes for rejoicing including:

• A long life puja being offered to Lama Zopa Rinpoche on March 11
• Teachings by Lama Zopa Rinpoche
• Resources for your practice on Losar and Fifteen Days of Miracles
• Information about this year’s Merit Box collection
• New FPMT Masters Program offered in two locations 
• 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.

The FPMT International Office e-News comes from your FPMT International Office. Visit our subscribe page to receive the FPMT International Office News directly in your email box.

Tenzin Ösel Hita and his son, Norbu. Photo courtesy of One-Big-Love.com.

On behalf of the entire FPMT organization, FPMT International Office wishes Tenzin Ösel Hita a very happy birthday and a long, healthy life. May his beneficial activities, including his Global Tree Initiative, flourish and may his wishes manifest without delay!

Tenzin Ösel Hita, the recognized reincarnation of FPMT founder Lama Yeshe, turns 37 this year. He shared this on his Facebook page:

“For my birthday this year, February 12, I am asking for donations to the Global Tree Initiative! This is the best present you can offer.

“We are entering a new age. I feel that the One Universal Family, through the Global Tree Initiative (PlantGrowSave.org) is going to unite people from all religions into a harmonious whole as we participate and collaborate around this life-generating activity. This is one of the pillars of the Dalai Lama—religious harmony.

“We are living a non-sustainable, consumerist life. Therefore, the least we can do is collaborate in planting a few trees. Individually but together, we will make a difference in the next two hundred years. The trees that we plant, now, will bring benefits for hundreds of years, long after we are gone.”

Learn more about Ösel and his projects on his website:
https://one-big-love.com/

Rowena Mayer, 81, died in Santa Fe, New Mexico, United States, on January 26, 2022, of cancer

By Don Handrick

Rowena Mayer, 2010. Photo courtesy of Rowena’s Facebook page.

Rowena Mayer met the Dharma for the first time in the early 1980s when she attended a teaching with His Holiness the Dalai Lama in Santa Cruz, California. After that she started going to Vajrapani Institute in Boulder Creek for classes and retreats while raising her family in Big Sur. One of her California Dharma friends David Molk recalled Rowena’s cheerful perseverance in her practice as she worked as a school teacher. She lived right at Pacific Valley School in Big Sur in chaotic, cramped circumstances, which might have discouraged or distracted a less stable and persistent practitioner.

Rowena moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico, in 2002, and shortly afterward connected with Thubten Norbu Ling Tibetan Buddhist Center(TNL), where she served as the center director from 2006 until early 2018, guiding the development of its programs and events, and helping the community to grow into one of the largest Buddhist centers in Santa Fe. As the “mommy” of the center, Rowena was a constant presence, greeting and welcoming nearly everyone who came through its doors.

During her years as center director, she persisted in inviting Geshe Thubten Sherab to return to New Mexico, where he had worked at FPMT’s International Office when it was located in Taos from 2001-2003. It was her strong wish that Geshe Sherab become the center’s first resident geshe, and in 2013 he agreed to do that on a part-time basis, sharing the teaching duties for half of each year with TNL’s other resident teacher, myself.

Rowena with Lama Zopa Rinpoche, Geshe Thubten Sherab, and Don Handrick at Thubten Norbu Ling, Santa Fe, 2017. Photo by Ven. Sarah Thresher.

She also continually invited Lama Zopa Rinpoche to come to Santa Fe. And her years of dedication to TNL, the FPMT organization, and Rinpoche resulted in his weeklong visit in August 2017, which included several teachings and initiations that were attended by over 200 people. The blessings of Rinpoche’s visit continue to benefit TNL in that it has grown into a large community of practitioners with an expanded program and a new building that is set to open later in 2022.

Nearly a hundred members of the TNL and FPMT community who knew Rowena joined an online Medicine Buddha puja that was conducted for her by Geshe Sherab on the evening of January 26, 2022. Rowena’s daughters and other family members watched the puja that night with her, and she took her last breath shortly before the puja ended. A few days before she passed, she had mentioned to one of her daughters that Medicine Buddha had visited and spoke with her, so it seemed most auspicious that her final moments came during that particular puja.

Rowena will be remembered for her incredible kindness and the loving concern she showed to so many. Moreover, as a practitioner, she demonstrated a genuine enthusiasm for the Dharma that will continue to inspire all those who practiced with her. What a blessing it was to have had her in our lives!

*After reading this obituary, Lama Zopa Rinpoche commented: “From the person’s side, to live the life as a very good human being and from Medicine Buddha’s side, the most powerful is to make prayers to and practice in degenerate times (from sutra and from tantra). Hence Rowena had no worries at the time of death. Whoever one practices in the life can therefore appear to oneself at death time.”

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/).