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Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition
The FPMT is an organization devoted to 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 spreading the Dharma to sentient beings. We provide integrated education through which people’s minds and hearts can be transformed into their highest potential for the benefit of others, inspired by an attitude of universal responsibility and service. We are committed to creating harmonious environments and helping all beings develop their full potential of infinite wisdom and compassion. Our organization is based on the Buddhist tradition of Lama Tsongkhapa of Tibet as taught to us by our founders Lama Thubten Yeshe and Lama Thubten Zopa Rinpoche.
- Willkommen
Die Stiftung zur Erhaltung der Mahayana Tradition (FPMT) ist eine Organisation, die sich weltweit für die Erhaltung und Verbreitung des Mahayana-Buddhismus einsetzt, indem sie Möglichkeiten schafft, den makellosen Lehren des Buddha zuzuhören, über sie zur reflektieren und zu meditieren und auf der Grundlage dieser Erfahrung das Dharma unter den Lebewesen zu verbreiten.
Wir bieten integrierte Schulungswege an, durch denen der Geist und das Herz der Menschen in ihr höchstes Potential verwandelt werden zum Wohl der anderen – inspiriert durch eine Haltung der universellen Verantwortung und dem Wunsch zu dienen. Wir haben uns verpflichtet, harmonische Umgebungen zu schaffen und allen Wesen zu helfen, ihr volles Potenzial unendlicher Weisheit und grenzenlosen Mitgefühls zu verwirklichen.
Unsere Organisation basiert auf der buddhistischen Tradition von Lama Tsongkhapa von Tibet, so wie sie uns von unseren Gründern Lama Thubten Yeshe und Lama Thubten Zopa Rinpoche gelehrt wird.
- Bienvenidos
La Fundación para la preservación de la tradición Mahayana (FPMT) es una organización que se dedica a preservar y difundir el budismo Mahayana en todo el mundo, creando oportunidades para escuchar, reflexionar, meditar, practicar y actualizar las enseñanzas inconfundibles de Buda y en base a esa experiencia difundir el Dharma a los seres.
Proporcionamos una educación integrada a través de la cual las mentes y los corazones de las personas se pueden transformar en su mayor potencial para el beneficio de los demás, inspirados por una actitud de responsabilidad y servicio universales. Estamos comprometidos a crear ambientes armoniosos y ayudar a todos los seres a desarrollar todo su potencial de infinita sabiduría y compasión.
Nuestra organización se basa en la tradición budista de Lama Tsongkhapa del Tíbet como nos lo enseñaron nuestros fundadores Lama Thubten Yeshe y Lama Zopa Rinpoche.
A continuación puede ver una lista de los centros y sus páginas web en su lengua preferida.
- Bienvenue
L’organisation de la FPMT a pour vocation la préservation et la diffusion du bouddhisme du mahayana dans le monde entier. Elle offre l’opportunité d’écouter, de réfléchir, de méditer, de pratiquer et de réaliser les enseignements excellents du Bouddha, pour ensuite transmettre le Dharma à tous les êtres. Nous proposons une formation intégrée grâce à laquelle le cœur et l’esprit de chacun peuvent accomplir leur potentiel le plus élevé pour le bien d’autrui, inspirés par le sens du service et une responsabilité universelle. Nous nous engageons à créer un environnement harmonieux et à aider tous les êtres à épanouir leur potentiel illimité de compassion et de sagesse. Notre organisation s’appuie sur la tradition guéloukpa de Lama Tsongkhapa du Tibet, telle qu’elle a été enseignée par nos fondateurs Lama Thoubtèn Yéshé et Lama Zopa Rinpoché.
Visitez le site de notre Editions Mahayana pour les traductions, conseils et nouvelles du Bureau international en français.
Voici une liste de centres et de leurs sites dans votre langue préférée
- Benvenuto
L’FPMT è un organizzazione il cui scopo è preservare e diffondere il Buddhismo Mahayana nel mondo, creando occasioni di ascolto, riflessione, meditazione e pratica dei perfetti insegnamenti del Buddha, al fine di attualizzare e diffondere il Dharma fra tutti gli esseri senzienti.
Offriamo un’educazione integrata, che può trasformare la mente e i cuori delle persone nel loro massimo potenziale, per il beneficio di tutti gli esseri, ispirati da un’attitudine di responsabilità universale e di servizio.
Il nostro obiettivo è quello di creare contesti armoniosi e aiutare tutti gli esseri a sviluppare in modo completo le proprie potenzialità di infinita saggezza e compassione.
La nostra organizzazione si basa sulla tradizione buddhista di Lama Tsongkhapa del Tibet, così come ci è stata insegnata dai nostri fondatori Lama Thubten Yeshe e Lama Zopa Rinpoche.
Di seguito potete trovare un elenco dei centri e dei loro siti nella lingua da voi prescelta.
- 欢迎 / 歡迎
简体中文
“护持大乘法脉基金会”( 英文简称:FPMT。全名:Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition) 是一个致力于护持和弘扬大乘佛法的国际佛教组织。我们提供听闻,思维,禅修,修行和实证佛陀无误教法的机会,以便让一切众生都能够享受佛法的指引和滋润。
我们全力创造和谐融洽的环境, 为人们提供解行并重的完整佛法教育,以便启发内在的环宇悲心及责任心,并开发内心所蕴藏的巨大潜能 — 无限的智慧与悲心 — 以便利益和服务一切有情。
FPMT的创办人是图腾耶喜喇嘛和喇嘛梭巴仁波切。我们所修习的是由两位上师所教导的,西藏喀巴大师的佛法传承。
繁體中文
護持大乘法脈基金會”( 英文簡稱:FPMT。全名:Found
ation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition ) 是一個致力於護持和弘揚大乘佛法的國際佛教組織。我們提供聽聞, 思維,禪修,修行和實證佛陀無誤教法的機會,以便讓一切眾生都能 夠享受佛法的指引和滋潤。 我們全力創造和諧融洽的環境,
為人們提供解行並重的完整佛法教育,以便啟發內在的環宇悲心及責 任心,並開發內心所蘊藏的巨大潛能 — 無限的智慧與悲心 – – 以便利益和服務一切有情。 FPMT的創辦人是圖騰耶喜喇嘛和喇嘛梭巴仁波切。
我們所修習的是由兩位上師所教導的,西藏喀巴大師的佛法傳承。 察看道场信息:
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If your daily life is tremendously involved in emotions, you are completely driven by them and psychologically tired. In other words, our physical emotions get too involved and we don’t understand the functioning of our six sense consciousnesses.
Lama Thubten Yeshe
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The Foundation Store is FPMT’s online shop and features a vast selection of Buddhist study and practice materials written or recommended by our lineage gurus. These items include homestudy programs, prayers and practices in PDF or eBook format, materials for children, and other resources to support practitioners.
Items displayed in the shop are made available for Dharma practice and educational purposes, and never for the purpose of profiting from their sale. Please read FPMT Foundation Store Policy Regarding Dharma Items for more information.
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Transforming Hardships into Realizations
Paula Chichester and Roger Munro started their second Great Retreat in January at Land of Medicine Buddha in Soquel, California. They completed their first over two years ago at Milarepa Center in Vermont; it took nearly four years to complete. During a recent teaching, Lama Zopa Rinpoche said he “accepts” their retreat. “What I am most interested in is the bearing of hardships,” he said. Rinpoche felt it would benefit people to understand some of the hardships they underwent during their retreat in Vermont. Julia Hengst talked to Paula and Roger in November.
What is a Great Retreat?
Roger: When you’ve had an initiation into one of the Highest Yoga Tantra deities (Chakrasamvara, Yamantaka, Vajrayogini, Cittamani Tara, Kalachakra, among others), based on the kindness of your own guru and your intention, you develop the wish to do the Great Retreat of that deity. You go through the process of doing whatever preliminary practices your guru tells you to do before you start the retreat, such as 100,000 water bowl offerings, tsa-tsas, etc. Then you begin as you would any other retreat: Late one evening on an auspicious day, you do your first session; then you wake up the next morning and do the next session, then three more that day and it’s like that for about 1200 days. It’s a very clear, structured set of practices done over a period of three or four years. From my own experience, it brings unbelievable blessings and gives you some understanding of your own karmic power and potential.
Paula: As our kind teacher Lama Zopa Rinpoche said, once you complete the Great Retreat, you simply spend the rest of that life waiting to die, with a happy mind.
Why is Rinpoche interested in people experiencing hardships while practicing Dharma?
Paula: The main reason we need to experience hardships is because that’s when we get to practice Dharma. When life is easy you don’t think about transforming a problem because you don’t have any. But when your life is full of problems (whether you’re in retreat or not), every minute is a chance to change your mind. The more problems you have, the faster your path to enlightenment. If you want to learn to ride a bicycle, you keep getting on, no matter how many times you fall off. You fall off, get back on. An easy life doesn’t give you much opportunity to transform your mind.
Roger: I agree with Paula. You don’t practice hardships because you want to punish yourself or you’re bad and someone wants to punish you – it’s just a very nuts and bolts issue of time and space in one’s life. When you’re working solely for the happiness of this life and all the comforts and securities of this life, the life is taken up with those activities and very little time is left to actually practice in any meaningful kind of way. You have to give up wanting health insurance, always having the right automobile, always having the right kind of food, having the kind of house you want – not that these things aren’t important, but at the end of the life your mind will be full of regret because you have to leave all those things behind. It’s just a very practical matter of how much time we have left in this life and what it is you want to take with you at the end of this life into a future life. You just can’t take the material things. If you spend this life on the material world and all its comforts and securities, at the end of it you mind is empty of virtue. You travel on from this life with no supply of virtue in the mind.
Paula: We have an incredible backlog of negative karma and the ways we experience the purification of that is by undergoing hardships. The negative karma doesn’t just go away; when you do Vajrasattva retreat the karma doesn’t disappear. You still have to experience the karma ripening, but maybe you experience it not in the hell realms but as some sort of sickness, or maybe your husband leaving you, or something like that. If we’re really intent on purifying negative karma and accumulating merit, then we’re constantly experiencing hardships due to constant purification. We have to want the hardships. If we’re doing the practice of the four opponent powers with faith and we’re sincerely purifying, the hardships are the outcome of pure practice. Then we have to learn to rejoice and feel happy when they come!
How can you tell the different between purification and “normal” suffering?
Paula: From the outside it’s impossible to tell. I think only an individual practitioner can tell by looking back over the years and seeing if they’ve changed after going through the hardships.
Roger: Sometimes it seems as if the sufferings increase and life gets worse when you wholeheartedly submit to the guidance of a qualified vajra master. But that’s what you want, that’s what you’re looking for. It’s like when you’re sweeping a house, you’re looking for the dirt and you want to get it out of the house. It’s very simple: When you practice Dharma you look for the negativities and you try to get them out through the doors of your body, speech and mind, the only places they can exit. That’s how you create the space in the mind for Dharma realizations to take root. Before it was overcrowded with the weeds of hatred, ignorance and greed. Nothing of virtue could grow there. You have to pull those weeds out and that’s always painful.
What part do courage and willingness to face hardships play?
Roger: Once we find the powerful motivation needed to do something, then doing it is easy. You can call it courage, but you can also call it a mind that’s going to push through the hardships, knowing there’s something much greater. Everyone goes through hardships to achieve what they want, not just spiritual people. Even rich people go through the hardships of dealing with family and the pressures society places on them; everyone has hardships, no matter what. Actually, the courage to practice Dharma doesn’t seem like much at all because the results are so great; the hardships that are experienced are so miniscule in relation to the blissful outcome of enlightenment.
Paula: I’m not even sure I have any courage! What Roger says is right, and also, once you get the idea to attain enlightenment for the benefit of all sentient beings, there’s nothing else to do. It’s not really a question of courage, but more that there is nowhere else to go, nowhere to turn. The thought of doing anything else is unbearable. There were times in that retreat when I was sitting there cold and lonely, unable to do anything with my mind, unable to meditate, but the thought of doing anything else, of living a regular life again, was so disgusting that I didn’t have a doubt. Or I would think about the suffering of the lower realms, or of the human realm, or even the suffering of middle class humans! Then I just lived with the hardships because I couldn’t do anything else.
Tell us about the hardships you have experienced.
Paula: Everyone practices Dharma in a different way; you meet the qualified vajra guru and he gives you advice, and so, according to the advice, there will be corresponding hardships. For example, some people are center directors, so they have their own kind of sufferings. The advice Rinpoche gave me was to continue doing retreat, and that has its own particular hardships like looking into the mirror of negative emotions with no distractions, never getting to see friends and family, never listening to music or reading journals and books, as well as the uncertainty of knowing where we will live, how we’ll get money, how we’ll pay for food, how we’ll get from A to B. We finish one preliminary practice and don’t know how we’ll get the causes and conditions to do the second. We don’t know if we’ll get the teachings we need – we’re constantly living in uncertainty, from a worldly point of view.
I went through a big transition from having worldly security to having total faith in the guru and the blessings of Buddha, who promised to take care of sincere practitioners. For me that took a long time, maybe 10 years, to not be afraid anymore of not knowing what would happen. Also, to not be afraid of the physical discomfort of being poor, not having enough money for good clothes, or good food, or even enough money to go to the doctor if you’re sick.
Roger: My own experience in this Western culture, for a man to have a place in this world and any sense of self-respect, the main emphasis is on what kind of material possessions you have, what you’ve achieved, what other people think of what you’ve achieved, that kind of thing. And in order to practice a life of Dharma, because you’ve dedicated your life to becoming an inner being, you lose all of the outer securities of the world. Giving up the thought of being secure is one of the prerequisites to becoming an inner being. I think most men and women in our culture, if they sincerely want to practice Dharma, have to give up job, family, all the things this culture values. You have no health insurance, no real job description, there’s nothing of immediate benefit you’re doing for others.
I’m spending my whole life in retreat, and some people may from their own perspective even view this as an extremely selfish action. I’ve found that some people don’t take me seriously, or they speak to me in a condescending manner about what I am and what I do, mainly because they don’t understand what I do. I’m not doing anything for them directly, no social services are involved. The life of a meditator is based solely on belief in the law of cause and effect, blessings of the Triple Gem, fear of the lower realms, and belief that ultimately one will attain enlightenment, and of course nobody can see any of that. I think that’s one of the greatest social hardships.
Another difficulty people face in truly entering the path is that we have to start Dharma from wherever we are; if you’re an independently wealthy heir to some kind of fortune and you meet the Dharma, you start from there. You can afford to do this or that, take teachings, pay for your own education in that way. But if you’re a very poor person with no material resources, you have to accept that’s where you start your practice. You can’t think, “Oh, one day I’ll create the ideal circumstances to practice,” and start from there, because that’s the kind of life where no Dharma is practiced. You figure out what your resources are, where you want to go, what you want to do, and you start from that point. As long as you create the causes through doing the preliminary practices, when it comes time to actually start the retreat, you will have the ability to find what you need, or if you don’t find what you need, you’ll have the karmic wherewithal to go through the hardships of not having what you need; still you will get the practice done, still you will go from beginning to end.
Paula: Another difficulty is not only not seeing my family and friends but also that they have no idea what I’m doing and think I’ve gone crazy. A lot of people are afraid to enter into the life of a meditator and Buddhist lifestyle because they are afraid of what their families, their friends will think. This is particularly difficult when there is all this stuff about cults and strange groups around. I remember when I first got into Buddhism my friends called me Paulananda, thinking I had become another one of these religious freaks. This is all just concerning reputation, so it boils down to the eight worldly dharmas. They appear as hardships from a worldly point of view, and you’re experiencing them as hardships, but the point is to transform the mind so they no longer appear as difficulties.
As Rinpoche says, the one door opening the door of Dharma is the abandonment of the eight worldly dharmas. The purpose of abandoning the eight worldly dharmas is so you can develop a calm mind and do the work of entering, abiding and absorbing the winds in the central channel. If you always reactive negatively to hardships, there is no way you can develop stable meditation. The hardships are the path.
What were some of the difficulties you faced during your Great Retreat at Milarepa Center?
Roger: First we had to find a place to do the retreat, which was difficult. We visited many Dharma centers and got different levels of reception. We arrived in America with very little money, and through Rinpoche’s subtle guidance we ended up in Vermont. Some people had opposition to what we were doing, people who thought we were just going to be selfish hermits. While we built the retreat huts we lived for about nine months in a heavily wooded temperate rain forest behind Milarepa Center under a sheet of plastic with lots of rain and mosquitoes. Where we lived looked like a refugee camp, an extremely poor situation. It was difficult to get food since we were working all the time.
We had to clear a couple of acres of forest just to get some fresh air and sunlight. We built a couple of 50-square-foot huts there, which was difficult for my body — my body was constantly sick, suffering from allergies. The more my practice of Highest Yoga Tantra developed, the more subtle and sensitive my body has become; because of that, doing construction was a source of constant pain.
I built the huts using a gas-powered chain saw and the exhaust made me sick all the time. Again, we were in a state of insecurity about money, and the only sustenance in those times is going for refuge. We spent about nine months building the huts with our very limited resources, and it was extremely difficult just to live there. Also, we were told the houses could only be 50 square feet, which comes down to 7 foot by 7 foot square; they were about the size of a medium-size tent. At first we thought this would stop us, but when we realized this was our only choice, we decided we had to make it work. By the end of the retreat, four years later, we were accustomed to our tiny spaces.
As soon as we started the retreat severe snow storms came and we found ourselves in these tiny 7 by 7 rooms, freezing. We were under so much pressure to start that we didn’t have a chance to test the fireplaces or how the heating in the hut worked. For the first two years of the retreat I found out my fireplace was putting so much smoke in the room I became sick and couldn’t meditate. I had the choice between being warm and unable to use my mind, or being very cold and having an alert mind; I chose to be cold. I’d wake up, and my room would be completely frozen; the water in the offering bowls on the altar would be frozen solid, my body would be cold from head to toe. I would have to jump up and down and run around in my little room, do some prostrations, just to get warm. Paula’s experience was similar.
We had very little money for clothing to begin that retreat, and all of our clothes were from church thrift stores. We discovered that everything we had was dry-cleaned, and those chemicals caused us to be sick for the first year. We burned all the clothes the first summer, so the second winter, not only were our houses not warm but we had little warm clothing. It just went on and on. In northern Vermont in the middle of winter it can get anywhere down to minus 30 or minus 40 degrees Fahrenheit, and it can stay that way sometimes for several weeks at a time. During the third year of our retreat it was the third coldest winter in recorded history in Vermont. It stayed at minus 20 or minus 30 at night for a month; it would reach zero or 5 degrees during the day.
The facilities were extremely primitive; we had no bathing facilities, no bathroom or toilet, no running water and no electricity. Winter nights were long, and even the candles we used made us sick in such an enclosed space, so we couldn’t use them. We had a 6-foot octagonal-shape kitchen, and anything we did in there was uncomfortable and squeezed.
So how did you bathe?
Roger: For the first two years of the retreat I didn’t bathe at all. I didn’t wash my hair, I hardly bathed my body, except for my private parts. But the rest of the time it was so painful and so cold, and in the summertime there were so many insects. Just to get water in the winter meant walking a couple hundred yards through deep snow to a small creek, and chopping through a foot of built-up ice. It was dangerous as one slip on the ice could mean serious injury or even death – very stressful. I still have a painful hip from one time I slipped and fell on the ice. Fortunately when Paula and I did slip we were never knocked unconscious for that would have meant death. We only saw each other at lunch, and you could die in minutes if you’d fallen in extreme cold. Also, we had to wash our clothes in this situation. Our hands would get so cold they would hurt for days, sapping our energy for practice, so washing wasn’t a huge priority, as you can imagine.
Paula: Just being outside in the cold for periods of chopping wood and carrying water would leave us feeling fatigued. If we stayed outside for too long we would be affected for almost three days. Roger chose to go without fire, but I continued to use the fireplace even though the fumes made me sick. It was so cold I had to keep the fire going 24 hours a day; it only took two minutes to go outside and throw another piece of wood on the fireplace, but if I forgot my gloves, my hands would ache for days afterwards. My head hurt, the cold would just go right through; I would wear two hats, sweaters, three pairs of pants, blankets all around.
The toxic conditions caused by the smoke, dry cleaning fumes, etc. in my room created a condition where my skin burned and itched when it touched water. Two years later when we rectified the toxic problems I bathed in a bucket in my room.
The first two winters the siding on the outside of my house shrank, which left quarter-inch cracks through which cold drafts could come and disrupt my meditation. I could never be comfortable in my hut, even if it was warm. I kept the temperature at 50 degrees so I could sit under my blankets. Furthermore, after I fixed the cracks by caulking them, the caulk gave off poisonous fumes, which I could smell inside for two months; again this made me sick!
And regarding the insects in the summer – mosquitoes are everywhere, along with huge black flies that leave itchy welts on the body. Mosquitoes would completely cover the screen door in summer. It’s hot and humid in the summer, and then it’s cold in the winter. There are a couple of months in the fall when it’s nice outside.
Describe your cooking and food situation in more detail.
Paula: We had one building that was originally intended to be retreat hut, but it was too small. The center gave it to us to be our cookhouse; Roger did a lot of remodeling; we had a wood stove for heat and a gas stove. The wood stove was so bad we didn’t use it – we got another one in the third winter. In ten- or fifteen-degree weather our food would be cold before we could even eat. We realized after the first winter that the gas in the kitchen was making us sick; we would cook in this tiny kitchen and by the time the food was done we had splitting headaches. That first year was the hardest because we didn’t know what we were getting into. As soon as spring came Roger put the stove outside, where he built a makeshift tepee over it, and from there we continued to cook, even in zero-degree weather. We would chop our vegetables inside, then go outside to cook. We ended up eating only once a day.
Although I also had difficulties with gas and creosote fumes, my most dangerous obstacle was the cold. By the second winter my health had deteriorated due to these conditions, so I thought a macrobiotic diet (which consists mainly of grains and vegetables) would help me regain my strength.
But having no overcoat (which we had burned) combined with the diet, caused me to lose all my digestive heat, so I ended up sick with diarrhea in the winter, which wouldn’t go away for two months or so. I got really thin and very gray. I distinctly remember walking in the snow one day and getting a strong sense that my life force energy was leaving me, just draining out of me; I got scared by this, because I had the thought I would die. I didn’t communicate anything to Roger, but at the same time he saw my condition rapidly deteriorating. He ordered a chicken for me, and immediately after that I warmed up. After that we began to eat meat.
Incidentally, if you get sick during retreat, you still continue with your four sessions a day, even if you have a fever; you have to deal with it by yourself – mom isn’t here, no one is there to help!
Before the retreat started, we agreed to a food delivery once every two weeks. The caretakers came on tsog days, so we had to have a list ready for what we would need in the following two weeks on the day they delivered. So if we had a need the day after tsog, we would wait a month, at least, to get it; we would sometimes not receive what we ordered for two months! This was difficult in cases when we were sick or really needed something for health.
Here in America, we’re used to getting something very soon after the desire comes. In that way the first year was hard for us – just waiting for things. Sometimes what we ordered wasn’t what we wanted and then we’d get upset about that. Interestingly, by the end of the retreat, that wasn’t a problem for us anymore – whatever came was perfect!
Roger: Another way of seeing this circumstance from a worldly viewpoint is that we put ourselves at the mercy of the kindness of others. We relied upon others for food, shelter, clothing, offerings of money – all this kind of stuff. With our cultural background of rugged individualism that’s crammed down our throats, that becomes a very big impediment to spiritual practice. People aren’t always kind; even though they have good intentions, they go through their own trips, and you become the object of all their stuff. And then of course you’re working out your own karma, so even if that person has the intention to treat you kindly, sometimes your karma forces them to treat you badly and not help when they said they would.
One example of my own personal karma is when, after the second winter Lama Zopa came to visit (it was the only official visit during the retreat, and it brought great blessings). One morning after Rinpoche came I had a dream, and when I woke up I realized we had to get the fireplace situation fixed, and we needed decent clothes and meditation cushions. We decided to write to Miss Lim in Malaysia, one of Paula’s friends, a kind benefactor, and ask her to send us some money to be able to do these things; she sent us a few thousand dollars, which we used for wood stoves that didn’t put chemicals and smoke into the rooms, and clothes. But even though I designed the stoves in May 1993 and anyone could have built and installed them before the summer was over, it wasn’t until Christmas Day 1993 that the stoves were delivered. Fortunately we got the stoves installed, because, as I mentioned, that third winter was the coldest on record, and I think we would have either stopped the retreat or, perhaps, one of us might have gotten very sick or died without them.
Now obviously these were my and Paula’s personal karmic obscurations that prevented others from going out and doing what needed to be done to get those stoves to us. So for those six months that we waited for the stoves, we could do nothing but practice patience; we were relying on the kindness of others. Somehow our karma prevented others from being very kind and helping us in that way. It was about zero degrees the day I installed them.
Did you perceive the situation with this understanding at that time?
Roger: No, not from the start. It was very difficult to deal with these things, like not getting what we needed as quickly as we would have liked, especially the stoves, heavy weather gear, medicines Paula ordered, among other things. We had to work very hard to apply all of our intellectual Dharma understanding as an antidote to the disappointment or anger that would come. We were also forced to realize our own lack of care for dependents in past lives. It took me about six months to figure out that everything that was going on, any negativity that was directed towards me, any lack of help, any kinds of inharmonious things that were going on were because this is how I treated people in this life and in past lives and now I was purifying this in some way. The reality was that it was our karma; fortunately we realized that. If we hadn’t realized it we wouldn’t have been able to finish the retreat because we would have gotten so angry that we would have ended up getting in fights with people. The more problems came and the less help we got, the more determined we became in our practice.
This is another hardship that makes people reluctant to enter the path, the aspect of relying on the kindness of others. Sometimes people are kind, sometimes they’re not, even if they want to be. Most people want control over everything themselves, they want to be independent, and just for this reason most people can’t move away from this life. To be a meditator you can’t be like that; it’s almost like you become public property. You have to give up any self-centered ego, because if you keep that it will cause only pain.
You have to give up thinking that problems are caused by someone else. The only way you can do that is to realize it’s just the creation of your own karma, and other people are kindly helping you purify that. But if you believe other people should be your servants or should be this or that, then you’re in trouble; samsara is always trouble, and samsaric relationships only cause trouble.
Paula: I was very enthusiastic and excited going into retreat, having completed my preliminaries, thinking, “I’m going to get single-pointed concentration, I’m going to do tummo,” and suddenly I went straight into the wall of my karmic obscurations! It was like the Road Runner cartoon, with the character who would run Smack into the wall! I deal with that the first year or so, because I just kept getting smashed. After some time the main mantra for the retreat was the verse from the Guru Puja:
Should even the environment and the beings therein
be filled with the fruits of their karmic debts and
unwished-for sufferings pour down like rain, please
bless me to see miserable conditions as the path by seeing
them as causes to exhaust the results of our negative karma.
That’s what the retreat became for me. As soon as I changed the concept from, “Oh I’ll do tummo and be the deity,” to mind transformation and the idea of purifying my negative karma, then I became very happy. I realized this retreat was a mind transformation retreat. Lama Zopa says you do Great Retreats to generate the lam-rim realizations, and I’m thinking, “lam-rim realizations? I’m going to do tummo!” But then I realized lam-rim is the most precious. You can’t practice tantra successfully without strong lam-rim realizations.
Even though Roger and I weren’t talking at that point, we both realized this around the same time. Then I just applied whatever worked and felt happy that I could even sit on the cushion for eight or nine hours a day. I just took it from there.
Could you talk more of the inner hardships you faced?
Paula: I think anyone who has done long retreat would agree that one of the main difficulties faced is the absence of ego-gratification. Most of the time, no matter what I’m doing when I’m not in retreat, I’m doing something that gives some sort of ego feedback, even if it’s just getting something to eat, reading a book, seeing a movie, talking with someone, going here or there – suddenly there’s nothing, nothing at all. I’m in this little tiny place and I can’t go anywhere. There’s absolutely nothing to do but read Dharma books and meditate. There are no psychological pats on the back, nothing for the ego to grasp on to. Because of this, I went through depression and a feeling of emptiness. It’s not blissful empty; it’s more like nothing. I just sat with that, and still felt loneliness and depressed feelings during the last winter. I did have blissful meditations, good meditation experiences, and that kept me going, but it’s so slow.
I remember I cut my finger in retreat and as I watched how long it took to heal, I realized this is exactly what it’s like as we’re transforming our body-minds into buddhas, clearing up our subtle nervous system and all the other inner work we do; Lama Yeshe used to use the word organic to describe this process, and until then I didn’t really understand what he meant. To become a buddha, it’s not like you just change a computer screen ; we’re actually working with human cells, and the mind is a biochemical thing. The mind heals in the same way a scar heals over, and the channels and winds – it all opens up very slowly and organically.
Here in America we have what I call two-dimensional learning, where to learn something you read about it, memorize it, and you spit it back out. Dharma learning isn’t like that; you might be able to memorize lam-rim like that, but to have realizations, which are understandings on a cellular level, it’s a cellular process, therefore it takes a long time.
I understand that a Great Retreat is really just a drop in the bucket. You really need a long time. With this understanding comes a different, gentle sort of patience, almost as if you’re babying yourself. You become gentle and kind to yourself. To a degree I lost the American supermarket, instant gratification mentality when I realized we’re here for the long run.
In the midst of the boredom and loneliness was there any point when you would rather have been doing something else?
Paula: I never had the desire to do anything else. By the end of the retreat I had emptied out much of who I was and what I had grasped onto. If I hadn’t gone through all that turmoil in the beginning when that garbage came up, it never would have left. What happens during retreat is that each time a memory comes up, or an experience comes, I can apply the antidote; the best antidote is emptiness. One of the best things about doing a long retreat like that is you can actually develop an experience of emptiness, which is the most precious antidote to emotions; by the end of the retreat, if feelings came up, I actually had some power over them due to this right view. The emotional hardships were extremely important because they gave me the chance to really look at the “I.” I finally got the chance to look at the ego-grasping.
Roger: I also experienced the things Paula did to different degrees. On another level, I experienced heart attacks, severe heart palpitations, and on several occasions I was sure I would die in that moment. I would have to say, “Well I’m up here, and I won’t get any medical treatment.” I would be fully ready to die. I would go to bed and not expect to wake up the next morning; sometimes this wasn’t so bad, since my belief that I would go to a pure land was so strong that the idea of waking up in this tiny room wasn’t so appealing!
One time I went through what appeared to be serious spirit harm; I would have dreams of being in my room and this spirit would be eating my head. I could hear it and see it. It was a very frightening experience to watch; then I would find myself back inside my body while the same experience was going on. My first response was to recite some wrathful protector mantra. I went back to sleep and woke up a while later; I continued to have this dream, and when I woke up I could actually feel the spirit harming me – it was like I was being electrocuted from the top of my head.
Then I thought if I recited The Heart Sutra I would be protected from this harm. It stopped, so I went back to sleep. I woke up again, and it was worse than before; it was like my nervous system was shattered. I thought to myself, “I’ve tried wrath, and that didn’t work; I tried wisdom, which also didn’t work. This thing obviously wants something.” Finally I decided to do the Chöd practice, and that worked. Immediately as I gave up strong grasping of this physical body and offered it to this malevolent spirit, the harm stopped, and I went back to sleep. The next morning when I woke up my nervous system felt very weak and shaken; nonetheless my mind was very happy.
From the worldly viewpoint, this seems like a terrifying experience and I feared greatly for my life, and my body hurt. But because of the practice I was able to transform it into the joy of having come through it with some positive outcome. I was able to give up this body, offer it to the spirit and say, “Here, do whatever you want with it – eat it, drink it, anything.” Somehow by doing that I befriended that spirit and received no more harm for the rest of the retreat.
Also, going back to what Paula was saying about the internal hardships of loneliness and depression: There’s only one thing to do, which is to transform them into the power of practice, actually feeling one with the guru, feeling the guru’s presence at all times.
Paula: Another thing is extreme fatigue. We never had a day off. We woke up very early in the morning, and we put in eight or night hours on the meditation cushion. Furthermore, we had to chop wood and carry water, cook food – there was no rest. To keep our bodies going we had to do chi-gong or take a walk; there was always something that needed to be done out of necessity. There was no time to stop – work in the morning, afternoon and night, seven days a week.
In the fall there was work to prepare for winter, so we would spend some of the afternoon stacking wood, among other things. By the time we finished it would be dark and I hadn’t done my afternoon session. I would end up doing the last session after midnight. Then we would wake up after only a few hours of sleep and it would begin again. The fatigue was difficult, and sometimes on top of that I would get lung.
I never wanted to stop, but I wondered how I could continue like this. Then I would pray to the guru, and it’s really due to the blessings of the guru that I went on. I never wanted to stop; that it was very hard was a recurring thought.
Roger: One difficulty that may not be apparent until you do it is that sitting all day becomes difficult. I have some kind of chronic hip problem, which got worse during the retreat. I fell on ice once during the retreat, and ever since then I experienced pain whenever I sat. The only time I didn’t feel pain was during deep absorption when the winds would leave that part of my body, and I wouldn’t feel it anymore. The rest of the time was a very harsh experience of forcing myself to sit in one place. Fortunately there is some feedback of bliss in meditation, if you persevere long enough or if you have the right karma; still, that doesn’t mean you won’t end up limping out of the session like a 70-year-old man!
Also, much of the time I would go without breakfast during that retreat. Not because I was lazy, not because there was no food; simply because there was no time to eat and get my next session done. I would experience the suffering of hunger. The choice was be hungry or get a session done and I chose to get a session done. A lot of the time I would go without an evening meal as well for the same reason. This is part of the joy of being a meditator, the single-pointed devotion to practice, and it brings a deep feeling of inner satisfaction. Still, on the surface one goes through all the sufferings of heat and cold, hunger and thirst. My room was so small I could only build a bed that was only 2 feet wide, so I couldn’t even lie down comfortably on the bed.
How did you deal with the hardships – how did you actively work with them so you could stay in retreat?
Paula: There are several ways – the first step is to learn the techniques; I would sift through my mental lam-rim catalog and look for which remedy or antidote is proper to apply at that time. One can use any point from the lam-rim, ranging from praying to the guru, to meditation on death and impermanence, to reflection on how this is my karma ripening or meditation on the suffering of the twelve links; emptiness meditation is powerful, or whatever worked at the time.
Another motivating factor was to think about how much I want to become enlightened for the benefit of all sentient beings – we certainly wouldn’t do just this for ourselves! I would also consider my alternatives – the thought of doing anything else made me stay. Also the realization came that doubt is just another negative mind that needs to be abandoned as much as hatred or jealousy. Also I would think of my teachers, how wonderful and inspiring they are, how there is no one I have ever met like them anywhere else, in any culture.
Especially inspiring for me was to think of Geshe Jampa Wangdu’s cave in Dharamsala, where he would simply sit in mud if it rained – he had much worse conditions. I would think that by doing this I become like them, and based on that I would stay with it.
Having benefactors was really important to enduring the hardships. In retreat one doesn’t get any feedback on meditation, it doesn’t seem to improve for a long time, and there are so many hard conditions, but when I would think of the people who were really counting on me, and how I was ultimately doing this for their sake, I gained strong motivation. I was training to take on the sufferings of all sentient beings, so how could I do that without having lots of suffering with which to practice?
What are the benefits of experiencing all these difficulties?
Roger: The most important benefit I derive from persevering in the face of hardships is that I’m able to achieve what I want in this lifetime, I’m able to create the causes for higher rebirth, liberation and enlightenment on behalf of all kind mother sentient beings. That’s the freedom, the power I get.
Based on that we’re about to start another Great Retreat, to last another four years. This time the conditions, although a little primitive by most peoples’ standards, are better. Inner hardships will increase, which is good, it’s what I want. It’s very appealing for me to do another retreat; as traumatic and painful as the last one was, I can feel the results in my mind very directly, and that leaves me with the imprint of wanting to do more and more and more, until eventually, in this life or some future life, I become like my guru Lama Zopa Rinpoche, or my guru His Holiness the Dalai Lama.
Without question I see that persevering in the face of hardships is the key to all these achievements, all the good in the world. All our past gurus have done it, they’ve all persevered in one hardship or another to gain the realizations. The only way we’re going to have accomplished yogis and yoginis manifesting in this society is if people give up the idea that Dharma practice is easy, that spiritual practice is something that is comfortable or something that is always pleasing to the mind – that’s just not going to work. Even worldly endeavor is not like that – how can spiritual endeavor be like that?
Not only do I get to achieve what I want in this life – but as anyone knows who has ever read the life stories of beings like Milarepa, Gampopa, Lama Atisha, Lama Tsong Khapa, all these great, inspiring beings who have practiced the entire lam-rim of sutra and tantra and experienced the fruits of practice by, at the very least continuing in the face of such obstacles – I’m putting imprints of the entire lam-rim, sutra and tantra, on my consciousness. If I get extremely lucky and am able to please the mind of my guru through my practice, I have the chance of attaining realizations in this lifetime. And what could be more wonderful than that – to follow in the footsteps of these holy beings?
Paula: I have the same feeling as Roger and I would like to add that the day-to-day joy of transformation that occurred during the retreat is still with us; I am excited to be doing another retreat. Not only are we able to achieve the highest goals, but also in the day-to-day existence, when hardships come up, the grasping at them is less. The connection with the Dharma, with the guru, and with faith is so much deeper. It seems like when you’re taught the Dharma, it is segmented – there are all the parts of the lam-rim and various aspects of tantra, all these pieces appear; during great retreat, however, all of it integrates into a beautiful experience beyond words, which is why the lamas can’t tell you about it – they can only point you toward that experience and give you the map (which is the lam-rim of sutra and tantra) and encourage you to go meditate. The fruit of that experience is so indescribable; the little I’ve tasted of it caused me to want to do more because the benefit is so great. The hardships are incidental. Lama Yeshe would use the word totality to describe such holistic, deeply joyful experiences of which the hardships are part.
Furthermore, by taking on the hardships, one learns the extremely precious practice of tong-len, the way of taking on everyone’s hardships; the more practice one gets at transforming one’s sufferings into joy, the more one can do this for all sentient beings. You develop the wish to truly take on the misery of all beings and make them all happy. The only way to do this is by feeling happy with one’s own sufferings.
Roger: The Great Retreat is an extremely blessed and powerful form of practice that comes to us through the Gelugpa lineage; there’s nothing like it as far as giving you the single-pointed opportunity to figure out what Dharma practice is. My own understanding is if we get enough people doing these practices, enough people who are prepared to persevere in the face of hardships in order to please the mind of the guru, we’ll definitely get some stars; some people will rise up out of that group and we’ll have Western tulkus, our own yogis and yoginis and mahasiddhas manifesting great things. That can only come from a culture in which one is able to do this practice called persevering in the hardships.
“What I am most interested in is the bearing of hardships”
–Lama Zopa Rinpoche
“Many times, I think, you don’t see much result in most people who have done three-year retreat. But Roger and Paula’s retreat – I think I would accept. I can see the improvement and stability, and that’s the result of having practiced Dharma during the retreat.
“They bore so many hardships. What I am most interested in is bearing hardships. Some people can talk about this experience or that, about some dreams or something, but bearing hardships – that becomes real Dharma practice.
“Generally, those who have realizations, the Kadampa geshes or those in monasteries, spent their early life without much concrete food – just some black tea and some tsampa. Many of them have stories of having no food for many months, but there was no fear, no worry: The mind was completely absorbed in Dharma, practicing, studying, debating. The realizations, even of the learned masters, are a result of bearing hardships and studying Dharma.
“Everyone can recite a mantra or visualize deities – that is not difficult; practicing Dharma is difficult. Why there is no development in the mind is not because one hasn’t received a mantra or hasn’t received a deity to meditate on, it’s because of not having practiced Dharma.
“After they finished their retreat at Milarepa, Ribur Rinpoche offered Roger and Paula the suggestion to do another retreat. If they become enlightened before retreat finishes, that is good. So I hope they have a good journey! If you can offer them some help, that’s good.”
“Joy and happiness arise in my mind.”
–Geshe Rabten
“I lived in an old small stone hut that had room for only one person. It was situated in a forest on a hillside above Dharamsala. Many of the slates on the roof and stones in the wall had fallen down. When the wind blew, a draught would come through the cracks in the wall. And when it rained heavily all the rainwater would come in through the roof. Because of this, when I lay down at night I would have to put a number of containers and basins on my bed. At times I even had to put up an umbrella and sleep under that. When the different kinds of monkeys would get onto the roof their legs would come through into the room.
“Occasionally relatives and people I knew would come from here and there to see me. Some of them had rather small minds and would exclaim, ‘O teacher, you are living in such a dreadful house!’ Often they would even start crying. I would reply, ‘But when I look at this house with my eyes, a feeling of joy and happiness arises in my mind.'”
–From Song of the Profound View, by Geshe Rabten, Wisdom Publications
“Don’t think easiest, best or cheapest!”
–His Holiness the Dalai Lama
At a teaching in Los Angeles in July this year, someone asked His Holiness the Dalai Lama: “What is the quickest, easiest way to realize selflessness?”
His Holiness replied with great intensity, “Although I cannot claim to have any high levels of realization, even the little realization that I have in relation to the understanding of selflessness is a product of an effort over 30 years.”
And then he bowed his head and wept. “When Milarepa was giving his last instructions to one of his foremost disciples, Gampopa, he showed him the calluses on his behind, the result of his continuous sitting in meditation.
“‘Look at this!’ Milarepa said to Gampopa. ‘This is what I’ve endured. This is the mark of my practice and this is how you must remember that realization of Dharma requires effort and single-pointed commitment.’
“So don’t think easiest, best or cheapest! Think more, count more in eons – that is important!” His Holiness urged.
“Although I am quite sure that I cannot achieve the level of realization – even by a hundredth part or a thousandth part – of what Milarepa achieved, one thing is for sure. I will definitely emulate Milarepa’s example and try to follow in his footsteps!”
“Even though my bones have pierced my flesh on this cold stone floor, I have persevered.”
–Milarepa
To give thanks due
To all sentient beings who are my parents,
I do religious practice in this place.
This place is like a lair of savage beasts;
At the sight of it, others would be roused to indignation.
My food is like the food of dogs and swine;
At the sight of it, others would be moved to nausea.
My body is like a skeleton;
At the sign of it a savage enemy would weep.
My behavior appears to be that of a madman,
And my sister blushes with shame.
But my awareness is truly Buddha;
At the sight of it the Victorious One rejoices.
Even though my bones have pierced my flesh on this cold stone
floor, I have persevered.
My body, inside and outside, has become like a nettle,
It will never lose its greenness.
In the solitary cave, in the wilderness,
The recluse knows much loneliness.
But my faithful heart never separates
From the Lama-Buddha of the Three Ages.
–From The Life of Milarepa, by Lobsang P. Lhalungpa, Penguin Arkana
Archive
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- An Interview with Buddhist Scholar John Dunne on Mindfulness
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- An Update from Kushinagar
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- The Mind is the Measure of All Things
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- Visit Chandrakirti Tibetan Buddhist Meditation Centre in New Zealand
- July
- Challenging Orthodoxy in Tibetan Buddhism
- Confessions of a Mahamudra Junkie
- Find Out What Five-year-old Dechen Bloom Asked Ven. Robina Courtin about the Heart Sutra
- Geshe Lamsang’s Heart Advice
- Growing Up within the FPMT Mandala
- Holding Up a Mirror to Our Children’s Behavior
- Not Just For Kids: Vajrayana Institute’s Child-Focused Activities
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- Sobering Up from Samsara
- Tara Redwood School: Sprouting the Seeds of Compassion
- The Eight Auspicious Signs
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- ‘He Was for Me the Perfection of Patience and Generosity’
- ‘I Have Never Known a More Generous Person in My Life’
- A Compassionate Insurrection
- Buddhism’s Common Ground: An Interview with Ven. Thubten Chodron
- Liberation through Education
- Lost in Translation: A Reflection on the Sacred
- Origin and Spread of the Buddha’s Doctrine
- Recognizing Alison Murdoch’s 10-Year Contribution to Universal Education and FDCW
- The Benefits of the ‘Golden Light Sutra’
- The Murky Reward of Nakedness
- What About Me?
- You Are Not Alone
- January
- Mandala for 2013
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- Nepal: ‘The Most Holy Place in the World’
- The Dalai Lama Completes His Studies
- Like a Waking Dream: Geshe Sopa’s Students Share Their Stories
- More than Auspicious
- Pure Gold on the Ground Below
- The Bodhisattva on Bascom Hill
- Fulfilling a Long-held Promise
- Reminiscences of Geshe Sopa
- Profound Equanimity that Constantly Perserveres
- A Shining Presence: Geshe Sopa in Photos
- The Most Important Influence on My Life
- The Simplicity of Great Authority
- Ven. Geshe Lhundub Sopa Rinpoche, My Teacher
- Both Father and Son: Geshe Sopa Rinpoche’s Omnipresent Blessing
- A Privilege and an Immeasurable Gift
- Patience in Ascertaining the Truth
- Praises for Our Perfect Teacher Geshe Lhundub Sopa Rinpoche
- From the Vault: “An Extraordinary Modern-day Milarepa”
- FPMT Activities in Nepal Photo Gallery
- Seeing Problems as Positive
- A Straight and Steady Motivation
- A Letter from Animal Liberation Sanctuary
- Ancient Philosophy in Everyday Life at the Himalayan Buddhist Meditation Centre
- Himalayan Yogic Institute: The Birth of the Himalayan Buddhist Meditation Centre
- His Holiness at Kurukulla Center Photo Gallery
- The Mummification of His Holiness the 9th Bogd Jetsün Dampa Rinpoche
- Paul Donnelly on the Creation of “Like a Waking Dream”
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- Finding Inspiration in FPMT Centers: An Interview with Geshe Sherab
- Meet Geshe Jampa Gelek: Istituto Lama Tzong Khapa’s Resident Teacher
- An Irresistible Pull
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- Book Review: The Black Hat Eccentric
- Editor’s Choice – Media Reviews
- The Second Round of 108 Nyung Näs at Institut Vajra Yogini
- April
- The Need for Qualified Teachers
- Don’t Just Sit There … Circumambulate!
- How to Understand Our Reality from the Universal Point of View
- The Purpose of Study
- Treading Fertile Spiritual Soil
- Going Home to Buddhism: An Interview with Pilgrimage Organizer Effie Fletcher
- Pilgrimage to Tibet
- Songs and Mental States
- Where Dharma Meets Technology Meets Art
- The Path to Changing One’s Mind
- Meet Geshe Thubten Soepa
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- July
- Understanding Lam-rim: An Interview with Ven. Sangye Khadro on the Masters Program
- ‘I Will Be Paralyzed and Happy’ and Other Writings by Bob Brintz
- Behaving in a Greener Way: Panchen Losang Chogyen Gelugzentrum Acts Ecologically
- Blessing the Waters of New Zealand’s North Island
- Buddhist Business Lessons to Share: Creating Right Livelihood
- Cherishing Life and a Recipe for Mushroom and Kale Pâté
- Four Countries, Countless Benefits: Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s East Asia Tour Photo Gallery
- His Holiness the Dalai Lama at FPMT Center Events March-May 2013 Photo Gallery
- His Holiness the Dalai Lama on the Nature of Mind
- His Holiness the Dalai Lama Speaks on Aging and Death in Switzerland
- I Will Be Paralyzed and Happy
- In Praise of the Universal Mother
- Meet Geshe Deyang
- On Becoming a Vegan: When Vegetarian is Not Enough
- Our Fundamental Needs: An Interview with David Suzuki
- Overcoming Alcoholism and Introducing a Healthy Lifestyle in Mongolia
- Planting Seeds of Peace in Mexico City: Universal Education for Compassion and Wisdom in Action
- Shopping Buddha
- The Purpose of Study (continued): Ven. George Churinoff Finishes His Story with Lama Yeshe and Tenzin Ösel Hita
- We Cannot Live without Harming Others
- October
- Mayra Rocha Sandoval Completes Three-Year Lam-rim Retreat in Mexico City
- Achieving Realizations of the Path
- Advice on Caring for Mother
- His Holiness Completes Ninth Australian Tour
- ‘One Day in Service to His Holiness Is a Life Well Spent’: His Holiness the Dalai Lama in Melbourne 2013
- Identifying the Object of Negation
- His Holiness the Dalai Lama in New Zealand
- The Exemplary Life and Death of Geshe Yeshe Tobden
- The Sera Connection: An Interview with José Cabezón
- The Greatest Honor: Becoming a Rik Chung
- A Spiritual Journey to Tsum
- Sera Je Food Fund’s Dramatic Impact on the Monks of Sera Je Monastery
- Cat Rescue as a Means to Make Merit
- Alison Kaye Harr
- The Sera Je Food Fund
- Land of Joy: An Interview with Andy Wistreich
- ‘A Transforming Experience in a Completely Unexpected Way’: Masters Program Students Near End of Studies at Istituto Lama Tzong Khapa
- ‘Only Birds and Crickets to Distract the Mind’: First Retreat in the New Gompa at De-Tong Ling
- Ideas on Self-Acceptance and Bringing Dharma to the Community: An Interview with Alan Carter
- ‘I Realized That My Life Couldn’t Be the Same Again’
- Meet Geshe Lobsang Kunchen
- Complexities of Tibetan Culture Past and Present: Five Book Reviews
- January
- Mandala for 2012
- January
- El fallecimiento de Khensur Rimpoche Lama Lhundrup Rigsel
- Le décès de Khensour Rinpoché Lama Lhoundroup Rigsel
- The Passing of Khensur Rinpoche Lama Lhundrup Rigsel
- UWE Gathering in France: Inspiration, Information, Transformation!
- Preserving the Foundations: Merry Colony and FPMT Education
- Compassion in Education: An Interview with Pam Cayton
- Benefits of Generating a Good Heart
- Collaborators in Preservation: Key Education Services Contributors Reflect on the Future of FPMT Education and Their Work with Merry Colony
- What Differentiates Buddhism from Christianity
- On Receiving Generosity
- Of Yaks and Dogs
- Feeding Fish at Nalanda Monastery
- The Karma of Success
- Occupy Samsara
- Lama Says You Should Go to Kopan and He Will Take Care of You
- Big Love Excerpt
- FPMT News Around the World Photo Gallery
- Nalanda Monastery’s 15-Year Master Plan
- Rinchen Jangsem Ling Consecrates Towering Kuan Yin and White Dzambhala Statues
- Editor’s Choice – Media Reviews
- The Passing of Khensur Rinpoche Lama Lhundrup Photo Gallery
- April
- ‘Subduing the Mind, Actualizing the Path’ Resource Area
- Big Ears, Small Mouths: The Life of a Retreat Caretaker
- Random Reflections on Retreating
- Realizing the Dharmakaya
- Report from Bodhgaya: On the Ground at Kalachackra 2012
- Subduing the Mind, Actualizing the Path
- You Can, You Must
- Big Ears, Small Mouths
- Don’t Wake Up with a Mind Like That
- Random Reflections on Retreating
- Retreat in Everyday Life
- Universal Mandala School
- Animal Liberation Sanctuary Update
- The Misleading Mind – Searching for Happily Ever After
- Sitting Easy
- An Interview with Åge Delbanco
- Tulku Gyatso Remembered
- Thangka Exhibition at Maitreya Instituut Amsterdam
- The Beginning of Tushita
- FPMT News Around the World Photo Gallery
- News from Kopan Monstery and Its Projects
- Editor’s Choice – Media Reviews
- July
- Comienzo con duda
- Exploring the Practice of Writing: The Mindful Writer
- P513 and the Golden Light Sutra
- Teaching a Good Heart: FPMT Registered Teachers
- Like Nectar on Flowers: The Selfless Service of FPMT-Registered Teachers
- The Simile of a Cloud
- Mandala Talk: Ven. Thubten Chodron on “Insight into Emptiness”
- Begin with Doubt
- The Seventeen Pandits of Nalanda Monastery
- ‘Everybody Needs Universal Compassion and Wisdom Education’: An Interview with Lama Zopa Rinpoche on UECW
- ‘Everybody Needs Universal Compassion and Wisdom Education’: An Interview with Lama Zopa Rinpoche on UECW [Unedited Transcript]
- Contest Winners: Deciphering the Guru’s Grocery List!
- Illuminating the Darkness: Helping Kathmandu’s Street Kids
- FPMT Around the World Photo Gallery
- ‘She Is Not Looking for Another Man’
- Ever Shining Consummate Sun
- My November Course
- ‘You Are His Daughter and You Want to Help’
- Your Prayers and Dedications ‘Have Power’
- Editor’s Choice – Media Reviews
- Half the Woman: Losing Weight for Rinpoche
- Taking Online Dating as the Path
- Waidangong: Shaking One’s Way to Health
- October
- La joie de l’étude : une interview de Guéshé Kelsang Wangmo
- Khadro-la on Using Stupas to Minimize Harm from the Elements
- 16 Actitudes at Centro Yamantaka in Colombia
- Children and Teens Programs Take Root and Grow at Losang Dragpa Centre in Malaysia
- The Joy of Study: An Interview with Geshe Kelsang Wangmo
- Publishing the FPMT Lineage: An Interview with Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive Director Nicholas Ribush
- Key to the Cave
- The Practice of Writing: An Interview with Dinty W. Moore
- Craig Preston on Teaching and Translating Classical Tibetan
- Loneliness
- The Qualities of Good Food
- Where I Needed to Be
- Meet Geshe Ngawang Sonam: Hayagriva Buddhist Centre’s New Resident Teacher
- Stay Low and Go, Go, Go: Fire Safety Training at Kopan Monastery and Nunnery
- Rinpoche’s Decision
- Insight into Emptiness
- Editor’s Choice – Media Reviews
- January
- Mandala for 2011
- January
- The Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition: Looking to Mongolia
- Tibet, Tibet, I Have to Go to Tibet!
- Youth in Refuge
- Lama Yeshe in London, 1975 (Video Recording)
- Hippie Era: Looking for Meaning in Our Lives
- Tsog Adventure
- Transformative Mindfulness and the 16 Guidelines in Canada and North America
- 16 Guidelines at Akshay Charitable School, Bodhgaya, India
- Taking the 16 Guidelines into South African Schools
- 16 To Live By Update
- Educación Universal Update
- Outings and Expeditions with Ready Set Happy
- Three Ways to Help Animals
- Meet Sera Je, the Dog!
- NHS Videos for Carers
- Cittamani Hospice Service’s Annual Memorial
- Mercy Relief to Thai Flood Victims
- His Holiness the Dalai Lama in San Jose, California
- Making Business Work for FPMT
- Bhutan’s Prime Minister is Serious about Happiness
- Resources for “Peaceful Jihad”
- Yoga for Health
- Addiction Workshops at Mahamudra Centre
- Nine Questions About Vegetarianism
- An Interview with Jetsünma Tenzin Palmo
- A Visit for My Mother, A Crash Course for Me
- Lights and Rainbows: My Struggle
- A Love Letter to My Valentine: Let Me Tell You Who Our Cupid Is
- A Young Lass, A Manangi
- An Open Letter To B. Alan Wallace
- Editor’s Choice
- April
- E. Gene Smith Obituaries
- Engaged Buddhism: Compassion in Action
- Lama Zopa Rinpoche in London, 1975 (Video Recording)
- Photo Gallery
- Engaged Buddhism Resource Guide
- Trailers for “Meditations from the Multiplex”
- Raw Food Resource Guide
- The Healing Power of Juice Fasting
- An Interview with Anila Ann McNeil
- Dagri Rinpoche at the FPMTA National Meeting
- An Old Story of Faith and Doubt: Reminiscences of Alan Wallace and Stephen Batchelor
- Editor’s Choice
- July
- Practices for Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s Long Life
- The Dissatisfied Mind of Desire
- Don't Stop! Go Now!
- ¡No pares! ¡Ve ahora!
- Leading with the Mind of a Servant
- Practices to Control Earthquakes and the Four Elements
- El retiro de la vida
- Protection from Radiation
- Morning Intention and Breath Counting with Children
- Interview with the Authors of the Recently Published Winning Ways
- Buddhism in the Trenches
- Cuando el gurú manifiesta un ataque
- The Hidden Toll of Australia’s 2011 Floods
- His Holiness Spreads Wisdom of Universal Human Values and Religious Harmony
- “Peace Through Inner Peace,” His Holiness Visits Minneapolis
- Hurray!
- Anger Always Hurts Me
- La rabia siempre me hiere
- Move, Breathe and Be Kind
- Working with Addiction
- Гнев всегда причиняет вред Мне
- הכעס תמיד פוגע בי
- Ian Green: Buddha’s Builder
- Big Love Excerpt
- Thinking Like a Thief
- Robert Page’s Art for Liberation Prison Project
- Ethics on My Mind
- Surrendering to Monkeys: Letting Go of the Self
- The Kindness of Lama Yeshe and My Mother
- What Goes Around, Comes Around
- Editor’s Choice
- October
- An Idea to Begin to Repay the Kindness
- Remembering the Kindness of His Holiness the Dalai Lama and the Courageous People of Tibet
- Remembering the Kindness
- Dalai Lama on The Spirit of Things
- Harry O’Brien Introduces His Holiness to Australian Football
- His Holiness in Melbourne, Australia 2011
- His Holiness the Dalai Lama 2011 Chenrezig Gompa Talk
- His Holiness the Dalai Lama at Vajrayana Institute’s Happiness & Its Causes Conference
- Luka Bloom Shares “As I Waved Goodbye” with His Holiness the Dalai Lama
- REJOICE! FPMT Offerings to His Holiness in Australia
- Khensur Rinpoche Lama Lhundrup
- A Message from Kopan Monastery
- A note on Khensur Rinpoche Lama Lhundrup’s passing
- Discovering Khensur Rinpoche Lama Lhundrup’s Relics
- Madre, padre, maestro, amigo: La bondad incomparable del querido Khensur Rimpoché Lama Lhundrup Rigsel de Kopan
- Người Mẹ, người Cha, người Thầy, người Bạn: Lòng Nhân Từ Vô Song của Khensur Rinpoche Lama Lhundrup Rigsel Cao Quý
- Interview with Lama Lhundrup
- Lama Lhundrup Videos
- A Thank You Puja at Kopan Monastery
- Caring For Lama Lhundrup
- Un père, une mère, un enseignant, un ami : L’incomparable bonté du vénéré Khènsour Rinpoché Lama Lhoundroup Rigsèl de Kopan
- Lama Lhundrup: An Old, Dear Friend
- Memories of Lama Lhundrup
- My Love Affair With Kopan Monastery
- An Aspect of Lama Lhunrup Seen at Kopan
- The Qualities of Lama Lhundrup
- The Kindness of Lama Lhundrup
- Thus I Have Heard: An Offering to the Participants of the First FPMT Translation Conference
- Creating Compassionate Cultures
- Ants Spread Dharma
- New Goats for Animal Liberation Sanctuary
- It Doesn’t Need to Be Either/Or
- Vegan Pumpkin “Cheesecake”
- Teachers Discuss the Future of Buddhism in the West: The 2011 Garrison Institute Conference
- The European Buddhist Union and Engaged Buddhism
- Socially Responsible Investing
- Panchen Losang Chogyen Gelegzentrum Makes a Plan for World Environment Day
- Meher Baba Clearly Told Me in a Dream
- Gelek Sherpa Photo Gallery
- Sarah’s Journey
- A Pilgrim’s progress
- Big Love Excerpt
- FPMT News Around the World Photo Gallery
- Editor’s Choice
- January
- Mandala for 2010
- January
- Back Over the Mountains
- Compassionate Action for Dogs and Donkeys in Dharamsala
- Confidence to Change the World
- Dharma at the Dollar Store
- Editor’s Choice
- ever mind
- FPMT News Around the World
- How to Meditate
- Snapshots of Buddhism in the West
- The Practice of Motherhood
- The Unspeakable – Spiritual Dryness
- April
- FPMT’s First Holy Object Project
- Holy Objects Are Rare in Prison
- Notable FPMT Holy Objects from Around the World
- The Maitreya Project: Big Love, Universal Love
- Types of Holy Objects
- Why Holy Objects Are Precious and Wish-fulfilling
- Editor’s Thanks
- Nothing to Trust in Appearances
- Who is Maitreya Buddha?
- Story of the Bouddhanath Stupa
- Sacred Sites Around the World
- Holy Objects Resource Guide
- David Zinn’s FPMT Photo Montage
- FPMT News Around the World
- Animal Liberation in Mexico
- Wrestling a Whale with Bodhichitta
- Shamatha in the Indian Buddhist Tradition
- It Really is all About Me (and My Ego)
- Obituaries
- Write for Your Lives
- Power to Hope, Power to Heal
- Editors Choice
- July
- Dying is Better than This Flower
- Like Nectar on Flowers: The Selfless Service of FPMT-Registered Teachers (Geshe Section)
- Like Nectar on Flowers: The Selfless Service of FPMT-Registered Teachers (History Section)
- The Ever-Changing Forms of Buddhism
- An Interview with Khensur Jampa Tegchok
- Meeting Ven. Amy Miller
- FPMT News Around the World
- Still Cooking
- The ‘Roo from Black Saturday
- MAITRI – Where Every Individual Matters
- Welcome to Root Institute!
- Tara Children’s Project
- Editor’s Choice
- FPMT TEACHER TRIVIA ANSWER KEY
- October
- January
- Mandala for 2009
- January
- April
- July
- “The Sink”
- CPMT 2009 Representatives Meet for Six Days at Institut Vajra Yogini, France
- Don’t Just Sit There … Circumambulate!
- FPMT News Around the World
- Geshe Potowa of the 21st Century
- Inner Peace and Happiness during Three-Year Retreat
- No Desire but Plenty of Bliss and Void
- The Passing of the Holy Master Venerable Geshe Tsultim Gyeltsen: Sadness, Joy, Inspiration and Blessings.
- October
- A Taste of Liberation
- Building Community: Priorities for FPMT Sangha
- Center History Amendments
- Commentary on the Epithets of the Buddha
- FEATURED MEDIA: Editor’s Choice
- FPMT News Around the World
- Integrating Lam-Rim into Daily Life
- Liberating Horses on Saka Dawa
- Spoggy the Sparrow: A Real Dharma Bird
- The Dharma School Comes Home
- Training for Community Life: An Interview with Sister Jotika
- Uncounted Cost of Samaya
- Mandala for 2008
- February
- Advice from Lama Zopa: A Thousand Benefits
- Aspiration
- Begin Again
- Everything’s Local in the Global Community
- Further Explorations
- Giving Negativity a Body Blow
- Langri Tangpa’s Eight Verses for Training the Mind
- Life in a plaster cast
- Maitreya Project Heart Shrine Relic Tour
- Maitreya Project: Setting the Record Straight
- Making Merit
- Mind Training, The Tibetan Tradition of Mental and Emotional Cultivation: Part II
- Monsoon Meditation
- Society or the Individual
- Tantra Comes from Buddha
- Thanksgiving Report from Lama Zopa Rinpoche
- The Tenth Course
- The Works of Geshe Jampa Gyatso at Pomaia
- April
- A Letter from a Student to Lama Zopa
- A Truthful Heart
- A Year in the Life of FPMT
- Art as Dharma
- Berni Kohnen
- Dealing with Feelings
- Emergency Buddhism: Part II
- Essential Life Practices
- Flexible Retreats: How to Retreat from our own Delusions
- Graduation Time!
- Henry Lau
- Lama the Businessman
- Manis by the Millions
- On the Environment and Meditation
- Ready, Set, Go!
- Shifting the Attitude: Embracing Community
- The Evolution of the Virtual Thangka
- The Importance of Lam-rim and the War Against Delusions
- The Tara Institute Healing Meditation Program
- What Is a Root Guru?
- June
- A Nation in the Spotlight
- An Appeal to the World from His Holiness the Dalai Lama
- Beatrice Ribush: Special Tribute from Lama Zopa Rinpoche
- Choden Rinpoche Touches Hearts of Prisoners, Officers and Staff in Australia
- Compassion for a Killer
- Conversation without End
- Establishing a Firm Foundation: International Mahayana Institute (IMI)
- Lama Yeshe’s American College “Experewence”
- Leading Chinese Intellectuals Speak Out
- Letter from the Publisher
- Life at Sera Je
- Maitri’s Microcosm
- Obituaries
- Prayers from Kopan
- Robert Thurman on the Situation Inside Tibet
- Summer Days at a Kids’ Camp
- Support His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Tibet
- The Caves of Maratika
- The Dharamsala Experience
- The Perfect Altar
- Where Waves and Water Are One
- Who Am I, Really?
- Why We Love War
- Yangsi Rinpoche on the Need for a Plan
- An Interview with Ven. Professor Samdhong Rinpoche
- August
- 2008 International Sangha Prayers for World Peace
- A Blessing for Marine Life
- About Prayer: A Retreat
- Accentuating the Positive
- And My First Question Is …
- Becoming Maitreya
- Cleaning the Whole Mirror
- FPMT Puja Fund
- Geshe Lobsang Jamyang Reborn
- Long Life Puja for the Dalai Lama: A Student’s Experience
- Mexican Dharma Celebration
- Mouse in the House!
- New Abbot at Nalanda Monasteiy
- Obituaries
- On the Importance of Meditation
- Ordination: Caught Between Two Cultures
- Powerful Ceremonies
- Pujas by the People
- The Abbot: When East Meets West
- The Benefits of Namgyälma Mantra
- The Dharma of Politics: Adventures in Interdependence
- The Monks at Nalanda Monastery in France
- October
- ‘Why Does the Buddha Wear Lipstick?’
- 16 Guidelines for Happy Families
- A Great Adventure for Teens
- A Volunteer’s Experience in Bodhgaya
- Buddha’s Café
- California Mud
- Camp for Teens
- Compassion through Art
- Dharma in My Life
- Dog-tired at a Nyung-nä
- First Encounters
- Glorious Italian Days and Nights
- I’m Really Not There
- It’s Cool to Be Kind
- Kadampa Center’s New Building is Consecrated
- My Root Guru: Lamp on the Path to Enlightenment
- Obituaries
- Peace Begins with You and Me: LKPY Turns One
- Rare and Important Manuscripts Found in Tibet
- Reaching Out to the Young
- Relying on the Guru
- Sitting at School: The Case for Contemplative Education
- The Last Hurrah
- The Reasons for Studying the Four Noble Truths
- Three Turnings of the Wheel of the Dharma
- To Be Truly Free
- Wheel-Turning Day World-Wide Recitation of the King of Glorious Sutras Sublime Golden Light
- Winning Gold
- February
- Mandala for 2007
- February
- A Dharma King Takes Shape: The origins of Buddhist Art
- Contemptible Dreams, Remarkable Rinpoches
- Fur and Feathers and Other Sentient Beings
- How Khedrup Je Became Entrusted with the Tooth-relic
- Lama, the ad-man
- Liberation for our Brother and Sister Animals
- Loving Kindness Photo Contest: First Winner
- More River than Rinpoche
- The case for not eating our friends
- When Tibetans Found Their Voice: Tibetan Buddhist Philosophy from 1200-1600
- April
- “Ask a Lama” Revisited
- 12 Ways to Create Good Karma
- A Last Letter from Lama Yeshe
- A Remarkable Feat by Extraordinary Men: The Western Geshe in Two Acts
- A Room Full of Role Models: The Geshe Conference in Sarnath
- A Young Monk Runs Away: The Humble Beginnings of a Legendary Geshe
- Be Careful What You Wish For …
- Building the Land of Kalachakra
- Ideas to Make Life Better
- Lama the Environmentalist and Art Teacher
- Loving Kindness Photo Contest: Second Winner
- Masters in Our Midst
- Mystic Tibet: An Outer, Inner and Secret Pilgrimage
- Other Titles in Tibetan Buddhism
- Radical Solutions for Transforming Problems into Happiness.
- The Four Subscripts, Continued
- The Master from the New Generation – Geshe Thubten Sherab
- The Rise of the Geshe-ma
- To help oneself – or others? That is the question
- Transforming Desire into Wisdom with Vajrayogini
- Vajrayogini Retreat Explained
- What Does a Geshe Do for a Center?
- What is a Geshe?
- June
- ‘Anyone Can Be a Buddha’
- A Breath of Fresh Air
- A Clear and Knowing Mind
- A Stone Made of Heart
- About Doubt
- Architecture of the Mind
- Clarifying the Status of the “Geshema” Degree
- Garden of Enlightenment
- How to Establish a Daily Meditation Routine
- In Another Person’s Shoes
- Lama Learns to Drive
- Loving Kindness Peaceful Youth: The Beginning
- Loving Kindness Photo Contest: Third Winner
- Molting
- Motherhood as a Path to Realization
- Obituaries
- Subscripts Concluded and Word Order
- The Dharamsala Experience
- The Real Chöd Practice
- The Value of Study
- Vegetarianism: A Healthy Debate
- Venture into the Interior
- Young Tulkus Give Contemporary Advice
- August
- What Exactly Is Merit?
- A Journalist Undone
- A Venture in Real Estate
- An Introduction to Tibetan Prefixes
- Buddhist Monastics Get Together
- Developing Wisdom
- Economics and the Dharma: Coming to Realize That All Profit Is Loss
- Green Tara Rising
- How to Be a Happy Meditator
- Integrating Ngondro into your Daily Meditation
- Kurukulla: A Work in Progress
- Loving Kindness Peaceful Youth
- Obituaries
- Please Recite the Golden Light Sutra for World Peace
- The Baby Minder’s Preliminary and Purification Practice
- The Benefits of Wearing Robes
- The Compassion and Wisdom Knowledge Base
- The Foundation of All Good Qualities
- The Soothing of Madness and Sorrow
- The Way to Meditate: The Importance of Mindfulness
- Tibetan Cooking
- October
- A Water Bowl Marathon
- About Connecting with a Teacher
- Achieving Inner Happiness Through Meditation
- Bhutan’s Velvet Revolution in Reverse
- Dalai Lama Urges Introduction of Bhikshuni Vows into Tibetan Tradition
- Eight Hundred Words on Education
- Getting to Know the Four Schools of Tibetan Buddhism
- Heart Advice of Achos Rinpoche
- Heart to Heart
- How to Garden Without Killing
- How to Let Go
- In Praise of Silence
- Kim’s Lama: Spiritual Quest in Kipling’s Novel
- Lama Yeshe and the Sand Tray
- Nepal Sanctuary for Animals Underway
- Obituaries
- Suffixes and Finding the Root Letter of a Syllable
- Teaching the Language of an Ancient Culture in a Modern World
- The Importance of Human Affection and Love
- The Iron-Bridge Man
- What is Anger?
- Will All the Volunteers Please Stand Up?
- December
- Dalai Lama receives highest honor from the US
- Disappointment and Delight: The eight worldly concerns
- Each Faith Enhances the Other
- Lo-jong Mind training, the Tibetan tradition of mental and emotional cultivation: Part I
- Making friends with money
- Meanings and Meditation
- Nurturing baby bodhisattvas to stop the rot
- Our Relationship to Resources
- Recognizing and supporting the Sangha community
- Thank You and Rejoice!
- February
- Mandala for 2006
- February
- Advice from Lama Zopa Rinpoche
- Getting to the Cushion: Temporary Ordination at Gampo Abbey
- Keeping It in the Family
- Kindle Now the Dharma’s Light
- Letting Go of Fear and Trembling Takes Courage
- Maitreya Project on track
- Monsters (Un)incorporated
- Obituaries
- On a Wing and a Prayer
- The Dream: One Thousand Maitreya Statues
- Universal Compassion and Wisdom for Peace
- April
- June
- August
- Altruism versus Co-dependency
- Buddhism in Latin America
- Following the Eightfold Path in the exercise yard
- Found in translation: A compassionate heart
- Journey to Sikkim
- Letter from Bodhgaya: Monastic Economics
- Milarepa: The Movie
- MILAREPA: TIBET’S GREAT MYSTIC
- SERVICE BY ANOTHER NAME …
- Stepping into the Abyss: Experiences on Retreat
- October
- Ask a Lama: Celebrating all the traditions
- Confessions of a Buddhist Environmental Activist
- Dealing with Grief
- Eco-Ethics: Engaging in the Practice of Compassion
- ENGAGED REALISM
- How Prayer Can Help: Reciting the Sutra of Golden Light
- Letter from Bodhgaya: Arboreal antidote to an inconvenient truth
- Peace promoter honored
- Reducing your Ecological Footprint
- The Giving Tree: A voice for the singing river
- THE PRACTICE OF GURU PADMASAMBHAVA THAT SAVES FROM EARTH DANGER
- Vipassana: The Mindfulness-Awareness Meditation
- What Does Al Gore Know that Everyone Should Know?
- Whirlwind Down Under: Lama Zopa Rinpoche in Australia and New Zealand
- Blessing the World’s Waterways
- December
- A Summer in Kenya
- An intensive meditation experience for teenagers Five-day retreat at Land of Medicine Buddha, California, December 27 to January 1
- Building a monastery
- Calling all young photographers. Win prizes!
- Materialism of the Gaps
- Mongolia: Dalai Lama urges shared responsibility
- Of Siberian Cranes and Broken Worlds
- Preliminary Practices by the Zillion
- The Spirit of Christmas: SILENT MIND, HOLY MIND
- Using Meditation to Gain Knowledge of Mental Reality
- Where Are All the Western Geshes?
- February
- Mandala for 2005
- February
- “Universal Education” Dharma for the 21st Century
- According to Je Tsongkhapa
- FPMT Masters Program: The Graduates
- Letter from Bodhgaya: Travels with my father
- Life as a Monk
- New FPMT College Planned
- Rock climbing without arms:
- Study Versus Meditation: Do they complement or compete with your practice?
- Tibetan art unfurled
- Tushita: The Place of Joy
- April
- Buddhism in the Family: Dealing with the “Terrible Twos”
- Letter from Bodhgaya How wonderful it would be if…
- Nam-tok: The hallucinatory bubble
- Science and Buddhism: Measuring Success in Meditation
- Science and Buddhism: Studying Compassion
- The Dharma of Sitting
- Tsunami disaster: Children helping children
- Tsunami disaster: Potowa Center helps the victims
- June
- Albert Einstein and the Dalai Lama
- From News Roundup: Making a difference in the courts of law
- Integrating Tibetan and Western Medicine in the Treatment of Anxiety
- Is Nothing Sacred? The Truth about Emptiness
- Personal experiences in healing rLung
- Spirituality and Work: Antonyms or Synonyms?
- The Mathematical Proof of Emptiness
- The Point Is to Practice
- August
- October
- December
- February
- Mandala for 2004
- Mandala for 2003
- March
- A Celebration of the Feminine
- Celebrating the Feminine in Buddhism
- Creating the Work You Love
- Finding Larger Truths for Peace
- Giving Birth to Healthy Life
- Possibilities for Contemporary Buddhist Living
- Romancing a River
- Speaking to Create Harmony
- Taming Your Wild Elephant-like Mind
- The Attendant Who Pledged Her Life
- The Dharmic Politician
- The Face of Buddha in Mongolia
- The Girlfriend with a Lama
- The Inner Activist
- The Working Woman
- Turning Rage to Love
- When Clothes Make the Nun
- When Does a Stem Cell Become a Human Being?
- When Loneliness Is Your Closest Friend
- You Are Not a Buddhist Missionary!
- June
- September
- Advice for Western Practitioners
- Beginnings: History in the making
- Buddhist Psychology? Buddhism is Psychology
- Conversations with a Nun: Opening the Prison Door
- Reflections on the importance of arousing Bodhicitta
- The challenge: Kids and their ‘stuff’
- The living likeness of Lama Thubten Yeshe
- The more things change …
- The Secret of Happiness
- To debate or not to debate: That is the question
- December
- A Cheerful Face on Death
- A grief observed
- Advice on Long Retreats
- An interview with Yangsi Rinpoche
- History in the Making
- How to Prepare for and Not Be Afraid of Death
- Parenting as a Path
- Science and Buddhism Meet with His Holiness the Dalai Lama
- Trust and Mistrust
- Who are we really, and to whom do we pray?
- March
- Mandala for 2002
- March
- An Engaged Military
- An Extraordinary Modern-Day Milarepa: The Life and Death of Geshe Lama Konchog
- Coming to Terms with “God”
- Dealing with Depression
- Embracing Anger
- Good Life, Good Death
- Ground Zero
- Heaven, Earth, and Mankind Luck
- Holy Wars in Buddhism and Islam: The Myth of Shambhala
- Letting Go of Codependency
- Life Among the Ruins
- Mandala for Universal Peace
- Natural Born Buddhist
- Open Letter to a President
- Revenge is Far From Sweet
- Shalom! A Letter from Jerusalem
- Stanger, Enemy, Friend
- The Case of the Dirty Debutante
- Transforming Problems into Happiness
- Unbearable Compassion
- War and Peace in Tibetan Buddhism
- Why Worry?
- June
- A Healthy Relationship
- A Korean Holiday
- A Teacher’s Responsibility
- A Word from Lama
- Art Sets Kids Free
- Capturing a Living Likeness
- Counsels from My Heart
- First Assemble the Ingredients
- First, assemble the ingredients
- Garuda Rising
- Grappling with the Guru Principle
- Hi-Tech Volunteers
- Just Get On With It!
- Mos and Other Conundrums
- Out of the Mouths of Young Monks
- Relationship with the teacher
- Spiritual Authority, Genuine and Counterfeit
- Students Speak
- The guru as Buddha —or like Buddha?
- The Harmony of Retreat
- The Sounds of Silence
- Thinking Like a Thief
- Trials and Joys of a Disciple
- Wake Up Call
- Working with the Western Mind
- Zen Moments of Truth
- September
- A Garden’s Teaching
- A Jewish-Buddhist Encounter
- A Liberating Corner of a Prison
- Advice for Retreat Practice
- An Ecological Challenge
- Bearing Witness
- Bön and Benedictine
- Dharma in the Workplace
- Do Good Bosses Lead – Or Just Manage?
- Eva’s Good Heart Pillows
- Gethsemani: The Conversation Continues
- Inner City Haven
- Love and Freedom
- Making Peace with Our Inner Family
- Meditation in the Workplace
- Misunderstandings
- Non-Gardening in a Rainforest
- Science to Prove Benefits of Compassion
- Spirit in business
- Spirit in Business: an Oxymoron?
- Start the Day Right
- Stupa: The Mind of a Buddha
- Symbols of the Enlightened Mind
- The Beauty and Benefits of Offering Flowers
- The Calvert Community
- The Simple Art of Meditation
- The Twins: Faith and Doubt
- The Way of the Ani Yunwiwa
- Tibetan Must Preserve Their Culture
- Very Young Practitioners
- Why am I doing this?
- Why Am I Doing This?
- Wise Women Healing
- December
- A Light-filled Day for Lama Tsongkhapa
- A Month in Shangri-la
- Bad Boy Miller
- Comfortable with Uncertainty
- Flexibility
- From Lama Zopa’s Letter to His Holiness the Dalai Lama
- Inner and Outer Disarmament
- Pilgrimage to Tibet
- Please, Ma’am!
- Relics Explained by Lamas
- Relics on Tour
- Safe Sex and Healthy Babies
- Stitching a Culture Back Together
- The Bliss of Practice
- The Case of the Talkative Traveler
- The Future of Tibet
- The Habit of War and Suffering
- The Secret Life of Power Places
- Unlearning Hate
- March
- Mandala for 2001
- March
- June
- A sacred trek round Mount Kailash
- Cutting to the Chase
- Dharma teachers: seven years in the making
- Emptiness on My Mind
- Keanu Reeves on the small screen
- Maha Dalai Lama (Great Dalai Lama)
- Mastering the art of ‘masterful coaching’
- The Fourteen Dalai Lamas: A Sacred Legacy of Reincarnation
- The Inner Realizations of the Dalai Lama
- The power in the stories we tell ourselves
- What is Dharma?
- Who are you and where can you be found?
- Who is making this decision anyway?
- September
- A Vehicle for Realization
- Band-aids, baby-sitting or real Buddhadharma?
- Dakinis: healers of our gender scars
- Freedom from the ego mind
- Monasticism in the 21st Century
- Monasticism in the 21st Century
- The 12 Deeds of Shakyamuni Buddha
- The benefits of cherishing others
- The Lies Our Minds Tell Us
- The Master’s Voice
- The puzzle of relationship
- Those who teach, learn
- Training the mind while training the body
- December
- Addicted? Who, Me?
- Behave yourself. You are being watched
- Buddhism in Action
- A Fortunate Life
- A Heart for Dying Children
- A Nurse Finds Right Livelihood
- A Teacher Helps Kids ‘Reach for Peace’
- A Thousand Letters
- Aid for AIDS Victims
- Altruism in a Maid’s Uniform
- An Italian in Wonderland
- Behave Yourself. You are Being Watched.
- Bodhisattva in Training
- Care for the Dying in Singapore
- Computers in the Slums
- Freedom Inside Prison
- From Mozart to Mongolia
- Healing the Scars of Sexual Abuse
- I Would Ride 500 Miles – Or More
- Keeping the Balance
- Looking into the Mirror of Death
- Nun Helps Air Force Cadets to Stay Grounded
- Roshi on the Frontlines
- Senior Wisdom
- Soup Kitchens and Ban the Bomb
- The Bean Counter Who Works for Free
- The Freelance Lama: Thubten Dorje Lakha Lama
- The Healing Power of Meditation
- The Intimacy of Dying
- The Toe Tag of Tenderness
- Walk a Mile in My Shoes
- Word Power: A Journo’s Story
- Computers in the Slums
- Dharma for Modern Life
- Interview – Why Buddhism?
- News Roundup
- Nun helps Air Force cadets to stay grounded
- Sharing the benefits of a Christmas feast
- The Attitude Behind Social Service
- The Dharma of Dancing
- The freelance lama
- The Warm Heart
- Trading the Good Life for a Better One
- Vikramashila, Ancient Seat of Tantric Buddhism
- World Peace
- Mandala for 2000
- January
- How a Person Enters into the Mother’s Womb
- Cecilia Berranger, France
- Colin Crosbie, Australia
- Death of a Son
- Ecie Hursthouse, New Zealand
- Geshe Gelek Chodak
- In Mongolia, “It is now physically very hard but easier mentally.”
- Jacie Keeley, United States
- Janet Brooke, United States
- Journey to Realms Beyond Death
- Lama Ösel’s News
- Letter from Ulaanbaatar
- Maria Torres, Spain
- Mary Grace Lentz, United States
- Monks and Nuns of the FPMT: Ven. Yeshe Gyatso
- Naresh and Antonella Mathur, India
- Panchen Otrul Rinpoche’s Fourth Visit to Mongolia
- Peter Kedge, Canada
- Rocio Arreola, Mexico
- Salim Lee, Australia
- The Passing Scene: January-February 2000
- The Reawakening of Buddhadharma in Mongolia
- Vajra Brothers and Sisters Have a Say: Giving Life to a Statue of the Buddha
- March
- A Day in the Life of an FPMT Lama: Geshe Thubten Chonyi
- Attachment: The Biggest Problem on Earth
- Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche Uses Film for Seeing Reality
- His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s New Millennium Message
- Journey to Realms Beyond Death
- Lama Osel “Eager for the Study of Buddhism”
- Lama Ösel’s News
- Maitreya Project Hosts Twelve Thousand People for Teachings of His Holiness the Dalai Lama in Bodhgaya
- My First Meeting with Lama Yeshe
- Other Lamas: His Holiness Jigdal Dagchen Sakya
- Proceeds of Sale of Videos of Australian Documentary Film to Benefit Milarepa Prison Project
- Tha Passing Scene: March-April 2000
- The Beginnings of Lama Yeshe’s Work in the West
- The Biography of a Buddha
- The Blossoming of Blue Lotuses
- The Sign of a Real Lama
- The Unimaginable Qualities of Lama Yeshe’s Body, Speech and Mind
- Thousands “Genuinely Delighted” to Celebrate the New Millennium at the Bodhgaya Stupa
- Vajra Brothers and Sisters Have a Say: Terry Griffith-Ladner
- May
- How a Doctor-Lama Manifests as the Medicine Buddha
- Mental and Physical Illness Can Be Caused by Spirits
- Practicing the Art of Tibetan Buddhist Healing
- Spirit Influence Is the Result of Karma from the Person’s Previous Lives
- Successful Treatment of AIDS, Cancer and other Diseases by Tibetan Medicine
- The Passing Scene: May-June 2000
- Vajra Brothers and Sisters Have a Say: Carleen Gonder
- Ven. Lobsang Rinchen
- July
- September
- A Lama Comes of Age
- A new generation of Tibetan lamas
- Competition or Compassion?
- Competition or Compassion?
- Countering Violence in Colombia
- Give Peace a Dance
- Keeping cultures alive in exile: Tibetan children go to Israel
- Mandalas as Tools for Peace
- MindTrip
- Peace on this planet is in the hands of young people
- PeaceJam
- Six thousand Oregon Teenagers to meet His Holiness the Dalai Lama
- November
- January
- Older Archives
- Mandala for 1999
- January
- March
- 150 People Experience the Joy of Serving
- Advice from Shantideva: “Please Become a Kind Person”
- Australian and New Zealand Geshes Enjoy Themselves in Laid-back Subtropical Queensland
- Education Fund Supports Talent and Creative Initiative
- FPMT European Geshes Meet in London: A Conference with a Difference
- Geshe Jampel Senge
- Helping to Make Things Better
- His Holiness the Dalai Lama Teaches on Shantideva in Bodhgaya
- Home Truths: March-April 1999
- Lama Osel’s News
- Nalanda: A New Building to House Forty Monks
- New Education Services for FPMT Centers
- Stupa of Universal Compassion: Re-creating a Building Designed in the Fifteenth Century to Last for 1,000 Years
- That is My Home, My Home is Up There
- The Lawudo Lama Returns
- The Passing Scene: March-April 1999
- Useful Meeting
- Ven. Thubten Samphel
- May
- A Buddhist Approach to Mental Illness
- Gelek Rinpoche
- Home Truths: May-June 1999
- How to Deal with “Meditator’s Disease”
- Ksitigarbha Bodhisattva
- Lama Ösel’s News
- Sam-Lo Geshe Kelsang
- The Making of a Buddha
- The Passing Scene: May-June 1999
- The Power of the Human Heart: Transforming Asia’s Biggest Prison
- The Practice of Ksitigarbha to Avert Danger and Purify Obstacles
- Ven. Thubten Khadro
- July
- Accompanying Children to Their Death
- Changing Suffering into Happiness
- Changing Suffering into Happiness: Andrew Vahldieck, USA
- Changing Suffering into Happiness: Elea Redel, France
- Changing Suffering into Happiness: Isabel Amorim, Brazil
- Changing Suffering into Happiness: Skye Banning, Australia
- Home Truths: July-August 1999
- Ven. Marcel Bertels
- September
- A Day in the Life of Western Monks at Sera Je
- Advice from the Virtuous Friend, His Holiness the Dalai Lama
- Chime Lama
- Fifty People Successfully Complete First Five-year Course of Basic Program in the Netherlands
- Geshe Acharya Thubten Loden
- Home Truths: September-October 1999
- How St. Francis Lost Everything and Found his Way
- Journey to Realms beyond Death
- Lama Ösel’s News
- Receiving the Blessings of Chenrezig Himself
- Reclaiming Life on Death Row
- The Passing Scene: September-October 1999
- Vajra Brothers and Sisters Have a Say: September-October 1999
- November
- Believing in Social Justice Principles
- Feng-shui: Tai-chi for the Environment
- Geshe Doga
- Geshe Yeshe Tobden
- Gomang Khensur Kelsang Thapkey Rinpoche
- Helping Others with a Good Motivation is Dharma Practice
- Home Truths: November-December 1999
- In Praise of Dorje Den, Lama Yeshe’s Dog
- Kirti Tsenshab Rinpoche Honored by Mexican Indians
- Lama Ösel’s News
- Lama Yeshe Losal
- The Passing Scene: November-December 1999
- Unashamedly Beautiful Housing for Melbourne’s Elderly Homeless
- Ven. Tenzin Jangsem
- Wintringham Wins World Habitat Award
- Mandala for 1998
- January
- “Surprise and joy”
- Bad and Good Depend on the Individual Person’s Interpretation
- Choosing a Life Without Attachment
- Colors of the Dharma:
- Fulfilling a Lifelong Calling to Heal Leprosy
- Fund-Raising Event in Singapore Attended by 5,500
- Geshe Lobsang Dorje
- Home Truths
- Lama Osel’s News
- Letter to Lama Zopa from the Staff of FPMT International Office
- Maitreya Project Gaining Momentum
- New Director of FPMT International Office
- Putting Compassion into Action
- The Keeper of Lawudo
- The Passing Scene
- Tibetan Monk-Scholar Visits Taiwan to Research the Chinese Bhikshuni Tradition
- Transforming Hardships into Realizations
- When We Study Buddhism We Study Ourselves
- March
- A Blissful Festival of Dharma
- Geshe Tenzin Tenphel
- Home Truths: March-April 1998
- Lama Osel’s News
- Monks Walk through Asia for Inner Peace/World Peace
- On Pilgrimage with Ribur Rinpoche and Lama Zopa Rinpoche
- The Benefits of the Existence of Statues and of Making Statues
- The Blessings of Chenrezig Himself: the Guarantee of Future Success
- The Hermit of the Pyrenees
- The Passing Scene: March-April 1998
- The Purpose of Religion
- Twenty Thousand People Attend Teachings in Bodhgaya by His Holiness the Dalai Lama
- Wutaishan’s Natural Wonder, the Sky-Gazing Great Buddha
- May
- Empowering the Homeless Youth of San Francisco
- Everything Comes from the Mind
- Home Truths: May-June 1998
- Khensur Lobsang Thubten Rinpoche
- Lama Ösel’s News
- Looking into the Future
- Loving Oneself
- The Compassion and Vastness of the Minds of the Lamas
- The Passing Scene: May-June 1998
- Using Your Mind Can Be Fun
- July
- Aaron Morrison, 23, American
- Aida Rius, 19, Spanish
- Angela Furio, 18, Spanish
- Arturo, 22, Mexican
- Christopher Kelley, 24, American
- Felicity Keeley, 11, American
- Fong Huey Yee, 18, Singaporean
- Holly, 12, and Greenfield Nguyen, 14, Vietnamese-American
- Home Truths: July-August 1998
- Jasmilhe Uchitsubo, 16, Japanese
- Jesse Tate Wistreich, 20, English
- Josephine Ross, 15, Australian
- Kalu Davis, 15, Australian
- Kim Tate Wistreich, 11, English
- Lama Tenzin Osel Rinpoche, 13, Spanish
- Lama Yeshe Talks to His Monks and Nuns
- Lungtog Rinpoche, 13, Chinese
- Marlon Vassallo, 20, Italian
- Melissa Carlisle, 23, Singaporean
- Moana Strom, 15, American
- Sangha Shouldn’t Pay
- Shannon Kincaid, 21, American
- The Passing Scene: July-August 1998
- Tom Andrews, 15, Australian
- Ven. Lozang Chodzin, 25, New Zealander
- Ven. Tenzin Chhime (Ven. Holly Ansett), 23, Australian
- Ven. Thubten Dagme, 20, American
- September
- January
- Mandala for 1997
- January
- A Celebration of Kindness: The Dalai Lama in New Zealand
- A Tibetan Pilgrimage
- A Vision for the Future
- Building Bridges
- Educating Monks and Nuns
- From Here to Enlightenment: Education Sentient Beings
- Geshe Ngawang Dakpa
- Home Truths: January-February 1997
- How to Attract People to the Dharma Centers
- Implementing the Basic Program of Buddhist Studies
- Lama Osel’s News
- Not All Who Wander Are Lost
- Teaching
- The Passing Scene: January-February 1997
- What Tibetans Do with their Dead
- March
- May
- Geshe Tsulga
- Home Truths: May-June 1997
- Kopan Monastery: A New Era for Kathmandu Center
- Kopan Monastery: Coming Home
- Kopan Monastery: Kopan the Mother
- Kopan Monastery: The Wellspring of FPMT
- Kopan Monastery’s New Gompa: Loved, Lived in and Full of Dharma
- Lama Osel’s News
- Mogchok Rinpoche Arrives at Nalanda
- Relating to Your Path
- Remembering Death
- The Passing Scene: May-June 1997
- Training Tibetan Translators
- July
- Anger
- Attachment: The Biggest Problem on Earth
- Climbing a Mountain with Both Hands
- Facing the Disharmony within Ourselves: Making Dharma Centers Work
- Going Beyond Hope and Fear
- Home Truths: July-August 1997
- Khensur Kangurwa Lobsang Thubten Rinpoche
- Lama Ösel’s News
- Many Ways to Work with the Mind
- Mongolian Renaissance
- The Passing Scene: July-August 1997
- Letter from a Meditator
- September
- A Day in the Life of an FPMT Lama
- Death, Intermediate State and Rebirth
- Give Your Ego the Wisdom Eye
- Home Truths: September-October 1997
- How to Benefit the Dying and the Dead
- Journeying Skillfully from Life to Life
- Looking Forward to Death
- Nine Ways to Help the Dying
- The Passing Scene: September-October 1997
- We Die as We Live
- November
- A Day in the Life of an FPMT Lama
- Beauty is in the “I” of the Beholder
- Buddhism Breaks into Prison
- Finding Freedom: Practicing Dharma in Prison
- His Holiness the Dalai Lama, the “eternal optimist”
- Home Truths: November-December 1997
- Lama Osel’s News
- Lama Zopa on the Road in America
- Letters from Prison: J.W. Johnson
- Letters from Prison: Jimmy Tribble
- Letters from Prison: Milo Rusimovic
- Letters from Prison: Paul Dewey
- Letters from Prison: Timothy Haremza
- Maitreya Project tackles the engineering challenges involved in building a statue to last for 1000 years
- Ode to John Schwartz
- Prisoners
- Searching for a Way to Leave No One Behind: The Transformation of a Mexican Gangster
- Searching for a Way to Leave No One Behind: The Transformation of a Mexican Gangster
- The Passing Scene: November-December 1997
- Thirty people to start seven-yearFPMT Master’s Program
- Writings from Death Row
- January
- Mandala for 1996
- January
- Reversing the Energy of Addiction
- The Passing Scene: January-February 1996
- A New Generation of Young Lamas
- Geshe Losang Tengye
- Home Truths: January-February 1996
- The Great Stupa of Australia
- The Benefits of Building Stupas
- The Magnificent Legacy of Rabten Kunsang
- He Is My Guru and I Am Going With Him
- Reflections on a Guru/Disciple Relationship
- Lama Osel’s News
- March
- May
- July
- September
- “Seeking joy and freedom from sufferingis the birthright of all beings”
- A Longing to Change
- A Monastery to Last until Maitreya Comes
- Buddhist Monks and Nuns: A Community of White Crows
- Chenrezig Nuns: Harmoniously Growing
- Geshe Tashi Tsering
- Home Truths: September-October 1996
- IMI Communities: Nalanda is Reborn
- Italian Monks and Nuns in ‘Precarious Equilibrium’
- Lama Osel’s News
- Ordination, Who? Me?
- Taiwanese Sangha
- The Benefits of Being Monks and Nuns
- The Passing Scene: September-October 1996
- Tibetan Geshe Offers Money to Help Western Sangha
- Western Monks and Nuns: Taking Care of Our Own Reality
- With Vows, You Don’t Do The Ordinary
- November
- A Day in the Life of an FMPT Lama: Geshe Thubten Dawa
- Beyond Extraordinary: His Holiness the Dalai Lama in Australia
- Dalai Lama Gives to Charity the $750,000 Offered to Him
- Geshe Lhundup Sopa
- Home Truths: November-December 1996
- Lama Osel’s News
- The Compassion Buddha is no other than Your Holiness
- The Making of the Universe
- The Passing Scene: November-December 1996
- January
- Mandala for 1995
- Mandala for 1992
- Mandala for 1990
- April
- Bringing it Home … to the land of Abraham Lincoln and Mickey Mouse
- Creating the Causes: Special Advice on the Guru Shakyamuni Puja from Lama Zopa Rinpoche
- FPMT, Not Just for the West
- Is Stability the Goal?
- It Takes Time
- Leprosy in Bodhgaya: A Long Way to Go
- Membership Provides Stability
- On Becoming Vegetarian
- To Wear Pain Like an Ornament
- October
- April
- Mandala for 1989
- April
- As a Monk in the World
- Excerpts from an Interview of Piero Cerri
- His Holiness the Dalai Lama Speaks on the 30th Anniversary of the Tibetan Uprising – March 10, 1989
- His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s Message to the WCRP
- Life in a Residential City Center
- My First Retreat
- Putting into Practice
- Remember the Guru’s Kindness
- The Meaning of Vezak Day
- The Tantric Way in Daily Life
- Transforming Motherhood into the Path
- October
- April
- Mandala for 1988
- April
- A Talk about Nalanda
- An Interview with Tenzin Palmo
- Chronicle of a Special Child
- Focus on Full Ordination for Buddhist Women
- It Isn’t “Out There” Anymore
- Lam-Rim: A Teaching by Geshe Jampa Tegchok
- Now Is the Time When Action is Practice
- Our First and Final Meeting with the Panchen Lama Who Passed Away on January 28, 1989
- Reflections from a New Bhikshuni
- The Twelve Links of Dependent Arising
- Universal Education: On Becoming One
- World Conference on Religion and Peace
- October
- April
- Mandala for 1987
- Mandala for 1984
- Wisdom #2 – 1984
- A Prayer for the Quick Return of Kyabje Ling Rinpoche
- A Prayer for the Quick Return of Tsenshab Serkong Rinpoche
- Extracts from a Mönlam Diary
- How to Let Go, How to Integrate Emptiness in Everyday Life
- Lama Thubten Yeshe, 1935-1984
- Making a Home for Future Nuns
- Nalanda Monastery
- Bodhichitta: The Perfection of Dharma
- They Can Change Their Minds and They Can Become More Harmonious
- We Should Be Very Harmonious and Try to Help Each Other
- Willing to Do Anything to Help
- Lama Was a Great Yogi
- A Prayer for the Kind Father Guru to Return Quickly
- Lama Zopa Rinpoche: One of the Young Lamas Who Is Special
- Our Heart Jewel, Our Wish-granting Gem
- The Activities That Lama Yeshe Performed Are the Activities of All Holy Beings
- Now Here Is a Real Yogi
- The Difference a Single Person Can Make
- Who Simply Breathed Goodness
- The Wind Moaning Down the Valley Is Your Breath
- Getting away from It All
- Teachers
- Journey to Spiti
- Short in Body but Tall in Knowledge
- Kyabje Yongdzin Ling Dorjechang
- Meetings: Opening Our Hearts to Each Other
- Kyabje Song Rinpoche
- Tsenshab Serkong Rinpoche
- Wisdom #2 – 1984
- Mandala for 1983
- Mandala for 1999
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*powered by Google TranslateTranslation of pages on fpmt.org is performed by Google Translate, a third party service which FPMT has no control over. The service provides automated computer translations that are only an approximation of the websites' original content. The translations should not be considered exact and only used as a rough guide.When Lord Buddha spoke about suffering, he wasn’t referring simply to superficial problems like illness and injury, but to the fact that the dissatisfied nature of the mind itself is suffering.