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International Office News
August 2015
New Lama Zopa Rinpoche Photo Albums
Recent Grants Offered by the FPMT Social Services Fund
Newest Online Feature from Mandala
How Friends of FPMT Repays the Kindness of Donors
International Merit Box Project
Advice from Lama Zopa Rinpoche
Skillfully Developing Inner and Outer Methods
How to Run a Dharma Organization
Celebrating FPMT’s Thirteenth International Sangha Day!
Have this translated into your native language by using our convenient translation facility located on the right-hand side of the page. French and Spanish speakers will find the FPMT International Office News translated each month in the “Bienvenue” and “Bienvenidos” tabs on the FPMT homepage!
Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s News:
News, Activities and Advice
Highlights from our blogs on FPMT.org:
Real Buddhism Is Not to Harm Others
“Buddha is like the doctor because, as I’ve explained, we have disease and he has medicine,” Lama Zopa Rinpoche teaches in a new video on FPMT’s YouTube channel. “Dharma is like the medicine. The Sangha is like the nurse. When you take refuge in the Dharma, when you rely on Dharma, what you have to abandon is harming others, even by death. Through understanding, when you take the refuge ceremony, when you take refuge in Dharma, rely on Dharma – try not to harm yourself, try not to harm others. …” Read more …
How to Think During Relationship Problems
One of hundreds of buddha statues at Buddha Amitabha Pure Land, Washington, US.
Photo by Chris Majors.
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A student was going through relationship problems and Lama Zopa Rinpoche offered some advice on how to think while experiencing them:
“All the problems are very good because they purify negative karma accumulated in the past. All those difficulties and problems in your life purify past very heavy negative karmas collected in many past lifetimes. And, by purifying those, you will experience much happiness in the future like the sun shining. So, it’s positive”. Read more …
‘Practicing Patience Is
So, So, So, Important’
“It is extremely important to pay attention to patience in everyday life,” Lama Zopa Rinpoche said in “The Most Important Practice of Patience,” a teaching made available as part of Mandala‘s July-December 2015 online content. “Not only we who want to practice lam-rim – the graduated path to enlightenment – but even nonbelievers need to practice patience so that their relationships with their wives, parents, friends, even with outside relationships, can last longer.” Read more …
Keep up to date with Lama Zopa Rinpoche News. Find a wide range of advice from Lama Zopa Rinpoche on Rinpoche’s Advice page. Go to the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive for lots more advice from Lama Zopa Rinpoche.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche at Maitreya Instituut Loenen, the Netherlands, July 2015.
Photo by Ven. Thubten Kunsang.
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Rinpoche’s Schedule
August 21, 27, 28: Teachings, Shantideva Meditation Center, USA
August 30: Long life initiation of Most Secret Hayagriva, 10 a.m., 41 – 01 75th Street Elmhurst, New York 11373, USA
September 5 – 12: Lam-rim retreat in Mexico
September 18 – 20: Teaching, lam-rim retreat and initiation, Centro Yamantaka, Colombia
September 25 – 27: Teaching, lam-rim retreat, Centro Shiwa Lha, Brazil
Nov/Dec: Teachings during the one-month lam-rim course, Kopan Monastery, Nepal
September 11 – 26, 2016: Light of the Path retreat, Kadampa Center, USA
Please contact the hosts directly with any questions. Subscribe to our FPMT news blog to get updates as soon as they are announced.
Rinpoche Available Now – Enjoy livestreams of many of the teachings above and recordings of Rinpoche’s most recent teachings!
International Office News:
New Lama Zopa Rinpoche Photo Albums
Several photo albums featuring Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s activities around the world have been posted to FPMT.org for students and supporters to enjoy.
Recent Grants Offered by the FPMT Social Services Fund
The Social Services Fund was established to support Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s Vast Visions for the FPMT organization by offering grants to beneficial charitable activities. The following grants are made possible due to the kindness of our generous donors. Thanks to all who contribute to these, and many more, charitable activities that benefit so may in need around the world.
Please join us in rejoicing that over US$166,600 in grants have been offered recently to support many beneficial activities including:
MAITRI Charitable Trust in their ongoing efforts to provide essential education, medical care, aid, and other charitable services to the people and animals of Bodhgaya, India, which is the poorest and most densely populated area in the country; The Animal Liberation Sanctuary in Nepal in support of their incredibly compassionate work providing shelter and care for animals rescued from being killed, so that they may live out their natural lives in peace and attain a higher rebirth; Rolwaling Sangag Choling Monastery School to help with a desperately needed hostel for young Nepali school children; and FPMT Mongolia’s Lamp of the Path NGO to offer social services to some of the poor and homeless living in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.
Newest Online Feature from Mandala
In May 2015, Ven. Losang Drimay, teacher and resident at Land of Medicine Buddha in Soquel, California, was one of 12 Buddhists to meet with 17 Catholics at Gethsemani Encounter IV. The first Encounter took place nearly 20 years earlier at the Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani, the home and retreat of the late Trappist monk, writer and mystic Thomas Merton (1915-1968) in New Haven, Kentucky in the United States. His Holiness the Dalai Lama, who was a friend of Merton, attended the first Encounter. Ven. Drimay shares her experience in Mandala‘s newest online feature: “Finding Freshness: Ven. Losang Drimay Attends the Interfaith Gethsemani Encounter IV.”
How Friends of FPMT Repays the Kindness of Donors
The Friends program is an essential source of funding for the Foundation’s success, and we’re happy to be able to repay our Friends of FPMT supporters’ kindness with free and easy access to hundreds of FPMT education materials and Mandala magazine. Learn more and join here …
International Merit Box Project
A simple practice from your home can greatly benefit communities around the world. Order a free Merit Box kit for your altar today!
Sign up to receive daily posts of all FPMT news blogs via email.
For Center, Project and Service Directors, SPCs, Board Members, Registered
Teachers and Coordinators:
This advice is specifically for those offering service in the roles listed above.
Advice from Lama Zopa Rinpoche
Skillfully Developing Inner and Outer Methods
An excerpt from Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s talk to participants in the recent European regional meeting at Maitreya Instituut Loenen, the Netherlands. Rinpoche talked about the goal of the FPMT; how the organization is doing; how to create the causes for success and overcome obstacles (we’ll get you the prayer Rinpoche refers to soon); and how to build up a center:
“Our goal is to benefit sentient beings, [help them achieve] the ultimate happiness – liberation from oceans of samsara, and achieve enlightenment, peerless happiness.
… What you want is success, happiness, being beneficial to others. What is success? To be beneficial to others. Maybe non-Dharma organizations want success for yourself. But here success is for others, your life to be successful for others. So this is a very, very important thing.
… So now the organization [FPMT] got better. As I said many times, for many years the organization developed, now seems generally speaking [there is] more compassion, which is very, very important, very, very, very, very important to become more compassionate in nature, become that nature, rather than more angry, more selfish. Otherwise your having met Dharma has no purpose, becomes only intellectual, but you haven’t really achieved something.”
The video and full edited transcript of this teaching are up in the FPMT Affiliates Area. Many thanks to Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive for providing the transcript!
How to Run a Dharma Organization
Lama Zopa Rinpoche blessing a 17-year-old dog, Maitreya Instituut Loenen, the Netherlands, July 2015.
Photo by Ven. Thubten Kunsang.
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An excerpt from Rinpoche’s July teachings at Maitreya Instituut Loenen, the Netherlands. These teachings are so powerful for those of us offering service within the Foundation and also help us understand Ven. Roger Kunsang’s role in the organization!
” … [T]here is no FPMT center separate from the students. FPMT is a real Dharma organization run with compassion, not just running a company. The organization is getting better and better. It is run with compassion. That is a Dharma organization, taking care of people’s minds. … Now FPMT is getting better, there is basically more understanding of Dharma and more collecting merit, so it is getting better and better.”
Read the full edited advice. The video and the unedited transcript are up on Rinpoche Available Now (see teachings for July 11, 2015).
FPMT World:
Celebrating FPMT’s Thirteenth International Sangha Day!
From Luz Bella Ramírez, coordinator of Chekawa Study Group, Mexico:
“With much joy and a big effort, we at Chekawa finally gathered and sent the donation for the Lama Yeshe Sangha Fund – I’m very glad! Since we’ve been low in finances and didn’t seem to be able to collect the donation amount, we decided to make pizzas and sell them over the weekend! So this year we celebrated International Sangha Day working hard in the kitchen! I’m very happy to say that in the end, adding up our collected coins and with a few additional contributions from kind and generous people, we could send our donation for our beloved monastic community yesterday – isn’t that nice!”
Opportunities to Offer Service in FPMT
Please check out the regularly updated meritorious opportunities to offer service as a volunteer or as paid staff in FPMT centers, projects and services around the world.
Land of Medicine Buddha, California, USA, is looking for an assistant director; Land of Joy, UK, needs a spiritual program coordinator, a cook, an office assistant and a housekeeper.
Impermanence at Work
Dharmakaya Study Group Now a Center! Dharmakaya started as an FPMT study group back in 2012, in Reno, Nevada, USA, and we rejoice that founding coordinator Trey Ligon and his team have enabled the study group to transition into a full FPMT center affiliated with FPMT, Inc.!
Australia National Office
We welcome new national coordinator – Peter Stickels
With grateful thanks to previous national coordinator – Helen Patrin
Centro Terra di Unificazione Ewam, Italy
Via Pistoiese 149/C
50145 Firenze
Chag-tong Chen-tong Centre, Australia
166 Warwick St West, Hobart, Tasmania.
Tel: (+61) 484381713
Dharmakaya Center, USA
We welcome new and first spiritual program coordinator (SPC) – Anne Ligon
South East Asia Regional Office
We welcome new regional coordinator – Doris Low
With grateful thanks to previous regional coordinator – Tara Melwani
With love,
FPMT International Office
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