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International Office News
November 2016
Lama Zopa Rinpoche during a puja offering, Washington State, USA, November 2016. Photo by Ven. Roger Kunsang.
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New from FPMT Education Services
Eleven Guru Rinpoche Statues Arrive at Lawudo Retreat Centre
Released! Mandala January-June 2017
FPMT Education Program Updates
Update on the New Affiliates Area
Will Your Center Need an Interpreter in 2017?
Fulfilling Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s Vast Vision: Serving His Holiness the Dalai Lama
Book Now for the Foundation Service Seminar
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 News:
Activities and Advice
Highlights from our blogs:
“In regards to the recent election in the United States, I wanted to suggest that you make prayers that loving kindness, compassion and bodhichitta be generated in the heart of Mr. Trump, all the government people and everybody else in the country, and even in the heart of people in other countries. In that way everybody in the United States and in the world can enjoy perfect peace and happiness…” Read the full letter …
Lama Zopa Rinpoche visiting New York City, US, August 2016
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The Benefits of
Serving a Dharma Center
Lama Zopa Rinpoche sent his thanks to a student who had served an FPMT center for many years:
“Billions, zillion, trillion times numberless thanks to you for working with your body, speech, and mind in the center…. In the morning when you come to work, think this: ‘I am going to work for all sentient beings, to free them from oceans of samsaric suffering and to bring them to peerless happiness.’ That’s the motivation for all day long for body, speech, and mind—it doesn’t matter what you do.” Read in full …
Time Is Emptiness; Emptiness Is Time
“This is a very good meditation on emptiness,” says Lama Zopa Rinpoche in his book Kadampa Teachings, adding, “It’s simple but profound, and gives us a clear understanding. When we hear or think of one year, ‘Oh, it takes one year to do that,’ whether it’s study or travel, it’s a real one year, one that exists from its own side. Now, when you analyze that one year, you find that it is labeled on the base, twelve months. ‘One year’ is imputed by your mind to the base, twelve months.” Read in full …
“Merely seeing this mantra purifies 100 eons of negative karma,” says Lama Zopa Rinpoche, adding, “This is said by Buddha in the sutra Pagpa Chu Lung Rolpai Do.” Read in full …
Find a wide range of advice from Lama Zopa Rinpoche on Rinpoche’s Advice page.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche giving a teaching to two people who came up to meet him in a coffee shop, Washington State, USA, November 2016. Photo by Ven. Roger Kunsang.
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Schedule
November – December 4 – Teaching during part of the one-month lam-rim course, Kopan Monastery, Nepal
December 5 – Long life puja offered to Lama Zopa Rinpoche, Kopan Monastery, Nepal
December 18 – 23 – Teachings at Choe Khor Sum Ling, Bangalore, India
2017
April 1 – 30 – Teachings and celebration in Korea for the Jade Buddha for Universal Peace, a project of the Great Stupa of Universal Compassion
May 6 – 14 – Teachings and initiation, Golden Light Sutra Center and Ganden Do Ngag Shedrup Ling, Mongolia
May 20 – June 5 – Teachings and initiation, Ganden Tendar Ling, Russia
August 20 – September 17 – Light of the Path retreat, Kadampa Center, USA
October 4 – November 5 – Mani retreat, Istituto Lama Tzong Khapa, Italy
Subscribe to our FPMT news blog to get updates as soon as they are announced. Enjoy livestreams of many of the teachings above and recordings of Rinpoche’s most recent teachings via Rinpoche Available Now!
International Office News:
News from FPMT Education Services
Lama Zopa Rinpoche recently updated the design of a Samantabhadra protection card for one’s home or office. We’re pleased to make this protection card available as a printable PDF.
“Praises to the Twenty-One Taras” is now available as an ebook and includes Tibetan phonetics, chantable English version, and English translation.
Living in the Path module “The Happiness of Dharma” has been recently updated with a wonderful video from Ven. Thubten Dondrub.
Eleven Guru Rinpoche Statues
Arrive at Lawudo Retreat Centre
Eleven large Guru Rinpoche (Padmasambhava) statues—one 13.5 feet (4 meters) tall and the others over 2 feet (.6 meters) tall—were recently transported by airlift up to their new home in Lawudo Retreat Centre, Nepal. The Padmasambhava Project for Peace has been able to offer the cost for the statues and also toward the incredible effort required to get these precious holy objects to their new home at an altitude of 13,000 feet (3,962 meters). Lama Zopa Rinpoche has expressed, time and again, the unimaginable power of holy objects to purify negative karma and create extensive merit for all who come in contact with them. About Guru Rinpoche statues, Rinpoche has said, “Building Guru Rinpoche statues will bring immeasurable benefit, peace, happiness, and freedom to the world. They will have immeasurable impact.”
Released! Mandala January-June 2017
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Mandala January-June 2017 is in the mail! This issue’s theme is “How to Practice Dharma.” In it, we explore what it means to really practice Dharma. We share Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s advice on meeting hardships on the path from his book How to Practice Dharma. Ven. Gyalten Lekden describes the incredible efforts of Buddhist yogis in their encounters with difficulties. Plus we have teachings from Ribur Rinpoche and Lama Yeshe and stories of practice from several FPMT students.
In addition to the print issue, we’ve published several online-only pieces, including a an excerpt about Gelug mahasiddha Gyelwa Ensapa from Jan Willis’s Enlightened Beings: Life Stories from the Ganden Oral Tradition, an interview with Buddhist scholar Roger Jackson, and “Buddha Was a Grassroots Organizer” by Ven. Lozang Yönten. For this and more, see Mandala January-June 2017.
Mandala is offered as a benefit to supporters of the Friends of FPMT program, which provides funding for the educational, charitable and online work of FPMT.
Give a Gift That Helps Others
For the second consecutive holiday season, FPMT International Office is offering an alternative to giving material gifts. Instead, give a gift that helps others! After you choose one of four FPMT charitable projects to support, you’ll receive an e-card or printed card highlighting the effects of your donation, which you can give to your loved one. We’re sure they’ll rejoice knowing that you chose to make a positive impact for others on their behalf! Learn more and pick your gift.
For Center, Project and Service Directors, SPCs, Board Members, Registered Teachers and Coordinators:
This advice is specifically for those offering service in these roles.
FPMT Education Program Updates
A new Basic Program Online (BP) subject, “Ornament for Clear Realization: Chapter 4” came out this month. All nine BP subjects needed for program completion are now offered on the FPMT Online Learning Center (OLC). With the three-month review and BP final exam also facilitated on the OLC, the option of graduation has become available for BP online students.
A major update of the Basic Program materials web page, accessible through the FPMT Affiliates Area, includes many corrected, updated, and new translations, meditations, and transcripts. Check it out! For centers offering BP: please download the list of all available materials with updates indicated.
The Masters Program materials web page also includes some new and updated files. Here as well, the materials list indicates all updates.
Update on the New Affiliates Area
Our new, password-protected Affiliates Area will launch December 5. Look out for your email invitation!
The Affiliates Area is an online resource that will replace the FPMT Affiliates Area, and is essentially the FPMT Handbook completely online. The Affiliates Area has been designed to include a powerful search function and intuitive links throughout to make it much easier for you to find the information you need.
Will Your Center Need an Interpreter in 2017?
Yaron Bahir, director of Lotsawa Rinchen Zangpo Translator Program (LRZTP) 7, recently said via the CPMT e-group, “LRZTP 7 has just started the second year of the classroom-based training of interpreters. This means that in less than a year (October 2017), qualified graduates will be ready to come to serve as interpreters for geshes resident in FPMT centers!
“Fourteen LRZTP 7 students are committed to working in an FPMT center. So now I can offer you the opportunity to make a connection with a student who will come to work as an interpreter in your center.”
Don’t miss this opportunity! Contact Yaron now if there is a possibility that your center might need a new interpreter or be able to host a resident geshe next year.
Offering Service
Please see the new section—”Offering Service”—on Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s Advice page for inspiration, advice, and encouragement while offering service to the FPMT organization. We hope you will find many beneficial teachings to support you, your staff, and your volunteers!
FPMT World:
Rejoice:
Fulfilling Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s Vast Vision:
Serving His Holiness the Dalai Lama
With organizational help from numerous FPMT volunteers, the city of Strasbourg, France, hosted His Holiness the Dalai Lama in September. “FPMT centers helping to organize teachings by His Holiness strengthens our link to him and preserves the lineage,” said director of Institut Vajra Yogini François Lecointre. “Lama Zopa Rinpoche has said clearly many times that our number one priority as an organization is to serve His Holiness by all means possible. So it is great to be involved in organizing his events.” Read more about the visit …
Upcoming Major Retreats
Visit the Retreat Schedule page to find specific dates and more information about these and other retreats scheduled at FPMT centers around the world:
Retreats with Lama Zopa Rinpoche:
Light of the Path Retreat, USA, August-September 2017
100 Million Mani Retreat, Italy, October-November 2017
Highlighted FPMT retreats:
Heruka Five Deities retreat, Spain, January-March 2017
Yamantaka approximation retreat, UK, March-April 2017
Vajrayogini approximation retreat, UK, July-August 2017
Book Now for the Foundation Service Seminar
Click here to register for the FPMT Foundation Service Seminar (with a Facilitator Training component), which is being offered February 3-10, 2017, at Land of Medicine Buddha, California, USA.
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.
Root Institute, India, is looking for help in its Project Development and Outreach department; Land of Joy, UK, has various new volunteer positions.
Impermanence at Work
Centro Shiwa Lha, Brazil
Rua Ribeiro de Almeida 23, Laranjeiras, Rio de Janeiro, RJ 22240-060
We welcome new spiritual program coordinator (SPC) – Terezinha Vilela
With grateful thanks to outgoing SPC – Ven. Kunsang
Nagarjuna C.E.T. Alicante, Spain
We welcome new director – Isabel Belso
With grateful thanks to outgoing director – Ven. Paloma Alba
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