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Advice from Lama Zopa Rinpoche
Spiritual Director of FPMT
Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s
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For more advice from Lama Zopa Rinpoche on a wide range of topics in the form of short talks and letters go to the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive
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Keep Your Wisdom in the Pure Path
Lama Zopa Rinpoche arriving at Buddha House, Adelaide, Australia, May 2018. Photo by Ven. Lobsang Sherab.
In this short video clip from a teaching given at the 2016 Light of the Path retreat, Lama Zopa Rinpoche, while explaining the meaning of a Tibetan phase, discusses the importance of studying one path well in order to avoid confusion and the degeneration of one’s wisdom.
“Keep your wisdom in the pure path,” Lama Zopa Rinpoche instructs. “Pure view, pure conduct, a subdued mind, wisdom.”
In order to do this, Rinpoche advises to not dilute and confuse your efforts by trying many types of teachings.
“You start this, then start this, start this, start this,” Rinpoche says with this hand gesturing in different directions. “Then your wisdom is not set in the best direction, best view, best conduct.”
You even become unsure and unclear about Lama Tsongkhapa’s teachings, Rinpoche explains. When you try different things, “at the end you are lost, at the end you are not sure, you are confused.”
However, after studying well on one path and making sure that you have correct meditation, conduct, and view, Rinpoche says, then when you learn about other paths, due to that correct basis, you are able to understand, to recognize other methods and paths, and to be able to discriminate between them.
It is like going to a buffet at a restaurant and tasting all the different food. If you do that with the teachings, you could end up like someone for whom Lama Tsongkhapa’s teachings mean nothing.
“What is mediation, what is conduct, what is pure view—the real path,” Rinpoche warns that those things could mean nothing to you. “You are lost.”
Watch “Keep Your Wisdom with Pure View and Conduct” on YouTube:
https://youtu.be/i_Xr4CuIb00
The quotes from Lama Zopa Rinpoche have been edited and are based on the unedited transcript of the 2016 Light of the Path retreat, which you can find here with video recordings of the complete teachings:
https://fpmt.org/media/streaming/teachings-of-lama-zopa-rinpoche/light-of-the-path-teachings-2016/
Find and watch video from all of Rinpoche’s recent teachings events, including from Chan Tong Chen Tong Centre in Tasmania and the Great Stupa of Universal Compassion in Bendigo, Australia:
https://fpmt.org/media/streaming/teachings-of-lama-zopa-rinpoche/
Lama Zopa Rinpoche is the spiritual director of the Foundation for the Preservation of Mahayana Tradition (FPMT), a Tibetan Buddhist organization dedicated to the transmission of the Mahayana Buddhist tradition and values worldwide through teaching, meditation, and community service.
- Helping Stray Dogs: A Thank You Letter from Rinpoche (posted February 20, 2017)
- How to Benefit Animals
- How to Benefit Insects and Other Small Beings (posted January 4, 2017)
- Request to stop animal sacrifice in Nepal (November 2009)
- Liberating Animals Practice
- Sign ‘Please Don’t Hunt’
- Turkeys – Help Them on Thanksgiving
For more advice from Rinpoche on this subject in the form of short talks and letters, please go to Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive
- Benefit of Centers
- Benefits of Study Groups and Centers
- Can’t Think Like a Normal Organization
- Centers Must Help Their Own Students
- Collect Merit So Easily at the Center
- Dharma Centers – Why Do They Exist
- Dharma is Needed for the Happiness of Sentient Beings
- Dragons at the Doors of Centers
- FPMT Organization – How it Started
- FPMT Education – Essence of
- FPMT Education and Organization
- FPMT Helps at the Time of Death
- Gong to Call All Buddhas & Bodhisattvas
Drawing of Gong » - How Fortunate and Happy We Are!
- How to Bless Tea Sold at a Center (posted January 30, 2017)
- How to Practice: Advice to a Study Group (condensed advice for each of us on how to practice for our entire lives)
- Incredible Benefit Offered by FPMT Centers, Projects and Services
- ‘In the Centers, Everything That Is Done Is for Sentient Beings’ (posted September 20, 2017)
- Need for Organization
- Remembering the Kindness PrayerRinpoche would like this prayer used throughout the organization. The prayer should be done following the Prayer that Spontaneously Fulfills All Wishes (Tong nyi nying je ….) at the end of dedication prayers.
Prayers for His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Tibet (for those without Prayer Books) - The Role of the Center and Study Group in Providing a Dharma Education
- The Purpose of the Center Building
- Sangha are the Heroes
- Sur Offering
- Why We Need Dharma and Dharma Centers
- Why We Need Dharma Centers!
- Wish for Us to Achieve Realizations
For more advice from Rinpoche on Centers and the FPMT Organization in the form of short talks and letters, please go to Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive.
- Heart Advice and Practices
- Rejoice before Dying (posted March 4, 2016)
For more advice from Rinpoche on this subject in the form of short talks and letters, please go to Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive – “Death and Transitions” and Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive – “Sickness and Health”.
- Benefits of Having Many Holy Objects
- Benefits of the Prayer Wheel
- Benefits of Offering Gold to Statues
- Eight Auspicious Symbols
- Essential Mantras for Holy Objects
- Holy Relics
- Mantras for Microfilm
- Padmasambhava statue: Prayer for inviting statue to new home
- Prayer Wheel (a card for display)
- Sixteen Arhats, Benefits of Making Offerings and Requests to
- Stupas – Benefits of Offering to
- Why Holy Objects are Precious and Wish-fulfilling
- Earthquake and Tsunami: to control, and for all affected
- Fire: Practices and Advice to Dispel Fires (updated November 2015)
This advice is also for tornadoes, floods, hurricanes, and any of those dangers from water, air, earth, and fire. - Radiation: Practices for Protection
- Rain: How to Stop
- Rinpoche’s Advice on California Wildfires (posted October 18, 2017)
- Disasters of the Elements, letter from Lama Zopa Rinpoche, 2002
For more advice from Rinpoche on this subject in the form of short talks and letters, please go to Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive.
- Advice for a New Director
- Attitude for Offering Service
- Attitude for Our Work
- Benefits of Offering Service To the Guru (July 2014; teaching on video)
- Benefits of Serving a Dharma Center (posted October 17, 2016)
- Benefits of Working for Dharma Centers
- Benefit of Working for the Center – Wow!
- Benefits of Working for the Guru
- Creating Merit for the Center, Project or Service
- Dealing with Difficult People
- Directors – How to Practice
- How to Rejoice about Hardships Borne Working for the Center and Thanks
- How to Run a Dharma Organization
- Lama Zopa’s Letter to New Center Director and Study Group Coordinator (given November 5, 2009)
- Message to Directors
- Overwhelmed? Advice
- Pay Attention to Geshes and Visitors
- Qualities of a Leader
- Service as a Path to Enlightenment
- Service is the Best Offering, and Thanks
- Successful Service due to Guru Devotion
- Talking on the Phone – How to Make it Beneficial
- Thank you for Volunteering
- The Real Professional (excerpt from How to Be a Real Professional)
- Volunteers – Importance of and Thanks to
- Work at the Center so Important and Beneficial
- Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s Request for Prayers After the US Election (posted November 16, 2016)
- For Peace and Harmony in Israel and Palestine (given July 2014, updated November 2014)
- Support His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Tibet (given March 27, 2008)
- Recite the Golden Light Sutra for peace in the world (given May 7, 2007)
- Advice specifically for Iraq and “for people who desire peace for themselves and for others” (given June 28, 2004)
- For World Peace (given after September 11, 2001)
- Avoid Negative Rejoicing (given after September 11, 2001)
- Practices to Benefit the Whole Country
- Attitude to Have After Being Robbed
- Avoid the Ten Non-Virtues
- Benefits of Knowing How to Cook
- Bodhisattva Attitude: How to Dedicate Your Life to Others
- Bodhichitta Mindfulness
- Breaking Up with a Partner, Advice While (posted March 11, 2016)
- Buddhist Marriage Ceremonies
- Change has to Come From the Mind
- Chenrezig Practice and Mantra
- Compassion is of the Utmost Need – Ten frame-ready quotes on compassion
- Cooking – How to Use in the Path
- Daily Practice Advice
- Daily Taking and Giving
- Depression: How to Overcome (given September 2015)
- Depression: No Time For As So Much to Rejoice About
- Dharma is Needed for the Happiness of Sentient Beings
- Dharma Essential for Happiness
- Discovering Dharma
- Don’t Waste your Perfect Human Rebirth
- Driving – The Wheel of Sharp Weapons of My Negative Karma When Driving
- Eliminating Obstacles (Guru Rinpoche prayer)
- Essential Daily Practice Advice
- Financial Anxieties – Put in Perspective
- ‘The Friend Who Is Angry Can Be the Most Kind Person in Your Life’ (posted July 17, 2017)
- Heart Advice of Achos Rinpoche, with commentary from Rinpoche (letter version and A4 version)
- Hell or Enlightenment Depends on Your Mind
- How to be a Real Professional
- How to Bless Food with OM AH HUM (posted March 11, 2015)
- How to Make your Life Most Beneficial for Sentient Beings, Even Your Speech (posted September 6, 2016; blog version, posted September 7, 2016)
- How to Think During Relationship Problems (posted August 3, 2015)
- Importance of Meditation
- Keep Your Wisdom in the Pure Path (posted June 4, 2018)
- Learning about Dharma: Give Trillions of Dollars for
- The Main Thing Now Is Attainment (posted May 26, 2015)
- Morality Is the Support and Foundation for All Good Qualities
- Most Important for Success
- New Students and Prisoners
- On Feeling Loved (posted March 29, 2017)
- Ordinary Life Actions – Make Them Meaningful
- Pacifying the Date of Cutting Hair
- Parenting – Advice for Parents
- Patience – need for and benefit of
- Pilgrimage, How to Go On
- Pithy Advice
- Plan to Practice Never Seems to Happen (posted March 18, 2015)
- Practices to Do for His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s Health and Long Life
- Prayer Book Updates: Essential Buddhist Prayers Volumes 1 & 2 and Retreat Prayer Book Updates
- Prayers after an Election (posted November 16, 2016)
- Prison Is the Best Opportunity (posted March 21, 2016)
- Prostrations and Benefiting People You’ve Killed (posted May 28, 2015)
- Purifying Your Forefathers’ Killing Karma (posted June 1, 2015)
- ‘Put All the Blame to One’ (posted August 9, 2017)
- Real Chöd Practice
- Reasons to Practice Dharma
- Recognize All the Wrong Views and See Things as a Hallucination (posted May 26, 2016)
- ‘The Remedy Is to Think of Reincarnation’ (advice on suicide, posted July 28, 2015)
- In Response to Appreciation after Following Rinpoche’s Advice
- Studying and Making Life Dharma
- Taking Care of Sentient Beings is the Most Meaningful Life
- Teeth, How to Think While Brushing (posted January 15 2018)
- What Brings the Happiest Life
- What Students Need to Do (given 2010)
“Within the FPMT organization we are doing well studying the words. Now students need to experience the lam-rim.” - You Have So Much to Rejoice About in This Life (posted July 31, 2015)
For more advice from Rinpoche on this subject in the form of short talks and letters, please go to Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive
- The Liberation Box, Tools for a Fortunate Rebirth
- Namgyalma Card and Amulet
- Samantabhadra Protection
Carte de protection de Samantabhadra en français - Short Consecration Ritual
- Spirit Harm – Methods to Counteract
- Sutra of Golden Light & Vajra Cutter for wearing
- Tashi Tsegpa (to dispel all inauspiciousness)
- Vairocana Protection
- Best practices to do: Lama Zopa Rinpoche always recommends Medicine Buddha practice and Using Sickness for the Path
- Bird Flu (Nov 2005)
- ‘By Having This Sickness I Can Practice Pure Dharma’ (posted September 18, 2017)
- Cancer and Chemotherapy, Advice for (posted March 25, 2016)
- Contagious Diseases, Practices to Do
- Counteract the SARS virus
- How to Think about Caring for the Sick (posted February 22, 2017)
- Protection from from Cancer, Swine Flu As Well As New Diseases
- Your Broken Arm Is Another Form of Teaching (posted April 1, 2016)
