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Lama Zopa Rinpoche News and Advice
Lama Zopa Rinpoche teaching and giving oral transmissions to children from Ladakh at Sera Monastery, India, January 2014. Photo by Ven. Roger Kunsang.
“Your inspiration to practice Dharma is the most important thing in your life. Without Dharma there is no happiness, and there is no question that you can’t achieve enlightenment. You can’t liberate sentient beings from all the sufferings and causes and bring them to enlightenment. You can’t even achieve for yourself total liberation from samsara. All the happiness of future lives has to come from Dharma because it comes from past good karma, that which is Dharma. So, without Dharma, one can’t have any success in this life: success in business, marriage, or any happiness you want.
“So, the best thing to help others is Dharma, and the best thing to help oneself is Dharma. Among the best, most important things in this life is to meditate on the lam-rim and to have realizations –to complete the path to enlightenment and to make yourself fully qualified to liberate numberless sentient beings who are obscured and suffering and to bring them to peerless happiness and full enlightenment.”
– Lama Zopa Rinpoche, from “Advice for New Students” on the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive
More information, photos and updates about FPMT spiritual director Lama Zopa Rinpoche can be found on Rinpoche’s homepage. If you’d like to receive news of Lama Zopa Rinpoche via email, sign up to Lama Zopa Rinpoche News.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche with the children from the Ngari Institute of Buddhist Dialectics, Sera Monastery, India, January 2014. Photo by Ven. Roger Kunsang.
In January, Lama Zopa Rinpoche gave many oral transmissions and teachings to school children from the Ngari Institute of Buddhist Dialectics in Ladakh, India. The school was set up by the monks of Ngari Khangtsen at Sera Je Monastery in South India. The children had been brought to Sera Je for the recent Jangchup Lamrim teachings by His Holiness the Dalai Lama.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche sponsors the school childrens’ meals through the Lama Zopa Rinpoche Bodhichitta Fund. The children at the Ngari Institute are orphans or have come from abusive or very poor families. They follow the standard government educational curriculum during the day and learn about Tibetan Buddhism and culture during after-school hours.
Rinpoche’s assistant Ven. Roger Kunsang reported that the children have memorized many prayers and Lama Chöpa and “they know the tunes!”
Lama Zopa Rinpoche teaching and giving oral transmissions to children from Ladakh at Sera Monastery, India, January 2014. Photo by Ven. Roger Kunsang.
More information, photos and updates about FPMT spiritual director Lama Zopa Rinpoche can be found on Rinpoche’s homepage. If you’d like to receive news of Lama Zopa Rinpoche via email, sign up to Lama Zopa Rinpoche News.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche teaching and giving oral transmissions to children from Ladakh at Sera Monastery, India, January 2014. Photo by Ven. Roger Kunsang.
“The Destroyer Qualified Gone Beyond One (Bhagawan) said, ‘The bodhisattva does not follow many Dharmas. The bodhisattva holds one Dharma well and realizes it well. The whole Buddhadharma will be in the hand of that person.’ What is that Dharma? It is great COMPASSION. (From the Chenrezig Sutra Well-Condensed Dharma.)”
– Lama Zopa Rinpoche from “Compassion Is of the Utmost Need”
Lama Zopa Rinpoche is the spiritual director of the Foundation for the Preservation of Mahayana Tradition (FPMT), an organization dedicated to preserving Mahayana Buddhism through offering the Buddha’s authentic teachings and to facilitating reflection, meditation, practice and the opportunity to actualize and directly experience the Buddha’s teachings. Sign up to receive news and updates.
Dagri Rinpoche making offerings to Lama Zopa Rinpoche at the long life puja offered to Rinpoche at Land of Medicine Buddha, September 2013.
Following the long life puja offered to Lama Zopa Rinpoche at Land of Medicine Buddha, CA, USA, on September 29, 2013, Rinpoche offered US$12,106, toward the completion of two stupas being build in California.
US$6,053 was offered to the Stupa to Minimize Harm, a stupa to minimize harm caused by possibly earthquakes on the coast of California, and US$6,053 was offered to a new stupa being built at Land of Medicine Buddha.
If you build stupas or statues to inspire people, without even teaching Dharma, for however many hundreds and billions of years the holy object lasts, it continues to liberate many sentient beings every day, freeing them from the lower realms, causing them to actualize the path liberating them from samsara and bringing them to enlightenment. Even if after you die you are in another universe, in the hell realms or a pure land, wherever you are the stupa or statue that you built is continually benefiting sentient beings. It is incredible how you can continually benefit sentient beings by having built a stupa.
—Lama Zopa Rinpoche
His Holiness the Karmapa and Lama Zopa Rinpoche at Root Institute, Bodhgaya, India, January 31, 2014. Photo by Ven. Roger Kunsang.
His Holiness the Karmapa visited Root Institute and Maitreya School in Bodhgaya, India, on January 31. Lama Zopa Rinpoche, who is currently staying at Root Institute, welcomed the Karmapa. After giving a talk to students and teachers at the Maitreya School, His Holiness offered a teaching in the main gompa at Root Institute.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche is the spiritual director of the Foundation for the Preservation of Mahayana Tradition (FPMT), an organization dedicated to preserving Mahayana Buddhism through offering the Buddha’s authentic teachings and to facilitating reflection, meditation, practice and the opportunity to actualize and directly experience the Buddha’s teachings. Sign up to receive news and updates.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche talking to the reincarnation of Gen Lamrimpa, Sera Monastery, India, January 2014. Photo by Ven. Roger Kunsang.
While staying at Sera Monastery in India, Lama Zopa Rinpoche visited with many young tulkus including the reincarnation of Gen Lamrimpa, who is currently studying at Sera Me. The previous Gen Lamrimpa was born in Tibet in 1936 and was an accomplished meditator and teacher. He is well known to many Western Dharma students for leading a year-long shamatha retreat at Cloud Mountain Retreat Center in the US Pacific Northwest. His teachings from this retreat were published in the books How to Practice Shamatha Meditation (also published as Calming the Mind) and How to Realize Emptiness.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche with the tulku of Gen Lamrimpa, Sera Me Monastery, India, January 2014. Photo by Ven. Roger Kunsang.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche is the spiritual director of the Foundation for the Preservation of Mahayana Tradition (FPMT), an organization dedicated to preserving Mahayana Buddhism through offering the Buddha’s authentic teachings and to facilitating reflection, meditation, practice and the opportunity to actualize and directly experience the Buddha’s teachings. Sign up to receive news and updates.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche explaining in a video interview the path to enlightenment and how fortunate all are, Osel Labrang, Sera Je Monastery, India, January 2014. Photo by Ven. Roger Kunsang.
“Think, ‘How fortunate I am that I am able to offer (service) in the present, in the future,’ so rather than taking it as a burden, follow the bodhisattvas’ path. Follow the bodhisattvas’ attitude – that’s the way to achieve enlightenment. So in that way you achieve enlightenment very fast, without taking many eons. So the stronger compassion you have, how much good heart you have, you are able to achieve enlightenment quicker. So how much you are able to offer service to sentient beings, that much negative karma, so many eons of negative karma gets purified and you collect inconceivable merit and so that makes you able to achieve enlightenment quickly – quicker.”
– Lama Zopa Rinpoche from “Rejoice in Your Efforts,” new from the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive.
Learn more about FPMT spiritual director Lama Zopa Rinpoche and his beneficial activities by visiting Rinpoche’s homepage, where you will find links to Rinpoche’s schedule, new advice, recent video, photos and more.
There are many beautiful flowers in Rinpoche’s garden. Photo by Ven. Roger Kunsang.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche is well known for his extensive and beautiful offerings. The Lama Zopa Rinpoche Bodhichitta Fund sponsors Sangha to make thousands of light and water offerings daily in Rinpoche’s residences in the United States. Sangha offer extensive prayers for the entire FPMT organization and all its projects, students and benefactors as well as all sentient beings. Gorgeous flowers adorn Rinpoche’s garden– an offering for all. You can enjoy an entire photo gallery devoted to this. Here we include a few of these photos. Please rejoice in these beautiful and abundant offerings!
Daily offerings are made this the Medicine Buddha altar at Rinpoche’s California residence.
We are not aware of the limitless skies of benefits we achieve from the practice of offering, what we can achieve and enjoy from life to life. Even while you are in samsara, you enjoy good rebirths, wealth, and every happiness. Even just the samsaric perfections are amazing, without adding all those incredible realizations that allow us to offer deep benefit to sentient beings, liberating them from oceans of samsaric suffering and its cause, delusion and karma.
—Lama Zopa Rinpoche (from Extensive Offerings, published by FPMT Education Services)
Rinpoche’s garden is full of beautiful flowers, an offering for all. Photo by Ven. Roger Kunsang.
You are welcome to donate any amount toward these ongoing extensive offerings.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche doing korwa around Mahabodhi Stupa at night, Bodhgaya, India, January 2014. Photo by Ven. Roger Kunsang.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche arrived in Bodhgaya this week. Bodhgaya is the location of the Mahabodhi Stupa, marking the location where Shakyamuni Buddha became enlightened.
Mahabodhi Stupa, Bodhgaya, India, January 2014. Photo by Ven. Roger Kunsang.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche is the spiritual director of the Foundation for the Preservation of Mahayana Tradition (FPMT), an organization dedicated to preserving Mahayana Buddhism through offering the Buddha’s authentic teachings and to facilitating reflection, meditation, practice and the opportunity to actualize and directly experience the Buddha’s teachings. Sign up to receive news and updates.
Central School for Tibetans new kitchen, sponsored by the Lama Zopa Rinpoche Bodhichitta Fund.
In April of 2013, Lama Zoa Rinpoche made a donation, through the Lama Zopa Rinpoche Bodhichitta Fund, of US$30,000 for the complete renovation of a school kitchen at the Central School for Tibetans in Bylakuppe in South India.
In January Rinpoche visited to inaugurate the new kitchen.
Please rejoice in the completion of this new kitchen!
Long life puja, Sera Je Monastery, India, January 2014. Photo by Ven. Roger Kunsang.
In January, a long life puja was done at Sera Je Monastery for all the former abbots, current abbot and the most senior monks who were at Buxa Duar, including Lama Zopa Rinpoche. Buxa Duar is where many Tibetan monastics first settled after escaping from Tibet in 1959. At Buxa, the monks continued with their monastic education in exile, including Lama Zopa Rinpoche, who met Lama Yeshe at Buxa and become his student. Rinpoche had been staying at Sera Je for part of December 2013 and January 2014.
Monks leaving the long life puja, Sera Je Monastery, India, January 2014. Photo by Ven. Roger Kunsang.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche is the spiritual director of the Foundation for the Preservation of Mahayana Tradition (FPMT), an organization dedicated to preserving Mahayana Buddhism through offering the Buddha’s authentic teachings and to facilitating reflection, meditation, practice and the opportunity to actualize and directly experience the Buddha’s teachings. Sign up to receive news and updates.
Geshe Domo Rinpoche’s tulku with Lama Zopa Rinpoche, Domo Labrang, Sera Monastery, India, January 2014. Photo by Ven. Roger Kunsang.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche visited the young Domo Geshe Rinpoche at Domo Labrang at Sera Je Monastry. Lama Zopa Rinpoche was a guest for dinner. As a boy, Lama Zopa Rinpoche was ordained and educated at Domo Geshe Rinpoche’s Drugkar Monastery.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche offering gifts to Domo Geshe Rinpoche after arriving for dinner at Domo Labrang, Sera Je Monastery, India, January 2014. Photo by Ven. Roger Kunsang.
Ven. Max Mathews (known as Mummy Max) was a very early student of Lama Yesha and Lama Zopa Rinpoche. She recounted a story about taking Domo Geshe Rinpoche and Lama Yeshe for a week on Dal Lake in Srinagar, Kashmir, in the forthcoming Lama Yeshe biography Big Love. “[Domo Geshe Rinpoche] and Lama were like two little old ladies, cooking, enjoying the lake, the flowers, the peace, and laughing at me. They laughed at everything,” Max said.
More information, photos and updates about FPMT spiritual director Lama Zopa Rinpoche can be found on Rinpoche’s homepage. If you’d like to receive news of Lama Zopa Rinpoche via email, sign up to Lama Zopa Rinpoche News.