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Lama Zopa Rinpoche News and Advice
Lama Zopa Rinpoche, Kopan Monastery, Nepal, April 2020. Photo by Ven. Lobsang Sherab.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s newest book, How to Face Death without Fear: A Handbook by Lama Zopa Rinpoche, was recently released by Wisdom Publications. The 400-plus page paperback book has been compiled from years of Rinpoche’s teachings and carefully edited by Ven. Robina Courtin, an FPMT registered teacher.
Students can use How to Face Death without Fear: A Handbook to help loved ones prepare for the end of their life with courage, acceptance, and a mind free of fear. Rinpoche explains how to think about death and reincarnation, how we go from one life to the next, what to do before death, in the moment itself, after the breath has stopped, and after the mind has left the body. Much of the advice included in the book can be adapted to benefit non-Buddhists and animals too.
How to Face Death Without Fear: A Handbook by Lama Zopa Rinpoche.
As Rinpoche says in the book’s introduction, “When suddenly one day one of your loved ones dies and you don’t know what to do to help, you’ll feel so confused, so lost. Recently a Buddhist student of mine told me that this is what happened for her when her father died unexpectedly. That made me think that knowing how to help others at the time of death is such important education to have.”
Rinpoche provides the mantras, prayers, and meditations appropriate for each stage of the dying process. This new edition of Rinpoche’s 2017 book How to Enjoy Death makes it easy for the reader to find the right practice at the right time.
Ven. Robina Courtin explained in the preface, “Because for most of us death is a difficult thing to come to terms with—our loved one’s or our own—working out which practices to do can be daunting. Therefore Rinpoche’s actual advice, the things to do—contained in parts 3, 4, and 5, the heart of the book—have been identified as eighty-seven distinct practices, numbered and structured chronologically to help us know what to do when.”
How to Face Death without Fear: A Handbook is an invaluable resource not only for Tibetan Buddhist caregivers, hospice workers, and chaplains but for all of us.
Liberation Box, Protection Tools for a Fortunate Rebirth
The FPMT Foundation Store continues to offer the Liberation Box, which is a collection of tools to be used at the time of death assembled according to Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s advice. It contains powerful methods for ensuring a fortunate rebirth for those who have died or are in the process of dying, including a stupa, hardcopy booklets and cards, MP3 audio files, a phowa pill, and a blessed cord. The Liberation Box can compliment the practices in Rinpoche’s book How to Face Death without Fear. The Foundation Store also offers a French and Spanish hardcopy version of the Liberation Box, as well as a digital version.
For more information, visit Wisdom Publications’ page for How to Face Death without Fear: A Handbook by Lama Zopa Rinpoche:
https://wisdomexperience.org/product/how-to-face-death-without-fear/
You can also find links to many resources for time of death on FPMT.org/death.
FPMT.org and Mandala Publications brings you news of Lama Zopa Rinpoche and of activities, teachings, and events from over 160 FPMT centers, projects, and services around the globe. If you like what you read, consider becoming a Friend of FPMT, which supports our work.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche outside the Kopan canteen, where he had tea with some monks, Kopan Monastery, June 2020. Photo by Ven. Lobsang Sherab.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche continues his video teachings on thought transformation from Kopan Monastery in Nepal. Here is a summary of the most recent teaching:
This video begins with long-time FPMT student Massimo Corona, who arrived at Kopan Monastery in 1971, explaining how he met Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche. Massimo, who also served FPMT Inc. as its executive director and a member of the board of directors, helped bring FPMT to his home country, Italy. With the financial assistance of his family, Massimo was able to purchase and offer an old stone castle in Tuscany in 1977. This became the home of Istituto Lama Tzong Khapa and firmly established FPMT in continental Europe.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche begins this teaching explaining that people can misuse their precious human rebirth to create negative karma, which is like using gold to buy “kaka.” By recognizing how precious the human rebirth is, we then don’t waste it on meaningless things. Even without vows, avoiding killing, stealing, lying, etc., will help keep you from going to prison. We need to abstain from creating negative karma and have self-discipline. Even keeping one of the five lay precepts brings so much happiness to others by protecting them from being harmed by you. Taking vows is also practical. Without them, you not only waste your life, you use it to create non-virtue.
Due to ignorance, we live life with obscurations in the mind, like being in a fog without any sun, moon, or stars. The truth doesn’t exist in that kind of mind, and we follow a hallucinated life, thinking, “This is real. This is truth.” In the West, people think it isn’t possible to live a life without attachment and self-cherishing thoughts or activities. However, in the East, numberless beings have become enlightened, and there are many holy places. Buddhism has now spread to the West, but there is a shallow understanding of the teachings. People need to be willing to bear hardships, like Milarepa did, in order to practice Dharma. We need to bear hardships to overcome delusions and have realizations. Buddhism is not easy. To go deep into Buddhism, we have to dedicate our life to it and make sacrifices. The first Dharma practice is to renounce worldly concern.
Unless we have omniscience or very high clairvoyance, we aren’t able to see others’ minds and we can’t tell who is enlightened. When holy beings appear to be doing normal activities or appear ordinary, our obscured mind cannot see that they are enlightened. It is possible that someone who appears very ordinary is enlightened, and we can make many mistakes in relation to them.
When you actualize bodhichitta, you don’t do any single activity with the motivation of cherishing yourself, everything is for every other being including the numberless beings in numberless universes.
By realizing impermanence and death, you can overcome laziness and everything you do becomes holy Dharma. With the realization of impermanence, Dharma becomes easy. And then doing non-Dharma worldly things becomes difficult because you are aware of the shortcomings.
We invite you to go deeper into the topics presented here, plus many others, by watching Rinpoche’s video and reading the full transcript of Rinpoche’s teaching.
Watch Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s teaching “When You Realize Impermanence, Dharma Becomes Easy”:
https://youtu.be/WqkCy443X7I
Find more advice and video teachings by Lama Zopa Rinpoche from Kopan Monastery and also links to videos in translation, transcripts, MP3s, and more:
https://fpmt.org/fpmt/announcements/resources-for-coronavirus-pandemic/advice-from-lama-zopa-rinpoche-for-coronavirus/
Practice advice from our teachers, Dharma study-from-home opportunities, and more can be found on the page “Resources for the Coronavirus Pandemic.”
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.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche with Khen Rinpoche Geshe Chonyi and other Kopan monks on top of Kopan Hill, Kopan Monastery, Nepal, June 2020. Photo by Ven. Lobsang Sherab.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche continues his video teachings from Kopan Monastery in Nepal. Here is a summary of the most recent teaching:
Lama Zopa Rinpoche begins this video by explaining that the subject of the teachings he has been providing from Kopan Monastery is lojong, thought transformation—transforming sufferings (including this virus) into ultimate happiness, liberation from samsara, and enlightenment so that sentient beings can achieve full enlightenment, the total cessation of obscurations and the completion of all the realizations.
Without self-discipline life is filled with so much suffering. There’s no peace and unbelievable dissatisfaction. We think these problems come from the outside, but they never do; they all come from the mind. You have to practice contentment, patience, compassion, and loving-kindness—all qualities of a good human being. Without doing this, your whole life is suffering.
Meditation is to free yourself from the oceans of samsaric suffering by ceasing and eradicating the root of samsara, which is the ignorance that holds “I” as real. How the “I” exists is that the mind focuses on the aggregates and merely imputes “I.” When the “I” appears back to you, it appears in all the wrong ways. It appears permanent, without parts, and independent. It is labeled by the mind and does not truly exist. It is a dependent arising. It is not possible for something to exist from its own side. The “I” is so extremely subtle that it is as if it doesn’t exist. The wisdom realizing that the “I” is empty of existing from its own side eradicates the ignorance that is the root of samsara. The wrong concept that believes that the “I” exists from its own side is the root of suffering. All of your suffering comes from your wrong concepts, from your mind, not from the outside.
Ignorance functions to give rise to the other delusions. Ignorance exaggerates “good” and “bad” and from that anger and attachment arise. This is all based on the object of ignorance, which is a totally wrong concept. If you follow attachment with no self-discipline, no contentment, no satisfaction, your life becomes crazy.
By taking vows (Rinpoche goes through the various levels of vows), in addition to meditation and listening to teachings, you practice self-discipline and generate so much merit.
Rinpoche concludes by continuing to offer the oral transmission of Sutra of Great Liberation.
We invite you to go deeper into the topics presented here, plus many others, by watching Rinpoche’s video and reading the full transcript of Rinpoche’s teaching.
Watch Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s teaching “Without Self Discipline, It’s Like You Throw a Bomb on Your Life”:
https://youtu.be/ClQdXk1dvdY
- Read the transcript of Rinpoche’s teaching
- Sutra of Golden Light resource page
- Recognizing the False I by Lama Zopa Rinpche
Find more advice and video teachings by Lama Zopa Rinpoche from Kopan Monastery and also links to videos in translation, transcripts, MP3s, and more:
https://fpmt.org/fpmt/announcements/resources-for-coronavirus-pandemic/advice-from-lama-zopa-rinpoche-for-coronavirus/
Practice advice from our teachers, Dharma study-from-home opportunities, and more can be found on the page “Resources for the Coronavirus Pandemic.”
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.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche with Khyongla Rato Rinpoche at Root Institute, India, January 2018. Photo by Ven. Lobsang Sherab.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche continues his video teachings from Kopan Monastery in Nepal. Here is a summary of the most recent teaching:
This video begins with footage of Rinpoche, which was filmed by Richard Gere, receiving the lung of the dharani Extremely Conquering from Bondage from Khyongla Rato Rinpoche at Root Institute in India.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche begins this teaching explaining that if we create the cause to be born in the lower realms and we do not purify this before death comes, we are reborn there and will have to suffer again and again until the karma finishes. As a human beings, we have total freedom to purify our negative karma, and there are many practices to do this. This precious human rebirth can end at any time, while we are doing any daily activity—we never know when we will die.
Many believe that everything that happens in one’s life is up to God, or Buddha, or somebody who has the highest power. But the question arises: If everything is up to God or Buddha, why is there suffering? Don’t they have compassion for the world? His Holiness the Dalai Lama says that the human brain is special because it can be used to analyze. We have to put in effort from our side, we have to analyze. If you just think, “Oh, God will take care,” then you can just follow all the delusions and whatever the selfish mind wants, and thus live life creating negative karma, thinking someone else more powerful will take care. In reality, we created the cause of suffering ourselves. Therefore, we have to generate the whole graduated path to enlightenment: correctly following the virtuous friend, renunciation, bodhichitta, right view, and tantra.
Rinpoche continues explaining the benefits of Sutra of Great Liberation and continues giving the oral transmission for this sutra.
Buddhism explains how to be free from suffering forever. Even if we don’t die from the virus, we will die from something else. Buddhism has so many ways to rescue us from suffering, and offers so many ways to help others. If you do get the virus, you can experience it and make it useful for sentient beings by thinking that they will receive enlightenment due to you taking on the virus. In this way, you not only utilize the virus for happiness, but for ultimate happiness, and to achieve enlightenment for the numberless sentient beings so that they can be free from oceans of samsaric suffering by you bringing them to enlightenment as well.
We invite you to go deeper into the topics presented here, plus many others, by watching Rinpoche’s video and reading the full transcript of Rinpoche’s teaching.
Watch Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s teaching “Buddhism Has So Many Ways to Rescue Us from Suffering”:
https://youtu.be/pDi16-BVzZw
- Read the transcript of Rinpoche’s teaching
- Dedication verses for COVID-19 Crisis Teachings
Find more advice and video teachings by Lama Zopa Rinpoche from Kopan Monastery and also links to videos in translation, transcripts, MP3s, and more:
https://fpmt.org/fpmt/announcements/resources-for-coronavirus-pandemic/advice-from-lama-zopa-rinpoche-for-coronavirus/
Practice advice from our teachers, Dharma study-from-home opportunities, and more can be found on the page “Resources for the Coronavirus Pandemic.”
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.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche at Kopan Monastery, Nepal, May 2020. Photo by Ven. Lobsang Sherab.
The Six Perfections: The Practice of the Bodhisattvas is a new book from Lama Zopa Rinpoche, published by Wisdom Publications in March 2020. In it, Rinpoche walks us through this key Mahayana Buddhist teaching. Here’s an excerpt from Rinpoche’s teaching on the perfection of patience:
There is nothing pleasant at all about anger. Irritation, agitation, impatience, sullenness, spite—all these sorts of negative emotions overwhelm us and refuse to give us one moment’s peace, whereas when we have patience, we have genuine peace. There is no question of which is preferable. The frustrated, unhappy mind is the fuel that can easily grow into anger. Until we have learned to overcome that anger with patience, it will destroy any happiness we have.
It’s not that anger and hatred are weak minds. With hatred our mind is incredibly focused on the object of our hatred and how to destroy it. We should turn that strength around to destroy the real enemy, focusing all our attention on what is really causing us such unhappiness—our own anger. We need to destroy it completely with patience.
We don’t have to become angry when an enemy tries to harm us or when adverse situations occur. It’s impossible to avoid problems, but when we analyze such situations, we will see that there is no reason for becoming unhappy. Unless we can generate a happy mind, how can we renounce the unhappy one? We therefore need to think well on the benefits of voluntarily accepting suffering and make a strong determination to not allow anger and frustration to arise, no matter what happens around us.
It is very easy to let a day go by without practicing patience, then a week, a month, a year. Before we know it, our whole life has gone and then, suddenly, unexpectedly, death happens and we have never developed patience in our mind, despite all the teachings we have studied and retreats we have done. At the time of death it’s too late to regret not developing patience.
What we can do now in a very practical way is to watch our mind, and the moment it is disturbed by somebody or something, by understanding the terrible effects of anger, we determine to not allow even a moment of anger to arise. We can make a plan to do this for a certain time each day and gradually increase it. If we train our mind in patience in that way, doing whatever we can to overcome any angry thought that arises, by keeping at it, change will definitely happen, year by year. Seeing how there is so much more peace now that the angry mind does not arise gives us the determination to practice patience even more. Then, thinking back on how we once would have become angry from one sharp word from a colleague at work or from the noise of branches tapping on our window disturbing our sleep, we will wonder why we ever got so angry. It is just a matter of practice.
Cover of Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s book
Learn more about The Six Perfections: The Practice of the Bodhisattvas, including order information, on Wisdom Publication’s website:
https://wisdomexperience.org/product/the-six-perfections/
Find recent advice and video teachings by Lama Zopa Rinpoche from Kopan Monastery and also links to videos in translation, transcripts, MP3s, and more:
https://fpmt.org/fpmt/announcements/resources-for-coronavirus-pandemic/advice-from-lama-zopa-rinpoche-for-coronavirus/
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.
Kopan monks doing Lama Chopa on Saka Dawa at Kopan Monastery, Nepal, June 2020. Photo by Ven. Lobsang Sherab.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche continues his video teachings from Kopan Monastery in Nepal. Here is a summary of the most recent teaching:
This video begins with Ven. Thubten Samphel, discussing his early life, how he became one of the first monks of Lawudo Gompa and Kopan Monastery, and what daily life was like at these places in the beginning.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche begins this teaching explaining that we can have victory over this virus, if we contract it, by utilizing it on the path to enlightenment. This virus is just one of the shortcomings of samsara and can be used to benefit even the tiniest sentient beings. You can use the virus to not only bring temporary happiness to others, but to free them from oceans of samsaric suffering and then bring them to total cessation of obscurations and completion of realizations. The virus is just one example—you can use any problem, any relationship, any circumstance, to benefit others.
This precious human rebirth is so precious because we can use it to generate loving-kindness. This is more meaningful than living life under the control of distraction and attachment. You receive skies of merit meditating on immeasurable loving-kindness. From the four immeasurable thoughts:
How wonderful it would be if all sentient beings were to have happiness and the causes of happiness.
May they have happiness and its causes.
I myself will cause them to have happiness and its causes.
Please, Guru-Deity, bless me to be able to do this.
Making innumerable offerings to all the buddhas, or offering three hundred different food items every day, does not compare to generating loving-kindness toward sentient beings for even a few seconds. Cherishing sentient beings as precious, holding them as extremely dear, is loving-kindness.
If someone harms us, our solution is usually to harm them back. Because of this, we continuously receive harm. Therefore, if we are harmed, do not harm back. The self-cherishing thought that says, “I am the most important. My happiness is most important,” is a total hallucination. It is like drinking poison, thinking it is nectar.
Buddha defeated a million maras by meditating on loving-kindness. If you practice loving-kindness, if you practice bodhichitta, this is the best protection from life’s dangers.
Rinpoche discusses Nagarjuna’s benefits of generating loving-kindness, which include: devas and humans will love you; devas and humans will protect you; you will have happiness of mind and many happinesses; you won’t be harmed by poison and weapons; without effort you will achieve success; and you will be born in the world of Brahma.
The merit of practicing each of the four immeasurable thoughts cannot fit into universes equaling the number of grains of sand in the Ganges River. The four immeasurable thoughts are immeasurable equanimity, immeasurable loving kindness, immeasurable compassion, and immeasurable joy. Meditate on the four immeasurable thoughts, but don’t do them thinking of eating pizza or going to the beach. Especially if you meditate with tonglen, this is amazing.
Rinpoche ends this teaching discussing the benefits of the Sutra of Great Liberation and continues to offer the oral transmission of it.
We invite you to go deeper into the topics presented here, plus many others, by watching Rinpoche’s video and reading the full transcript of Rinpoche’s teaching.
Watch Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s teaching “This Perfect Human Rebirth Is So Precious Because You Can Use It to Generate Loving Kindness”:
https://youtu.be/lRS0-0HcRJw
- Read the transcript of Rinpoche’s teaching
- The four immeasurable thoughts are recited in many practices. You can find them in Daily Prayers.
- Dedication verses for COVID-19 Crisis Teachings
Find more advice and video teachings by Lama Zopa Rinpoche from Kopan Monastery and also links to videos in translation, transcripts, MP3s, and more:
https://fpmt.org/fpmt/announcements/resources-for-coronavirus-pandemic/advice-from-lama-zopa-rinpoche-for-coronavirus/
Practice advice from our teachers, Dharma study-from-home opportunities, and more can be found on the page “Resources for the Coronavirus Pandemic.”
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.
Most Secret Hayagriva Tsog Kong offered for Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s long life, Kopan Monastery, Nepal, June 2020. Photo by Ven. Lobsang Sherab.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche continues his video teachings from Kopan Monastery in Nepal. Here is a summary of the most recent teaching:
This video starts with an introductory clip of a Losar video of Lama Zopa Rinpoche talking about a quote on the benefits and results of practicing virtue. The quote was on a card sent by His Holiness the Sakya Trichen. Rinpoche then reminds us to please enjoy our life by transforming our body, speech, and mind into virtue as much as possible.
Rinpoche begins the teaching explaining that any bad, unfavorable, or undesirable conditions can be transformed into the path to happiness—not just temporary happiness, but ultimate happiness. Bad conditions, and even the happiness you experience, can be utilized in this way. This prevents us from using our precious human life like toilet paper, a total waste.
By harming others, you will get sick, Rinpoche explains. This includes killing animals for food or for business. Seeing the suffering of animals causes us to generate compassion and reminds us to practice Dharma.
This perfect human rebirth is so precious. The purpose of this life is not just to achieve happiness, or the blissful state of peace for oneself, but to benefit others.
For example, prostrating or making offerings to a statue of Buddha creates far more merit than just seeing a statue.
Tibetans make water bowl offerings to holy object because it doesn’t cost anything and it doesn’t cause pride to arise. If an offering costs a lot of money, pride can develop rather than rejoicing. In this way, offering water can become a pure offering and you collect a lot of merit. Water is wet, so offering it helps the mind become soft, rather than selfish and hard like a rock. With a soft mind one can develop loving kindness, bodhichitta, and the ultimate good heart.
Extensive water bowl offerings are made every day at Buddha Amitabha Pure Land, Washington State, US; Kachoe Dechen Ling, Aptos, California, US; Ganden Do Ngag Shedrup Ling, Mongolia; Amitabha Buddhist Centre, Singapore; Kopan Monastery, Nepal; and elsewhere.
Offering water bowls creates far more merit than simply seeing a holy object. Instead of thinking that the offering bowls contain water, which is how it appears to the human mind, you can create even greater merit by thinking that the offering bowls contain the purest nectar, which is how the offering appears to a buddha.
In Tibet, you can put the water that has been offered into a garden or clean ground. Because it is blessed water, you can’t put it in a dirty road or somewhere unclean. However, in the West, many houses don’t have gardens. So in this case, the sink where one washes up is the only place it can go, but not in a toilet, which would be very disrespectful.
By offering flowers to holy objects this creates the cause to have a beautiful body and to have a holy body that sentient beings never get bored of seeing.
By offering incense to holy objects this creates the cause to have pure morality from life to life. Incense is usually better than offering perfume because some perfumes cause attachment to arise.
By offering light to holy objects this creates the cause to develop wisdom; it eliminates ignorance. Offering light also creates the cause to have a beautiful body. Offering light is very important because ignorance causes us to suffer in the lower realms. When you see animals, you can generate compassion. Those born in the lower realms continuously suffer and create negative karma day and night.
By offering food to holy objects this creates the cause to have a long life, an increase in enjoyments, and immortality.
By offering music to holy objects this creates the cause for millions of people to be attracted to the sound of your voice, to have perfect holy speech, and to achieve all the qualities of the holy speech.
There is no difference at all between making offerings of water, flowers, incense, light, food, music, etc. to an actual buddha and making offerings to a statue of a buddha.
We invite you to go deeper into the topics presented here, plus many others, by watching Rinpoche’s video and reading the full transcript of Rinpoche’s teaching.
Watch Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s teaching “This Perfect Human Body Is So Precious Because You Can Use It to Make Offerings“:
https://youtu.be/ZUzLwDX6Ndk
- Read the transcript of Rinpoche’s teaching
- Resources on Holy Objects
- Dedication verses for COVID-19 Crisis Teachings
Find more advice and video teachings by Lama Zopa Rinpoche from Kopan Monastery and also links to videos in translation, transcripts, MP3s, and more:
https://fpmt.org/fpmt/announcements/resources-for-coronavirus-pandemic/advice-from-lama-zopa-rinpoche-for-coronavirus/
Practice advice from our teachers, Dharma study-from-home opportunities, and more can be found on the page “Resources for the Coronavirus Pandemic.”
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.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche on a Zoom call with many FPMT resident geshes, center directors, national and regional coordinates, and other staff, on Saka Dawa, Kopan Monastery, Nepal, June 2020. Photo by Ven. Lobsang Sherab.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche continues his video teachings from Kopan Monastery in Nepal. Here is a summary of the most recent teaching:
This teaching begins with video of an online “Zoom” mandala offering to Lama Zopa Rinpoche from many of the FPMT resident geshes, center directors, national and regional coordinators, and other staff. The offering was made on Saka Dawa and those on the video call made a heartfelt request for Rinpoche to live long and continue teaching, and also thanked Rinpoche for all he does. Rinpoche showed viewers cuddly toys on which he had written mantras and teachings about the emptiness of self. Rinpoche offered “numberless” thanks to all the people at FPMT centers, projects, and services around the world for the beneficial work they do. The offering was organized by Yangsi Rinpoche from his home in the United States and was made on behalf of the entire FPMT organization, including those not able to join the call.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche begins this teaching by reminding us that if we have the karma to get the coronavirus, it is not possible to escape it. The virus came from the mind, due to karma. Many have the mistaken view that anything that helps or harms the mind comes from outside. This view believes that the methods to stop the harm and to achieve happiness are only dealing with the outside world, while forgetting about the mind. The main work is in the mind.
It is a huge mistake believing everything in life comes from outside. Rinpoche says we should not try to retaliate against the harm we think of as coming from outside. That is only continuing to create the cause for future harm. By harming others—human beings, animals, even the tiniest creatures—you are continuously creating the cause to receive harm. You think you are doing this (harming others) for your happiness, but that is totally wrong.
The basic method to stop harm is to change your mind from a negative mind to a positive mind.
We have to understand that this human body is so important so that we take care of this body and don’t treat it like garbage.
Continuing on from Rinpoche’s last teachings, Rinpoche discusses the benefits of prostrating to holy objects, including that you create greater merit prostrating to a holy object than you do by seeing it. Because of this, it is good to have many holy objects as possible inside and outside of the home. This is why gompas and temples have so many statues—it’s a very simple way to generate merit by treating holy objects properly. Everyone who sees these holy objects in your home (even an enemy!) will leave with oceans of merit.
Think that all holy objects you see are manifestations of your root guru. Think that they manifest as a holy object to purify the negative karma that makes you be born in the lower realms, to free you from the lower realms, to free you from samsara, to free you from lower nirvana, and to bring you to enlightenment. If you think this, with your palms together in prostration mudra, and go around the holy object (circumambulate), you feel connected and don’t view them as if you were just in a museum. This is the proper way to engage with holy objects.
We invite you to go deeper into the topics presented here, plus many others, by watching Rinpoche’s video and reading the full transcript of Rinpoche’s teaching.
Watch Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s teaching “You Create Greater Merits by Prostrating to a Holy Object Than by Seeing It”:
https://youtu.be/NufyhxIa8S8
- Read the transcript of Rinpoche’s teaching
- Advice for Prostrations from Lama Zopa Rinpoche
- Resources on Holy Objects
- Dedication verses for COVID-19 Crisis Teachings
Find more advice and video teachings by Lama Zopa Rinpoche from Kopan Monastery and also links to videos in translation, transcripts, MP3s, and more:
https://fpmt.org/fpmt/announcements/resources-for-coronavirus-pandemic/advice-from-lama-zopa-rinpoche-for-coronavirus/
Practice advice from our teachers, Dharma study-from-home opportunities, and more can be found on the page “Resources for the Coronavirus Pandemic.”
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.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche at Kopan Monastery, Nepal, May 2020. Photo by Ven. Lobsang Sherab.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche often speaks about solar and lunar eclipses, which are considered auspicious for practice and provide opportunities for accumulating increased merit.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche reminds students that the merit generated is multiplied by one hundred million on solar eclipses and by seven hundred thousand on lunar eclipses, and that the multiplying effect of eclipses occurs regardless of whether the eclipse is partial or full. Also, Rinpoche advises that the merit multiplying effect does not last the whole calendar day and that merit making activities should be carried out during the time of the eclipse itself.
Whether or not an eclipse is visible and its local timing depends on where a student is on Earth. Websites like timeanddate.com can help students determine when there is an opportunity to practice during an eclipse.
Upcoming solar eclipse: June 21, 2020 (This eclipse is at its maximum at 6:41 UTC.)
In November 2019, Rinpoche wrote out specific advice for eclipses:
… So what can you do on these days?
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- You can rejoice in your, other sentient beings’, and the buddhas’ three times’ merits.
- You can read the Vajra Cutter Sutra, Chanting the Names of Manjushri, and King of Prayers.
- You can meditate on emptiness, and especially meditate on bodhichitta, with whichever technique.
- You can do Lama Chopa. At either the beginning of Lama Chopa or during the lamrim section, you can meditate on emptiness.
- Whatever activity they are doing at your local FPMT center, you can join them.
- Of course, you can do self-initiation—that is the best one.
- You can do prostrations by reciting the Thirty-Five Buddha prayer.
- You can make more offerings or help sentient beings more. Liberate animals or, with bodhichitta, practice charity to people or animals—you can do whatever you can.
- Recite OṂ MAṆI PADME HŪṂ with bodhichitta.
- Of course, don’t forget that the best practice is bodhichitta, tonglen.
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Keep this advice, especially in order to educate and help others, the numberless sentient beings ….
Any other meritorious activities advised by Lama Zopa Rinpoche are also good to do on solar eclipses. In the video “Advice for Saka Dawa Duchen,” Rinpoche discusses additional ideas for virtuous activities to complete when merit is multiplied, such as during solar eclipses, as well as the source of Rinpoche’s knowledge about the merit multiplying effects of certain days throughout the year:
To learn more about merit multiplying days, watch “Advice for Saka Dawa Duchen” on YouTube and find a transcript of the video on FPMT.org:
https://youtu.be/xYWCFIwZgTk
You can read more about practices specifically recommended by Rinpoche for solar and lunar eclipses, and other merit multiplying days:
https://fpmt.org/teachers/zopa/advice/practice-on-the-four-great-holy-days/
Check “Dharma Practice Dates” for information on auspicious days for practice:
https://fpmt.org/media/resources/dharma-dates/
Acquire your own copy of the Liberation Prison Project calendar through the Foundation Store:
https://shop.fpmt.org/2020-Liberation-Tibetan-Calendar-PDF-Dowloadable-Format-_p_3252.html
Through comprehensive study programs, practice materials, and training seminars, FPMT Education nourishes the development of compassion, wisdom, kindness, and true happiness in individuals of all ages.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche showing one of the plush toys that has had mantras and drawings added to it, Kopan Monastery, Nepal, June 2020. Photo by Ven. Lobsang Sherab.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche continues his video teachings from Kopan Monastery in Nepal. Here is a summary of the most recent teaching:
At the start of this video, Lama Zopa Rinpoche shows us how to visualize conventional and ultimate bodhichitta while making momos!
Rinpoche begins the teaching explaining that we can turn every action we engage in into a bodhichitta motivation by cultivating the thought of cherishing others. By doing this you not only create skies of merit, every action becomes a cause for enlightenment.
This perfect human rebirth is so precious. We can offer Dharma teachings to sentient beings. By giving one verse of teachings to a sentient being with compassion, you collect more merit than offering a great-thousand-fold universe filled with the seven types of jewels or gold to buddhas. And teaching Dharma to two sentient beings? Double that! Imagine those who are busy going around the world giving teachings to many—the human rebirth provides incredible opportunities. Even reciting a mantra to an animal such as a dog one time, this is priceless. Your Dharma practice is not only for yourself, it is so important for numberless sentient beings.
Human beings, from presidents and billionaires to beggars, do not understand the feelings of other sentient beings. Thousands of animals are killed every day for food, people not only eat them, but also make money off of this. People have the mistaken view that this is a good thing, that there is nothing wrong, that these beings are for their pleasure. They never think about the suffering of the animals and that they also want happiness. They don’t realize that these beings, who have been their mother sentient beings for eons, are objects of compassion, not simply objects of pleasure.
This perfect human rebirth is so precious. We can use it for prostrations. Every time you prostrate, however many atoms are covered by your body—from your feet to the length of your hair—that many times you create the karma to be born as a wheel-turning king for one thousand lifetimes. You can achieve supreme enlightenment even by prostrating with one hand, bowing your head or body, and prostrating with a distracted mind. There are eight benefits to putting your hands together in prostration to a holy object. You will receive a perfect body, have perfect surrounding people (those who do not cause obstacles or troubles for you), live in pure morality, have devotion, have a brave mind, achieve the arya path, and achieve enlightenment. This is just from putting your palms together when you see a holy object such as a stupa, statue, your guru, and so forth. There is no difference between making offerings to an actual buddha and making offerings to a statue of a buddha. Putting your palms together in the prostration mudra when you see a holy object is an incredible way to be free from the problems of samsara.
If you understand Dharma, you can make your human body most beneficial.
Rinpoche then continues giving the lung for Sutra of Great Liberation up to page 29.
We invite you to go deeper into the topics presented here, plus many others, by watching Rinpoche’s video and reading the full transcript of Rinpoche’s teaching.
Watch Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s teaching “This Perfect Human Body Is So Precious Because You Can Use It to Do Prostrations”:
https://youtu.be/dskazWzEhXE
- Read the transcript of Rinpoche’s teaching “This Perfect Human Body Is So Precious Because You Can Use It to Do Prostrations”
- Cultivating Mindfulness of Bodhichitta in Daily Activities by Lama Zopa Rinpoche
- Advice for Prostrations from Lama Zopa Rinpoche
- Resources on Holy Objects
- Dedication verses for COVID-19 Crisis Teachings
Find more advice and video teachings by Lama Zopa Rinpoche from Kopan Monastery and also links to videos in translation, transcripts, MP3s, and more:
https://fpmt.org/fpmt/announcements/resources-for-coronavirus-pandemic/advice-from-lama-zopa-rinpoche-for-coronavirus/
Practice advice from our teachers, Dharma study-from-home opportunities, and more can be found on the page “Resources for the Coronavirus Pandemic.”
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.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche during Lama Chopa on Saka Dawa, Kopan Monastery, Nepal, June 2020. Photo by Ven. Lobsang Sherab.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche continues his video teachings from Kopan Monastery in Nepal. Here is a summary of the most recent teaching:
This video begins with Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive director Dr. Nicholas Ribush talking about his path to meeting Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche at Kopan Monastery in Nepal in 1972. He gives a brief history of the monastery, the beginnings of FPMT publishing, the beginnings of the International Mahayana Institute (IMI), and how the FPMT organization itself was started.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche starts his teaching discussing the benefits of the Sutra of Great Liberation, which Rinpoche had planned to continue offering the lung of in this video, but ran out of time at the end. (Please continue to watch these teachings for the continuation of the lung of this sutra.)
Rinpoche explains that the general subject of these teachings is lojong (thought transformation) in the context of the coronavirus pandemic, about which many people are scared and full of fear and worry.
What one can do with this precious human rebirth is unbelievable! You can purify the negative karma to be born in the lower realms. You can become free from the lower realms, receive a higher rebirth, and be free from samsara completely through Dharma practice. Further, by practicing bodhichitta and great compassion with this human rebirth, you can achieve enlightenment and become able to free numberless sentient beings from the oceans of samsaric sufferings and bring them to enlightenment. This is incredible.
We are so fortunate to be born in this world, where the complete teachings of Buddha exist. By correctly pleasing the virtuous friend, you will meet the virtuous friend in this and all lifetimes, and receive the complete and unmistaken teachings (Dharma). Every second you correctly follow the virtuous friend, you receive higher rebirth, ultimately finish the sufferings of samsara, and then achieve enlightenment. By depending on the virtuous friend, we can even achieve enlightenment in a brief lifetime—this is an incredible opportunity. When you correctly follow the virtuous friend, numberless buddhas are so pleased, like how a mother would feel to see someone helping their child. If you please the virtuous friend with a devotional mind, you can achieve enlightenment in this lifetime. Even a foolish person could do this through strong devotion.
If you have made a Dharma connection with a virtuous friend and received teachings, even two or three words of a mantra such as OM AH HUM, you are supposed to view that virtuous friend as the Buddha. You have the freedom to purify all of your negative karma by pleasing the virtuous friend. When you follow the virtuous friend’s advice, it is as if you have done hundreds of thousands of prostrations and mandala offerings. However, if you make mistakes in following the virtuous friend, your mind will never change and you create heavy negative karma.
Rinpoche then briefly commented on the benefits of bodhichitta, explaining there is “no end” to the merit one creates by generating bodhichitta in each action. He then discusses the unbelievably unfathomable benefits of taking refuge, explaining, “If the merits of taking refuge were materialized, even the three-thousand-fold galaxies could not contain them.”
Rinpoche closes with the message that due to the precious opportunity of being born a human, following the virtuous friend, generating bodhichitta—there’s no space in the mind for depression. Whether or not the virus harms you or is a blessing depends on the mind.
Rinpoche will continue his lung of Sutra of Great Liberation in the next video.
We invite you to go deeper into the topics presented here, plus many others, by watching Rinpoche’s video and reading the full transcript of Rinpoche’s teaching.
Watch Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s teaching “Always Remember the Benefits of Correctly Following the Virtuous Friend“:
https://youtu.be/xxiri2vYflM
- Read the transcript of Rinpoche’s teaching “Always Remember the Benefits of Correctly Following the Virtuous Friend”
- Big Love: The Life and Teachings of Lama Yeshe, recently published by Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive
- Dedication verses for COVID-19 Crisis Teachings
Find more advice and video teachings by Lama Zopa Rinpoche from Kopan Monastery and also links to videos in translation, transcripts, MP3s, and more:
https://fpmt.org/fpmt/announcements/resources-for-coronavirus-pandemic/advice-from-lama-zopa-rinpoche-for-coronavirus/
Practice advice from our teachers, Dharma study-from-home opportunities, and more can be found on the page “Resources for the Coronavirus Pandemic.”
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.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche taking blessings from the Sutra of Great Liberation, which he started to an give oral transmission of on Saka Dawa, Kopan Monastery, Nepal, June 2020. Photo by Ven. Roger Kunsang.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche continues his video teachings from Kopan Monastery in Nepal. Here is a summary of the most recent teaching:
Lama Zopa Rinpoche begins this teaching reminding us that our precious human rebirth is more precious than a whole sky filled with wish-granting jewels. With the precious human life, one is able to plant the seed of virtue, supreme enlightenment.
If one has good karma, whatever is wished for can be achieved. However, even skies of wish-granting jewels can’t purify negative karma and give you a perfect human rebirth, liberation from samsara, and enlightenment. With this perfect human rebirth, you can do these things, you can purify negative karma, which causes birth in the lower realms. Due to this opportunity, it is the time to do one’s best: to not be lazy, not be distracted. Right now we are so attached to this life. We have attachment, anger, ignorance, pride, jealousy, and all the delusions. We are experts at following these, all aspects of a selfish mind. We don’t see the mistakes of this or how all of the suffering in samsara comes from I-grasping ignorance. In this way, we are a slave to self-cherishing. The self-cherishing mind is like a dictatorship.
You found a precious human rebirth and this is so precious, unbelievable. So don’t waste it! Doing so is similar to food becoming poison and causing death, like using your human body and life to become firewood in hell.
When the guru is sweet and speaks nice words, gives presents, we are happy and we like them. But if the guru scolds us or they are displeased with us, the tendency is to give them up, throw them away like garbage. How can we achieve enlightenment, or even renunciation, if we give up the guru when the guru does something that our self-cherishing thought doesn’t like?
According to Phabongka Dechen Nyingpo in Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand, there are eight benefits of correctly following the guru:
- You become closer to enlightenment.
- You please all the buddhas.
- You don’t get harmed by maras and evil friends.
- All your delusions and wrong concepts naturally stop.
- All your paths, bhumis, and realizations increase more and more.
- In all lifetimes you are never without virtuous friends.
- You don’t fall down into the lower realms.
- All your temporary and ultimate wishes succeed effortlessly.
Conversely, not following the guru has the following eight shortcomings, also according to Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand:
- If you criticize the guru, you criticize all the buddhas.
- For however many seconds you get angry at your guru, you will be reborn in hell for that many eons.
- Even if you practice tantra, you can’t achieve the sublime realization.
- Even if you practice tantra with much effort, it is like achieving hell and so forth.
- The qualities you didn’t generate before are not generated and the qualities you generated in the past are lost.
- In this life, you are tormented by diseases and so forth.
- In your next lives, you wander in the lower realms for eons and eons.
- In all lifetimes, you will be without virtuous friends.
At the conclusion of this video, Rinpoche gives the lung of Sutra of Great Liberation up to page 22 in the Tibetan text. Rinpoche says he will continue giving the lung of this sutra, a little at a time.
We invite you to go deeper into the topics presented here, plus many others, by watching Rinpoche’s video and reading the full transcript of Rinpoche’s teaching.
Watch Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s teaching “Do Your Best in This Life!“:
https://youtu.be/tUyfKZOjo6s
- Read the transcript of Rinpoche’s teaching “Do Your Best in This Life!”
- Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand by Phabongka Dechen Nyingpo
- Dedication verses for COVID-19 Crisis Teachings
Find more advice and video teachings by Lama Zopa Rinpoche from Kopan Monastery and also links to videos in translation, transcripts, MP3s, and more:
https://fpmt.org/fpmt/announcements/resources-for-coronavirus-pandemic/advice-from-lama-zopa-rinpoche-for-coronavirus/
Practice advice from our teachers, Dharma study-from-home opportunities, and more can be found on the page “Resources for the Coronavirus Pandemic.”
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.