E-letter No. 253: July 2024
Dear Friends,
We extend our heartfelt thanks to everyone who donated to LYWA over Chokhor Duchen, Buddha’s First Turning of the Wheel of Dharma.
As highlighted in our Chokhor Duchen special mailing, your generous contributions will support the LYWA Kopan eBook Project. Continue reading to learn more about this project, and explore new additions including a video and podcast from the archive, a fresh installment of the Big Love Audiobook Heart Project, new advices from Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s Online Advice Book, and a new teaching from Lama Zopa Rinpoche.
And many thanks for subscribing to our monthly eletter. Please feel free to share it with others!
LYWA Kopan eBook Project
Coming soon! We’re delighted to announce that LYWA will be publishing a series of ebooks of Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s teachings from the Kopan meditation courses held annually at Kopan Monastery in Nepal. All of Rinpoche’s teachings from the Kopan courses will be converted to ebooks, including those already published on our website and those not yet published.
We have already published two eBook series: Kopan Course No. 42 and Kopan Course No. 24. The next ebook in this series will feature teachings given by Lama Zopa Rinpoche at Kopan Course No. 52 in 2019. Rinpoche taught on the lamrim, the stages of the path to enlightenment, illustrating key points with colorful anecdotes and engaging personal stories. Read an excerpt from this course in the monthly teaching below.
Kopan Monastery is the heart of the FPMT, the international organization founded by Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche to preserve and spread Mahayana Buddhism worldwide. The Kopan meditation courses were life-changing for countless students and this is where many students met the Lamas, received teachings and became Buddhist. Rinpoche did not teach at all the Kopan courses, however, he taught at many of them.
The Kopan courses began in April 1971 with a ten-day program attended by about a dozen people. From these early beginnings, the Kopan courses evolved to become an annual event with around two hundred attendees from all over the world. Read more here about how the Kopan courses began.
The Kopan eBook Project is possible due to the generous support of donors like you. Your contribution plays a vital role in ensuring that these timeless teachings continue to inspire and transform lives for generations to come.
FROM THE VIDEO ARCHIVE: Discerning the Essence of Activities
This month from the LYWA video archive we offer an excerpt from teachings given by Lama Zopa Rinpoche during the Ganden Lha Gyäma retreat and Yamantaka initiation at Istituto Lama Tzong Khapa in Pomaia, Italy, 2004. In this excerpt Rinpoche muses on the pervasive function of words and provides commentary on Lama Tsongkhapa's admonition to discern which activities have essence and should be encouraged, and which activities are essenceless and should be abandoned.
Visit and subscribe to the LYWA YouTube channel to view more videos freely available from our archive. See the FPMT YouTube channel for many more videos of Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s teachings.
ON THE LYWA PODCAST: Proof of Reincarnation by Habituation
By training the mind in patience, it leaves a positive imprint on your mind. Then later you find it easier for the mind to be patient and more and more difficult for the mind to get angry. It’s the same with self-cherishing or bodhicitta. Whichever way one trains the mind, one can become more easily habituated towards that mind—even in this life.
– Lama Zopa Rinpoche
This month on the LYWA podcast, Lama Zopa Rinpoche explains the difference between the mind and the body, engages in debate with the students on this difference, and ends by offering the proof of reincarnation by habituation. These teachings were given by Rinpoche during the 29th Kopan Meditation Course, held at Kopan Monastery, Nepal, 1996. You can also read along with the transcript on the LYWA website.
The LYWA podcast contains hundreds of hours of audio, each with links to the accompanying lightly edited transcripts. See the LYWA podcast page to search or browse the entire collection by topic or date, and for easy instructions on how to subscribe.
BIG LOVE AUDIOBOOK HEART PROJECT
We are happy to share another audiobook installment of Big Love: The Life and Teachings of Lama Yeshe, written by Adele Hulse. Organized by Janet Brooke, this heart project is comprised of narrations recorded by personal friends of the late Åge Delbanco (Babaji), one of Lama Yeshe's earliest students.
This month the Big Love Heart Project brings you Chapter 10: 1972: The Unsurpassed Dharma Land of Enlightenment, narrated by Don Broderson. Chapter 10 describes the construction of Kopan structures by devoted students, what happened after Zina left Kopan to go on retreat in the mountains, and the second and third Kopan meditation courses and related teachings by the Lamas.
WHAT'S NEW ON OUR WEBSITE
This month we have a Portuguese translation of How to Generate Bodhicitta by Ribur Rinpoche to share with you, now available for free download as a PDF file. You can also find this translation or read the text in English on our Teachings from Tibet site or get an ebook version of this text in English.
We’ve also added new entries to Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s Online Advice Book. Each year, we incorporate over 100 new pieces of advice on various topics, bringing the total to more than 2,500 entries now available on our website.
- Five Powers Near the Time of Death: This extensive advice on the five powers to be practiced near the time of death was given to a student who was very close to dying from cancer.
- A Prayer Wheel for the Ocean in Vietnam: A student wrote that she and her friend wanted to make a prayer wheel for the ocean in Vietnam, with one billion OM MANI PADME HUM mantras inside. There is a very long coastline in Vietnam and many sentient beings are caught by Vietnamese fishermen every day.
- When Faults Appear in the Guru’s Actions: Rinpoche advised that when we see mistakes in the virtuous friend, we should abandon that thought like poison.
- Practices for Cancer and Healing Maternal Harm: This advice was given to a student who was seriously ill with cancer and requested practices. She also asked about her mother, who had mistreated her when she was young.
You can always find a list of all the newly posted advices from Lama Zopa Rinpoche on our website.
Community News
The Dalai Lama underwent knee surgery last month in New York City and is now recovering well in upstate New York. The official Facebook page of His Holiness the Dalai Lama has confirmed that His Holiness is healing well from knee surgery without complications. If you aren't on Facebook, you can find the same update here. Last month, FPMT invited students to recite the Medicine Buddha mantra for the successful outcome of His Holiness’s procedure. Keep up the good work!
Don't miss out on reading the special tribute that FPMT shared about the remarkable and inspiring life of Sister Max Mathews, affectionately known as Mummy Max who died this past February. Her contributions and generosity to the FPMT are incomparable.
As always, thank you so much for all your support. We couldn't do it without you! Read on for this month's teaching by Rinpoche on how we are here to serve others.
Big love,
Nick Ribush
Director
THIS MONTH'S TEACHING: We Are Here to Serve Others
At present, everything we do is for this I, to get happiness for this I, which is not in our eyes, not in our ears, our nose, our toes or our heart. If we looked for it specifically, we wouldn’t be able to find the I. Looking for it, analyzing it, this is inner science. Most of the time, Western science only checks outside phenomena, external things, but inner science is checking our life. Although we look for our I from the top of the head to the toes, there is no way to find it. When we don’t look for it, it looks like there is a real I, “I must kill people; I must cheat them; I must do everything bad to get power for this I.” We do whatever we can to get happiness for this I, to get power for this I, but when we look for it, we can’t find it. We can’t find this real I from the top of the head down to the toes. We can’t find it in this room. We can’t find it in this world. That shows this real I is nonexistent.
People run around their whole life with so much worry that this I is going to suffer. This real I is going to suffer, is going to have a bad reputation and so forth, “I will get hungry; I will get sick; I will die.” This real I will suffer in this way. In the city, after they finish work, if people have a bit of time, they go juggling [jogging] around the city for hours. Or they cycle to not get cancer or diabetes. For this real I to not get cancer or diabetes, they spend so many hours when they get a little bit of time from their job. But if we look for the I, it is not there. If we look from the tip of the hairs down to the toes, we can’t find it anywhere. We can’t find this real I that we are worried about all the time, day and night. Afraid of getting diabetes, we take so much medicine and [incur] so much expense for this I. We go to a psychiatrist for this real I to not get problems. If somebody criticizes us, telling us we are bad, we immediately call the police and want to put them in prison.
Whatever bad things we do are to get happiness and power for this real I, not for the merely labeled I but for this real I. OK? We spend our whole life like this, going to university to get a degree, to get a job, to get money for this real I which is not there, which we can’t find. If we meditate on it, we can’t find it. If we look for it, we can’t find it. If we examine it, although it looks like it is there, we can’t find it.
This is the experience of our daily life. Not only the Buddha said this or the Kadampa geshes said this, it is also the experience of our daily life. For example, I will tell you, while we are walking in the street, when we think there is a real I, we not only believe it is real but we cherish it so much, “I want happiness; I don’t want suffering; I don’t want this problem.” Then, our face wrinkles—a very, very sad face, without a smile. We spend our whole time with that face. When we think we are the only one in the world suffering, it looks like that, but there are thousands of people suffering far worse than we are. But we still think that we are the only one suffering like this in the world.
But the moment we think “I’m here in the world to serve others,” suddenly we can smile. All these people going by car, in the restaurant, at the beach, we are here to serve all these people, all these animals. Suddenly, we have found happiness. Suddenly, we can smile.
We feel a connection with the surrounding people, those who are in the restaurants or shops. We even have a connection with the animals. So, we can smile at people and feel a connection with everybody. We are here to help others. Suddenly our mind is relaxed, happy. You understand?
Right there, we find happiness, right there. If we change our mind into the thought to benefit others, happiness is right there!
I’m just giving you a simple example. Even if your family is so unhappy, think like that. With bodhicitta, everything we do is only for sentient beings, for the happiness of all sentient beings. That includes every ant, every mosquito. Whatever we do benefits everybody.
So, you have come to Kopan at this time to learn and practice that. You understand? That makes your life most meaningful, most happy. Whatever you are doing, even if you are sinking—not sinking down, singing songs!—even if you are playing tennis or football, whatever you are doing is for every sentient being. That is unbelievable. That is the happiest life.
Bodhicitta is the root of the path to enlightenment. It causes us to actualize the whole path to enlightenment. The six perfections are there, the five paths, the ten bhumis are there. Tantra is there. There are the four classes of tantra: Kriya Tantra, Charya Tantra, Yoga Tantra and Anuttara or Maha-anuttara Tantra, which has two stages, the generation stage and the completion stage. We are able to achieve all that. Every single thing we do becomes the cause of happiness of all sentient beings.
Every single thing done with bodhicitta becomes a cause of the happiness of all sentient beings. Every single thing we do with bodhicitta, every single action of body, speech and mind, becomes a cause of the happiness of all sentient beings. You should write that down. That is the highest meaning of life; that is the purpose of life.
Excerpted from Lecture 1, Kopan Course No. 52, Kopan Monastery, Nepal, November-December 2019. Lightly edited by Gordon McDougall. Go here for information about the upcoming Kopan course beginning in November 2024.