Osel in America

Osel visited Lama Zopa Rinpoche recently in Madison, Wisconsin at Geshe Sopa’s home. We understand there was a lot of tea and little tempest 🙂

Previous post Tempest in a Teapot

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Sakya Trizin and Lama Zopa Rinpoche

Recently Lama Zopa Rinpoche visited Dehra Dun India where he met with His Holiness Sakya Trizin, and received many empowerments and transmissions.

The lineage of these practices had completely died out in the Gelug tradition, so Lama Zopa Rinpoche has been working on having these empowerments happen since 1990 and requested and arranged for these transmissions to happen in order to bring them back into the Gelug tradition, thus helping to preserve the Mahayana tradition in general.

This is a wonderful example of H.H. Sakya Trizin and Lama Zopa Rinpoche fostering a truly non-sectarian attitude for the benefit of the Dharma.

To read more visit the FPMT website.

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New: Emptiness

In Emptiness, the fifth volume in The Foundation of Buddhist Thought series, Geshe Tashi Tsering provides readers with an incredibly welcoming presentation of the central philosophical teaching of Mahayana Buddhism. Emptiness does not imply a nihilistic worldview, but rather the idea that a permanent entity does not exist in any single phenomenon or being. Everything exists interdependently within an immeasurable quantity of causes and conditions. An understanding of emptiness allows us to see the world as a realm of infinite possibility, instead of a static system. Just like a table consists of wooden parts, and the wood is from a tree, and the tree depends on air, water, and soil, so is the world filled with a wondrous interdependence that extends to our own mind and awareness. In lucid, accessible language, Geshe Tashi Tsering guides the reader to a genuine understanding of this infinite possibility.

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The devastating fire at Istituto Lama Tzong Khapa — and what you can do.

Dear friends: as you may have heard, a December 26th fire has destroyed the gompa at the Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition’s Istituto Lama Tzong Khapa (ILTK) in Italy. No one was hurt, but this nonetheless represents a giant loss — and yet, at the same time, an opportunity. As Lama Zopa Rinpoche himself wrote in reaction to the news:

“I think what has happened at Lama Tzong Khapa Institute, with the blazing fire destroying the gompa, is an auspicious sign – that you have overcome all the problems by this blazing fire… The burning of it gives us the opportunity to build an enlightened gompa… We definitely need a very beautiful gompa that becomes an encouragement to everyone, to depressed people, to people who believe ‘I am helpless’, something that brings greatest joy and fulfillment in the heart. It is also a teaching to us on impermanence. Do not hold on to things which are impermanent, which are a dependent arising, like a butter lamp that depends on causes and conditions, like lightning, like a water bubble, like clouds, also like a star in the day time, like the defective view of the senses … an illusion, a dream, all that was said by Buddha.”

You can read a full report on the fire here.

If you’d like to make a donation via PayPal to help the ILTK build their new gompa, go to:

https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=2171238

To make a donation by bank transfer:

ACCOUNT NAME: Istituto Lama Tzong Khapa
BANK: Cassa di Risparmio di Lucca Pisa Livorno
BRANCH: Rosignano Marittimo
Tel. 0586/799230 – Fax 0586/760995
ACCOUNT: ILTK n. 48
IBAN: IT21-A-06200-25100-000000000048
SWIFT: BPALIT3L
CAUSE: “the new gompa”

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Lama Zopa and “How to Be Happy” in Nepal

Here are some photos from the December 17th book-launch for Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s new “little book of Wisdom,” How to Be Happy, at Kopan Monastery in Kathmandu, Nepal.

What a beautiful location for an author event!

To order your copy of this “perfect gift for family and friends who may not have had the good fortune to meet Lama Zopa,” just click here.

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Congrats to the Maitripa Class of ’09!

Earlier this Fall, Portland, Oregon’s Maitripa College was given degree-granting authority from the State of Oregon, marking the fulfillment of one the school’s most important goals: to be able to offer credentialed higher education in the Buddhist tradition in America.

This year also marks the end of the curriculum for Maitripa’s first class of graduate students, who will be recognized in the school’s first graduation ceremony in January.

Several Wisdom authors have an ongoing role in Maitripa College’s development: Yangsi Rinpoche (author of Practicing the Path) was a co-founder (along with Dr. James Blumenthal) and the school’s visiting faculty includes Lama Zopa Rinpoche, Geshe Sopa Rinpoche, Jeffrey Hopkins, Dr. Jose Cabezon, and Dr. Jan Willis.

Our congratulations to them for their collective achievement, and to the graduating students who shall follow in their footsteps!

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Unconventional advice from a Buddhist master, on the page and on the web

Lama Zopa Rinpoche, the Spiritual Director of the Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition (FPMT), is a master at explaining Buddhism’s radical but effective methods for transforming suffering into happiness, as practiced and taught by Tibetans for a thousand years.

Much of his most helpful direct advice to real practitioners has been collected in a Wisdom book, Dear Lama Zopa. Whatever your question or concern, it’s a good bet that Rinpoche has an answer that will surprise and enlighten you — and, lighten your mood. You can also find newly-added advice from Rinpoche any time on the FPMT’s website, here.

And don’t miss How to Be Happy, Rinpoche’s latest book, which Mandala calls “the perfect gift for family and friends who may not have had the good fortune to meet Lama Zopa.”

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