Member of the FPMT

My very precious wish-fulfilling friends, whose minds are enriched with devotion to the triple gem,
Whose minds are enriched with devotion, being the source of compassion – root of all beings’ happiness,
Whose minds are enriched with devotion, being the source of all goodness – up to enlightenment.

With my hands at my heart I very sincerely thank you all, give numberless thanks, for your generous support to me in my Dharma activities, supporting my office and all the Dharma projects.

Please do not misunderstand the quote below, this is not meant to mean I am a Buddha. I want to say something here that comes from the Ayra Sanghatasutra:

If one plants a seed in the supreme field of the Buddhas it has great results. In this way, you will enjoy so many results; those wise ones will have happiness. You will abandon negative karma and engage in so much virtue. Anyone who makes charity to my teachings, even the size of a hair, will have great enjoyments and so much wealth for 80,000 eons. Wherever that living being is, karma will always be generous. Like this, giving to the Buddhas is very profound and has a great result.

My most dear precious Kim,
Good morning. How are you? I thought to send this short happy message to you, like official work, ha ha. Roger explained to me what you have said, that you want to do whatever I say, and support me, by wanting to accomplish projects like the Maitreya project. It relieved my heart and relaxed me. Space and happiness came into my heart. I have a purpose, to try and live in this world.

With big love and prayers,
Zopa

PS: Hospitals and schools are very needed, but these are just for this life’s happiness and that is very short compared to all future lives, while you are in samsara. Without Dharma there is no end to suffering, there is no end to rebirth, death, sickness, and all the problems. All of this is mentioned in the Buddha’s texts and in the existing teachings of the great lamas. The teachings of the Buddha and the great lamas depend on the existence of holy objects of the Buddha. Building holy objects, as well as preserving scriptures that are used to learn and to purify negative karma, creates merit. Even just seeing holy objects creates positive imprints and creates the cause for enlightenment. The Buddha has explained in the sutra called the Mudra Developing Devotion how unbelievable merit is collected by sentient beings just by merely seeing holy objects. It also purifies so many obscurations and plants the seed of enlightenment, which eventually brings one to enlightenment. Also, by building holy objects, so many people get jobs and are able to feed their family, educate their children, send them to school, etc. So much social service can happen, and this is the best social service, with this kind of project. It offers the best kind of social service for this life and spiritual benefits for future lives, both. Ha ha ha hah!

The cost is nothing compared to all the billions of dollars the governments waste. One atomic bomb costs so many billions of dollars. One missile costs the same as the Maitreya Project. I think one bomb costs 200 million dollars. Billions of dollars are spent on nonsense things.

The Maitreya project gives jobs for many thousands of people in India, which is very poor. It takes care of families, and children can go to schools. Besides the Dharma, the benefit to the whole world is as limitless as the sky.

How are you? I hope you had a great and successful operation. Now maybe you don’t even need to put your feet on the ground, you can just fly or walk in space. There are eight common siddhis and one of these is walking in space by the power of the wind. This means you can go to a place that takes many months to travel to in just a few hours. Maybe now you don’t need to rely on airplanes to go to Bodhgaya. This is just a joke, sorry. But it would be very nice if it happened that way.

I was wondering how things are going with the plan for the project? Here, I have one very important thing to mention. I heard that there are some people who may help the project. I am wondering if you are able to meet this family and present the project. In my observation, it comes out better if you meet them than if I go there to meet them. So, I wanted to see if you would go and meet the family and present the project.

You can explain the incredible social services that this project will offer. Bihar is a poor state, and by building the statue, so many thousands of people will get jobs and be able to feed their families, go to school, etc., and that is without even mentioning the limitless skies of benefit that are received because it is a holy object. Because of the power of the holy object, it can purify all the negative karmas, and one can accumulate merit. This is how one can achieve enlightenment, by collecting inconceivable merits. This is what plants the seed of enlightenment, ceases all the sufferings, and creates the cause to achieve full enlightenment. Through this, realizations come in their hearts, and this is how numberless beings are able to achieve enlightenment.

Every day, so many tens of thousands of people will come. Just from India alone, many buses will come, and all these people will have the unbelievable opportunity to create the cause of happiness not only for this life, but more importantly, for all the coming future lives, all success, and ultimate happiness—liberation and enlightenment. Also, people will come from all over the world.

People who help to sponsor this project will have their family names written where all the people can see, so everyone can rejoice, regardless of how much they have sponsored or helped the project, the whole, entire project or half, for whatever they have offered.

This is a great, unbelievable contribution to the Indian nation and Indian people, a great gift to the world, especially India, and is something in which to rejoice. It is the most important thing in which to rejoice in one’s whole life, especially at the end of one’s life. This is really something that one has done to benefit the world, to bring peace for all living beings, to spread peace in the world. This project can really help against war, famine, disease, torture, poverty, sickness, and the dangers of fire, water, earth, and wind.

This is because peace and happiness for the world and for all sentient beings depend on loving kindness and compassion. Loving kindness and compassion cannot be created by machines or tablets, they are an attainment, a realization, something which has to be developed from the mind. They are things which have to come from the mind and from one’s heart. For this, you need to purify negative karma, the obstacles and defilements, and to receive the conditions to collect merits to be able to study the path to enlightenment, see how to develop compassion and loving kindness, and then practice this. Just praying is not enough to actualize this. This project helps you to actualize the prayers.

These are some basic reasons for how important it is. You need a lot of merit to develop the education of loving kindness and compassion, to develop the good heart. This is the root of all happiness for oneself, now, and in the future, and ultimate happiness, liberation and enlightenment, for oneself. This is also the root of all other living beings’ temporary and ultimate happiness, as well as liberation and enlightenment.

This project makes it possible for this education to happen. This is how you can present it to the family and to others, to inspire them, and to explain the benefits and reasons why it is so important.

I meant to send this information to you one or two weeks ago but it just didn’t happen, so before I completely forget I would like to send this message to you. It would be very kind if you could meet them, pass on this message, and educate them regarding the benefits of this project—how it benefits not only them but the whole of mankind, the whole world, all living beings, who are also numberless in other universes.

With much love and prayers...

Thank you very much for your kind letter and your Merit Box. I will dedicate the money to making the two-story statue of the female deity of controlling. This is to help my project. A student is trying to get a position in the Singapore embassy, he also needs this statue, and I will dedicate your money to this project.

Thank you very much for your devotion to guru, Dharma, and Sangha and your compassion for the most precious, kind sentient beings. Serve sentient beings, please continue your Dharma practice in this way, and also meditate on the lamrim. Develop realizations step by step. Success will come with these conditions, and the most important one is to make your realization of guru devotion stable. This is the most important realization to develop, using the methods of strong purification and of extensive collection of merits.

Then, every day, pray with that strong guru devotion to the direct and indirect guru to grant realizations.

With much love and prayer...

To my dear brothers and sisters, who are brave and good-hearted, concerned not only for yourselves, but who want to see the world happy and peaceful; then, besides this world, who are concerned for the peace of all the countless living beings; and who want to offer service, I have an extremely important request for you.

First, I will mention the background of this request. Around Lhasa, there are three great monasteries: Sera, Ganden, and Drepung, each of which has many thousands of monks. These are the main places of learning for the Dharma, for learning the complete extensive teachings of the Buddha, the philosophy of Buddhism, both sutra and tantra. In our present time, there came to be a very highly realized yogi named Tehor Kyorpon Rinpoche, who was a great scholar from Drepung. After he took his examination to become a lharampa geshe, which is like earning a doctorate from a University, he left for the mountains to meditate. He went to one very high mountain near Lhasa to look for a cave, carrying only the few possessions of a monk, the robes, etc., which are needed according to the practice of Vinaya and the Lam-rim Chen-mo, Lama Tsongkhapa’s great commentary on the graduated stages of the path, the heart of the 84,000 teachings of the Buddha.

A Buddhist meditator is an inner scientist, a scientist of the mind. In this way, Tehor Rinpoche meditated like a scientist, experimenting. He studied for all those years, and generated vast understanding of the depths of Buddhism. Then he tried to achieve the meaning of the path by generating the realizations of the stages of the path in his mental continuum. His disciples, all geshes, also completed the extensive study program in the monasteries. Some of them also came to live an ascetic life in the mountains around where he was, although with quite some distance between them, in order to actualize the path to enlightenment.

When Tibet was taken over by Communist China in 1959, Rinpoche escaped from Tibet. He lived in Dalhousie, near Dharamsala. There were many Tibetans in the Tibetan settlement where he was – lay people, and also monks from other monasteries, such as the lower and upper Tantric colleges, and so forth. Tehor Kyorpon Rinpoche was guiding them and started a group of ascetic monks – geshes. He individually examined and accepted each one. In this group, there was also a great meditator, Geshe Jampa Wangdu, who had vast success actualizing the lamrim, guru devotion, the three principal paths, calm abiding, and also the generation and completion stage realizations, such as the clear light and the illusory body – all these stages of the path.

Geshe Jampa Wangdu practiced lamrim and achieved shiné, calm abiding, at this place. Before he passed away, I took some teachings from him on the pill retreat known as “taking the essence,” (chu len), so he is one of my gurus. There have also been others who achieved calm abiding there. I don’t know many stories about all the other meditators, but they are all very serious practitioners.

Like this, there have been extremely successful meditators produced from that community, who have reached very high levels of the tantric path. Tehor Kyorpon Rinpoche was, initially, the great yogi who led the group. There was one incarnate lama among that group, one lama who was the chief disciple of that great yogi. After Tehor Rinpoche passed away, this lama was given the responsibility to develop and sustain the community. There is still a group of meditators that continues, even up to now, but the land they are using, which is in Kangra, belongs to some monks from another tradition. They recently asked for the land back and have given the meditators a deadline by which they must either vacate the land or buy it.

These meditators are the real thing, serious practitioners living an ascetic life and experimenting on the path. They have received 300,000 rupees (US $6700) from the Tibetan Government. The Tibetan Government also sent out a letter requesting help from the Tibetan community, but that letter doesn’t really explain the importance of this group and what they are doing, meditating and attaining the path – the common lamrim and the uncommon lamrim, the tantric path. This is the most important thing that is needed in the world. Each meditator who attains the path will bring so much peace and happiness to this world. Each of them becomes more precious than the whole sky filled with wish-granting jewels. You can see how important the need is. If you look at how much suffering there is in the world: all the war, terrorism, famine, torture, dangers from the elements, so many people dying everywhere from disease – millions and billions dying of cancer (how many people are dying of cancer right now?), AIDS, etc., you can see how important meditation is for the world.

We need spiritual guides who have experience of the path. This is so rare. It is so important, in the world, to receive teachings from someone with experience. This is the best model, the most inspiring thing for the people of the world to achieve enlightenment.

Also, they live according to the Vinaya. They are preserving the Vinaya practice shi sum, the three foundations – Sojong, Abiding in the Summer Retreat (yarne), and Releasing the Retreat (gakye). Living in pure Vinaya is the basis for attaining the path of liberation and enlightenment. Whether or not the teaching of Buddha can be said to exist in a country is defined by whether or not these pure Vinaya practices are being performed. Vinaya is protecting oneself, disciplining one’s own three doors from the obstacles which interfere with being able to achieve liberation – freedom forever from the ocean of samsaric sufferings. It is the spiritual discipline which brings a person to liberation and to enlightenment.

They still need approximately US $9000 to buy the land. In addition to that, they also need around US $2500 to build a small temple where they can gather and do their practice, and to purchase a few other helpful items.

From the depths of my heart, I thank anyone who can help with this very much. This is definitely helping with world peace. Of course, there is no question that anyone from this group who has already actualized bodhicitta is a holy being; and then there are all those who will actualize bodhicitta, and will become holy beings that bring incredible peace and happiness to this world. This is a great blessing for the whole world.

With much appreciation,
Thubten Zopa, who bears the name of “Lama”

My very dear James,
I hope you and all your family are well. Please give my sincere regards to your family.

The following quotation is from the tantric text called Oceans of Wisdom: “For those who are wise and fortunate in doing the guru’s activities, this has greater meaning than having made prostrations to the three times’ buddhas for one hundred thousand times ten million eons. If one accomplishes the advice of the guru, one will accomplish all one’s wishes and create inconceivable merit.”

According to the Glorified Kalachakra Tantra: “Even if one has made offerings to the Three Jewels for three countless great eons, and saved the lives of ten million living beings, one can’t achieve enlightenment in this life. But if, with a devotional mind, one pleases the guru who has oceans of qualities, one will definitely achieve sublime and common qualities (realizations) in this very life.”

I am not saying I am the guru who has oceans of qualities, but am referring to His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Lama Yeshe.

Another quotation: “Even if one does oceans of good things for eons, one can’t achieve enlightenment in this life. But if one pleases the virtuous friend, one will achieve sublime realizations (Mahamudra clear light), and enlightenment, which is obtained from the direct cause, clear light.”

As it is said: “Enlightenment, which is so difficult to achieve, from many millions of eons, is granted in this very life of the quarreling time by the guru.” This is the reason why one offers to be a servant and to please the guru.

So, dear James, in the past I asked you to invite His Holiness the Dalai Lama, and you did, and that was very beneficial. Again, I asked you to invite His Holiness the Dalai Lama, and that visit was incredibly beneficial. The largest number of people came to that event. Now you have a third opportunity to offer service to His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Also, for so many years you have been putting your heart into the organization and offering service. Everyone can understand the great benefit the organization has received from you. This means you have offered great service to the teachings of Buddha and to sentient beings.

Most dear, devoted, and dedicated students of the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha and sentient beings, again, it is really amazing what you have been able to accomplish. I am jumping up and down (with both feet) with joy and happiness (just like the fans do when their team has won the football, raising their arms and leaping into the air, although sometimes you can’t tell by their expression if they are happy or not, sometimes it looks like they’re angry). Anyway, this is my way of showing how happy I am with how you are helping and supporting the project.

This is the most urgent time for your help and support. It’s like if you are at the bottom of a cliff and someone lowers a rope for you, and you can’t quite reach it. Then someone comes (all of you) along and helps you reach the rope so you can climb to the top. Or it’s like you are dying of starvation and then someone brings you food.

From my heart, I want to thank all of you BILLIONS of times for helping with these recitations and pujas. I thank you on behalf of the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. Once this karma ripens it will have immense benefit for sentient beings and the teachings of the Buddha.

The FPMT is like a baby about to stand up.

With much love and prayer...

Most venerable one who is beautified by the three higher, incomparable sources of inspiration for countless sentient beings to abandon the cause of sufferings and to follow the path to liberation and enlightenment and who is the incomparable leader, whose kindness to the FPMT organization, to Maitreya Project, and to me is inexpressible. I hope everything is going well with you.

You are the main source from whom we have received funding for the Maitreya Project and because of this we have been able to develop the Project, also due to the kindness of other small donations that came from other people.

I understand at this time it is not easy and the funding is not so available for you, so I have very great appreciation and respect for your incomparable compassion. One of the qualities and signs of a holy being is that they don’t change their minds about whatever they have promised in the past. It is said in the teachings that once bodhisattvas make a promise, it is like it has been carved on a rock. With you it is like that.

It has been an extremely difficult situation for the Maitreya Project. When I heard that there were some funds available from the manager, it was unbelievable, like receiving food when somebody is dying of starvation. The funds would be highly beneficial now and I would appreciate it very much.

As you know this project is going to last for 1000 years and is built thinking of the long term. That is what makes it expensive. However, the longer the statue can last, the longer it can liberate sentient beings from oceans of samsaric suffering and bring them to enlightenment. The bigger the statue is the greater the number of sentient beings from all over the world who will come and receive so much benefit from it. Every single thing they do, whether circumambulating, prostrating, or making offerings to the statue, immediately becomes the cause to achieve enlightenment, even if their motivation is not Dharma, but is attachment and grasping to this life. Still, every single action of every single sentient being becomes the cause to achieve the whole path to enlightenment, including the root, which is guru devotion. Even seeing the statue purifies so many defilements and plants the seed of enlightenment, and that causes them to have realizations in the path in the near future.

I would like to thank you very very much for this recent donation.
With deepest gratitude and my prayers and love...

It is more important to offer service as best we can to the guru than to build the Maitreya statue. There is no difference between offering service to His Holiness and offering service directly to Maitreya Buddha. Offering service to His Holiness is actually offering service directly to Maitreya Buddha himself.

I want to say thank you very much to everyone, to all the yogis, yoginis, heroes and heroines, to all the Rinpoches out there and all the precious ones having Buddha nature, to all you unbelievably fortunate ones practicing great compassion toward all sentient beings (with bodhicitta). I want to thank those who are praying, working, and liberating sentient beings from the most unbearable sufferings of the lower realms and the sufferings of samsara in general. I also want to thank those who are liberating beings from the sufferings of the upper realms, even from the subtle defilements, from lower nirvana, and bringing beings to enlightenment.

I would like to thank you all very much for all your service in making the thousand offerings to Maitreya Buddha, for performing Tara pujas, etc., for all your voluntary work and all your prayers. I would like to thank you for doing this on top of your everyday service to the teachings of Buddha, sentient beings, and your own spiritual growth.

So, here is a short message for you all:

I bow down to the holy lotus feet of the Buddha Maitreya, who is the
embodiment of all the buddhas (countless buddhas).
I bow down to the loving kindness of every single one of those buddhas.
I bow down to the loving kindness which creates omniscience that guides us obscured, pitiful sentient beings.

How does loving kindness guide us? It frees us from the lower realms and brings us to the higher happy realms. It not only frees us obscured, pitiful sentient beings from that, but also frees us from so much samsaric suffering, the whole of samsara, and brings us to ultimate liberation.

Not only that, this great loving kindness, which creates omniscience, even frees us from lower nirvana and subtle defilements, and brings us obscured, pitiful sentient beings to full enlightenment.

Each of the buddhas' great loving kindness protects us from all undesirable conditions, all those sufferings, and gives us the collections of goodness, all desirable conditions, and all happiness.

Loving kindness uses perfect power to free us from all those sufferings and gives us all temporary and ultimate happiness. Great loving kindness directs the perfect power each buddha has. There are countless buddhas, and that loving kindness makes each one benefit us. So, each buddha has this great loving kindness for us all the time.

There is great loving kindness in the heart of the Buddha for us, from time without beginning, as the continuity of our life is beginningless. So, until full enlightenment is achieved, the Buddha has loving kindness for us.

Maitreya Buddha is the embodiment of each buddha's loving kindness, and the symbol of all the bodhisattvas' loving kindness for all sentient beings.

Peace experienced throughout the entire universe, global peace, national peace, and each individual's peace comes from the good heart, loving kindness. Maitreya Buddha is a symbol of this.

Recently, I think, the students in the Dharma centers suddenly put more effort into prayers, to make the thousand offerings to Maitreya Buddha and Tara pujas, as I requested at that time, when we appeared to have come very close to securing funding for the Maitreya Project. For some time this has looked possible, but then recently, from my observations, it looked very difficult. Now, suddenly there has been a change. Before, it seemed that nothing would happen this year with the financing of the Maitreya Buddha project, that we would have to wait until next year. Now, suddenly, things have become much more positive regarding the funding. So, you can see how causative phenomena is dependent arising – if there are unmistaken causes and conditions, then the result can come. And all of this is existing in mere name, merely imputed, which shows that while it is existing it is empty, while it is empty it is existing. That is why all sentient beings can end their samsaric suffering, which as no beginning, and achieve enlightenment.

I would like to thank you all now for your sincere and devoted heart prayers for success in building the Maitreya statue.
With much love and prayers...

My very dear Norman,
Thank you very much for your kind email. I am sorry for the delay in replying.

From the bottom of my heart I would like to thank you very much for all the many years of your service to the center. This has enabled the center to benefit many sentient beings. So many sentient beings have received teachings correctly, which allows them to practice correctly and to have correct realizations. From that, they can achieve liberation and enlightenment and be able to enlighten others.

All of this great benefit that has come from the center for so many years, and will continue to come in the future, came from you, your capacity, your intelligence, your devotion, and your compassion. I highly appreciate all your kindness and I request, with my two palms together, for you to please continue.

Of course, I don't need to repeat to you how important it is to teach Dharma to sentient beings, and how important it is for sentient beings to learn Dharma. To be able to become fully enlightened and reveal Dharma, Shakyamuni Buddha first generated compassion for all living beings by entering the Mahayana path and collecting merits by practicing charity for three countless great eons. Then he practiced the paramita of morality for three countless great eons, as well as practicing perseverance and the rest of the six paramitas. He also offered his limbs and his whole body to others. He was born so many times in royal families but gave away his wealth and gave up his family in order to complete the two merits, wisdom and virtue, and in order to achieve the two kayas, so that he could then reveal Dharma to us. In this way, these precious teachings were left in the world by Buddha.

How wonderful it is that you are teaching and translating this to many sentient beings. How joyful it is! How fantastic it is! This is the ultimate method of achieving world peace, and to enlighten all sentient beings.

Thank you very much.
With much love and prayers...

My very dear John and Nicky,
Thanks very much to both of you for your service. It is very kind of you. Of course, it is not an easy job. Here I would like to express what the great yogi Milrepa said:

“Ha Ha! The meditator meditating on the rock and the benefactor offering food have an auspicious arrangement to achieve enlightenment together… Ha Ha!”

It is exactly the same in your case, with both of you offering service to the mediators, which gives them a chance to continue their retreat. This retreat is not just focusing on breathing, and watching where thoughts are going and what they are doing; it is not only that. They are meditating on lamrim, on the whole path to enlightenment, especially bodhicitta.
With much love and prayers...

Thank you so much for all your work in supporting the retreatants. I feel this is one of the best services you can do for others, because you are offering service to those who are practicing Dharma, who are working to end suffering in samsara and trying to achieve enlightenment for sentient beings. This is more important, in my view, than going to Africa and saving many people from starvation. Even if thousands of people are able to survive, it doesn’t mean they will practice Dharma, change their minds, and stop the causes of suffering and achieve liberation.

Each person who goes to Shine Land is purifying their mind, collecting merit, and bringing enlightenment nearer. There is no question that if one of them actually achieves realizations, this person will be able to benefit sentient beings more and more, and will be able to bring others to enlightenment: the great liberation.

This is how the Shine Land is benefiting all sentient beings. Thank you so much.

More Advice from Rinpoche on Related Topics:
See the Advice Book section for People Serving Dharma Centers.
See the Advice Book section with Advice for Center Directors.