Benefits of FPMT Projects

Benefits of FPMT Projects

Date Posted:
June 2009

Rinpoche made the following comments on the benefits of the FPMT, Dharma centers and their projects.

My point here is for you to understand what we are doing and what you are helping with. This is so that you can rejoice. It really is unbelievable, incredible, what you are helping with, and this creates so much benefit for the world and for sentient beings. This actually creates the cause to liberate so many beings. This is an incredible opportunity for you to rejoice, and if you rejoice and then dedicate the merits, it is amazing. This is more than anyone can offer, and this creates more karma than anything else.

It’s possible that others have done a lot, but what they have done has been done with a self-cherishing mind, wanting reputation, fame, and praise, but here, what you are doing is not with this mind, so it is incredible. This is really something for you to rejoice in again and again and then dedicate all the merit.

Many people do a lot, but usually their motivation is for worldly benefit, material benefit, or reputation, or they are mainly focused on helping people materially, like food for the poor, etc, which of course is good, but does not alleviate the real cause of suffering, which is negative karma. Here, what you are doing will really benefit so many sentient beings, because what you are doing is supporting building holy objects, Dharma centers, and the FPMT’s projects, which are helping sentient beings to purify their negative karma and create extensive merit. This is the best help and the most important thing to offer sentient beings, because this helps to improve sentient beings’ minds.

At the centers we are teaching the complete path to enlightenment, as Buddha explained, very clearly, as well as the explanation on how to liberate numberless sentient beings, every single sentient being. Even in just one small area of land there can be hundreds of thousands of ants, so you have an idea how many sentient beings there are just in this world alone.

The path of the Buddha has been tested by many great holy beings who have practiced and achieved enlightenment, and their stories are there for others to read and learn how they did it. So, the most important thing to offer is education on how to cease all the sufferings and their causes, which are seeds left in the mind from past negative karma. This is the only way that one can actually be liberated from all the sufferings in samsara and cease all the mistakes of the mind. Mostly, the people who support this are the Sangha. We have many different Sanghas of different nationalities around the world. Of course, there are also lay people who help in many ways, like building holy objects. From these holy objects so many receive benefit, even insects. Once these holy objects have been built and even while they are being built, day and night, they purify so many sentient beings’ negative karma, and in this way these beings are not reborn in the three lower realms. The objects help sentient beings create the cause of enlightenment and to also enlighten all other sentient beings.

Building holy objects and circumambulating them, making offerings, etc, creates merit. This merit comes from virtue/good karma. This is all due to the power of the holy object. Even if one doesn’t have a virtuous mind, due to the power of the holy object, one creates merit.

What you are doing is helping us accomplish limitless skies of benefit for sentient beings and the teachings of Buddha, benefiting sentient beings not just by giving shelter, food, and medicine, etc. Of course, those things are very good, but they are not enough because they don’t purify the past negative karma of this life, nor all past lives’ negative karmas, which have not been purified, and the results of which are still to come, as well as negative karma from numberless past lifetimes from beginningless time, which brings all difficulties, unbelievable sufferings, physical sufferings, and mental sufferings, as well as war, famine, disease, torture, poverty, everything. If one doesn’t purify these things, and one doesn’t purify the mind, then material things alone won’t help, because they don’t transform the mind from anger into loving kindness and compassion, from desire into renunciation, the satisfied, content, free mind, seeking the happiness of future lives, or, more pure than that, seeking liberation from samsara, detachment from samsaric pleasures, and from the self-cherishing thought. It is from this that all obstacles, undesirable things, and sufferings come. It must be transformed into bodhicitta and cherishing others, which is where all happiness comes from, temporal and ultimate happiness, up to enlightenment.

For example, even though many countries try to help Africa, it is still in the same situation, there is still so much killing, stealing, famine, and poverty. It is always the same. There seems to always be poverty and famine, it doesn’t seem to change, even though many countries try to help with money and food. Why doesn’t the situation change? Because they have not changed their minds into virtue from non-virtue, from ignorance into wisdom, seeing how things are empty, how they exist in mere name, merely imputed by the mind, seeing things as a hallucination. Instead, they see them as appearing not to be merely imputed by the mind, but existing from their own side, and do not understand that they are not true. The other countries only provide for the needs of this life and this doesn’t change the mind into the path to happiness, especially great liberation and enlightenment.

By building the Maitreya Buddha statue, we are going to benefit sentient beings not just by giving material support, medicine, food, shelter, and so forth, not just that. The first thing is that all the people who are building the statue, who are directly involved, purify so much negative karma collected from beginningless rebirths. By working on a holy object they collect so much merit, and have the great opportunity to transform their minds into the path and achieve, particularly, guru devotion, renunciation, bodhicitta, emptiness, the realizations of the three principal aspects of the path, and the two stages of tantra, which enable them to achieve enlightenment.

Due to this project, many thousands of poor people in India will get jobs so they can get food for their families and put their children through school. Also, it is a different type of work to building a factory or a building that is used for business offices. This project is so different because of the power of the holy object. Even if the people working on it do not practice Dharma, because of the power of the holy object, then all this work becomes Dharma and virtue, which is the cause of happiness.

It is said in the teachings by Buddha requested by King Salgyal:

However many atoms there are in a statue of a Buddha (in the text it mentions a stupa, but a statue is exactly the same as a stupa), for that many lifetimes the person who is building the statue or stupa will be born as a king in the human realm or the deva realm, and for that many times will he or she create the cause to achieve the perfect concentration of the form and formless realm.

Without perfect concentration (calm abiding), one can’t really develop on the path to liberation, through the paths of accumulation, preparation, insight, meditation, and no more learning. Continually, one can’t cease the delusions, including the seeds of delusions, so one can’t really achieve the cessation of all the sufferings, liberation from samsara, the five Mahayana paths, the ten bhumis, and enlightenment for sentient beings. Without one-pointed concentration, one cannot achieve and complete the tantric realizations, the two stages. If one doesn’t achieve enlightenment, then one can’t do perfect works for numberless sentient beings, numberless hell beings, hungry ghosts, human beings, suras, asuras, and intermediate state beings.

By building holy objects, such as statues, stupas, and scriptures, however many atoms there are in the holy object, then you collect that many causes of perfect concentration. Here we are building a 500-foot Maitreya Buddha statue, so you can imagine how many atoms there are in it. So, you will get all these benefits: a higher rebirth, even as a king in the human or deva realm, and through this you can benefit so many sentient beings.

Now, we are very close to being able to bring the limitless skies of benefit of the teachings of Buddha to sentient beings, to bringing the happiness of the sun shining the Dharma in this world to so many sentient beings, in the east and the west, all the different parts of the world.