Lama Zopa Rinpoche full length teachings

We can precede the Chenrezig visualization by calming techniques and breathing exercises, reciting prayers and reflecting on the kindness of Guru Shakyamuni Buddha. Buddha made immense sacrifices for the benefit of all sentient beings, practicing morality, charity, perseverance, concentration, and wisdom for three countless great eons. Integrating Lam Rim meditation with deity meditation and mantr...

Our current bodies carry the seeds of disturbing thoughts and defilements, and they perpetuate samsara. The continuity of these aggregates, including consciousness, never breaks, constantly circling from one life to the next. The general suffering of samsara includes the impermanence of everything, the unsatisfactory nature of desires, and the inevitability of leaving our bodies behind. Sentient b...

Everything we perceive, from objects to colours, is a result of the mind labelling and imputing meanings onto them. By recognizing the imputed nature of phenomena and the contradiction between appearance and reality, we can prevent the mind from solidifying mistaken beliefs and contributing to delusion, attachment, and other negative emotions. By focusing on wisdom and understanding the ultimate n...

Lama Zopa Rinpoche continued his video teachings on thought transformation from Amitabha Buddhist Centre, Singapore in August and September, 2022. Here is a summary of the most recent teaching recorded on September 14, 2022: By not harming others, we are creating the cause for peace in the future, Rinpoche explains. If we fight those who harm us in this life, it creates the cause to fight them aga...

Lama Zopa Rinpoche continued his video teachings on thought transformation from Amitabha Buddhist Centre in Singapore in August and September. Here is a summary of the teaching offered on September 10, 2022: During Rinpoche's September 3 teaching ( #134: In Your Life as a Couple, Practice Good Heart ), Rinpoche offered the oral transmission for Lama Tsongkhapa's Utilizing Suffering in the Pat...

Lama Zopa Rinpoche continued his video teachings on thought transformation from Amitabha Buddhist Centre in Singapore in August and September. Here is a summary of the teaching offered on September 7, 2022: The most important Dharma, Rinpoche teaches us, is compassion. If you are becoming kinder and more compassionate, this means you are practicing Dharma. Rinpoche discusses the importance of taki...

For those of us living as a couple in relationships, we need to practice having a good heart. With body, speech, and mind, we have incredible opportunities to collect good karma. If we dedicate our own lives to serving others, to create happiness and reduce suffering in others, then we influence our companions to gradually do the same. This is really offering so much help to them, helping them to...

Lama Zopa Rinpoche continued his video teachings on thought transformation from Amitabha Buddhist Centre in Singapore in August. Here is a summary of the teaching offered on August 16, 2022: Rinpoche offers some of the history of how he began teaching courses at Kopan Monastery in Nepal and how the FPMT organization began (starting at 28:12). Real happiness comes from a good heart, Rinpoche remind...

Lama Zopa Rinpoche continued his video teachings on thought transformation from Amitabha Buddhist Centre in Singapore in August. Here is a summary of the teaching offered on August 13, 2022: To live life as a couple, you need wisdom and compassion, Rinpoche teaches us. If we don't have this, life together is so much suffering, so many problems. This is due to thinking in the wrong way—with the sel...

Lama Zopa Rinpoche continued his video teachings on thought transformation from Amitabha Buddhist Centre in Singapore in August. Here is a summary of the teaching offered on August 10, 2022: It is very important to understand how anger destroys your happiness. By getting angry at a bodhisattva, our merits are destroyed, we will be reborn in hell, and realizations will be delayed. And by getting an...

Lama Zopa Rinpoche continues his video teachings on thought transformation from Amitabha Buddhist Centre in Singapore at the request of Telo Tulku Rinpoche, Ganden Tendar Ling FPMT Buddhist Center, Aryadeva FPMT Study Group, and the Save Tibet Foundation in Russia. Here is a summary of his August 6, 2022 teaching: Most of the world is suffering, Rinpoche reminds us. Whether rich or poor, there is...

Lama Zopa Rinpoche continues his video teachings on thought transformation. Here is a summary of a teaching given on June 26 from Kopan Monastery, Nepal, at the request of Telo Tulku Rinpoche, Ganden Tendar Ling FPMT Buddhist Center, Aryadeva FPMT Study Group, and the Save Tibet Foundation in Russia.  The first kindness of sentient beings is that they are the source of all past, present, and...

Lama Zopa Rinpoche continues his video teachings on thought transformation . Here is a summary of a teaching given on June 25 from Kopan Monastery, Nepal, at the request of Telo Tulku Rinpoche, Ganden Tendar Ling FPMT Buddhist Center, Aryadeva FPMT Study Group, and the Save Tibet Foundation in Russia. The foundation of thought transformation is to stop harming others, Rinpoche explains. When anyth...

Lama Zopa Rinpoche continues his video teachings on thought transformation from Kopan Monastery in Nepal, offered to students from China and Malaysia via Zoom on June 13. All of the 84,000 teachings of Buddha are included in the advice to not harm sentient beings and to benefit them, Rinpoche explains. If we harm sentient beings, we can’t benefit them. All of the suffering we experience ourselves,...

Rinpoche offered this teaching to students from China and Malaysia via Zoom on June 12, 2022 from Kopan Monastery, Nepal. By taking refuge in the Dharma, we should stop harming sentient beings, Rinpoche reminds us. And more than that, we should benefit them. In fact, the real refuge practice is cherishing sentient beings. If we take care of them the most, if we cherish them the most, that is the b...

Rinpoche offered this teaching, recorded on June 11, 2022, at Kopan Monastery in Nepal for a group of students in China and Malaysia. Numberless buddhas of the past, present, and future can see our suffering and that we need happiness, Rinpoche explains. They want to help, they want to guide us. However, from our side, if we don’t rely on them by going for refuge, all of their power together canno...

Lama Zopa Rinpoche continues teaching on refuge in this new video. Rinpoche explains how “taking refuge is not only reciting words." He offers the example of a robot, which does not have a mind and which only recites words without feeling. Rinpoche then talks about the many ways we can benefit numberless sentient beings by taking them around holy objects and having holy images and mantras for them...

Lama Zopa Rinpoche continues his teachings on refuge from Kopan Monastery in Nepal. In this video Rinpoche reminds us that understanding the topic of refuge is so important because it can take a whole life of studying or even many lifetimes to understand it. Rinpoche offers commentary on Phabongkha Rinpoche’s teachings on refuge from Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand as discussed in “Day Twelve”...

Lama Zopa Rinpoche continues teaching on refuge. Quoting from Lama Seringpa, Rinpoche explains how we should immediately cast away our self-cherishing thought, which creates all our suffering. Then we should immediately cherish others, from whom we received ultimate happiness.  We must also understand the three types of suffering--the suffering of pain, the suffering of change, and pervasive...

Lama Zopa Rinpoche continues teaching on refuge, emphasizing that refuge is not something simple that you hear and chant. Instead, one has to understand the four noble truths extensively and also understand the qualities of Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. Rinpoche explains that it is extremely important to understand what ties us to the suffering of samsara. When we fully understand how karma and delu...

Lama Zopa Rinpoche continues teaching on refuge, emphasizing how important it is to not belittle the guru with whom you have made a Dharma connection. Quoting the Fifth Dalai Lama, Rinpoche explains that what you see as mistakes by the guru are actually your own mistakes. Instead, you should see all that the guru does as positive. You should also be very careful about from whom you take refuge. Ri...

Lama Zopa Rinpoche continues discussing refuge in this recent teaching, reminding us that there are many ways in which we can help others, even with limited experience with and understanding of the path. For example, we can build holy objects and offer Dharma books and teachings to others, which helps them purify mistakes, create merit, and dispel ignorance. About the benefits of taking ultimate r...

Lama Zopa Rinpoche continues discussing refuge in this new video, reminding us that we must be careful about the objects in which we take refuge and making the point that it is best to go for refuge to Buddha. When you are dying, in order to not be born in the lower realms, to purify negative karma, to obtain a higher rebirth, Rinpoche says emphatically, "Rely on Buddha!" To free you from samsara,...

Lama Zopa Rinpoche discusses the importance of taking refuge in Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha while we have this precious human rebirth; explains why Buddha can definitely guide you, especially if you go for refuge to Buddha; and reminds us that cherishing others most is the path of the bodhisattva. Read more about his teaching here: https://fpmt.org/lama-zopa-rinpoche-news-and-advice/advice-from-lam...

Lama Zopa Rinpoche discusses the benefits of making offerings to stupas, in particular Boudha Stupa in Nepal. Then, joined by Kopan senior Sangha, Rinpoche leads an offering practice to Boudha Stupa, which with you can follow along.  Rinpoche also offers commentary on verses from Liberation Upon Hearing: The History of the Great Jarung Kashar Stupa by Padmasambhava on the benefits of making o...