Don’t forget that the Tara Institute gompa is always ready to accept your offerings of flowers, lights and incense!  Please contact Ven. Lhamo on 9596 7410 for more information.

Kyabje Zopa Rinpoche made the following comments about how to improve conditions at Dharma centers.

Be careful - watch your behavior with other people - be kind.

Offering food to students at the center is a way of collecting unbelievable merit, because students are the pores of the guru. Disciples of the same guru collect more merit from offering food to fellow disciples than from offering to the Buddha, Dharma, Sangha, and numberless statues and stupas. People don’t think of this, they think only of offering food in monasteries, but you can collect merit this way, too.

Whenever you meet students with the same guru, if you offer things to them with the recognition that they are the guru’s pores, as they have the same guru, then even if you offer chocolate, water, money, anything, that is an unbelievable way to collect merit. If you offer to many Sanghas who have the same Guru, then you are making offerings to that many pores of the guru. This is the easiest way to collect skies of merit through offering. By offering even just one candy, flower, or grain of rice to a statue of Buddha or even a visualized Buddha, you collect skies of merit, but offering to students in this way is much more powerful than offering to the three jewels (Buddha, Dharma, Sangha), as well as all the statues, stupas, and scriptures existing in all directions. These benefits should be understood, so that when you make offerings to the guru’s pores, you think correctly. This is the best business.

Sometimes centers don’t have much money, but if the director knows Dharma, he or she can very skillfully create merit without needing much money. When you meet people and support people, you also collect merit, which means that you can achieve enlightenment, and support one’s own and others’ happiness. If organizers at centers are not skillful and wise, knowing how to take care of people, then even having a geshe teaching Dharma may not be enough. Developing the center doesn’t only depend on the teacher, but on how you look after people. People can be made to feel welcome so they are attracted to come to the center, or not. So, we must pay attention to this.

The essential thing is to make people happy, and serve them well. This helps to build up the center, and to get material support very easily, without pushing. The purpose, of course, is to have more facilities, because then the center has more ability to spread the Dharma, and can offer more comfort, so more people can enjoy receiving the Dharma, and you can benefit them more, liberating them from oceans of samsaric suffering and bringing them to enlightenment.

You need to be aware of so many things. However, the key thing is to know how to take care of people. You must cherish every person who comes to the center, feel that they are so precious, and take care of them. Respect naturally comes from that, then caring, and the person is so delighted.

There are so many opportunities to collect merit for the center if you know the Dharma. Even just offering a bowl of water or cup of tea to a person who is a student or disciple of the same guru collects so much merit. This is one way to build up the center. Think big. This is a bodhisattva’s skillful means to benefit sentient beings.

The FPMT is a Dharma organization, not a factory; therefore, it should help people, help the students. It’s not a Coca-Cola or chocolate factory.

FPMT News (July 2009)

Dear Friends,

Lama Zopa Rinpoche receives many requests for prayers and help for people who are dying … the requests come every day. Very often people / students are not prepared for their own death or for that of those close to them - it comes even as a surprise or shock when it happens. It shouldn’t be, and Rinpoche is always trying to emphasize the need to be ready.

Today an old student came to Rinpoche with a request about what to do because a relative is dying, so Rinpoche wanted to send this message out:

My very dear Brothers and Sisters,

There are so many unbelievable circumstances for death; it can happen at any time, especially as more diseases such as cancer seem to be increasing.

Some people are very happy at the time of death because of their good heart: they experience even death for the benefit of numberless suffering  sentient beings, thinking that even at this time this is the best thing that they can do in their life. Other people are not so happy at the time of death, but are OK. Most people, however, are very unhappy at the time of death.

Irrespective of the conditions, such as cancer and so forth, the state of your mind is the actual cause of happiness and suffering, even at the time of death.

With much love and prayer,

Lama Zopa 

Scribe: Ven.Roger Kunsang, edited by Dr.Nick Ribush. Indonesia 7 February 2010

P.S. Lama Zopa Rinpoche has given extensive advice on preparing for death and caring for others at the time of death. Heart Advice for Death and Dying contains all of Rinpoche’s most essential advice, while Caring for the Dying is a short brochure with information that may be needed on short notice. For more information, please go to http://www.fpmt.org/teachers/zopa/advice/ and in particular, http://www.fpmt.org/teachers/zopa/advice/death.asp

In the afternoon after His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s teachings we went for tea with the geshe from one of our centers and some of his students. Geshe-la insisted I give the best advice for the center, and we talked a little about the difficulties. I said one needs an open heart; there are different views, so apply the views that are more beneficial. Like a road blocked by rocks, first you have to recognize the blocks so that you can clear them away.