NEW!

Kirti Tsenshab Rinpoche will give the Oral transmission of The Sutra
of Golden Light and the Sanghata Sutra upon Lama Zopa Rinpoche's
request. Please read articles below for information on these two
sutras.

Aug 10: Oral transmission of The Sutra of Golden Light
Aug 11: Oral transmission of Sanghata Sutra
Time to be confirmed)


UPDATES!

Uttaratantra - Sublime Continuum of the Mahayana (Chapter One)
One of the most important teachings in all traditions of Tibetan
Buddhism, clarifying the meaning of our Buddha potential, in
particular the emptiness of the mind that allows evolution to a
state of complete enlightenment and an extensive explanation of the
meaning of the Three Jewels.
Aug 12, 13, 19, 20, 26 & 27; 7- 9pm.
Course fee for Six sessions: $90 - 75
$15 per session


Review class for Uttaratantra:
Ven George will be conducting review classes on Aug 14, 21, 28. 7pm,
Although this class is offered as part of the BASIC PROGRAM, anyone
is welcome to join...
Course fee for three sessions: $45 - 36
$15 per session

For Full time Basic Program Students: Uttaratantra and Review class:
$120 - 95


Teaching on the King of Prayers:
An inspiring prayer of Bodhisattva Samanthabadra on the Aspiration
of the Bodhisattvas.
Aug 22, 23 & 24; 7 - 9pm
Course fee for three sessions: $45 - 36
$15 per session


Oral transmissions, at the end of the King of Prayers teachings:
Aug 22: Chanting the Names of Manjushri
Aug 23: Diamond Sutra
Aug 23: The Wheel of Sharp Weapons


Great Chenresig Initiation,
Aug 16 & 17; 7 - 9pm.
Course fee for two days: $60 - 45
No drop-in allowed. Participants must attend both days of the
initiation)
For those who signed up to do the Eight Nyung Nay retreat: $40
A prerequiste for participating in the Nyung Nay - Chenresig Fasting
Retreat.


REGISTRATION ESSENTIAL for all Events. This will also help us in
preparing handouts for participants. Please call 831 462 8383 ro
register or goto our website to download the Registration Form.


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SUTRA OF GOLDEN LIGHT
The kind and compassionate Guru Shakyamuni Buddha taught the Holy
Sutra of Golden Light. It has skies of benefit for the world, for
world peace, and skies of benefit for any individual who reads even
a portion of this text.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche says:
This text is very precious, it brings peace and happiness and is
very powerful to stop violence. It gives incredible protection to
the country from violence etc. By hearing this text, one's
karmas get purified.

This text increases successes and especially for leaders, like king
or presidents, it brings success in guiding virtue; the path to
happiness. For those who have problems – if they are dying or
dead, if the devas have turned against oneself and nothing is
working, if merely by expressing, one's friends, loved ones,
husband, wife, family members, even servants get angry with you, if
one's wealth declines or if one has harm from black magic or
spirits, bad dreams or fearful things happening, then one should
wash, put on clean clothes and with a peaceful mind listen to the
transmission of this text. Then all will be pacified. Anyone who
hears creates so much merit and is highly admired by the Buddhas.

The place where this is taught, that whole country benefits. The
king of the country doesn't get attacked and disease is
eliminated, everyone is happy and the country becomes harmonious.
There are no quarrels, the king gives religious freedom and is
always protected by the devas. It is especially good to be read in
places where there is a lot of fighting, like Colombia.

Anyone who keeps, memorises or contributes to this text exceeds the
eight worldly beings and all their wishes get fulfilled. Buddha told
the four guardians to make offerings and do service to this text and
always to protect the people who memorise or even just read it. The
four guardians acknowledged they would protect those who read it and
would help and fulfil all their wishes. As well, rains will come at
the right time and all prosperity will come.

Memorising or making offerings to this text is like making
inconceivable offerings to Buddha. In anyone whose ear these holy
words are spoken, enlightenment will never be reversed. The life
will always be directed toward enlightenment and one will never fall
back. There is no question if you memorise the text. The deva,
Hamachiwa Pala, told Buddha that she will protect the bhikshu who
recites this text and that he will receive all that is needed;
property, a stable mind and so forth. Who even tries to read or
understand this text will experience comfort and happiness of the
deva and humans for 100 billions eons; fame and perfect crops and
they will become a Buddha. The earth goddess definitely will help
even if only one chapter, one bodhisattva's name, is mentioned;
even if one verse (four words) is read and one tries to understand,
she will protect those sentient beings and fulfil their wishes.
Those sentient beings who hear only one verse will never go to the
lower realms. The earth goddess told Buddha that even if a person
hears only one verse, they will be born in the deva realm. Further,
the earth goddess told Buddha, that the non-virtuous karma of the
person who hears even one verse will be eliminated and they will
achieve enlightenment.

It will be good to go to countries where there are much killing and
read this 100 times or any number of times. This will be very
valuable, very beneficial.


SANGHATA SUTRA

Lama Zopa Rinpoche has recently suggested that all FPMT centers
recite a certain Mahayana sutra called the Sanghata Sutra, 20 times.
The recitation of this sutra yields enormous benefits for all those
who hear or recite it, and has been recommended by Rinpoche
specifically in order to generate the merit that will be needed to
bring to completion the Maitreya Project, which itself will yield
enormous benefits for countless beings.

The Sanghata Sutra is a direct record of a teaching that was given
by Buddha Shakyamuni on Vulture's Peak in Rajagriha. This discourse
of the Buddha, like all Mahayana sutras, was memorized by his
disciples and later written down in Sanskrit. However, the Sanghata
Sutra is unique in that it is a teaching that the Buddha himself had
heard from a previous Buddha, and it is also unique in the scope of
the effects it has on those who recite it.

The Sanghata Sutra is one of a special set of sutras called dharma-
paryayas, or 'transformative teachings' that function to transform
those who hear or recite them in particular ways. One very powerful
benefit is that at the time of death, any person who has recited the
Sanghata Sutra will have visions of Buddhas who will come to comfort
them during the death process. A further benefit is that wherever
the Sanghata Sutra is established, the Buddhas are always present,
as explained in the text itself. As such, the recitation can bestow
a powerful blessing on the place where it is recited.

In general, the recitation of Mahayana sutras is one of the six
virtuous practices specifically recommended for purification, and
the recitation of this sutra in particular has far-reaching karmic
consequences that last for many lifetimes, as the Sanghata Sutra
itself explains in detail. Within the sutra, the Buddha provides
numerous descriptions of the ways in which the sutra works on those
who recite it to clear away their seeds of suffering, and to assure
their future happiness all the way up enlightenment. The sutra also
includes some forceful teachings on death and impermanence,
including a teaching on the physical and mental processes that occur
at the time of death.

For many centuries, the Sanghata Sutra was among the most widely
read and copied of all Mahayana sutras. In the 1930s, an
archeological excavation conducted in northern Pakistan under
British colonial rule, unearthed a library of Buddhist texts. This
archeological dig was extremely important for historians, in that it
yielded a large cache of manuscripts written in the fifth century
AD, a much earlier period than can be found anywhere in India
itself. Among these many important manuscripts, the text of which we
find the largest number of copies was the Sanghata Sutra, more even
than the Lotus Sutra, the Diamond Cutter Sutra or the Perfection of
Wisdom sutras that nowadays are more familiar to us. Although the
Sanghata had been translated into many languages of early Mahayana
Buddhism, including Chinese, Khotanese and Tibetan, until that
excavation in the 1930s, the original Sanskrit had been lost.

In more recent times, after first encountering the Sanghata Sutra
while staying at Geshe Sopa la's monastery in Madison last year,
Lama Zopa Rinpoche decided to copy the sutra by hand in gold, and
has asked his students to recite the text on numerous occasions. On
the anniversary of September 11, Rinpoche requested that all his
students worldwide recite the sutra as many times as possible in
order to prevent further attacks.

While reading such a powerfully transformative sutra, which Buddha
Shakyamuni taught in order to make the path to enlightenment as easy
as possible, we can feel very palpably the Buddha's incredible
kindness for us. At the same time, because this sutra contains the
actual words spoken by the Buddha, by reproducing that speech
ourselves during the recitation, we are offering our voices to serve
as conduits for the presence of his teachings in the world. Thus in
reciting the Sanghata Sutra, along with all the benefits we
ourselves receive, we are acting in a very direct and powerful way
to keep active the teachings of the Buddha, which are so urgently
needed in order to alleviate the sufferings of all beings.


Excerpts of some comments Lama Zopa Rinpoche made to Ven. Lhundrup
Damcho regarding the Sanghata Sutra.

Planning to offer a copy of the Tibetan edition of the Sanghatasutra
to Lama Zopa Rinpoche, I had deposited it on the top of one of the
counters in the anteroom to his quarters. Before I had an
opportunity to offer it formally - indeed, before I had managed to
complete the title page or wrap it in a suitable text cloth -
Rinpoche spotted the text and asked to see it. He opened it and
began reading, first skimming the beginning and then turning to a
later page at random. Immediately he translated for us what he had
just read, "It says here that by hearing this text one receives the
same merit as the merit of a Tathagata so that means one would have
completed the two collections of merit and wisdom. So that means
one would already be a Tathagata so that looks not logical." Looking
up, he suggested instead one would have to understand that to mean
that from hearing this text, in the future one would go on to amass
that quantity of merit. One needs to understand it this way, he
suggested, otherwise the text seems to be making unreasonable
claims.

Rinpoche read selected passages from the sutra silently, and then
commented that one feels very clearly the kindness of the Buddha
reading this. We find it so difficult to put the teachings into
practice, he said. We meet the Dharma but become lazy and don't find
time to practice, or we practice but then after a while our mind
just turns away from it. Or we are born in Buddhist cultures but go
looking for something else. But here we see how the Buddha is making
it so easy for us to accumulate such vast merit. It becomes so easy
to practice, so easy to benefit others, so easy to become
enlightened and enlighten countless others, Rinpoche said, due to
such sutras as this one. So incredibly kind.

At that time, Rinpoche mentioned how he had stayed up all night and
read the entire sutra- which he said was remarkable since he seldom
gets that much time to do one thing from start to finish all at
once. He described his experience reading the sutra. Hearing all the
incredible benefits, he said, he began looking for that concrete
thing that held all those benefits, the inherently existing sutra
that was giving all those amazing benefits. As Rinpoche said this,
he gestured with his hand, as if trying to grasp some essential
thing that was eluding him. He laughed a little at himself, trying
to find the concrete and inherently existing sutra. He went on to
point out that many Mahayana texts first give an elaborate
description of benefits and then offer some mantra that has those
benefits. But, he said, there seemed to be no such thing in the
Sanghata. Instead, it seemed to be the description of benefits that
had the benefits. But in the end, very early that morning, Rinpoche
said, it occurred to him that just as the Buddha has the ability to
empower stones and other objects so that we can receive blessings
from them, so he could empower the sutra to do the same. In this
way, the sutra can contain the same powers as a Buddha to bless and
benefit beings, Rinpoche explained. Rinpoche also added that after
reading the sutra, when he was doing some meditation, there seemed
to be some improvement in his meditation, as he put it, and that
this could be taken as a sign of the effectiveness of the sutra.

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