Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s Vast Visions
During retreat in 2007, Lama Zopa Rinpoche composed a list of his ideas and wishes for the future of the FPMT organization. These Vast Visions can be broadly organized into four key areas of activity:
The Vast Visions encompass all the existing activities of FPMT, now and into the future. Rinpoche has kindly given us a clear roadmap to follow—one that will bring benefit and success to the organization by following the Guru’s advice, creating the causes to generate merit, and supporting and cultivating practitioners on the path to enlightenment.
Are You Inspired to Be Part of Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s Vast Visions?
The Vast Visions are ambitious and may take many lifetimes to fully actualize. We offer our heartfelt thanks and gratitude to all who have already helped begin bringing Rinpoche’s Vast Visions for the FPMT organization into reality.
If you would like to take part in the Vast Visions, we invite you to explore the many projects established to support these aspirations. By supporting these efforts, you help bring Rinpoche’s wishes into reality—demonstrating how many people contributing in small ways can make even the largest visions possible.
Read on to learn how these Vast Visions are being implemented in North America, and explore additional projects taking place internationally here.
1. Offering service to His Holiness the Dalai Lama
This includes inviting His Holiness to offer Dharma teachings and public talks and organizing events such as interfaith meetings, dialogues with scientists, and gatherings with young people.
One example in North America was the three-day “Spirituality and the Environment” interfaith summit with His Holiness hosted by Maitripa College, Oregon.
Learn more about FPMT offering service to His Holiness the Dalai Lama here.
2. Holy objects for world peace
My wish is for FPMT to build many holy objects everywhere, as many as possible. Making it so easy for sentient beings to purify their heavy negative karma and making it so easy for sentient beings to create extensive merit. Which makes it so easy to achieve the realizations of the path and so easy to achieve liberation and enlightenment.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche
100,000 Stupas Around the World
“Building stupas helps develop so much peace and happiness for numberless sentient beings. As a result, wars, disease, and desire will all be pacified. Instead of feeling hopeless, people will gain courage.” — Lama Zopa Rinpoche
To date, 64 stupas, a minimum of one story high (10 feet), have been completed or are in progress, at FPMT centers and by FPMT students around the world, including these in North America:
- Lama Yeshe Cremation Stupa at Vajrapani Institute, California (6ft)
- Lama Yeshe’s Enlightenment Stupa at Vajrapani Institute, California (16ft)
- Kadampa Stupa at Land of Medicine Buddha, California (6ft)
- Mahabodhi Stupa, at Land of Medicine Buddha, California (39 ft)
- Kalachakra Stupa at Kurukulla Center, Massachusetts (15ft)
- Kadampa Stupa at Kadampa Center, North Carolina (18ft)
- Auspicious Stupa of Many Doors at Milarepa Center, Vermont (14ft)
- Enlightenment Stupa at Pamtingpa Center, Tonasket, Washington (16ft)
- Enlightenment Stupa at Gendun Drubpa, Canada (9ft)
- Enlightenment Stupa, Vancouver Island, Canada (16ft)
- Kadampa Stupa at Kachoe Dechen Ling, California, US (10ft)
Check out the worldwide list here and enjoy this photo gallery of stupas at FPMT centers around the world. Some of the stupas pictured have received sponsorship from the FPMT Stupa Fund.
Since there is unbelievable benefit such as liberating sentient beings, then I thought that the whole organization could aim to build 100,000 stupas (minimum size of one story up to the distance from the earth to the moon) in different parts of the world and for FPMT to do this as a whole.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche
100,000 Prayer Wheels Around the World
“[I would like] for the whole organization to build 100,000 prayer wheels in different parts of the world, [including prayer wheels under the ocean], a minimum height of six feet. Prayer wheels are a great blessing for each country.” — Lama Zopa Rinpoche
To date, approximately 20 large prayer wheels and many smaller prayer wheels have been built around the world, including these in North America:
- Prayer wheel containing over 3 quadrillion mantras, Vajrapani Institute, California.
- Prayer wheel containing over 170 billion mantras as well as many sets of texts, Land of Medicine Buddha, California
- Prayer wheel containing 12 billion mantras, Land of Medicine Buddha, California
- Pagoda prayer wheel containing 64 billion mantras, Land of Medicine Buddha, California
- 32 one-foot prayer wheels surrounding the Ksitigarbha Statue at Land of Medicine Buddha, California
- Ten 14-inch x 10-inch prayer wheels at Milarepa Center, Vermont
Check out the worldwide list here and enjoy this photo gallery of prayer wheels sponsored by the FPMT Prayer Wheel Fund.
The reason why I’d like to build as many as possible is because in the texts it says: If you do prayers as a group, then it is a hundred times more powerful than doing it alone in the room…If we do it as the whole organization, as a project, then if everybody offers $10 or $5 or even smaller thinking that you are contributing to building a stupa, then in this way it becomes everyone’s project. In this way the karma is very powerful if we do it with many people, all together.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche
1,000 Maitreya Statues
“Maitreya Buddha is the embodiment of each buddha’s loving kindness, and the symbol of all the bodhisattvas’ loving kindness for all sentient beings.” — Lama Zopa Rinpoche
Maitreya Project created 100 life-sized statues some of which were offered to FPMT centers by Lama Zopa Rinpoche, including these 6 in North America:
- Guhyasamaja Center, Vermont
- Kurukulla Center, Massachusetts
- Lama Yeshe Ling, Burlington, ON, Canada
- Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive, Massachusetts
- Milarepa Center, Vermont
- Thubten Kunga Ling, Florida
- Vajrapani Institute, California
Check out the worldwide list here and enjoy this photo gallery of Maitreya statues at FPMT centers. To contribute, you can make a donation to the FPMT Holy Objects Fund.
A special thing about contributing to Maitreya, whether it be money or time or energy, is that it makes a connection with Maitreya Buddha, and the result is that one becomes a direct disciple of Maitreya Buddha when Maitreya returns to manifest enlightenment as Shakyamuni Buddha did.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche
Padmasambhava Statues for Peace
“Building Guru Rinpoche statues will bring immeasurable benefit, peace, happiness, and freedom to the world. They will have immeasurable impact.” — Lama Zopa Rinpoche
To date, 33 statues have been completed with support from the Padmasambhava Project for Peace Fund, including these in North America:
- Two life-sized statues at Milarepa Center, Vermont
Check out the worldwide list here and enjoy this photo gallery of Padmasambhava statues. To contribute, you can make a donation to the FPMT Holy Objects Fund.
You may think that a statue or thangka is just a statue or thangka, but it is the transcendental wisdom of dharmakaya, which understands and directly sees absolute truth, as well as conventional truth.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche
Large Thangkas and Festivals Around the World
“My wish is for the big centers in FPMT to have these large thangkas. This is a way to leave imprints for all these people [who see them], for enlightenment.” — Lama Zopa Rinpoche
One of Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s Vast Visions is for FPMT centers to display large thangkas and host festival days where these thangkas can be enjoyed. Here is a list of thangkas that have been completed and displayed in North America:
- 24ft Medicine Buddha thangka, painted by Peter Iseli, at Land of Medicine Buddha, California, is displayed during their Medicine Buddha Festival Day.
- 9.5ft Ksitigarbha thangka at Land of Medicine Buddha, California, displayed during their Ksitigarbha Festival Day.
- 11.5ft Vajrasattva thangka at Land of Medicine Buddha, California. Painted by Peter Iseli.
- 7ft x 9ft Tara thangka at Pamtingpa Center, Washington, USA, displayed for their 21 Tara dance offering during the annual Amitabha Buddha Festival at Amitabha Buddha Pure Land, Washington
Check out the worldwide list here and enjoy a photo gallery of many of these large thangkas being created around the world. To contribute, you can make a donation to the FPMT Holy Objects Fund.
Learn more about FPMT building Holy Objects for world peace here.
3. Supporting Practice and Realizations
Below are Rinpoche’s Vast Visions for supporting Dharma practice and developing realizations:
- Education programs and scholarships, including those offered by our centers and study groups in North America
- Retreat centers to develop realizations, including our four retreat centers in North America
- Offering pujas continually, including many monthly pujas offered at our centers in North America and our weekly online Regional Community Prayers
- Reciting the Sutra of Golden Light for World Peace, including every 1st Saturday of the month online at Lama Yeshe Ling near Toronto, Canada
- 100 Million Mani Retreats
- 1,000 Nyung Nä Retreats
- Writing the Prajnaparamita Sutra
- Supporting monasteries and nunneries
- Retirement support for ordained and lay students
Learn more about FPMT’s activities to support practice and realizations here.
Anybody who dedicates their life to achieving lam-rim realizations with the goal to liberate numberless beings from the oceans of samsaric suffering and to bring to enlightenment, this is what I regard as the most important thing in the world.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche
4. Social Services
Rinpoche’s Vast Visions for social service include supporting a variety of secular education and healthcare programs, and benefiting animals, such as:
- The Community Service projects happening in North America
- Continue & expand Universal Education programs, including:
– Creating Compassionate Cultures in California - Parenting programs & projects to help young people, including:
– regular Children & Youth Programs at Kadampa Center, North Carolina
– annual Family Camp at Vajrapani Institute, California
– annual online parenting classes via collaboration between Land of Medicine Buddha and Tara Redwood School in California - Centers hosting interfaith events, including:
– annual Saka Dawa Interfaith Celebration at Kurukulla Center, Massachusetts - Encourage vegetarianism, including:
– How to Have a Happy Life With a Good Heart, an upcoming cookbook featuring more than 100 vegetarian and vegan recipes inspired by Lama Zopa Rinpoche and published by Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive, Massachusetts
– regular vegetarian and vegan recipes shared in the e-news of Thubten Norbu Ling, New Mexico and Vajrapani Institute, California - Animal blessings
- Healing programs
- Substance abuse treatment program
- Social service for the elderly
Learn more about FPMT’s social service activities here.
My desire for the organization is for it to benefit extensively other sentient beings by offering various social services, such as those that bring loving kindness and peace to youth using Universal Education methods, religious interfaith activities which bring peace and happiness and extensively benefit others by spreading Dharma.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche