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    Advice for Monks and Nuns
    Advice for Monks and Nuns
    Advice for Monks and Nuns
    Ebook125 pages1 hour

    Advice for Monks and Nuns

    By Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche

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    About this ebook

    In these talks, Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche explain the great benefits of practicing Dharma as an ordained person, how to keep the ordination pure, the purpose of the monastic community, how to live together as monks and nuns, and much more. The necessity for the lay community to support the Sangha is also made clear, and not only monks and nuns but lay practitioners, too, will gain much by reading this booklet.

    This book is made possible by kind supporters of the Archive who, like you, appreciate how we make these teachings freely available in so many ways, including in our website for instant reading, listening or downloading, and as printed and electronic books.

    Our website offers immediate access to thousands of pages of teachings and hundreds of audio recordings by some of the greatest lamas of our time. Our photo gallery and our ever-popular books are also freely accessible there.

    Please help us increase our efforts to spread the Dharma for the happiness and benefit of all beings. You can find out more about becoming a supporter of the Archive and see all we have to offer by visiting our website.

    Thank you so much, and please enjoy this e-book.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherLama Yeshe Wisdom Archive
    Release dateJun 11, 2012
    ISBN9781891868498
    Advice for Monks and Nuns
    Author

    Lama Yeshe

    Lama Thubten Yeshe was born in Tibet in 1935. At the age of six, he entered the great Sera Monastic University, Lhasa, where he studied until 1959, when the Chinese invasion of Tibet forced him into exile in India. Lama Yeshe continued to study and meditate in India until 1967, when, with his chief disciple, Lama Thubten Zopa Rinpoche, he went to Nepal. Two years later he established Kopan Monastery, near Kathmandu, Nepal, in order to teach Buddhism to Westerners.In 1974, the Lamas began making annual teaching tours to the West, and as a result of these travels a worldwide network of Buddhist teaching and meditation centers - the Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition (FPMT) - began to develop.In 1984, after an intense decade of imparting a wide variety of incredible teachings and establishing one FPMT activity after another, at the age of forty-nine, Lama Yeshe passed away. He was reborn as Ösel Hita Torres in Spain in 1985, recognized as the incarnation of Lama Yeshe by His Holiness the Dalai Lama in 1986, and, as the monk Lama Tenzin Osel Rinpoche, began studying for his geshe degree in 1992 at the reconstituted Sera Monastery in South India. Lama’s remarkable story is told in Vicki Mackenzie’s book, Reincarnation: The Boy Lama (Wisdom Publications, 1996). Other teachings have been published by Wisdom Books, including Wisdom Energy; Introduction to Tantra; The Tantric Path of Purification (Becoming Vajrasattva) and more.Thousands of pages of Lama's teachings have been made available as transcripts, books and audio by the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive, and most are freely available through the Archive's website at LamaYeshe.com.

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      Book preview

      Advice for Monks and Nuns - Lama Yeshe

      ADVICE FOR MONKS AND NUNS

      Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche

      Edited by Nicholas Ribush

      May whoever sees, touches, reads, remembers, or talks or thinks about this book never be reborn in unfortunate circumstances, receive only rebirths in situations conducive to the perfect practice of Dharma, meet only perfectly qualified spiritual guides, quickly develop bodhicitta and immediately attain enlightenment for the sake of all sentient beings.

      Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive • Boston

      www.LamaYeshe.com

      A non-profit charitable organization for the benefit of all sentient beings and an affiliate of the Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition

      www.fpmt.org

      Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive

      PO Box 636, Lincoln, MA 01773, USA

      Please do not reproduce any part of this book by any means whatsoever without our permission.

      Copyright Lama Thubten Zopa Rinpoche 1998

      Front cover photograph by Carol Royce-Wilder

      (Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche in California in 1975)

      Cover design by Mark Gatter

      Ebook ISBN 978-1-891868-49-8

      AMN-2017-v2

      The Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive

      Bringing you the teachings of Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche

      This book is made possible by kind supporters of the Archive who, like you, appreciate how we make these Dharma teachings freely available on our website for instant reading, watching, listening or downloading, as printed, audio and e-books, as multimedia presentations, in our historic image galleries, on our YouTube channel, through our monthly eletter and podcast and with our social media communities.

      Please help us increase our efforts to spread the Dharma for the happiness and benefit of everyone everywhere. Come find out more about supporting the Archive and see all we have to offer by exploring our website at www.LamaYeshe.com.

      TABLE OF CONTENTS

      ADVICE FOR MONK AND NUNS

      The Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive

      Editor’s Introduction

      Lama Yeshe:

      The First Talk

      The Advantages of Monastic Life: Part 1

      The Advantages of Monastic Life: Part 2

      Lama Zopa Rinpoche:

      The Benefits of Being Ordained

      A Life Well Lived

      About IMI

      About Lama Yeshe Sangha Fund

      Publisher’s Acknowledgement

      Publications by LYWA

      Other available teachings by Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche

      About the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive

      About the Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition

      What to do with Dharma Teachings

      Dedication

      About Lama Yeshe

      About Lama Zopa Rinpoche

      About Dr. Nicholas Ribush

      Sign up for the LYWA e-letter

      Browse all LYWA titles

      Connect with LYWA

      Editor's Introduction

      The Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive is delighted to collaborate with the International Mahayana Institute in the production of this small collection of talks by Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche to their ordained students, the monks and nuns of the Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition. We hope to publish more of these talks in future.

      The first talk was given by Lama Yeshe at Kopan Monastery in December, 1973, to a small group of Western students a few weeks prior to their ordination. This was the beginning of the IMI. The second talk was given at Tushita Retreat Centre, Dharamsala, over two nights in April, 1982, during the first Enlightened Experience Celebration. Essentially, this was the beginning of Nalanda Monastery.

      The last two talks were given by Lama Zopa Rinpoche quite recently. The first was actually an essay prepared for publication in Mandala magazine in 1996; the second was given during teachings at Vajrapani Institute, California, in 1997.

      The continued existence of the Buddhadharma depends upon the continued existence of the Sangha—the community of ordained practitioners, monks and nuns—one of the three Buddhist Refuges. In these talks, Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche explain the great benefits of practicing Dharma as an ordained person, how to keep the ordination pure, the purpose of the monastic community, how to live together as monks and nuns and much more. The necessity for the lay community to support the Sangha is also made clear, and not only monks and nuns but lay practitioners, too, will gain much by reading this book.

      I thank Ven. Connie Miller, Rand Engel and Wendy Cook for their editorial suggestions, which greatly improved the readability of these talks, and Mark Gatter for so kindly designing this book.

      May the Sangha flourish in the ten directions for the benefit of all sentient beings.

      THE FIRST TALK

      Around the time of the fifth Kopan meditation course, in November 1973, ten Western Dharma students had asked Lama Yeshe's permission to get ordained. Lama suggested that they take their ordinations the following January, in Bodhgaya, after His Holiness the Dalai Lama had given the Kalachakra initiation. In December 1973, Lama gathered into his room these ten prospective monks and nuns, together with five or six of his students who had already been ordained, and offered the following advice. This was the first talk Lama ever gave to his Sangha community.

      Today I want to express my feelings to my sisters and brothers, because what we're seeing here is a very remarkable, revolutionary explosion of energy. But this is an internal revolution, not an external one. It has given me a lot to think about, but a very, very good feeling as well.

      I feel some kind of intuitive responsibility for the decision you've made to live in the Dharma. Therefore, I've thought a lot about how you can integrate your lives with Dharma so that you can continue to experience this internal revolutionary energy without interruption and develop your minds to their unlimited potential.

      My feeling is that it would be much better if the Sangha were to stay together, communicating with each other, rather than people getting ordained and then going off on their own. If you do go off on your own, worldly conditions will make your life difficult; it will be much harder for you to practice Dharma.

      For example, when Sangha are here at Kopan, we help them lead a monastic life. There are always lamas present and, as a result, our students get some kind of energy that helps them control their minds and makes it easier for them to keep their ordination. If, instead, they run off and stay in some other place where the conditions are not so good, their lives become very difficult. If, on top of that, they get sick, this confluence of internal and external problems makes their lives even more difficult.

      As you know, just because you're a monk or nun does not mean that you've reached enlightenment. It simply means that you have gained an understanding of the nature of samsara and have decided to work continuously to develop within yourself the everlasting, peaceful path of liberation. That's all. Getting ordained doesn't give you immediate control over your mind; it doesn't mean you are completely liberated. It's not like that.

      Our minds are uncontrolled. We need to control them. Monastic life allows us to develop our minds in a very comfortable way until we have truly achieved complete control over them and have gained such great knowledge-wisdom that even should we go to some berserk place, we are able to control that berserk energy instead of its controlling us.

      For us beginners, the desire to attain everlasting peaceful liberation is just like a flower seed. A flower seed needs to be cared for, watered, kept warm, fertilized—many things are necessary. Water alone is not enough; it needs fertilizer. Similarly, we need Dharma teachings. If we get teachings and retreat, we can wake up fantastically; enthusiastic energy always comes. Otherwise, we're like flowers that have been given only a few drops of water; when problems arise, we will find it difficult to deal with them. Our minds are just like flowers; we have to take good care of them.

      In Tibet, lay people looked after the Sangha. They had great respect for the Sangha because they knew that despite experiencing difficult conditions, the Sangha did their duty. By ‘‘difficult conditions’’ I don't mean that people were beating them. Their deluded minds beat them; their deluded minds didn't like fighting against wisdom. Lay people knew that Sangha life was difficult, but worthwhile, so they respected the Sangha's internal knowledge, their control. Therefore, the Sangha had much support in Tibet.

      For us, it's not like that. We have to take more responsibility for ourselves. Wherever our Western Sangha live, even in India or Nepal, it's not that different from the West. I

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