MANI RETREAT
with Lama Zopa Rinpoche
5 May to 6 June 2009


LAMA ZOPA RINPOCHE
________________________

Thubten Zopa Rinpoche is the spiritual guide to thousands of disciples throughout the world and the spiritual director of The Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition (FPMT), a worldwide rganisation mondiale of over one hundred Dharma centers, retreat centers, and social service projects. Rinpoche was the direct disciple of Lama Thubten Yeshe, founder of the FPMT, who died at the age of 49 in 1983, leaving many disciples grieved with his passing. His incarnation, born to a Spanish family in 1984, received the name of Lama Tenzin Osel Rinpoche.

Kyabje Zopa Rinpoche, born in Thami, in Nepal en 1946, at an early age would often venture along the path that led to the cave where the yogi Sharpa Nyingma Kunsang Yeshe passed the last twenty years of his life in meditation. The young child was finally recognized as as the incarnation of the “Lawudo lama ”, the name by which he was known, a great master of tantric teachings in the Nyingma tradition. At the age of four Rinpoche was taken by his uncle to a small monastery at border of Nepal and Tibet where he stayed many years learning to read and write, memorizing the buddhist texts that would later become the foundation of his studies. He then returned to Tibet where he received the novice monk's ordination and continued his studies at Geshe Domo's monastery in Phagri. In 1959 Rinpoche, a young teenager, fled Tibet, and arrived in Buxar Duar in northern India after a dangerous journey but horse and on foot. Here he met his master, Lama Thubten Yeshe, for the first time and with whom he established a connection which was to last up until the latter's passing away.

En 1965, in Darjeeling, the two lamas met their first western disciple, the Russian princess Zina Rachevsky, who played an essential role in founding Kopan monastery in Nepal qui joua un rôle essentiel dans l’établissement and who encouraged them to teach westerners in English. Later, inspired by the fact that the Buddha's teahings could be put into practice in their everyday life, the disciples invited their lamas to teach in their own countries and started to form study groups and even Dharma centers. To these increasing numbers of centers and projects, Lama Yeshe gave the name The Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition (FPMT) confirming his long term goal of preserving and spreading the pure teachings of the Buddha in accoradance with the tibetan gelugpa tradition of Lama Tsong Khapa.

With Lama Yeshe's passing, Kyabje Lama Zopa Rinpoche took over the direction of the organisation and all the many projects that were dear Lama Yeshe, of which the most ambitious remains to this day the erection of a statue measuring 154 meters high of teh future Buddha Maitraiya in northern India. There are now nearly 150 centers around the world that are affiliated to the FPMT. Rinpoche travels incessantly from one to the other to teach, guide long retreats; advise, supervise and reveal his audacious and ambitious projects which only have one ultimate goal, that of guiding all beings to Enlightenment.

You can find more information on Kyabje Zopa Rinpoche on the FPMT site.