The Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition (FPMT) is a network of Buddhist centers focusing on the Gelugpa tradition of Tibet. Founded in 1975 by Lama Thubten Yeshe and Lama Thubten Zopa Rinpoche, who began teaching Buddhism to Western students in Nepal, the FPMT has grown to encompass 150 teaching centers, projects, and social services in 33 countries. Since the death of Lama Yeshe in 1984, the FPMT's spiritual director has been Lama Zopa Rinpoche.
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We provide integrated education through which people's minds and hearts can be transformed into their highest potential for the benefit of others, inspired by an attitude of universal responsibility. We are committed to creating harmonious environments and helping all beings develop their full potential of infinite wisdom and compassion. Our organization is based on the Buddhist tradition of Lama Tsongkhapa of Tibet as taught to us by our founder Lama Thubten Yeshe and spiritual director Lama Zopa Rinpoche."[1]
The FPMT's international headquarters are in Portland, Oregon (USA). The central office has previously been located at:
In addition, the FPMT has numerous local centers in various countries around the world. Activity is most visible within Nepal and India (especially within their subculture of Western backpackers), Australia and New Zealand, the USA and Canada, Europe, Mongolia, and among the ethnic Chinese communities of Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, and Malaysia. See the FPMT website for a full listing.[2]
The name and structure of the FPMT date to 1975, in the wake of an international teaching tour by Lamas Yeshe and Zopa. However, the two had been teaching Western travelers since at least 1965, when they met Zina Rachevsky, their student and patron, in Darjeeling. In 1969, the three of them founded the Nepal Mahayana Gompa Centre (now Kopan Monastery). Rachevsky died shortly afterwards, during a Buddhist retreat.
Lama Yeshe resisted Rachevsky's appeals to teach a "meditation course," on the grounds that in the Sera Je tradition in which he was educated, "meditation" would be attempted only after intensive, multi-year study of the "five topics." However, he gave Lama Zopa permission to lead what became the first of Kopan's meditation courses (then semiannual, now annual) in 1971.[3] Lama Zopa led these courses at least through 1975 (and occasionally thereafter).
During the early 1970s, hundreds of Westerners attended teachings at Kopan. Historical descriptions and recollections routinely characterize early Western participants as hippies—backpackers on extended overland tours of Asia—to whom Lama Yeshe's style of discourse especially appealed.
Geoffrey Samuel (see bibliography) finds it significant that "lamas" Yeshe and Zopa had not yet attracted followings among the Tibetan or Himalayan peoples (Zopa's status as a minor tulku notwithstanding), and that their activities took place independently of any support or direction from the Tibetan Government in Exile in Dharamsala. On his reading, their willingness to reach out to Westerners was in large measure the result of a lack of other sources of support. Nevertheless, Samuel sees their cultivation of an international network as having ample precedent in Tibet.[4]
In December 1973, Lama Yeshe ordained fourteen Western monks and nuns under the name of the International Mahayana Institute. Around this time, Lama Yeshe's students began returning to their own countries. The result was the founding of an ever-increasing number of dharma centers in those countries.
In his description of the FPMT, Jeffrey Paine (see bibliography) emphasizes the charisma, intuition, drive, and organizational ability of Lama Yeshe. Paine asks us to consider how a refugee with neither financial resources nor language skills could manage to create an international network with more than a hundred centers and study groups.
David N. Kay (see bibliography) makes the following observation:
As a result, says Kay (and Samuel's analysis concurs), at the same time that the FPMT was consolidating its structure and practices, several local groups and teachers defected, founding independent networks. Geshe Loden of Australia's Chenrezig Institute left the FPMT in 1979, in order to focus on his own network of centers. More consequentially, Geshe Kelsang Gyatso and his students caused the Manjushri Institute, the FPMT's flagship center in England, to sever its FPMT ties. At issue was whether the centers and their students ought to identify primarily with Lama Yeshe, local teachers, the Gelugpa tradition, or Tibetan Buddhism as a whole. The FPMT now asks its lamas to sign a "Geshe Agreement" which make explicit the organization's expectations. (Complicating the latter dispute was controversy over Dorje Shugden; the FPMT has accepted the Dalai Lama's ban on the worship of this deity.)
Lama Yeshe's death in 1984 led to his succession as spiritual director by Lama Zopa. In 1986, a Spanish boy named Osel Hita Torres (a.k.a. Tenzin Ösel Rinpoche, or "Lama Ösel") was identified as the tulku of Lama Yeshe. As a university student, however, Hita gradually distanced himself from the FPMT and in May 2009, was quoted in several media sources as renouncing this role—remarks which he later disavowed.[6]. For latest news of Osel http://www.fpmt.org/teachers/osel/.
The FPMT is a federation of dharma centers. Each center is separately incorporated and locally financed, but follows common policies and spiritual guidance.
The FPMT is headed by a self-perpetuating board of directors, with its spiritual director (presently Lama Zopa) also is a board member. The FPMT International Office represents the board's executive function. The president / CEO of the FPMT is currently (2009) Ven. Roger Kunsang.
FPMT centers have their own local boards, which appoint center directors with the approval of the International Board. Centers also have a spiritual program director and in many cases, a resident geshe (and perhaps other sangha as well).
The center directors and spiritual directors from various countries meet every 12 to 18 months as the Council for the Preservation for the Mahayana Tradition (CPMT), in order to deliberate points of mutual concern. Its role is advisory to the International Board, although the CPMT actually predates it (1978 vs. 1983).
Lines of authority within the FPMT are complicated by the fact that many of its officers are devoted to Lama Zopa (or others) on the basis of tantric vows, or a formal teacher-student relationship. The organization stipulates that
The Dalai Lama is credited with the honorary role of "inspiration and guide".[8]
Students often first encounter the FPMT via short courses and retreats held at the various centers. The prototype of these is Kopan Monastery's annual month-long meditation course, offered since 1971.
Many FPMT centers have adopted standardized curricula, whose modules may also be obtained on DVD for external study. The three sequences were separately developed, and thus are only loosely correlated with one another. They are as follows:
Students desiring more advanced study have a number of options including:[12]
In addition, numerous centers are prepared to supervise a meditation retreat.
Wisdom Publications, now a well-known publisher of Buddhist books, originated in Delhi during the late 1970s under editor Nicholas Ribush. Its first publication was Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa's Wisdom Energy.[13] The publisher began formal operations in London in 1983 (after several years operating out of the Manjushri Institute), with Jeffrey Hopkins' Meditation on Emptiness (1983) as an early perennial. It moved again to Boston in 1988, under director Timothy McNeill. The press offers both academic and popular Buddhist literature from all traditions of Buddhism, as well as translations of classic Buddhist literature. Especially noteworthy are its encyclopedia-style project, the 32-volume Library of Tibetan Classics (developed by Thupten Jinpa, English-language translator for the Dalai Lama); and the Teachings of the Buddha series of translations of the Pali Nikāyas.
Since 1995, the FPMT has published a glossy magazine called Mandala (now quarterly).
The Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive, which holds copyright to the speeches and writings of Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa, is one of the FPMT's member organizations. It transcribes teachings by these and other lamas, and produces edited booklets for free distribution. Its director is Nicholas Ribush.
FPMT maintains a number of charitable projects, including funds to build holy objects; translate Tibetan texts; support monks and nuns (both Tibetan and non-Tibetan); offer medical care, food and other assistance in impoverished regions of Asia; re-establish Tibetan Buddhism in Mongolia; and protect animals. See the FPMT website for more information.[14]
Perhaps the highest-profile FPMT project to date is the Maitreya Project, a planned 152-meter statue of Maitreya to be built in Kushinagar, India.
Also to note is the Sera Je Food Fund http://www.fpmt.org/projects/seraje/ offering 3 meals a day to the 2600 monks who are studying at Sera Je Monastery since 1991.
Jeffrey Paine, commenting glowingly on the FPMT's various projects, writes:
Peter Moran, less sanguine, reports controversy over the appropriateness of the statue, as well as other aspects of fund-raising and expenditure, which he attributes to the differing cultural expectations of Westerners, Tibetans, and ethnic Chinese (who apparently contribute the majority of funds).
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