Service as a Path to Enlightenment eBook
By FPMT
()
About this ebook
This short text contains essential advice from Lama Zopa Rinpoche on how to be skillful in our service to others. By doing this, our action becomes the best offering and makes the numberless buddhas and bodhisattvas happy, even if wrathful action is required. Finally, after teaching us about right and wrong patience and contentment, we are given practical tips for what to do when mistakes are made.
“This advice is about how we should practice Dharma and meditate on the path, as well as how we should work at the center. If we understand this, we can understand how to live our whole life and how to do everything whether we work for the government or for a company; whatever it is we do.” - Lama Zopa Rinpoche
2011 edition.
FPMT
The FPMT is an organization devoted to preserving and spreading Mahayana Buddhism worldwide by creating opportunities to listen, reflect, meditate, practice and actualize the unmistaken teachings of the Buddha and based on that experience spreading the Dharma to sentient beings. 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 and service. 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 our spiritual director, Lama Thubten Zopa Rinpoche.
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Service as a Path to Enlightenment eBook - FPMT
Editor's Introduction
This short text is a compilation of two letters dictated by Lama Zopa Rinpoche for FPMT staff members concerning how to make working for an FPMT center, project or service the best kind of service.
Cultivating a Skillful Attitude
encourages us to remember the kindness of sentient beings and helps us to generate the mind wishing to repay that kindness. Rinpoche describes the preciousness of the enemy and how a skillful attitude makes the numberless buddhas and bodhisattvas happy. In addition, we are reminded of the range of methods available to benefit others, including reliance on wrathful actions when peaceful means prove ineffective.
In Leading with the Mind of a Servant
, we are reminded that pride and arrogance open the door to many problems while serving others from the heart is the best kind of offering. Rinpoche outlines specific ways to think as we go about our day, providing slogans and quotes to enhance our remembrance. After teaching us important points about right and wrong patience and contentment, we are given practical tips for what to do when mistakes are made.
While this advice was initially given to those working in FPMT centers, it can be happily applied to all situations of life.
Cultivating a Skillful Attitude
This advice is about how we should practice Dharma and meditate on the path, as well as how we should work at the center. If we understand this, we can understand how to live our whole life and how to do everything - whether we work for the government or for a company; whatever it is we do.
The four kindnesses of the mother
Why do we need to achieve enlightenment for sentient beings? Because every sentient being has been our mother numberless times. Mother
means not only our human mother, but also our mother when we were a hungry ghost or an animal. Our birth depends on a mother, and all these beings have been our mother numberless times. Besides devas, who have an entering birth (spontaneous) and so don't have a mother, all sentient beings have been our mother numberless times, from beginningless rebirths until now.
There are four kindnesses of the mother. The first is the kindness of giving us a body, especially a human