FROM HERE TO ENLIGHTENMENT: EDUCATING SENTIENT BEINGS

By Tubten Pende

With an altruistic motivation, to provide the conditions for ourselves

and others to achieve ultimate happiness by removing the root

of all problems through education and meditation according

to the lineages of Lama Tsong Khapa as taught by

Lama Thubten Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche

We needed an education conference to pull together our wealth of experience and dedication so that we might lift the foundation’s education offering to the next level of quality and benefit. Even though we have never had an education conference like this before – indeed, as Lama Zopa Rinpoche commented, we have never had any conference like this one before – we knew from our experience that something special can happen when we come together to work on foundation-wide issues rather than only those we confront in our centers.

With so many issues to cover we elected to aim for a coherent strategy to realize a vision of how we want to move into the next century. Thus our conference’s name, FPMT Education 2000: One Mandala Vision.

By the end of the conference we wanted participants to have:

• Developed a mission and goals to guide the FPMT centers’ education programs in the coming years;
• Outlined a coherent strategy to support the mission;
• Identified the practical skills, methods, and resources needed to live the mission; and
• Shared proactive problem-solving approaches to enhance communications within and between centers.

We enlisted the help of a professional facilitator, Hong Kong consultant Meg Hart Hui, who provided us with a plan, a daily schedule and her facilitation. The ideal number of participants in a business meeting does not exceed fourteen, and we had 100! The plan however was a good one, and despite chaos on the first day, order grew and real work began as the large group broke into smaller working groups, divided according to the education needs for:

• New students and the general public;
• The Buddhist community affiliated with our centers;
• Committed students and training for our teachers; and
• Monastics.

Each group worked within the general guideline of the FPMT education statement of purpose: “With an altruistic motivation to provide the conditions for ourselves and others to achieve ultimate happiness by removing the root of all problems through education and meditation.”

The groups set themselves the task of creating strategies to advance our present education efforts and to establish what has yet to occur. Crucially, at least one person in each group took on the responsibility to see that the strategies would be carried out after the conference ended.

There were also skills-development workshops to increase teaching and counseling skills (run by Karuna Kress and Lorraine Dupont, respectively). Dharma teachers discussed how they teach difficult Dharma topics. And during the meetings of center directors that coincided with the conference, Paco de la Banda showed what business marketing skills could contribute to Buddhist education.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche participated in the entire conference, from the morning meditations through the evening prayers. He clearly enjoyed the dynamics of 100 dedicated people hard at work sharing the responsibility of advancing education. During a long-life initiation he gave at the conclusion of the conference, Rinpoche recommended that future meetings of center directors stay with the theme of education, which inspired so much productive work at this one.

Geshe Tashi Tsering, the resident teacher at Jamyang Buddhist Centre, the host center, also participated in the entire conference. He was the only geshe there and wished the foundation’s other twenty Tibetan teachers had attended. He recommended that the centers encourage their geshes to participate in future education conferences.

Ideas that came up are already being actualized in centers. People who took responsibility to carry through the strategies created in their groups have their work cut out for them. Regular progress updates and news of other education initiatives will be published in Mandala.

One thing the conference proved was that we are capable of doing the work that needs to be done. Our centers have been doing tremendous work over the years supplying steady streams of Dharma to quench the thirst for genuine spiritual nourishment. This has produced a wealth of experience, talent and connections around the globe. Held together by a common vision and dedication we can be confident that the work will continue into the next century, and will succeed.