Useful Meeting
My feeling is that the FPMT geshe meeting that was organized by Geshe Tashi in London was quite useful. It gave the geshes here in Europe a chance to share their experience teaching in the West. However, because each center has a different way of organizing courses, etc., I think that in the future it would be good to organize a meeting of the FPMT geshes together with Western Dharma teachers and the people who organize courses in the centers. In this way we could discuss in more depth how to teach people of different mentalities, as people from different countries and different cultures require a different kind of presentation of the Dharma. I think that it would be useful if the FPMT education office were to organize such a meeting.
In terms of the implementation of the Basic Program, there is a difference between how this could be done in a city center and how it could be done in a residential country center. There is also the problem that some centers do not have a residential teacher. In the future we will need to talk about how to set up the Basic Program in such centers. My own idea is that some Western teachers could teach the Basic Program subjects. Perhaps a particular text could be taught two or three times a week for a period of one or two months. In this way the Basic Program texts could gradually be completed in a center.
Presently in the majority of centers the teachings are on lam-rim or lo-jong. However, the centers could perhaps begin to put Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s advice concerning the Basic Program into practice by organizing two separate teachings each week, perhaps one evening on one of the philosophical subjects, such as Buddhist Tenets, and the other on the lam-rim or texts such as Seven-point Mind Training, The Wheel of Sharp Weapons, Engaging in a Bodhisattva’s Deeds, and so forth. In this way the students who are interested in studying the more advanced subjects would have access to them, while other students could continue to have the opportunity to listen to lam-rim and lo-jong teachings.
In addition, a weekend retreat or meditation course could be offered from time to time. It would also be good if the centers were to organize short courses on tantra regarding how to perform various rituals. For example, in relation to the Medicine Buddha ritual students could be taught how to set up the altar and how to perform the puja; in relation to the Sixteen Arhat puja they could learn how to set up the altar, how to chant it with the correct intonations, how to prepare the necessary tormas, and so forth.
A weekend could also be devoted to a teaching on how to do prostrations, how to make tormas, and so forth, or to a nyung-nä (Chenrezig fasting retreat) or Tara Night. Courses could also be organized to teach students how to do the purification ritual jang-wa for the dead, how to design the mandalas for particular fire pujas, and how to perform the fire pujas related to the four actions of pacification, increase, power and wrath. In this way many people in a single center would become qualified to prepare for and lead rituals, retreats, pujas, fire pujas, and so forth.
“I also think that it would be very good if the FPMT could organize a long retreat of three years and forty-five days in one center. It would also be good to set up a teacher training program like the Masters Program somewhere in the USA or Australia.
