Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 23-minute teaching, Lama Zopa Rinpoche explains the purposes of reciting protective prayers and weaves them into the larger Maitreya statue project. He describes how building Maitreya statues—alongside social services like hospitals, education, and animal liberation—serves dual aims: generating genuine compassion and good heart in practitioners, and shortening the eons of sickness, famine, and warfare that precede Maitreya Buddha’s descent. Drawing on the example of Lotsawa Rinchen Zangpo’s discovery of a naturally appearing Maitreya statue in Ladakh, Rinpoche emphasizes how Buddhist teaching is the only medicine for sentient beings. He concludes by stressing the importance of supporting monasteries and nunneries worldwide to preserve the Sangha and ensure the Dharma’s survival, insisting that all worldly and spiritual activity must be rooted in good heart.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 23 2005 04 14 YAMANTAKA.mp3
UUID: 05fc14c0-4a13-4251-ac3a-cea6a4cdbff1
Teacher: Lama Zopa Rinpoche 1
Collection: z Malaysia (Lama Zopa Rinpoche 1)
Date: 2005-04-14
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 23.1 minutes
Words: ~1,470
So beginning oh, good afternoon. So beginning. I’m going to recite some praise to the four main protectors, Dharma protectors, and the Prajñāpāramitā and Hayagrīva. And the To succeed immediately, remove the obstacle for His Holiness, his illness, long life, also for holy wishes and all the activities. That’s the first.
Didn’t have that. To be able to construct and continue and complete the five hundred feet Maitreya statue. And about in this world, Maitreya Buddha will descend near Kushinagar, where Maitreya Buddha, future Buddha takes birth. So so hopefully hopefully, Maitreya Buddha when Maitreya Buddha takes birth in the Kushinagar and then says, oh, this looks like me. Often, the Maitreya Buddha says that.
And So to be able to construct as good as possible and then the successful or other projects to fulfill the those, say, special projects as well as various social services in Tibet, Mongolia, and various parts of India, various parts of the world in the West and here also, all the hospitals and so forth or whatever, helping the children or other. The various projects of Los Angeles Center and various social services. And to help the body and mind that not only take care of the body, but lead to good heart, lead to a meaningful life, meaningful human life. So whether it’s hospital or whether giving food or whatever it is, or whether it’s giving education, but everything to lead to good heart to inspire, to generate good heart. So to become good human being, not only just not only just alive, not only just to be alive, but to be good human being.
Not harm to the world, not harm to oneself, not to harm the world, so only to benefit. So to become like that, to bring on a peace and happiness to the world, to others, and to ourselves. Whatever social service we can do to be able to lead towards that and benefit in that way. And as well as animal liberation or animal hospital or helping animals, things like that. And not only they’re helping human beings save the lives of the animals as well and take care and also that they also purify the karma, negative karma and by hearing teachings, by hearing mantras and and so forth, so they get higher.
So sooner or later, they will achieve liberation from saṃsāra and full enlightenment. And to be able to build various whole objects, different parts of the world, that which is the quickest way to purify the, let’s say, the need of sentient beings from where all the problem comes. Disarmony and so forth, sicknesses, cancer, AIDS, whatever sickness. The new sicknesses from where all those things come. Say, that individual sentient beings, the mistaken way of thinking, negative thoughts.
The, say, imprints left on the mental continuum to be purified. So close the way to purify and for them to collect most extensive merit. Merit, good karma from where they receive all their happiness, from where their happiness comes from. Due to power of the holy objects, just for the day, people, even insects, everyone, it’s just a way purify the cause of the suffering. So in this way, then we have peace and happiness and great experience in merit.
So only in this way, then they can have good heart, soft mind, gentle mind, good heart. Only through this, they can transform their mind into loving kind of compassion, bodhicitta, as well as develop wisdom. So that even the education doesn’t stay as intellectual. Even the also the dharma education, you see, so it goes into heart and then actualizes realization like plants sitting in the ground and then with water soaking, it grows up like that. So even the education not to stay as intellectual but to cause, you see, exercise the realization of path to liberation, to enlightenment.
However, path to not just temporal happiness but ultimate happiness. So for this, there’s a different possible world to build. Hoping to Hoping to build many Maitreya statues. Of course, not like not like not like that. Not like that what you’ve been hearing. Not that one, not that way.
Not that size. Otherwise, think many people will be fainted. I think but not such a small ones. So like one story, two story, few story like that. Hopefully, one thousand in different parts of the world.
Because the story is that after Śākyamūni Buddha’s teaching stopped in this world, and there would be There would be I don’t know which one comes first. There will be eons of sicknesses in this world that, you know, whole world suffer so much sicknesses and so many people die. Not like before, like before, some part of the country, there is disease, so many people die, not but the whole world. Then after that, even eons of famine there’s period where the whole world suffer with the famine and so many people die. And then there’s even another period where eons of weapons.
So the whole world, there’s so much war and so many people die. So after that, the Maitreya descends. So it is said that by building the Maitreya statue so Maitreya descends earlier and this the eons of weapons, eons of famine, eons of sicknesses, so they become shorter. This, you know, this heavy period in this world become shorter. So it creates the cause for these eras.
For these periods, these very heavy periods, even shorter. So I didn’t know that reason before. I was just following Lama, who was kinder than all the three-time Buddhas, who I took care of for thirty years. So just lama’s advice will before lama passed away. So lama’s motivation is to by building the Maitreya statue so that the Buddhadharma Buddhadharma, which is As is mentioned in the Bodhicaryāvatāra, the only one medicine of the only one medicine for sentient beings, the transmigrated beings, the originator of all the peace and happiness, the panacea or the all the peace and happiness, the teaching that was the teaching of the Buddha made last long time with, you know, with the the offerings and the service to Buddha without meditation last long time in this world.
So Śāntideva, the great Bodhisattva Śāntideva made this prayer in the Bodhicaryāvatāra. So this is the only medicine for sentient beings to heal the sentient beings, to liberate and free the sentient beings from oceans of samsaric suffering, and cause the delusion and karma to purify, to cease all their gross and subtle defilements. So that is only teaching the Buddha. There’s nothing else. So I think lama’s wish, his motivation, is for the teaching to last long time in this world.
But I found these reasons later just recent time. Also in Ladakh, in Ladakh, in I don’t know how many hundreds of years ago Lotsawa Rinchen Zangpo, the great translator who after his translation, they translated Tantra teachings. So after that, the new Tantra. So that happened. Of course, it doesn’t mean he doesn’t mean, you know, without without coming from Buddha, without relying from Buddha that he just made it up is not that sort of translated from Sanskrit.
So I don’t know how many hundred thousand years ago in Ladakh. There’s a Maitreya Buddha. There’s a Maitreya Buddha naturally appeared from the rock. Then, wrote these benefits, these, you know, the eons of weapons, eons of sicknesses, eons of famine. In this world become shorter, you know, so by making the statue.
So it’s it’s a it seems it is engraved, carved on rock in Ladakh. Sorry. This is initiation time, not foundation time. But because they we’re going to recite some prayers. So then I was explaining, you know, for what purpose to to the to recite these protective prayers.
So dedicate for all the So that’s why I was explaining just this major project as well as to to support the monasteries, nunneries already existing for the to preserve dharma, spread dharma in this world to say their needs. And that and also to build new ones, different parts of the world so that among those monks and nuns to preserve Dharma. Sangha, to preserve Dharma, spread Dharma. So because the existence of the teaching in the world is mainly defined not by Tantra teaching, but by Sūtra teaching. The Vinaya teaching is defined by that.
So therefore, I depend on the very I say, depend on the existence of the Sangha. For that, it’s very important to different parts of the world to build monastery and this sort of spread Buddhist teaching in the in different parts of the world so that So please make prayer for success for all this.