Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 20-minute talk, Ven Wendy Finster shares firsthand accounts of events following Lama Yeshe’s death, including clear signs he left indicating a likely rebirth in America, and his final offering of gold to Sera Monastery in India. She describes the restructuring of the FPMT, the new administrative secretary Geoff Nye, and Lama Zopa’s request to take on Lama Yeshe’s spiritual and administrative responsibilities pending consultation with the Dalai Lama. The core of the teaching focuses on the planned year-long retreat at Kopan to generate merit for Lama’s quick rebirth, open to participants for any duration they can commit to, alongside recommended weekly practices including Guru Puja and Vajrasattva tsok. Finster emphasizes that practitioners’ primary responsibility is deepening their own dharma practice as the most effective way to support Lama’s swift return, with the retreat beginning imminently now that his relics have arrived.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 02 Lama Yeshe's Death.mp3
UUID: 8a942d39-e74b-4078-9d74-2baac4e6a146
Teacher: Ven Wendy Finster
Collection: Lama Yeshe's Death (Ven Wendy Finster)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 20.3 minutes
Words: ~2,638
There are a few things that Rinpoche mentioned. There’s the understatement of the year which goes I think it’s possible that Lama might be born in the West because I think he has much interest in teaching Westerners. Anyway, actually Lama left many indications that he will be reborn in America, America most likely, it seems. I don’t know how many of you know the American style. It’s not familiar to me, but it’s kind of amazing.
Americans are very open and very freely talking about everything, and it’s delightful really. I thought Australians were pretty open, actually Americans are much more open and easily to discuss things that we wouldn’t put into words. So what they are saying are things like, Lama has officially gone into voidness, now we’re left with the bliss. There’s obviously going to be a baby boom. They’re all talking about how there’s going be all these women with big stomachs convinced that lama is in there.
Anyway, they’re joking and laughing a lot after this last week I was there. So, Rinpoche thinks it’s likely that Lama will they don’t say so much, you you’ve got to pick up bits here and bits there and you put it all together. Rinpoche seemed to think it was likely that he would be reborn in America. Lama doesn’t read a map but he asked for a map map and asked for different people’s the location of the centre, the location of his house, the location of a couple of the different students’ homes and things like that. So there’s more specific things that I’m sure we don’t all know about, but there’s enough for me to be sure that Lama left quite a lot of signs about where he was expecting.
Rinpoche seemed to think that it wouldn’t be it’s up to us to continuously create the merit to create the karma that Lama will take rebirth quickly. But Rinpoche seemed to think that he probably will. And those of you who have met Lama, he was always in a hurry. There was never time. He’s always saying, Life is so short, dear.
There’s no time, dear. Be, you know, if we continue to practice in a way that would please Lama and that we continue to make the try to create the cause and create the wish that he will take rebirth quickly, maybe, you know, within a few years, again is what they’re sort of inferring anyway. So I think, in a nutshell, that’s kind of the sort of things that happened in terms of the cremation and the leading up to it. What’s happening now is that Rinpoche Lama Zopa has been requested. Another thing which happened was that last year Lama Yeshe previously the foundation for the preservation of the Mahāyāna tradition, the FPMT, has been the overall connecting thing which connected up however many centers there are of lamas.
Anyway, I think there’s about thirty around the world. The FPMT is supposed to be the director of each centre, so thirty people make up the FPMT. Then it had a secretariat, which was one person who was at that time in Italy and I think another secretary. So there was a secretariat who had a central office coordinating function keeping of files and things like that to try and coordinate the different centres in Lama’s what Lama wanted. So What happened about a year ago was that Lama said that he felt that the executive function of the FPMT would be enhanced if there was what he called a board.
He actually created a board, That board consists of about ten people. The Australian people on that are Doctor Nick Ribush and Paul Burke. Is that all? Anyway, my memory says that. There a couple of Americans, a couple of Europeans, a couple of English on that board.
That board is supposed to have more flexibility of meeting and making decisions about the organisation rather than waiting for thirty people to come together in one place, which I presume can only ever happen once a year, if that because of jobs, responsibilities and fares to get to one place and all that sort of thing. So Lama had actually created this board. The members of the board who were present at vajrapani Institute in California met and they officially requested Lama Zopa to take over Lama Yeshe’s responsibilities. Now, don’t know if you’re aware that there are sort of two arms to the responsibilities that Lama had. One was that he was the spiritual director of the centres and having the kind of the overall view of how the centres were to develop and so on.
But also he was an administrative director and in most of the legal documents relating to centres, Lama was legally there somehow in an administrative capacity as well as in a spiritual capacity. Also, Lama Zopa has always been, in all centres, been regarded as a spiritual director as well, so there’s no problem with that. We cannot take for granted that Lama Zopa will take over the administrative role that Lama Yeshe did. What happened was that the Board requested Lama Zopa to take over that administrative responsibility. Rinpoche said that he would discuss it with His Holiness the Dalai Lama and it was possible that he may.
So I presume that if he doesn’t then His Holiness will appoint someone else to do that. That. Also, to fill you in, in terms of the administrative structure, the person who was previously main the secretary at in Italy resigned at the end of last year, and a new person called Geoff Nye has been appointed for three years to be reviewed at the end of each year. He has said he would be happy to do the job for three years and to be reviewed at the end of each year. Geoff is planning to visit all the centres.
Mummy Max had bought a ticket for Lama to travel, so she’s going to give this ticket to Jeff so he can travel around and meet with people, so that he’s not some kind of alien figure, because it’s quite a big job that he’s taken on. He’s an American, he’s a very astute businessman, he’s a very good communicator, very direct. I think that if anyone can do the job well, he can do the job well. A very warm, astute person. He is kind of bald and has a wispy beard.
When Lama wrote him the letter at the end of last year to say, Please take the job, the people would like you to do that, the FPMT suggested that he do it. Lama said something in the letter about, Please keep your tie and your beard. Please take the job, but keep your tie and your beard. Anyway, I hope that Jeff will visit us within the next six months. Two reasons.
He has travelled quite extensively in Europe and America anyway, but not in the Australasian area, to make himself familiar with the of Lama centres in Australasia and also for people to meet with him and talk to him about whatever concerns they feel too. I’m hoping that that will happen. What’s actually Traditionally, I think in the Tibetan system, monks usually make offerings before their death or at the time of their death. They make offerings to the monastery from where they receive their education and to all the monks there and so on. I understand but I understand that about six or nine months ago, Lama actually bought I heard that he bought some gold, and he actually had the gold sent down to Sera Monastery in Southern India, which is the he was educated at Sera Monastery in Lhasa, and it sort of relocated in Southern India after the refugee situation happened.
What Rinpoche now has to do is, first of all he went to Switzerland and he took Lama’s relics with him to see another of Lama Yeshe’s teachers called Geshe Rabten. And then from there he went to India and he’s now in Dharamsala where His Holiness is giving teachings and also where he will discuss with His Holiness about issues relating to centres and his responsibility. From there he has to go down to Mysore at Sera where he has to make offerings and make many pujas for requesting Lama’s quick rebirth because it’s from us to create the cause and connecting on another level, you know, on a terms of karma level, sort of to really strongly request that Lama, for the benefit of us, that Lama will take rebirth quickly. And then after that he’s going to Kopan. Rinpoche decided that Kopan would be the best place to have this one year retreat.
He’s planning that there’d be one large statue made, which is probably going to be made in Italy. There’s apparently one very good statue maker in Italy. The main retreat will be happening at Kopan for one year. And people can go for any period of time that they feel they can. If they can, they go for a year.
If they can’t, then they go for a few months or however long they feel that they can go. If that’s impractical, Rinpoche suggested that we then try and, in regions, do have some kind of retreat. So he suggested Spain, New Zealand and America. Anyway, the main thing is that we continue in our own practice and there’s no suggestion at all that people should let go of other responsibilities. You’ve got to think what would Lama want you to do?
Basically we’ve got to ensure that things aren’t just sort of dropped and so on, that it’s important that we continue. So in terms of the practice that we’re going to do later this afternoon, I think that at least if those who can try to participate in this practice once a week or at least once a month to try and get the continuous energy working. And those of you who’ve got initiation into Dorje Sempa practice then to perhaps do some of that practice at home more regularly. But I want wanted to let you know about the retreat. I asked Rinpoche at the airport when he was leaving because he left a few days before I came back.
I asked him when he thought the retreat would start. In my mind I’m thinking, probably in a few months because it takes so long to organise things, you’ve got to get the statue made. Probably at Kopan there’s no facility so they probably have to make a meditation hall for students to be there. So it would probably take a few months. Rinpoche looked at me and said, Well, now we’ve the relics we can start straight away.
You know, no reason to wait. But that’s Rinpoche’s way. I suspect that actually there are a number of practical down to earth things which have to happen before the retreat. Also he wants to be involved in the retreat. He said himself that he wants to be involved if he can in the retreat.
And I don’t know what that means, whether that means he’ll be involved for a few months or whether he will start with the retreaters or just come and go when he has time to be involved in it. So my expectation is that probably within a month or so we will receive some kind of communication from Rinpoche in terms of what’s planned for the retreat, in terms of how it’s being set up. Has anyone got any questions about what I’ve talked about generally so far? Yes. Sometimes they can wait long would be like twenty years.
Actually, think quick would be two years. But we probably wouldn’t know, or maybe the Lamas would know because they’ve got other ways of checking of the birth. They use different methods of checking. They also have an oracle and they have different kinds of ways of checking with visions and also with different practices. They check Lama is in a pure realm and at the time that he will again take rebirth will be a time according to our karma and according to what he thinks is beneficial.
We can actually quicken the process by developing our own practice and by continuing to work in a way with our own practice that would please him. Because his whole purpose was for us to develop knowledge, wisdom and compassion to purify and create merit in our own lives, develop the Dharma understanding within ourselves. So our primary responsibility is to develop our own dharma, to purify negative and to create positive, and within our own inner evolution, to do what would make lama and that was lama’s purpose, actually. That’s for an unenlightened being or for an uncontrolled being. But also we did practices, and as Rinpoche asked us to do practices every seven weeks, Rinpoche says quite clearly, It’s got nothing to do with lama it’s for our minds that we do them.
In fact, what we’ve been doing is, I think it’s now four weeks. Yesterday, Rinpoche asked us to do Guru Puja yesterday morning and yesterday night, was done here. I think for the next three weeks, which will then make seven, we should do Guru Puja once a week, each Saturday. Then we will continue with this Vajrasattva tsok on Saturday evening for those who want to come. Is there any other question?
We can do both, I think. For those who can do both. puja and then do the Vajrasattva practice at night? Yeah, well we do one and then go have a break and then do the other. We need a big tsog plate out there so we can take all the offerings.
I think that in terms of practice, it’s important that we can particularly with the Vajrasattva tsok practice, it’s a practice which we are to visualize lama in this particular mudra, the Vajrasattva mudra. Particularly when we do this practice and use the visualisation of lama, it can be producing a much stronger understanding that actually Lama’s presence is on many levels and it’s only the physical manifestation of Lama which at the moment we’re missing. And that actually by visualising lama and using that visualisation in our practices we find that we actually can have communication with lama in a way that transcends the physical form. Perhaps now would be the best time for us to put the photos out and you to have maybe a twenty minute break or cup of tea or something while we look at the photos. Those of you who want to order any of the photos, make a decision today and maybe Dennis can take the orders.
And then we’ll start again maybe at three o’clock? The other thing I wanted to do was to maybe we should play the tape first before we break. There’s a tape here of Geshe Sopa speaking and then Lama Zopa speaking. So maybe we should play that before we break. Yeah?
And I can sort of go and fiddle around and get the photos ready. So Geshe Sopa is teacher of Lama since he was ten years old at Sera Monastery. Geshe Sopa now is in his early sixties and he’s a professor in Buddhism at the University of Wisconsin, in Madison, Wisconsin. And he’s quite wonderful. In fact I personally spent some time with him this time and have received teachings from him before and it’s been my wish for many years to receive more teachings from him so probably when I do go to America I’ll be going to study with him.
I hope.