Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 24-minute talk, Ven Wendy Finster addresses the community following Lama Yeshe’s death, conveying news from Lama Zopa Rinpoche about reincarnation signs and the organizational succession. She describes Lama Yeshe’s indications that he will likely be reborn in America, pointing to his requests for maps and specific locations before his death. She explains the restructuring of FPMT governance, including the creation of an executive board and the appointment of Geoff Nye as the new administrator, and details Rinpoche’s immediate plans: meetings with the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala, offerings at Sera Monastery in India, and the organisation of a one-year retreat at Kopan monastery. She emphasises that the community’s responsibility is to continue their own practice, particularly Guru Puja and Dorje Sempa visualisation, to support the conditions for Lama’s swift rebirth. Aimed at students already within the FPMT community.
File metadata (for organising)
File: Lama Yesha's Death-Wendy Finster-1b 1984.mp3
UUID: 2006e0c8-596b-4df6-9294-d7116b01ed75
Teacher: Ven Wendy Finster
Collection: Lama Yeshe's Death (Ven Wendy Finster)
Date: 1984 (exact day not recorded)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 23.7 minutes
Words: ~2,815
A few things that Rinpoche mentioned. There’s the understatement of the year which goes something like 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 most likely it seems. The Americans, 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 but actually Americans are much more kind of open and easily able to discuss even things that we wouldn’t put into words. So they are saying things like ‘Lama has officially gone into voidness now we’re left with the bliss’, you know, and actually there’s obviously going to be a baby boom and they’re all sort of talking about how there’s going to be all these women, you know, with big stomachs kind of convinced that Lama’s in there. So anyway they’re joking and laughing a lot after this, you know, last week I was there. Rinpoche thinks it’s likely that Lama will—they don’t say so much, you know, you’ve got to pick up little bits here and little bits there and you sort of put it all together—but Rinpoche seemed to think it was likely that he would be reborn in America and actually Lama asked people to—Lama doesn’t read a map but he asked for a map and he asked for different people’s locations, the location of the centre and the location of his house and 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’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’ve 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.
So maybe, you know, if we continue to practice in a way that would please Lama and that we continue to make the effort 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 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 officially. 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 thirty however many centers there are of Lama’s anyway. I think there’s about thirty around the world and the FPMT is supposed to be the directors of each centre, so like thirty people make up the FPMT, and then it had a secretariat which was one person who was at that time in Italy and I think another secretary, so that there was kind of a secretariat who had a central office coordinating function, keeping of files and things like that to try and coordinate the different centres as 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. So he actually created a board and that board I think consists of about ten people and the Australian people on that are Dr. Nick Ribush and Paul Burke I think. Is that all? Anyway, my memory says that. So, and there are a number of, there are a couple of Americans, couple of Europeans, a couple of English on that board.
So 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 because of jobs, responsibilities and fares to get to one place and all that sort of thing. So Lama had actually created this board. So the members of the board who were present at Vajrapāni Institute in California met and they officially requested Lama Zopa to take over Lama Yeshe’s responsibilities. Now I 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 centers and having the overall view of how the centers were to develop and so on.
But also he was an administrative director and in most of the legal documents relating to centers, Lama was kind of legally there somehow in an administrative capacity as well as in a spiritual capacity. Also, Lama Zopa has always been, in all centers, regarded as the spiritual director as well so there’s no problem with that, but we cannot take for granted that Lama Zopa will take over the administrative role that Lama Yeshe did. So 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 in conjunction with the board I presume. I don’t know too much at all about that. Also to fill you in in terms of the administrative structure, the person who was previously the main person in the Secretariat 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 and so she’s going to, I think, give this ticket to Geoff so he can travel around and meet with people so that he’s not sort of 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.
And he’s kind of bald and he’s got a wispy beard. And 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, FPMT sort of 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. Something like that.
Anyway, so I hope that Geoff will visit us within the next six months. For two reasons, so he can familiarize himself—he’s traveled quite extensively in Europe and America anyway but not in the Australasian area—to make himself familiar with the development of Lama’s centers in Australasia and also for people to meet with him and talk to him about whatever concerns they feel too. So I’m hoping that that will happen. So what’s actually happening right now is that traditionally, I think in the Tibetan system, traditionally monks usually make offerings before their death or at the time of their death. They make offerings to the monastery from where they received their teachings and to all the monks there and so on. And I understand—I’m not certain of this 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—he was educated at Sera Monastery in Tibet and it sort of relocated in southern India after the refugee situation happened. So what Rinpoche now has to do is he’s gone 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 Dalai Lama 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 for us to create the cause and connecting on another level, you know, in terms of karmic level, 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 and Rinpoche decided that Kopan would be the best place to have this one year retreat and 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—and the main retreat will be happening at Kopan for one year and people can go for like any period of time that they feel they can. If they can 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 sort of some kind of retreat. So he suggested Spain, New Zealand and America.
But 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 or—I mean 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. 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 Vajrasattva practice then to perhaps do some of that practice at home more regularly. But I wanted to just let you know about the retreat. So I presume that—I asked Rinpoche at the airport when he was leaving because he left a few days before I came back and I asked him when he thought the retreat would start and in my mind I’m thinking probably in a few months because you know it takes so long to organize things, we’ve got to get the statue made and probably at Kopan there’s no facility so they’ll probably have to make a meditation hall for students to be there and so it would probably take a few months.
And Rinpoche just looked at me and said well now we’ve got the relics we can start straight away. So what’s the—you know, there’s no reason to wait. But you know, 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. So has anyone got any questions about what I’ve talked about generally so far? Yes.
Sometimes they can wait a long while, would be like twenty years. So, yeah, actually I think quick would be two years but we probably wouldn’t know and maybe the Lamas would know because they’ve got other ways of checking the rebirth. They use different sort of methods of checking. They also have a kind of oracle and 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 according to our karma and according to what he thinks is beneficial.
So 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, to develop the Dharma understanding within ourselves. So our primary responsibility is to develop our own dharma understanding, to purify negative karma and to create positive karma and to kind of within our own inner evolution to do what would make Lama happy and that was Lama’s purpose actually. What does this bardo state come in then, forty nine days? That’s for an unenlightened being or for an uncontrolled being, but also we did practices and as Rinpoche asked us to do practices each week for seven weeks and Rinpoche says quite clearly it’s got nothing to do with Lama, it’s for our minds that we do them. So 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 which was done here and I think for the next three weeks, which will then make seven, we should do Guru Puja once a week each Saturday and 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. Do the song offering within the Guru Puja and then do the Vajrasattva Tsok practice at night? Yeah, well we do one and then go have a break and then do the other. We need a big tsok plate out there to 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 a particular mudra, the Vajrasattva mudra. And particularly when we do this practice and use the visualization of Lama, it can be producing a much much kind of 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 visualizing Lama and using that visualization 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 then 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 and those of you who want to order any of the photos please make a decision today for 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 speaking, so 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. Geshe Sopa is a teacher of Lama’s 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, 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.