Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition
 |
|
| Abbreviation | FPMT |
|---|---|
| Formation | 1975 |
| Founder |
Thubten Yeshe Thubten Zopa Rinpoche |
| Type |
Tibetan Buddhism Western Buddhism |
| Headquarters |
Maitripa College, Portland, Oregon United States |
|
Spiritual Director
|
Thubten Zopa Rinpoche |
| Website | fpmt.org |
The Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition (FPMT) was founded in 1975 by Lamas Thubten Yeshe and Thubten Zopa Rinpoche, who began teaching Buddhism to Western students in Nepal. The FPMT has grown to encompass over 160 Dharma centers, projects, and services in 37 countries. Since the death of Lama Yeshe in 1984, the FPMT's spiritual director has been Lama Zopa Rinpoche.
The FPMT's international headquarters are in Portland, Oregon (USA). The central office has previously been located at:
See the FPMT website for a full listing of FPMT centers, projects and services.
The name and structure of the FPMT date to 1975, in the wake of an international teaching tour by Lamas Yeshe and Zopa. However, the two had been teaching Western travelers since at least 1965, when they met Zina Rachevsky, their student and patron, in Darjeeling. In 1969, the three of them founded the Nepal Mahayana Gompa Centre (now Kopan Monastery). Rachevsky died shortly afterwards, during a Buddhist retreat.
Lama Yeshe resisted Rachevsky's appeals to teach a "meditation course," on the grounds that in the Sera Je tradition in which he was educated, "meditation" would be attempted only after intensive, multi-year study of the "five topics." However, he gave Lama Zopa permission to lead what became the first of Kopan's meditation courses (then semiannual, now annual) in 1971. Lama Zopa led these courses at least through 1975 (and occasionally thereafter).
During the early 1970s, hundreds of Westerners attended teachings at Kopan. Historical descriptions and recollections routinely characterize early Western participants as hippies—backpackers on extended overland tours of Asia—to whom Lama Yeshe's style of discourse especially appealed.
Geoffrey Samuel (see bibliography) finds it significant that Lamas Yeshe and Zopa had not yet attracted followings among the Tibetan or Himalayan peoples (Zopa's status as a minor tulku notwithstanding), and that their activities took place independently of any support or direction from the Tibetan Government in Exile in Dharamsala. On his reading, their willingness to reach out to Westerners was in large measure the result of a lack of other sources of support. Nevertheless, Samuel sees their cultivation of an international network as having ample precedent in Tibet.
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