What is Foundation Membership?

The Buddha taught that every living being has the potential to be free from suffering and to develop limitless love and compassion. For more than thirty years, the Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition (FPMT) has provided Dharma education which transforms people's minds into their highest potential, teaching people how to understand and integrate the teachings of Buddhism into their heart. The heart of FPMT reaches out across thirty-three countries, preserving and transmitting the Mahayana Buddhist tradition and its values toward the happiness of all beings.

As a Foundation Member, you will belong to an international community of students, supporting a vibrant network of over 150 Dharma centers, monasteries, nunneries, social service projects, hospices, health care clinics, publishing houses, and initiatives to create holy objects, translate rare texts and preserve the pure teachings of the Buddha in the Lama TsongKhapa tradition.

As Buddhism has spread internationally, an accurate presentation of the tradition by qualified teachers in whom students can place their trust is critical. FPMT follows the guidance of His Holiness the XIV Dalai Lama, a peerless representative of the Buddhist teachings in a troubled world. FPMT's founder Lama Thubten Yeshe was a master of the tradition whose teachings still resonate powerfully. FPMT's Spiritual Director, Lama Zopa Rinpoche, is respected internationally as a lama of rare ability who has truly realized what it means to live for others.

Your membership supports the Foundation in its vast global Dharma and social service activities according to the guidance of these amazing teachers.

Elements of the Buddha's Mahayana tradition are at risk of degenerating and fading away.  Our work preserves what the Buddha taught according to the tradition of Lama Tsong Khapa, upholding the rich array of Buddhist practices which FPMT has inherited from its teachers.

As a Foundation Member, you will assist FPMT in its work to keep the entire teachings of the Buddha pure in its entirety, protecting authentic Buddhist teachings in the Je Tsongkhapa lineage.  FPMT educational programs distill and transmit the entire Mahayana Buddhist canon, and are taught by the most qualified lamas and geshes of our time.

In the early years, FPMT was a tightly-knit family of a handful of students looking for answers and two ground-breaking lamas who had profound answers to give. It grew as students decided to bring back what they had learned to their local communities, and FPMT centers began springing up around the world. We are now an international community of over 150 centers, retreat centers, publishing houses, monasteries, and social service projects, and we are still a family: