Stupa Fund

	Building stupas helps develop so much peace and happiness for numberless sentient beings. As a result, wars, disease, and desire will all be pacified. Instead of feeling hopeless, people will gain courage. This is about peace – for the beings who see it, for the whole country, for the entire world, for all sentient beings.
–Lama Zopa Rinpoche

The Great Thousand Buddha Relic Stupa, Kopan Monastery, Kathmandu, Nepal. Photo: Nick Dawson

Lama Zopa Rinpoche established the Stupa Fund in 1992. The aim of the Fund is to provide the resources for the building of 100,000 stupas around the world, each of a minimum height of 12 feet. Simply seeing a holy object such as a stupa becomes the cause to achieve inconceivable awakening and enlightenment by purifying defilements. This is the special advantage of holy objects, that just by their existence they make it so easy for all living beings to create merit.

What is a Stupa?

Found in all Buddhist countries, stupas are the archetypal symbol of the enlightened mind. Even just seeing a stupa brings immense benefit. Stupas are a way to plant the seed of enlightenment and peace in the minds of all who see them, human or animal, Buddhist or non-Buddhist.

Inside each stupa are mantras and relics of holy beings that create incredible purification, merit, and blessings. The four Dharmakaya relic mantras are most often found in stupas, along with other powerful mantras. Lama Zopa Rinpoche has said if you put the 4 Dharmakaya relic mantras inside a stupa it creates the same merit as having built 100,000 stupas and having made offerings to all the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha.

By having the 4 Dharmakaya relics inside the stupa it creates the cause for so many sentient beings to be purified just by seeing, touching or making offerings to the stupa; this includes all the insects that come in contact with it.

Benefits of Stupas

Kadampa Stupa at Lama Zopa Rinpoche's houseStupas are an antidote for war, famine, and disease and are also extremely powerful for health and healing. You can visualize white healing light coming from the stupa, purifying you of your sickness, as you circumambulate and chant mantras. If you are facing death the best thing to do is circumambulate a stupa.

By actually building a stupa or statue, without words you are continually liberating many sentient beings – every day, anybody who sees, touches (including insects that touch the stupa), remembers, talks or dreams about the stupa plants the seed of enlightenment and purifies delusions and negative karma.  When the wind touches a stupa, the wind becomes blessed and then wherever it goes and whoever it touches is liberated from the lower realms, by purifying their negative karma. When the rain falls on the stupa, that running water liberates any being it touches, all the worms in the ground etc., from the lower realms. The same is true of dust.

It is explained by Buddha in the Sutra of the Mudra of Developing the Power of Devotion:
The minute you see a holy object you create infinite merits,
So no question, if you actually make prostrations,
Offerings and so forth, you create far greater merit.

                 Stupa in IcelandFrom the Sutra of the Exalted Compassionate-Eye Looking One:
If even for 10 million eons one explains the admiration (benefits)
Of any human being who circumambulates this stupa of the savior of the world;
One is unable to finish explaining them.

So stupas illuminate the world and bring inconceivable peace and happiness; and building these holy objects prevents destruction - of which so much is happening in the world, including war.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche has already inspired the building of more than forty large stupas around the world, including the Great Thousand Buddha Relic Stupa at Kopan Monastery in Nepal, the Great Stupa of Universal Compassion being built in Australia, the Kalachakra Stupa in the USA, a Kadampa stupa in France, and many other stupas in Nepal, Spain, Italy, France, the United States, Canada, Iceland, Tibet, Australia, and New Zealand.

The inconceivable merit of building a stupa is not limited to the person who physically builds it; contributing in any way to the building of a stupa brings equal benefit! Please help us make Rinpoche's vision for world peace a reality.

Latest News!

Kalachakra Stupa at Kurukulla CenterLama Zopa Rinpoche and the Stupa Fund offered over $21,000 towards the magnificent Kalachakra stupa at Kurukulla Center in Boston; as well as $5000 towards the new stupa being built at Gendun Drupa, Canada; $2000 towards the stupas at the IMI house in Sera Je, India; $3000 to Lama Yeshe’s cremation stupa at Vajrapani Institute, USA; and $26,000 to the Stupa Project at Land of Medicine Buddha, USA.

The Stupa Fund also supports the making of over 1000 small Kadampa stupas each year. These stupas are made by resident Sangha at Lama Zopa Rinpoche's home in California and are dedicated for students who have passed away.

Contribute to the Stupa Fund

For more information on the Stupa Fund, please contact Holly Ansett

FPMT publishes a three-part book series, Benefits and Practices Related to Statues and Stupas, and Advice on how to build stupas, giving Lama Zopa Rinpoche's advice on stupas. Read an excerpt from Part 1 of this series, a short teaching from Lama Zopa Rinpoche on the benefits and blessings of holy objects!

The Stupa Fund is a project of FPMT Inc. All donations made to the fund are tax-deductible within the United States in accordance with IRS Code article 501(C)(3) to the extent allowed by law.

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