Stupas are said to promote harmony, prosperity, longevity, good health, and peace. They bring blessings to the environment in which they are built, to those who help sponsor and build them, and to those who visit and venerate them. In this way, stupas ensure that the living quality of the Buddhist teachings will always be available.
From FPMT.org
Stupas, one of the most ancient icons in Buddhist art, are powerful symbols of the mind’s limitless potential. In other words, they represent the mind of enlightenment. Stupas are filled with sacred images, mantras and the relics of holy beings. Building or sponsoring a stupa is a very powerful way to accumulate merit and purify negative karma.
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
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.
The main stupa, which is the replica of the Mahabodhi Stupa in Bodhgaya, is the central axis in a garden, which will offer paths for circumamabulation, sites to sit and meditate, thousands of memorial stupas, flowering plants as offerings to the stupas, places to perform prostrations, benches for visitors to rest and reflect.
Small Five-Inches Kadampa Stupas Have Arrived at Land of Medicine Buddha!
We are delighted to continue Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s vision for our 100,000 Stupa Project. Rinpoche had advised that we make several sizes of stupas available for sponsorship to allow the creating of merit for sponsoring stupas.
It is with this motivation that we bring you this opportunity to help us fulfill Rinpche’s vision for stupa which will benefit many beings at Land of Medicine Buddha. The five-inch Kadampa Stupas have arrived at Land of Medicine Buddha! They are being placed in the niches on the first mandala wall. These small stupas will be filled with the Four Dharmakaya Relic Mantras and incense, and consecrated.
Sponsorships for these Stupas are Opened!
Donation to sponsor one stupa is $108. A discount is available if you would like to sponsor five or more stupas. Please email .
As an option, you may bring a Stupa home if you wish. There will be a journal in which you can write a dedication for your sponsorship. Your sponsorship will be recorded on a sign placed at the stupa site, with a site map to help locate the stupa/s that you’ve sponsored.
Wherever a stupa is built will become a powerful place for healing and a cause for the success of whatever visitors to that place are seeking.
—Lama Zopa Rinpoche
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.
—the Sutra of the Mudra of Developing the Power of Devotion
General Stupa Project Donations
Make a general donation to the 100,000 Stupa project.
Planting Seeds of Enlightenment
Make a donation towards the Stupa garden or sponsor a plant in the garden.
Kadampa Stupa Sponsorship
Sponsor a Kadampa Stupa to be placed on the Mandala Wall surrounding the main stupa.
Stupa News
The Vision
Rising from a verdant meadow with a Bodhi tree planted to the west, we are building a replica of the holy Mahabodhi stupa. This stupa will inspire all who see it to find refuge in the gentle path of wisdom, compassion, and peace.
As you walk the path from our Great Prayer Wheel to the upper part of our land you will encounter this venerable stupa, an icon of peace rising from an open meadow. Standing nearly forty feet tall, we are building a replica of one of the holiest Buddhist pilgrimage sites in India.
This stupa will be the central axis in a garden which will offer sites to sit and meditate, thousands of memorial stupas, gardens grown as offerings to the Buddha, places to perform prostrations, ponds with places for peaceful travelers to rest and reflect.
The purpose of this stupa is to serve as an inspiration and a blessing to all who visit it. Simply seeing, making prostrations, or circumambulating the stupa will be of benefit to all. Dedicated as a place to promote peace, we will have plaques to honor people such as His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Mother Theresa, Martin Luther King and others who have through their tireless effort created a more peaceful world.
“It has long been the tradition that wherever the teachings of the Buddha’s have been revered and practiced, communities of followers have built reliquary monuments known in Sanskrit as stupas and as chötens in Tibetan. And wherever they have been built, they have been regarded as sacred, for like religious images and scriptures, they represent aspects of enlightenment.”
—His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama
History
The vision for the Land of Medicine Buddha Stupa Project emerged in the late 1990’s. Tangible progress began in 1999. In the following decade, extensive architectural planning and land analysis work was done to build the 11,000 sq. ft. building modeled after the ancient stupa in Bodhgaya.
In 2011, Kyabje Zopa Rinpoche became the central pillar to our Founders Mandala by pledging $50,000 to support the building of our stupa. In January of 2013, the Chew family from Singapore became the second members of our Founders Mandala. We are looking for a few more visionaries to join us in making the building of this great stupa manifest quickly!
See engineering and architectural drawings here (PDF).
After only a year of design and engineering, in January 2014 we received our permit approval to build our stupa at Land of Medicine Buddha!
Construction
The bhumi puja to bless the land was held on Friday, April 25, 2014, and on the following Monday, April 28, 2014 construction began.
Two years later, on May 22, 2016, we filled the 9th and final chamber of the central tower. Many hands helped pass along the holy objects – sutras, mantras, tsa-tsas, etc. – from the truck, up the ladders, all the way to the top. All the spaces around the holy objects were packed with fragrant wood shavings and incense.
Our Facebook page and YouTube page have ongoing posts with pictures and videos of the progress.