Advice from Lama Zopa Rinpoche

Sunset on Kopan Hill while Lama Zopa Rinpoche is offering puja, May 2021. Photo by Ven. Roger Kunsang.

Recently Lama Zopa Rinpoche offered some advice for those experiencing the intense heatwave in the Pacific Northwest of the United States. In the midst of record-high temperatures, Rinpoche advised on how to look at our present difficulties as an opportunity to practice by utilizing our suffering as a pathway to the greatest happiness by cultivating bodhicitta, and especially, by taking all the suffering of every sentient being upon ourselves so that they may receive enlightenment. Additionally, Rinpoche recommends making strong, heartfelt prayers to Chenrezig for the blessing of rain. We hope that you will find this advice from Rinpoche useful:

First, think about karma, cause and effect. In Tibetan, ledre. Secondly, think about how Lama Atisha had 157 gurus and two root gurus. One was Lama Serlingpa, from whom he received bodhichitta teachings in Indonesia for twelve years, like however much nectar one pot has being poured completely into another pot. Lama Atisha had to travel twelve months by boat in dangerous conditions to Indonesia to receive these teachings.

The other root guru is Lama Dharmarakshita, who gave the teaching of the Wheel of Sharp Weapons. One stanza from that says that when you have unbearable pain or disease, it’s due to you giving harm to others—the wheel of sharp weapons (bad karma) turned on yourself.

So now, you take all the pain, or the disease, onto yourself. This is what makes your pain or disease most worthwhile, causing all the sentient beings to achieve full enlightenment. So this means you experience every sentient being’s suffering and they become free from the entire suffering of samsara and achieve full enlightenment.

Actually it is sooooo precious. It harms your worst enemy—the self-cherishing thought that has caused you to suffer from beginningless rebirths in samsara, including causing samsara without end. If you don’t practice holy Dharma, particularly bodhichitta now, then you will have to continue suffering

That selfish mind has caused you to harm every sentient being. They suffer in the past and present and also future. You can’t imagine! This time and opportunity is soooo precious to destroy the enemy of bodhichitta. Not only mine, but every sentient being’s. As for others—I don’t know about people—but animals might suffer and die; even in the caves they have no air-conditioning or fans.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche teaching in front of 1,000 Arm Chenrezig, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, August 2014. Photo by Ven. Roger Kunsang.

Make heartfelt prayers to Chenrezig. In front of the statue, recite the Chenrezig mantra, some malas.

Make very strong prayers. You should know that Chenrezig is there, he sees and understands everything. Then request what is the most important need for sentient beings, which is black clouds and so much rain for a long time. Then that causes landslides and water floods—I’m joking! Visualize strong rain in the whole area where there is heat.

From the second buddha, Nagarjuna, who mentioned in A Letter to a Friend [as a comparison to the suffering in hell], “Here, having put 360 short spears heavily into the body,” there’s no need to question about that. For us, even a tiny thorn the size of a hair, if it goes in the flesh it’s unbearable without taking it out. So imagine the example of the 360 short spears—most unbelievable, unbelievable suffering.

Therefore, there’s no comparison [including having 360 short spears in the flesh] to the unbearable, unbearable, extremely unbearable suffering of even the slightest hell. And then there’s having to experience it for one hundred eons or ten million eons.

So until the negative karma finishes, one never separates from suffering. This is something to think about when we think about lower realm sufferings every day. This is the most unbearable, and it’s the very smallest hell suffering.

As I often say, the heaviest suffering of human beings is actually great peace and pleasure when compared to the hell sufferings. So you can understand from this quotation. Whether you believe that hell exists or not is just the limitation of merit, of intelligence. Those who have a lot merit, they can remember past and future lives. They have merit, like those bodhisattvas who achieve the bhumis. The bodhisattvas who achieve the first bhumi can see one hundred past and future lives. And on the second bhumi they can see one thousand past and future lives. Then more and more … it goes on and on. The higher and higher they go, the fewer and fewer obscurations.

It’s like the more you clean it, the more you see the beauty—the color and design comes out. The more you clean the dirt it becomes clearer, so the quality of the mind comes out. That’s a very good outside example.

For example, a cup is dirty and smelly with kaka, but because the cup is not kaka you can clean it with soap and water. It’s the same with cloth that is very black and dirty, you can wash it with soap and different things, and then it becomes fresh like a new one, especially if you iron it. So that’s a very good outside example. Because the cloth isn’t oneness with the dirt, it’s just temporarily obscured. The mind is also not oneness with the obscurations, not oneness with attachment, anger, and ignorance—ignorance holding I and phenomena as truly existent. While it exists in mere name, not even an atom is existing from its own side.

So it’s an example, and through meditation, if you really meditate, if you get experiences, you see more and more clearly past and future lives, karma, with higher and higher realizations. As the mind gets less and less obscured and purified, then you can see things deeper and deeper, what ordinary beings cannot see. It doesn’t mean just because you can’t see it now [it doesn’t exist]. When the mind has fewer obscurations through purification, you can see for yourself, you can prove to yourself.

Now here as I mentioned, this shows very clearly the example of hell sufferings. It’s not hell but it’s giving an example. It’s a human being suffering, but it’s like hell, it gives you an idea—then, it becomes unbelievably hot, beyond human suffering. The heat is there, it’s the same as in Bodhgaya where it’s hot every single year. It’s not been in America, but now it happens. In India, in Bodhgaya, it happens every year. It’s just that we don’t know about India. So you see, this didn’t come from the outside, it came from the mind.

Nearby, there’s a part of America—the name I don’t know—it’s in the corner of America, there is so much water, so much flooding, so much of that has happened. Then in Washington it’s so hot. Some areas are very hot while close by there is flooding. It looks like it comes from outside, but it comes from the inside—the mind—the result of past negative karma.

The foundation of Buddhism is that happiness and suffering come from the mind, from your mind. So your mind is the creator. It’s explained in Abidharmakosha, this is one important subject to study. The various worlds came from the mind, born from the mind. It’s either so hot, or there are landslides or earthquakes. These outside conditions are caused by non-human beings. But that’s not the main cause. The main cause is karma. Karma is the mind; it is not the body. It comes with the mind, not with the body. There is the primary mind and the fifty one mental factors. There are five omnipresent mental factors, in Tibetan, kundro nga, always existing—“omnipresent,” as it’s translated in English is okay but it’s not very exact. Karma is the mental factor intention, which is one of those five.

Yes, of course it can be purified before experiencing the result. Yes, it depends on how perfectly it’s purified, whether you experience some result or not. If purification is perfectly well done, then one never experiences the result of negative karma, suffering is not experienced in this life. Then the next one is that you experience past heavy karma in this life, but not as heavy as experiencing it in the lower realms for many eons. Unbelievable heaviness, but it manifests as some cancer or virus, some chaos to finish. So there will be happiness in the future. These are the benefits of purification.

Kadampa Geshe Kharagpa said, “This small present suffering finishes some past negative karma, then there will be happiness in the future. So therefore, be happy by having this suffering.” I think it means to rejoice and be happy by thinking of the benefits. So not just in one life, but from life to life, you’ll have more and more happiness. Also, you go to enlightenment and are free from samsara. It can happen more and more like that.

So it’s very good to rejoice. You’re experiencing the hottest heat now, but in Bodhgaya, where we have a center, the people who live there go through this every year, so hot. That’s what Roger reminded me. In America it’s a big surprise because it didn’t happen like that before. So you have to know and you have to rejoice. Be happy because your past negative karma is getting purified, purified of the lower realm sufferings, unbelievable sufferings. It finishes like that, so rejoice, be happy.

And not only that, be happy to receive all the numberless sentient beings’ sufferings—the hell beings, hungry ghosts, animals, human beings, suras, and asuras—to take their suffering on yourself. Experience that suffering and the causes—karma and delusion—and let them be enlightened, the total cessation of obscurations and the completion of realizations.

Experience it for sentient beings rather than thinking, I’m suffering, I’m suffering. Unless of course, you want to fly to Mount Everest. So you see, in the northern hemisphere, in Iceland and in many places, there are huge ice mountains melting down. You hear about this all the time. Why is this happening? It came from the mind, basically. The great enlightened being, Padampa Sangye, who existed during Milarepa’s time said, “It looks like happiness and suffering come from the outside, but they come basically and originally from one’s mind.”

So you can ask, the virus came from China, but why does it have to be experienced in America? Some people have the virus while some people don’t have it—why? Also in the family, the father can die from the virus but not the children and not the mother—why? So you can ask like that.

You want to see yourself as an enlightened being and others as ordinary beings—this is totally ignorant because you don’t understand it came from the mind. Using a very simple example, when you recognize that you’re not well, that you’re sick, you go to the doctor. Because you don’t know how the sickness evolved, you don’t know the details, what happens with the sickness—you have no idea, so you go to see the doctor who knows better than you, who has studied more and who knows more than you. But you say this doctor is totally ignorant because he doesn’t know more than me, he hasn’t stopped suffering and ignorance up to thinking, “I’m an enlightened being,” and you disregard his advice.

So whatever is happening—the extreme weather, whatever it is that totally changes and then there’s suffering, hot, cold, big problems—you experience it for others. If you have intelligence, if you have a lot of merit, then you experience it for sentient beings. In that way you actualize the path to enlightenment. Then not only do you get enlightened but you enlighten other sentient beings. It’s so good, unbelievable. And if you die with that, as His Holiness always says, the best way to die is with bodhichitta.

Kyabje Khunu Lama Rinpoche, the great bodhisattva from whom I received teachings, said in the Praise to Bodhicitta that even if you’re sick, be sick with bodhicitta; even if you die, die with bodhicitta. Whatever happens, that is best. The Kadampa Geshe Chekawa said that he prayed to be born in the hells for sentient beings, but at death time he had visions of the pure land where he’d be reborn. He said, “I didn’t achieve my wish, which was to be born in the hells for sentient beings.” He treated all sentient beings like how you would treat your mother or the most kind person. Their suffering being the most unbearable, he felt it for all sentient beings—for every ant, every mosquito, even the tiniest one, everyone, no matter how big they were—he felt it for everyone.

This is the best way to die and to experience problems. It’s the best way to transform it all into the path for all sentient beings. What else is more happiness than this and more important than this, to be able to benefit numberless sentient beings? It’s ridiculous to take drugs or whatever. It’s like a person who has delusions from spirits, that person is running on the cliffs and in his vision, his view, there’s a big road that goes down to the beach. This is explained by not just one person, but quoted by those who didn’t die. They explained what they have seen, where there’s actually no road, they see a road.

Thank you very, very much. I bring up some words for this situation where everybody is jumping [with anxiety]. There are many stories with the heat, but one can’t jump that much. So please think about what I’ve said. The best is tonglen [taking and giving] and lojong [thought transformation]—the most beneficial. Whatever it is, even death, sickness, or relationship problems, experience it for all sentient beings. That’s the happiest and the hippiest person. 

Thank you very much. Goodbye.

Dictated to Ven. Tenzin Namdrol by Lama Zopa Rinpoche at Kopan Monastery, Nepal; transcribed and lightly edited by Wongmo, Buddha Amitabha Pure Land, June 30, 2021. Further edited by FPMT International Office, July 2, 2021.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche is the spiritual director of the Foundation for the Preservation of Mahayana Tradition (FPMT), a Tibetan Buddhist organization dedicated to the transmission of the Mahayana Buddhist tradition and values worldwide through teaching, meditation and community service.

Learn more about the recent video series Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s Teachings on Thought Transformation, where you can also find links to videos, transcripts, MP3s, additional practice advice, and more.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche offering incense puja on Kopan Hill to mitigate the pandemic in Nepal, India, and the world; for many weeks Rinpoche offered sur, bath offering, incense puja, and tea offering for many hours each night; Kopan Monastery, Nepal, May 2021. Photo by Ven. Lobsang Sherab.

In the following short excerpt, Lama Zopa Rinpoche explains that as Buddhists we train to be free from the pervasive compounding suffering and that the main goal of our human life is to bring all sentient beings of the six realms into peerless happiness, total cessation of obscurations and completion of realizations, into enlightenment. Here’s a summary of the video:

We need to be free from pervasive compounding suffering, Rinpoche explains. That is the main thing we should free ourselves from. By doing this, we are forever free from the suffering of pain and suffering of change, and then we have ultimate happiness, liberation.

But even being free from samsara, achieving nirvana, is not sufficient. “The blissful state of peace for oneself is not enough,” Rinpoche says.

Why? Because the purpose of our human life is to be beneficial for all sentient beings and to cause the the numberless hell beings, numberless hungry ghosts, numberless animals, numberless human beings, numberless sura beings, and numberless asura beings to be free from samsara forever. Not only that, the purpose of this life is also to bring everyone—each and every one in six realms—to peerless happiness, total cessation of obscurations and completion of realizations, sanggye.

“You need to do that!” Rinpoche says. That is the main purpose. That is why we are born a human being this time, to accomplish this aim. “That should be the main aim of our breathing, our eating food, going to sleep, everything. For that you need to achieve the state of omniscience.”

Watch the video “The Purpose of Our Human Life Is to Benefit All Sentient Beings”:
https://youtu.be/xAV-gvchhjw

The above video was extracted from the beginning of the 100 Million Mani Mantra Retreat at Istituto Lama Tzong Khapa, Pomaia, Italy, recorded on October 6, 2017.

Learn more about the recent video series Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s Teachings on Thought Transformation, where you can also find links to videos, transcripts, MP3s, additional practice advice, and more.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche is the spiritual director of the Foundation for the Preservation of Mahayana Tradition (FPMT), a Tibetan Buddhist organization dedicated to the transmission of the Mahayana Buddhist tradition and values worldwide through teaching, meditation and community service.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche doing puja to mitigate the pandemic in Nepal, India, and the rest of the world at sunset on Kopan Hill, Kopan Monastery, Nepal, May 2021. Photo by Ven. Roger Kunsang.

In the following short video clip, Lama Zopa Rinpoche explains that the greatest excitement in our life is to benefit all sentient beings. Listening to teachings, doing prayers and meditations, taking precepts, and living our life—all that—we dedicate to their well being. Here’s a summary of the video clip:

Rinpoche explains that we are listening to the teachings for numberless animals, in order to free them from samsara and lead them to enlightenment. “Can you imagine? Do you understand?” Rinpoche asks. “If you are not excited for this, then what else is exciting?”

“Other excitement is totally crazy,” Rinpoche explains. “It is over hallucination. There is hallucination and over hallucination. So here, can you imagine?”

The reason we are doing meditation is to benefit all sentient beings, not leaving out one single tiny fly, not one single ant. There are numberless universes. But not one single ant is left out, because of all the kind mother sentient beings, Rinpoche explains. If you think of the details it’s unbelievable!

So bodhichitta—practicing bodhichitta and benefiting sentient beings—is so great. “What other excitement do you want? Something else is more exciting that this?” Rinpoche asks. Nothing is more exciting and to think this is very strange, Rinpoche explains. It is like your mind is not right. “I’m talking including myself, not only you,” Rinpoche says.

Our reciting should be done with the thought that we are not leaving even the tiniest sentient being behind. We are reciting for everyone. “We get up for them in the morning, wash, and do the motivation, especially the Mahayana motivation, bodhichitta, wow!” Rinpoche says. We need to be alive to practice Dharma, to be of benefit, so we have to eat. So we eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner for all sentient beings. We take precepts for them. We do meditation for them. “Every prayer is for them,” Rinpoche says. “Can you imagine?”

Watch the video “Nothing More Exciting than That”:
https://youtu.be/5zlddu2tgOo

The above video is extracted from the Light of the Path 2017 teachings, recorded on August 27, 2017, in Black Mountain, North Carolina, US.

Since early May 2021, Lama Zopa Rinpoche has been offering video teachings in Tibetan from Kopan Monastery in Nepal.

Learn more about the recent video series Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s Teachings on Thought Transformation, where you can also find links to videos, transcripts, MP3s, additional practice advice, and more.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche is the spiritual director of the Foundation for the Preservation of Mahayana Tradition (FPMT), a Tibetan Buddhist organization dedicated to the transmission of the Mahayana Buddhist tradition and values worldwide through teaching, meditation and community service.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche blessing six goats that were purchased and saved from the butcher. The goats were liberated on behalf of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, all the Kopan monks and nuns, all the Nepali and Indian people, and all beings to be free from the Coronavirus, Kopan Monastery, Nepal, May 2021. Photo by Ven. Lobsang Sherab.

Since early May 2021, Lama Zopa Rinpoche has been offering video teachings in Tibetan from Kopan Monastery in Nepal. We anticipate Rinpoche will return to recording new video teachings in English in the near future.

In this short video extract from Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s video series Teachings on Thought Transformation, Rinpoche explains why it is so important to practice Dharma right now.

Rinpoche begins the discussion with the following quote:

Having received this perfect human rebirth, you can reach the end of the oceans of rebirth
And plant the seeds of virtue of supreme enlightenment.
Who would not want the results of a human body,
Which has even greater qualities than a wish-granting jewel?

Rinpoche reminds us that we have had numberless rebirths and suffered in samsara since beginningless time. But because we have received a perfect human rebirth in this life, we can put an end to rebirths in samsara and plant the seeds of enlightenment.

Because of what we can accomplish with this human rebirth, it is much more precious than the whole sky filled with numberless wish-granting jewels. With this human rebirth we can achieve the total cessation of obscurations and the completion of all realizations; we can’t achieve that from a wish-granting jewel alone.

Rinpoche explains that for numberless eons we have not had a perfect human rebirth, but in this life we do. It is so precious. So we should use it well. If we waste this opportunity, it would be like putting poison in perfectly good food or like using our human body to create the cause for our future lives to be like firewood in hell.

Therefore, Rinpoche says, Do what is best in this life now!

Watch the nine-minute video “Do Your Best in This Life—Now!”:
https://youtu.be/WOq1–WquBI

Read the video transcript here.

The above video is extracted from Video 38: “Do Your Best in This Life!”

You can subscribe to the FPMT Tibetan video channel to receive updates on new video teachings in Tibetan and you can also find all the recent Tibetan teachings there.

Watch more from the video series Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s Teachings on Thought Transformation, where you can also find links to transcripts, MP3s, additional practice advice, and more. Read a summary of Rinpoche’s thought transformation teachings given in 2020 in the Mandala 2021 article “The Time to Practice Is Now.”

Lama Zopa Rinpoche is the spiritual director of the Foundation for the Preservation of Mahayana Tradition (FPMT), a Tibetan Buddhist organization dedicated to the transmission of the Mahayana Buddhist tradition and values worldwide through teaching, meditation and community service.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche doing incense puja for everyone affected by COVID-19 around the world, especially for the monks and nuns of Kopan, and those in India and Nepal, Kopan Monastery, Nepal, May 2021. Photo by Ven. Lobsang Sherab.

In the following short excerpt from Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s video teachings on thought transformation, Rinpoche explains the importance of recognizing the reality of death and that it should reminds us to practice Dharma right now!

Rinpoche discusses a quote from Rongphu Sanggye on Thirty-Seven Practices of a Bodhisattva, citing Sutra of the Sorrowless State:

འདུ་ཤེས་ཐམས་ཅད་ཀྱི་ནང་ནས་ཡང་མི་རྟག་པ་དང་འཆི་བའི་འདུ་ཤེས་མཆོག་ཡིན།

Du she tham chä kyi nang nä yang mi tag pa dang chhi wäi du she chhog yin

Among all the recognitions, the best is the recognition of impermanence-death.

Recognizing impermanence-death reminds you to practice Dharma right now. It is not enough to think you’ll practice Dharma when you become old, because the time of your death is not known, Rinpoche explains. It could happen at any time. Therefore you must practice Dharma right now!

Then, when you die neither the people surrounding you nor your possessions can help you. Even the body that you cherish the most cannot benefit you. You can’t carry even one atom with you after you die. The only thing that can benefit you at the time of death is holy Dharma, nothing else. So, Rinpoche says, the conclusion is to practice only holy Dharma.

However, practicing Dharma doesn’t mean just circumambulating holy objects, reading Dharma texts, or meditating. Rinpoche explains that it means not only our prayers, reflections, and meditation need to be holy Dharma, but also eating, drinking, going to the toilet, walking, sitting, sleeping, working, and so forth all have to become holy Dharma. It means transforming everything we do into holy Dharma. 

Watch the seven-minute video “Recognizing Impermanence-Death Reminds You to Practice Dharma Right Now!“:
https://youtu.be/Og3NCXeJPo8

Read the transcript of Rinpoche’s teaching in this short video.

The above video is extracted from the Thought Transformation Teachings series Video 61: “The One Mistake is Not Remembering Impermanence-Death.”

Watch more from the video series Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s Teachings on Thought Transformation during the Time of COVID-19, where you can also find links to transcripts, MP3s, additional practice advice, and more.

Read a summary of Rinpoche’s thought transformation teachings given in 2020 in the Mandala 2021 article “The Time to Practice Is Now: Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s Thought Transformation Teachings During the Time of COVID-19.”

Lama Zopa Rinpoche is the spiritual director of the Foundation for the Preservation of Mahayana Tradition (FPMT), a Tibetan Buddhist organization dedicated to the transmission of the Mahayana Buddhist tradition and values worldwide through teaching, meditation and community service.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche doing incense puja for everyone affected by COVID-19 around the world, especially for the monks and nuns of Kopan, and those in India and Nepal, Kopan Monastery, Nepal, May 2021. Photo by Ven. Lobsang Sherab.

In the following excerpt from Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s recent  video teachings on thought transformation, Rinpoche explains that every time we generate bodhichitta, such as before doing a meditation or practice, we are doing it for every sentient being. Not even one of the numberless sentient beings in each realm is left out.

Our bodhichitta includes every single human being we see around us: for example, our parents, our children, our friends, strangers, and even those who are harming us. It also includes every single animal, even every single ant, we see around us.

Therefore, whenever we see a sentient being, we have to recognize that we did our meditation and our practice for them!

Watch the nineteen-minute video “When You Generate Bodhichitta It Is for Everyone You See!“:
https://youtu.be/nl-9ECJDKxE

Here is the transcript of Rinpoche’s teaching in this video:

By Understanding Your Own Samsaric Sufferings, You Generate Compassion and Bodhichitta

Then, when you think of others, then when you think of others, others are not just one—numberless. Like you, they are numberless, others! Waaaaaaaw. Lama khyen, lama khyen, lama khyen. Numberless! Before it was just you, just you, oooooooh. Now next you think—numberless! Ssssh. In hell, they are numberless in each hell realm. There are numberless hungry ghosts, numberless animals suffering, numberless! Uuh, hooo, hooo. Numberless human beings suffering, suras, asuras. Numberless, not just one! Bah, bah, bah. Lama khyen, lama khyen. Tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk.

Then you feel… If you feel, how much renunciation you feel that you have been in samsara, oh, then you feel so strong compassion for others. You feel it so strong! When you think how others are suffering in samsara, then you feel compassion so strong. You see? Yeah. Yes, compassion, then you want, you want to free them. You want to help them to be free from all the suffering, the numberless beings in each realm. Then you want to take the responsibility to completely do that all by yourself. Aaaah, like that. Aaaah, like that. Then bodhichitta comes! Then the thought of bodhichitta, the thought to achieve enlightenment, comes.

Bodhichitta Is Not Easy but It Is the Most Important Thing in Your Life

You see? It is not easy, but how important it is. It is not easy but how important it is! It is the most important thing in the life! Aaaah. It is the most important thing in your life. It is the most important thing. It is not just words, no—it is the most important thing in your life. What is more important than that, for you to help others? Aaaah! (Rinpoche laughs at his screaming.)

Bodhichitta is not just talking blah, blah, blah, some nice words, blah, blah, blah. No. It is the most important. Bah, bah, bah. It is the most need, the most need, for the happiness of you, for the happiness of all, of every sentient being.

When You Generate Bodhichitta for Sentient Beings, “Sentient Beings” Includes All the Hell Beings

So, when we generate … I will tell it here. When you generate bodhichitta, jang chhub gyi sem, when you generate bodhichitta to free the sentient beings from the oceans of samsara and bring them to enlightenment that includes every … there are numberless hell beings in each realm. In the eight major hot hell sufferings, they are numberless. They are numberless. Then in the six neighboring hells, they are also numberless. Numberless. So, it includes everyone! There is not left out even one.

Can you imagine it, if you think well? Aaaah. It is very easy to say “sentient being,” but if you really think, it is like that—there is not left out even one from the numberless [sentient beings] in each realm. It is amazing, amazing. Ssssh. So, precious. How the thought of bodhichitta is sooooooooooooo precious, precious, precious, precious, precious. Bah, bah, bah. It is the most important, the most important, the most important. Ah-hah. It is like that. You have to know this.

When You Generate Bodhichitta for Sentient Beings, “Sentient Beings” Includes All the Hungry Ghosts

Then, the hungry ghosts, uuuuh. There are those with outer obscurations, food obscurations, and inner obscurations. I mentioned them in the past. They are numberless!

Anything that looks nice, anything green, nice, water, but you, by looking at it, it becomes poison, pollution, poison, and disappears. You see before the food as nice, but because you are looking at it, there is pollution, like poison, and it disappears. Uuuum, like that. Bah, bah, bah.

For thousands of years, even ten thousand, you could not find even a drop of water. Can you imagine it? If you don’t get food for one day, how much you suffer? Even if the suffering is not much but your mind says, “Oh, I didn’t get food. Oh, I didn’t get food,” then you exaggerate. You make your suffering bigger. Your mind makes the problem bigger. So much of our life’s problems can be either no problem or something very small, but then you make it very big. Like a balloon (Rinpoche shows blowing on a balloon), you make it very big. It is like that. Much of it is like that, human being’s problems. They are hardly anything but then you blow them up, oooooo.

What was I saying? To not forget, what was I saying? 

When You Generate Bodhichitta for Sentient Beings, “Sentient Beings” Includes All the Animals and Human Beings

Now the animals, okay, animals. When you generate bodhichitta, to meditate or to do some practice for sentient beings when you generate bodhichitta to achieve enlightenment, [you think,] “Sentient beings, waaaaaw,” sentient beings are like that but you never relate it to the people around you and the animals around you who are suffering. The people in the city that you are living in, you never think that these people have so much problems. You never think. Only in the space “sentient beings.” Those sentient beings where you live in the village are so suffering, unbelievable suffering, bah, bah, bah, but when you see them, you don’t think [about them], but “sentient beings” are somewhere [else], “sentient beings.” (Rinpoche shows looking up into space.)

So, when you say “sentient beings,” it includes every single human being. Nobody is left out. “Nobody” means no white man it left out, no black man is left out. Not only in this world, there are numberless universes. Think there are numberless universes, not only this world. You think there is only this universe, No! Aaaah. The human beings in numberless universes aaaaaaaaaaall of them, not left out even one. There is no one human being left out. No! They are all included in “sentient beings.” Aaaah, like that.

Bodhichitta is Generated for Every Single Animal and Every Single Human Being

In the morning, when you meditate on “sentient beings,” when you do the Mahayana meditation at the beginning there is the motivation of bodhichitta after refuge, it includes all these people that you see. So already you have done a prayer, you have done meditation for them. Yeah! Yeah. So for everybody, yes, one mala of OM MANI PADME HUM for everybody, you did! The people around you, the people who are helping you, the people who are harming you, including even them. You haven’t thought of them, but they are included in that word “sentient beings” there. They are not left out. Even if you don’t like them, normally you never do anything for that person but, of course, “sentient beings” means that they are included, yeah, [when you do] one mala or whatever you are doing. Even if you are eating one spoon of food or drinking, it is done for them. Yeah!

So, in the morning when you do the meditation, for example, it is done! So, that includes, yes, all the people around you. Your parents, your children, yeah, your enemy, your friends, your strangers, your enemy who you don’t like, who you are always angry with, who is always angry with you, who complains about you all the time, it includes all of them. Even though you hate them, you don’t want to help them or anything, you abandon them, but when you generate bodhichitta, they are included in it.

All the people in the city where you are living, all day long you see people, you have generated bodhichitta, you have done the practice for them. You are reciting OM MANI PADME HUM [for them]. Even OM MANI PADME HUM or whatever, by generating bodhichitta it is done, it is done for them, for all the people that you see. When you go outside, you see people in the city or mountains, wherever, you see any sentient beings, any animals, deer, tigers, one attacking another one, eating another one, all of them, you have done it for everyone.

I’m just giving you an example. If you recite OM MANI PADME HUM, one mala, or even half [a mala], or even twenty-one by generating bodhichitta, after you recite refuge and bodhichitta, it is done for everyone, for every single animal. That means every single being in the ocean, large like sharks, whales, and the smallest, I don’t know the name, in the water, in the river, in the ocean. I don’t know the name, the smallest. Everywhere there are insects, in the forest, in the bushes, plants, trees, every tiny, tiny insect that human beings don’t see, under the earth, it includes everyone. Nobody is left out. Not one insect is left out. There are how many thousands of different kinds of ants. Scientists say there are, I don’t remember now, I have written it down but I don’t remember it now, a certain number of thousands of ants. It is including everything! Not one ant is left out. Not one mosquito is left out when you generate jang chhub gyi sem, bodhichitta. Aaaah, like that. You have to know that. It is not just a basic thing, sentient being.

When You See Sentient Beings, You Don’t Think They Are the Sentient Beings for Whom You Are Doing Practices

You don’t think of the people with so much suffering, whatever the different ones, or the animals suffering, being eaten by each other, ssssh, you don’t, when you say “sentient beings,” you never think of them. You never recognize that they are there, that these are the ones for whom you do the practice, never. It is just “sentient beings.” But when you meet them, you never think they are the sentient beings for whom you do the practice. Then you think you can’t help them, you can’t do anything for them. You think like that. You do not even pray for them, even how much you see they are suffering. Even if you can pray, you can help them, but you don’t do it. The thought doesn’t come to help them. Even if you have OM MANI PADME HUM, wow, there is so much what you can do, but you don’t do it. The thought doesn’t come. The thought to help them doesn’t come. How much you see them suffering, like that they have to suffer. That is there life, they have to suffer. Like that.

If Suffering Is “Nature,” Why Do You Want to Be Helped When You Are Suffering?

Some Western people say, “Oh, it is nature. It is nature.” The cat eats the mouse, I mean one animal eats another animal, “This is nature.” It is like you can’t help. There is nothing to do to help; it is nature. That means when suffer, don’t help, no doctors, nobody should help you because “It is nature.” Yeah! Relate it to yourself! Yeah! Yeah! This is nature, your suffering, your depression, so why do you need a psychologist? Why do you need all those things? You don’t need to go to see the doctor, “It is nature.” Yeah! So, it is the same thing. But in your case, you never think that, only other people or only other animals, “It is nature,” a cat eating a mouse, snakes eating a mouse, but, however, yeah, people killing animals, “This is nature.” “This is nature,” so it is like that. Then you let yourself [think], “Oh, I need help,” ooooo, you need help so much, “Please, please help me. Please help me.” But at that time, you don’t think “nature.” Ha-ha. It is funny; when it comes to you, you don’t think, “It is nature.” If at that time you think “nature,” you don’t get angry, but at that time you don’t think that. [You think that] only about others. Ha-ha, so funny.

With Bodhichitta, You Have the Best and Happiest Life

So, generating bodhichitta is great. Every single human being is included. Understand that every single animal, insect, the tiniest, it includes everyone. Nobody is left out. Not one mosquito, not one insect, the tiniest insect, no one is left out. It is so important, so important to generate the thought to achieve enlightenment for them, to benefit them. Wow, wow, wow, wow, how that is the best! How that is the BEST! You are doing every single action of your body, speech, and mind for them. Wow, how that is the best. There is nothing in life [that is more] best, happiest!

Like that, you have to know what is the happiest life! It is not just drinking alcohol, [taking] drugs, ooooooo. Destroying yourself, ooooo, it is not like that. Or climbing Mount Everest, an avalanche can happen, anything, and you get lost. Anyway, so, ha-ha, ha-ha, sssh, bodhichitta, tsk, ssssh, lama khyen, lama khyen, that includes all the sentient beings, suffering and obscured. Bah, bah, bah. It is so good, so good.

With Bodhichitta, Your Life is Highly Meaningful

You have to recognize like this. When you meet people … when you are doing the practice, you are doing a mantra, OM MANI PADME HUM, generating bodhichitta, you are doing it for your family. Yes! And you are doing it for your enemy, the people who harm you. Even for those you don’t know, you are doing it for them but you don’t recognize that. The numberless sentient beings, aaaaaaaall the sentient beings, not left out even one. Can you imagine? You have to recognize that.

When you go to Kathmandu, you did OM MANI PADME HUM, all these [practices you did] with bodhichitta, for these people you did it, you are doing it now. You have to recognize that. So how that is good, then you enjoy! Then you don’t see your life as meaningless. Aaaah. You don’t see your life as totally useless. You know? You don’t think that. You see your life as highly meaningful.

The above video is extracted from Video 62: “Why and How to Take Blessingsfrom a Holy Being.” Watch more from the video series Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s Teachings on Thought Transformation during the Time of COVID-19, where you can also find links to transcripts, MP3s, additional practice advice, and more.

Read a summary of Rinpoche’s thought transformation teachings given in 2020 in the Mandala 2021 article “The Time to Practice Is Now: Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s Thought Transformation Teachings During the Time of COVID-19.”

Lama Zopa Rinpoche is the spiritual director of the Foundation for the Preservation of Mahayana Tradition (FPMT), a Tibetan Buddhist organization dedicated to the transmission of the Mahayana Buddhist tradition and values worldwide through teaching, meditation and community service.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche recording a recent video teachings, Kopan Monastery, Nepal, April 2021. Photo by Ven. Roger Kunsang.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche continues his video teachings on thought transformation from Kopan Monastery in Nepal. A Note About Safety: All who attended this teaching with Rinpoche have tested negative for COVID-19, are wearing masks, and are socially distanced from one another in the room where Rinpoche teaches.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche continues offering advice for Sangha in this new teaching. Here is a summary of it:

Rinpoche begins this teaching instructing that when reciting the prayers “Taking Refuge and Generating Bodhichitta,” you should recite, “tshog nam kyi” instead of “so nam kyi.”

SANG GYÄ CHHÖ DANG TSHOG KYI CHHOG NAM LA
JANG CHHUB BAR DU DAG NI KYAB SU CHHI
DAG GI CHHÖ NYEN GYI PÄI TSHOG NAM KYI
DRO LA PHÄN CHHIR SANG GYÄ DRUB PAR SHOG

I take refuge until I am enlightened
In the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Supreme Assembly.
By my collections of merits and wisdom of listening to the Dharma,
May I become a buddha to benefit transmigratory beings. (3x)

Rinpoche then explains that people do all kinds of things for pleasure: eating delicious food, drinking alcohol, taking drugs, having sex, sleeping, or engaging in activities like hang gliding and parachuting. It is very important to meditate on how samsaric pleasures are in the nature of suffering. The experience doesn’t last, doesn’t increase, doesn’t stay; it is the suffering of change. When the pleasure decreases, it becomes the suffering of pain. By understanding this, you see samsaric pleasure as suffering. Then you have no attachment to it. Your mind becomes free from attachment and achieves inner peace and contentment. 

The suffering of pain and the suffering of change come from pervasive compounding suffering. It is called pervasive suffering because the aggregates are pervaded by suffering due to being under the control of delusion and karma. Another meaning of pervasive suffering is that there is suffering from the eighth hot hell up to the Tip of Samsara (one of the four formless realms). It is called compounding suffering because the aggregates contain the seed of delusion and karma. The main suffering that Buddhists need to be free from is pervasive compounding suffering. If you become free from it by actualizing the path—like the four noble truths, the true path and the true cessation of suffering—then you are totally free from the other two, the suffering of pain and the suffering of change.

Rinpoche reminds us what he taught in his last video, that Sangha are the real heroes by defeating the delusions. As Sangha, you are conquering the suffering of rebirth, the suffering of sickness, the suffering of old age, the suffering of death—and also the suffering of change and pervasive compounding suffering. Further, Sangha cause other sentient beings to defeat delusion, the cause of suffering.

When your mind is weak and you are thinking to disrobe, you should remember that you are a hero! A hero is not what the government or outside world considers a hero (such as those depicted in statues who have killed many people). Sangha are the real heroes and heroines. You took this incredible opportunity to be a hero over all the delusions to defeat, control, and cease  the oceans of suffering of each realm. Rinpoche asks, “If that isn’t a hero, then what is!?”

Rinpoche says that monks and nuns should rejoice and enjoy life as Sangha. Make your aim and what you want to achieve clear.

Rinpoche then explains the four general ways to prevent downfalls, including knowing your vows and applying the remedy to your strongest delusion.

In video 48 of this thought transformation series, Rinpoche explained the four ways to prevent downfalls based on the text Ox Horn Prediction (Lang Ru Lungten):

1. Continuously possessing conscientiousness
2. Having great respect for the vows of morality
3. Knowing the vows
4. Striving in the remedy to the delusions

Rinpoche offers specific ways to control the delusions and keep your morality pure. If you have some understanding of emptiness and practice mindfulness of emptiness, this is very helpful to control your delusions and not damage your morality. Otherwise, you are defeated by delusion. Your self-cherishing thought has been a dictatorship. Your attachment has been a dictatorship. You don’t realize this so you happily follow your excitement, which is a very big hallucination.

Everything comes from your mind. Objects—forms, sounds, smells, tastes, tangibles—all that we see every day comes from our mind. Also, the thoughts, the knower, the mind—they also come from the mind! Samsara and nirvana, permanent and impermanent phenomena, everything comes from the mind. Doing mindfulness meditation on how everything comes from the mind protects you from having a crazy life. This is a very important and profound meditation, a great deep discovery.

Another important meditation is practicing mindfulness that any harm you experience is the result of you having harmed others in the past. Recite, “Nobody harms you if you haven’t harmed others in the past” like a mantra.

Nothing you experience is the fault of others, Rinpoche reminds us. Even unpleasant environments are the possessed results of the ten non-virtues. Further, any abuse you receive is due to your own mistake of not having practiced Dharma. There is nothing to complain about—the only thing to complain about is your own mind. If you haven’t met Dharma in past lives and didn’t practice Dharma in this life, then you create all this negative karma of harming others. It is ridiculous to think that nobody is allowed to harm you, but you are allowed to harm others. It is good to meditate on karma when you receive harm and to remember that this is due to harming others in the past. In fact, you feel compassion when you understand that any harm you receive is the result of your past karma. There is no anger at all! You want to help in whatever way you can, for example—you can recite OM MANI PADME HUM for that person, to purify them.

You can say goodbye to anger completely when you meditate on the I being merely labeled by the mind. Nothing more than the merely imputed I experiences suffering and happiness. Anything more than the merely imputed I is a total hallucination. This concept that the I is not merely imputed is the root of all suffering, including the coronavirus.

Rinpoche explains how this happens: The mind merely imputes “I” on the aggregates. Then, in the next second, the negative imprint—left on the mental continuum from beginningless rebirths by the ignorance holding the I as real—decorates, or projects, on the merely labeled I, making it appear real. When it appears back, the merely labeled I appears as real, truly existent, existing from its own side, existing by itself. So a “real” I appears. You don’t remember that it was merely labeled by the mind just the second before, the shortest time before. Then, it appears, but you don’t recognize it’s a hallucination. You believe a hundred percent that this hallucination is true—that this real I is a hundred percent true! This is the root of your samsara. The concept that the I is not merely existent, that itself is so subtle. That itself, that concept, is the root of your samsara! It is the root of all your suffering!

We invite you to go deeper into the topics presented here, plus many others, by watching Rinpoche’s video and reading the full transcript of Rinpoche’s teaching.

Watch Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s teaching “Rejoice and Enjoy Your Life as a Sangha!“:
https://youtu.be/-q04fOXxHrQ

• Read the transcript of Rinpoche’s teaching
• Learn more about the monks and nuns of FPMT, including opportunities to offer support and information on Sangha communities and how to become a monk or nun
• Find Rinpoche’s Teachings on Thought Transformation translated into Spanish, Italian, French, Chinese, and Russian
• Dedication verses for COVID-19 Crisis Teachings

Watch more from the video series Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s Teachings on Thought Transformation during the Time of COVID-19 and find links to videos in transcripts, MP3s, additional practice advice, and more:
https://fpmt.org/fpmt/announcements/resources-for-coronavirus-pandemic/advice-from-lama-zopa-rinpoche-for-coronavirus/

Practice advice from our teachers, Dharma study-from-home opportunities, and more can be found on the page “Resources for the Coronavirus Pandemic.”

Lama Zopa Rinpoche is the spiritual director of the Foundation for the Preservation of Mahayana Tradition (FPMT), a Tibetan Buddhist organization dedicated to the transmission of the Mahayana Buddhist tradition and values worldwide through teaching, meditation and community service.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche at Kopan Monastery, Nepal, April 2021. Photo by Ven. Lobsang Sherab.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche continues his video teachings on thought transformation from Kopan Monastery in Nepal. A Note About Safety: All who attended this teaching with Rinpoche have tested negative for COVID-19, are wearing masks, and are socially distanced from one another in the room where Rinpoche teaches.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche continues offering advice for Sangha in this new teaching. Here is a summary of it:

Rinpoche begins by explaining that the Sangha should not think of themselves as hopeless, or like garbage. Sangha should realize that they are living the best life as a human being—becoming a hero or heroine.

In this world, if someone has killed thousands of people, big statues may be made of them, and they may be labeled “hero.” However, those who gave the orders to kill—the president, the head of the military, and so forth—have created the same karma as those who did the killing. Rinpoche then explains that even at a five star restaurant where they kill animals to serve as food, when you give the order for them to be killed, it is the same as if you are killing them yourself. Therefore, if a restaurant is vegetarian, this is unbelievably good. It is protection for human beings from this kind of negative karma.

People use animals like tissue paper because they don’t think of karma and future lives, Rinpoche explains. The animals are just like you—they want happiness and don’t want suffering. But because a person wants to make money, they use the animals, they kill them. This is having no understanding of Dharma, of karma. It is only thinking of the people, not the animals. When you go to kill an animal, they make a noise, they move away. You can tell they don’t want suffering! But due to skies of ignorance you don’t have the merit to understand karma. Negative karma is difficult to change. You have to be very careful with it.

When you kill others, you create more and more enemies for yourself. The negative karma increases. If you want happiness and you don’t want suffering, you must eliminate that which causes you to harm numberless sentient beings, such as anger and the self-cherishing thought. Nagarjuna said, “If you kill your anger, you kill all your enemies.” Your anger is your inner enemy, Rinpoche explains. If you get rid of it, then there is no outer enemy. So you must practice patience. And you must rid yourself of the self–cherishing thought and the root of samsara, which is the ignorance holding the I as real, as existing from its own side.

We are the most fortunate to have met the holy Dharma. You have to think like this, Rinpoche emphasizes. Otherwise, even being Sangha, you might not have much interest in being ordained. Then suddenly you die, and that’s it. Finished. While you have this precious human rebirth, practice virtue as much as you can. Rinpoche shares these verses from Shantideva’s Bodhicharyavatara (chapter 4, verses 17–19) on precious human rebirth, which he says are “very, very, very” important:

By my conduct like this,
I won’t achieve even a human rebirth.
If I don’t achieve a human rebirth,
There will only be negative karma; no virtue.

If even when I have the fortune to practice virtue,
I don’t practice virtue;
When I’m totally ignorant and suffering in the lower realms,
At that time, what will I be able to do?

If I don’t practice virtue
And even collect negative karma,
For a hundred times ten million eons
I won’t hear even the voices of the happy transmigratory beings.

Rinpoche explains, it is very important to remember these verses when you meditate on the lamrim. When you meditate on precious human rebirth and think about how you waste your time, remember this. It is very important—write it down in your prayer book!

Enlightenment and hell are in your hands. Happiness and suffering—every hour, every minute—this is in your hands. It depends on how you think. If you think in a negative way, a wrong way, with the wrong concept and hallucination, you create suffering and life becomes a problem. If you think in a positive way it brings happiness to yourself and others. Wow! This totally depends on your mind! Enlightenment or hell is in your hands. 

By practicing patience you bring happiness to the world. If you practice patience and not anger, there is no enemy outside. This brings peace in the world. There are numberless universes. Life to life, you bring peace and happiness to numberless universes and to all the sentient beings. You have to know that you are responsible. Every day, every hour, every second, you have total responsibility.

The real heroes are those who are practicing Dharma. Many people don’t understand Buddhists; they don’t understand Sangha living in the West. They don’t know what you are and don’t like you. They are not attracted to you, don’t want to see you, and think you are very strange. However, you are the real hero! Not like a statue of someone who has killed many people—not like that at all. You are practicing Dharma, guru devotion, renunciation, contentment. Contentment is a great source of peace and happiness to you and others. And you are practicing bodhichitta—wow! This brings all happiness to you and every single being all the way up to enlightenment.

Also, you study emptiness. You meditate on the correct teachings—what Lama Tsongkhapa and Manjushri taught, what Buddha taught. Every time you meditate on emptiness, you are making preparations to realize the Prasangika view, the unmistaken ultimate view to eliminate the root of samsara, which is the ignorance that holds the I as real when it is not. You are gradually realizing emptiness. By continuing that—combining shamatha and the great insight, the wisdom realizing emptiness—you cease karma and delusions. You cease all the causes of samsara and become free from suffering. You achieve total cessation forever! It is not just like a vacation for a week—it is forever. You have to think like that. 

People should build statues as high as Mount Everest of the ordained Sangha. People should explain how monks and nuns live their lives, how they practiced bodhichitta and emptiness, and how they practiced tantra—the quick way to achieve enlightenment and cease all the dualistic views and ordinary concepts, the quick way to achieve enlightenment in one life. Rinpoche urges that Sangha have to feel that they are the heros. “The real hero is you, the Sangha!” Rinpoche exclaims. It is a totally different reality than the ordinary world or what ordinary people think of as a hero.

Whenever anything undesirable happens, remember that this is the result of your karma of harming others. And also, if something good happens, this is because you created good karma by benefiting others. Remember this immediately when something happens. Rinpoche explains that this makes you realize that you need to purify your negative karma and stop creating the negative karma of harming others. Also, by harming others, you make them create the negative karma of harming you! This causes them to disappear from the human world and be born in hell, like falling down into the hole of hell. Therefore, the sentient beings who harm you are only objects of compassion. Even if you recite one mala of OM MANI PADME HUM for them and dedicate for them not to be reborn in the lower realms, even that can help. You do not need to get angry back, they are truly an object of compassion.

Monks and nuns are the real heroes because they are defeating the delusions. What causes all the suffering to you and to sentient beings? Your delusion, the three poisonous minds. You are defeating them. You are the real hero. Those other people who the world calls “heroes” for killing people, they may be leaders, but they are also totally a slave to their egos, totally a slave to the self-cherishing thought, totally a slave to ignorance from beginningless rebirths, which made them kill so many sentient beings. You are the real one defeating the delusion from where all your suffering and other sentient beings’  past, present, and future suffering come from. You are defeating the delusions by practicing morality! By living in ordination! You have to know that! You have to recognize that! That’s why you became a monk or nun. You are a real hero.

We invite you to go deeper into the topics presented here, plus many others, by watching Rinpoche’s video and reading the full transcript of Rinpoche’s teaching.

Watch Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s teaching “The Sangha Are the Real Heroes Because They Are Defeating the Delusions“:
https://youtu.be/ee-4eC22QJE

• Read the transcript of Rinpoche’s teaching
• Learn more about the monks and nuns of FPMT, including opportunities to offer support and information on Sangha communities and how to become a monk or nun
• Find Rinpoche’s Teachings on Thought Transformation translated into Spanish, Italian, French, Chinese, and Russian
• Dedication verses for COVID-19 Crisis Teachings

Watch more from the video series Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s Teachings on Thought Transformation during the Time of COVID-19 and find links to videos in transcripts, MP3s, additional practice advice, and more:
https://fpmt.org/fpmt/announcements/resources-for-coronavirus-pandemic/advice-from-lama-zopa-rinpoche-for-coronavirus/

Practice advice from our teachers, Dharma study-from-home opportunities, and more can be found on the page “Resources for the Coronavirus Pandemic.”

Lama Zopa Rinpoche is the spiritual director of the Foundation for the Preservation of Mahayana Tradition (FPMT), a Tibetan Buddhist organization dedicated to the transmission of the Mahayana Buddhist tradition and values worldwide through teaching, meditation and community service.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche recording a recent video teachings, Kopan Monastery, Nepal, April 2021. Photo by Ven. Lobsang Sherab.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche continues his video teachings on thought transformation from Kopan Monastery in Nepal. A Note About Safety: All who attended this teaching with Rinpoche have tested negative for COVID-19, are wearing masks, and are socially distanced from one another in the room where Rinpoche teaches.

Here is a summary of the most recent teaching:

Rinpoche begins this teaching explaining that a student had requested some advice and encouragement for ordained Sangha. But, of course, much of this advice is also relevant for lay students.

Rinpoche explains that a good environment is very helpful for building up the brave heart of a hero or heroine who can overcome problems and really practice Dharma by overcoming attachment and delusion. However even when there is an environment with external pollution and diseases, these things don’t cause you to be reborn in the lower realms. It is non-virtue that causes this. It is when negative karma is stronger than positive karma that you are reborn in the lower realms.

By meditating on and actualizing the three principal aspects of the path, you say goodbye to the suffering of the lower realms and samsara. Escaping these sufferings depends on whether or not you practice Dharma, whether you meditate on and practice lamrim—guru devotion, renunciation, purification, bodhichitta, and understanding ultimate reality correctly. For some people, as soon as the Dharma book closes, Dharma becomes far off in the distance. If you like suffering and don’t want happiness, then you don’t have to be concerned with what is good and bad.

Spending money and time to take care of yourself is not the ultimate answer. So many resources are wasted making the body healthy and fit, but this doesn’t actually stop your problems, Rinpoche explains. It doesn’t stop cancer or the virus. If you have the karma for these things and it is not purified, you will get it. But you can do what is best for yourself and every single sentient being. Your life can become the worst, or it can become the best—this is up to you!

There are many who call themselves Buddhist, who may meditate on emptiness, but if they don’t have the karma to learn about bodhichitta, to practice it, and actualize it, then they aren’t really Buddhist. The same is true for learning the correct view of emptiness.

In the West, even if you finish university, you don’t have an idea of what a being is. You don’t have a clear idea of what the mind is. But by studying Dharma you learn about this. The basis to be labeled “I” is the aggregates. We have all the five aggregates—the aggregates of form, feeling, cognition, compounded aggregates, and consciousness. Then, relating to any of these five aggregates, the I, or the being, is that which is labeled.

The Svatantrika view is that there is no I from the aggregates, but the thought that places the label “I” on the aggregates is very strong. Rinpoche explains that the thought labels “I” so powerfully that it exists. This is the Svatantrika view. There is no I from the aggregates, but there is a real I, existing from its own side, on these aggregates that is powerfully imputed by the mind. This, Rinpoche explains is their understanding of nontruly existent, the emptiness of I. The Prasangika view is that there is no real I on the aggregates at all, that the I exists much more subtly, it exists only in mere name.

Reality is totally different from what appears to us and what we believe, which is all a hallucination. The meditation on emptiness is like this; it is not easy to understand. You have to have a lot of merit to understand this, to realize this. Even ants are living in a hallucination. What a being thinks exists is merely labeled by the mind.

Lama Tsongkhapa did so many hundred thousand prostrations to the Thirty-Five Buddhas. The great Milarepa bore so many hardships to practice. If you read the life story of any great lama who has realized the path, you will see how many hardships they overcame to actualize the lamrim and achieve enlightenment.

Your daily mindfulness meditation should be that there is nothing there appearing from the object’s side. There is no enemy, no real friend. There is no real “this” there! By meditating on dependent arising, you destroy ignorance and all the delusions.

Those who don’t read Tibetan may think that whatever they read about meditation in English books is the best. But without a correct guide, there can be a hundred thousand explanations, but you won’t know which is correct. For those who can read Dharma books in Tibetan, it is like having a third eye because you can learn so much by yourself; you can read Lama Tsongkhapa’s teachings yourself. Ordained Western Sangha within FPMT are so fortunate because they have received teachings from gurus who are the embodiment of all the buddhas. Therefore, Rinpoche is stressing—Western Sangha are unbelievably fortunate.

However, it isn’t easy being Sangha in the West. As many can’t live in a monastic situation and have to live alone or with family, this makes it very difficult, and many disrobe. People don’t have devotion. There are many obstacles. People don’t understand your life; they don’t know what you are doing. So, it is a very difficult life to be a nun or a monk in the West. For Tibetan monks and nuns in the Tibetan community, it is easier to get help, especially at the monasteries where they live.

In Buddhist countries, everyone respects the Sangha. But in the West, Buddhism is new. In Buddhist countries, lay people’s respect for the Sangha helps protect Sangha, and we don’t have that in the West. Of course, how people (and even animals) in the West view the Sangha depends on imprints from past lives. Nowadays, many people respect His Holiness the Dalai Lama, so they also respect the Sangha.

Rinpoche mentions that Sangha should not be messy and should keep themselves very neat. If your inner life is messy, your outside will also be messy. This discourages other people. They will think, “Oh, this is a Buddhist.” You have to be a good example and behave correctly. The external manner helps others have devotion and to appreciate Buddhism.

The Sangha should also not act like they are carrying a heavy load. When you do that, outside people can degenerate their faith and they can criticize Sangha. Instead of growing their faith, the opposite happens, and they think there is so much suffering. It is very important to think of others, to think of the world. You can bring so much happiness and peace, and cause devotion to rise for the Sangha, the Buddha, the Dharma. It depends so much on how you act, how you behave, on whether or not you have a pure heart.

The Westerners who become monks and nuns are incredible heroes. You have to know that—you are a hero! There are so many obstacles, but in spite of that, if you want to become a monk or nun and practice—this is a hero! It doesn’t matter whatever the world, the outside people, or your parents think, such as that you are bad or strange. You are very brave and courageous! You don’t care about what the world thinks. You follow Dharma to stop being reborn in the lower realms and to get a higher rebirth, to stop samsara, then for liberation from samsara, free from lower nirvana, then to achieve great enlightenment for sentient beings, to help sentient beings. WOW! That is a HERO!

We invite you to go deeper into the topics presented here, plus many others, by watching Rinpoche’s video and reading the full transcript of Rinpoche’s teaching.

Watch Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s teaching “Western Monks and Nuns Are the Real Heroes and Heroines“:
https://youtu.be/zenv1CT_nwg

• Read the transcript of Rinpoche’s teaching
• Learn more about the monks and nuns of FPMT, including opportunities to offer support and information on Sangha communities and how to become a monk or nun
• Find Rinpoche’s Teachings on Thought Transformation translated into Spanish, Italian, French, Chinese, and Russian
• Dedication verses for COVID-19 Crisis Teachings

Watch more from the video series Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s Teachings on Thought Transformation during the Time of COVID-19 and find links to videos in transcripts, MP3s, additional practice advice, and more:
https://fpmt.org/fpmt/announcements/resources-for-coronavirus-pandemic/advice-from-lama-zopa-rinpoche-for-coronavirus/

Practice advice from our teachers, Dharma study-from-home opportunities, and more can be found on the page “Resources for the Coronavirus Pandemic.”

Lama Zopa Rinpoche is the spiritual director of the Foundation for the Preservation of Mahayana Tradition (FPMT), a Tibetan Buddhist organization dedicated to the transmission of the Mahayana Buddhist tradition and values worldwide through teaching, meditation and community service.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche teaching at Kopan Monastery, September 2020. Photo by Ven. Lobsang Sherab.

We must give priority to changing and developing our inner world through learning and practicing Dharma in order to end our suffering and the suffering of others. Lama Zopa Rinpoche gave priceless and detailed advice on this topic last year to a Dharma center facing difficulties. We’re sharing it now as part of the FPMT Annual Review 2020: Transforming Challenges into the Path. Here’s a short excerpt:

Even though there are numberless buddhas and bodhisattvas, why so far have we not become free from the oceans of samsaric sufferings? Why do we suffer continuously? Why are we not yet enlightened? Why do we continue to suffer and suffer? We have followed our self-cherishing as if it were our best guide, a god, our best helper. We have been led by the selfish mind, the great demon, doing exactly what it says, thinking, “This is me. This is I. This is what I want.” That is totally wrong! That’s not you, that’s not me, that’s not the I. The body is not the I; mind is not the I; both together are not the I. Yet there is no I that exists separate from the aggregates.

Of course, I’m not saying that there is no I. There is an I. But what exists is nothing other than what is merely labeled by the mind. So what the I is, is most extremely subtle. We ordinary beings, like myself, never think we are acting for the merely labeled I. If, for example, when we got angry we were able to meditate right at that time—“What is I? It exists in mere name”—there would be no place for our anger. It would totally disappear. It wouldn’t go anywhere; it would just become non-existent. The place from which that anger arises, the I, would no longer be there.

Similarly, the moment that you think the I exists in mere name, right at that time you see the real I is one hundred percent not there. That proves, or identifies, to your mind that the false I is simply an illusion.

In the first moment, the mind focuses on the aggregates, and then that same mind merely labels, or merely imputes, “I” upon them. That is how we create the I. Then, in the second moment, the I appears back to our mind as if it existed from its own side, as if it existed by itself, as if it were truly existent, or, in everyday language, as if it were a real I. It appears that way because of negative imprints left on our mental continuum from beginningless rebirths by the ignorance that holds the I as real, as existing from its own side, as existing by nature. That is projected, or decorated, by these negative imprints.

Then, in the third moment, we believe, or we hold on to, this concept of an I existing from its own side as one hundred percent true. Just to clarify, not a permanent I existing alone and existing with its own freedom. Also, not an I existing self-sufficiently. Also, not an I existing from its own side completely without depending on the substance, the imprint, left on the seventh consciousness, the mind-basis-of-all, and then experienced as both the object and the subject, the knowing mind. It is not even that, the gagja, the object to be refuted, according to the Cittamatra school of Buddhist philosophy.

The view of the next school higher than that, the Madhyamika Svatantrika, is that the gagja is the I that is not labeled by the mind but truly exists from its own side. According to the Svatantrika view, there is some existence from its own side but it is also labeled by the mind. Even that is not correct, but that is what they falsely believe. That is their right view.

However, in the view of the highest philosophical school, the Madhyamika Prasangika, this is the actual gagja, the object of refutation. Something that exists from its own side, even a little; something not totally from its own side but something from its own side, something small—that is totally non-existent according to Prasangika.

Realizing the total non-existence of that is the realization of the Prasangika view of emptiness. The wisdom realizing that is the only view that can directly eliminate the root of samsara, the ignorance that holds the I as real. Here I’m talking about the very subtle gagja—that there is something from its own side, even though it is labeled by mind. Even that is totally nonexistent. That belief is the root of samsara, the oceans of suffering. From that, ignorance arises, attachment arises, anger arises, jealousy arises, pride arises, and doubt arises. From that, the six root delusions and the twenty secondary delusions arise, and then in all the details, the 84,000 delusions.

Thus, that wrong concept, the ignorance that believes something exists from its own side, is the true cause of suffering, the principal one. From that, delusion and karma arise, bringing about all the various samsaric sufferings: the heavy suffering of the hells, the heavy suffering of the hungry ghosts, the heavy suffering of the animals, the heavy suffering of the human beings, the heavy suffering of the sura and asura beings, the suffering of rebirth, the suffering of sickness, the suffering of old age, and the suffering of death. All that comes from there. …

Read Rinpoche’s entire advice in the FPMT Annual Review 2020: Transforming Challenges into the Path.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche is the spiritual director of the Foundation for the Preservation of Mahayana Tradition (FPMT), a Tibetan Buddhist organization dedicated to the transmission of the Mahayana Buddhist tradition and values worldwide through teaching, meditation and community service.

Watch Rinpoche’s recent teachings and find links to transcripts, MP3s, additional practice advice, and more on the page Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s Teachings on Thought Transformation during the Time of COVID-19.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche making prayers during the recording of a video teaching, Kopan Monastery, March 2021. Photo by Ven. Lobsang Sherab.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche continues his video teachings on thought transformation from Kopan Monastery in Nepal. Here is a summary of the most recent teaching:

Rinpoche begins this teaching, which contains the final session of the oral transmission of the Sutra of Great Liberation, explaining that His Holiness the Dalai Lama has said that if you meditate on bodhichitta for just one session, it is like doing many preliminary practices. Further, if you can’t generate compassion for one sentient being, there is zero chance of achieving enlightenment. However, if you generate compassion even for one insect, one person, or another being, you create the cause to achieve enlightenment.

The purpose of life is to free all sentient beings from the oceans of samsaric suffering and its causes, Rinpoche explains. This includes the numberless hell beings, hungry ghosts, animals, human beings, sura beings, asura beings, and intermediate state beings in numberless universes. There is nobody left out when you generate bodhichitta, not even one mosquito. When you generate bodhichitta, your friends, enemies, and strangers are all there.

Before Rinpoche continues the oral transmission of the Sutra of Great Liberation he reminds us that the motivation for listening is to bring all these numberless sentient beings to enlightenment, peerless happiness, the cessation of obscurations, and the completion of realizations by oneself alone. So we should think, “To do that without the slightest mistake, I must achieve the state of omniscience. Therefore, I’m going to take the lung of the Sutra of Great Liberation.” Rinpoche continues the oral transmission at 16:32 of this video.

At the end Rinpoche offers a dedication for all those who have now received the oral transmission of this sutra:

May anyone who received the teaching, the lung of this Sutra of Great Liberation, receive all the benefits mentioned in the sutra.

May they never ever, never EVER be reborn in the evil-gone realms. May this rebirth be the last rebirth in samsara! Even though the continuation does not have a beginning, even though it is beginningless!

May they achieve the state of omniscience—buddhahood—knowing directly all the past, present, and future phenomena at the same time in every second. May they be able to read the mind of every hell being, every hungry ghost, every animal, every human being, every sura being, every asura being, every intermediate state being (there are numberless sentient beings in each realm) at the same time.

May they be able to read everyone’s mind directly. May they have perfect power to reveal all the methods, whatever fits according to their karma, to reveal the methods, exactly.

Receiving the oral transmission of the Sutra of Great Liberation is more precious than skies of wish-granting jewels, Rinpoche explains. Because you have received it, you don’t need to be scared of death, the virus, or being separated from your family or your body.

We invite you to go deeper into the topics presented here, plus many others, by watching Rinpoche’s video and reading the full transcript of Rinpoche’s teaching.

Watch Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s teaching “The Last Session of ‘Sutra of Great Liberation‘”:
https://youtu.be/oh1gKKfLsDY

• Read the transcript of Rinpoche’s teaching
• Find videos with Rinpoche giving the oral transmission of the Sutra of Great Liberatation 
• Find Rinpoche’s Teachings on Thought Transformation translated into Spanish, Italian, French, Chinese, and Russian
• Dedication verses for COVID-19 Crisis Teachings

Watch more from the video series Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s Teachings on Thought Transformation during the Time of COVID-19 and find links to videos in transcripts, MP3s, additional practice advice, and more:
https://fpmt.org/fpmt/announcements/resources-for-coronavirus-pandemic/advice-from-lama-zopa-rinpoche-for-coronavirus/

Practice advice from our teachers, Dharma study-from-home opportunities, and more can be found on the page “Resources for the Coronavirus Pandemic.”

Lama Zopa Rinpoche is the spiritual director of the Foundation for the Preservation of Mahayana Tradition (FPMT), a Tibetan Buddhist organization dedicated to the transmission of the Mahayana Buddhist tradition and values worldwide through teaching, meditation and community service.