Advice from Lama Zopa Rinpoche

Lama Zopa Rinpoche with Khen Rinpoche Geshe Chonyi, the abbot of Kopan Monastery and Nunnery, at Kopan Monastery, Nepal, May 2020. Photo by Ven. Lobsang Sherab.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche continues his video teachings from Kopan Monastery in Nepal during the coronavirus pandemic. Here is a summary of the most recent teaching:

This video begins with more scenes from Kopan Nunnery and a short talk by the nunnery’s Geshema Jangchub Gyalmo, who along with Kopan nun Geshema Namdol Phuntsok was part of the first group of female geshes. Geshema Jangchub Gyalmo shares a little about her history and offers advice on how to think during the pandemic.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche begins this teaching by reminding us that when we don’t think of death, the mind becomes totally distracted by the outside five sense objects—occupied by friends, enemies, and the pleasures of this life. Even if you know some Dharma, when you hold the “I” as real, your life is still under the control of the self-cherishing thought and ignorance, and you are a slave to attachment and anger.

If you think of your death—if you remember that your death can happen this year, this month, this week, today—then the mind goes inside, and you examine your life. At the time of death, there is no more time to think about and transform your life and mind. When your life has been under the control of the self-cherishing thought and attachment to this life, at the time of death, you have not only wasted this precious life, but your actions have become negative karma.

At this time when everyone is in isolation, we have the opportunity to practice Dharma and meditate more seriously. You collect so much merit by doing Dharma practice, reciting Buddha’s teachings, and meditating on bodhichitta and emptiness. In this way, the virus helps you do continual purification and collect the merit needed to achieve enlightenment more quickly.

Those who haven’t met Dharma are full of fear and worry about the virus. But if you do know Dharma, you can use the fear to practice and get a higher rebirth, purify negative karma, and be free from samsara, free from nirvana, lower nirvana, and achieve great nirvana for sentient beings. Thinking about death for a Dharma practitioner is so useful. Being afraid of death and the fear of suffering in samsara is so useful.

Those who haven’t met Dharma exaggerate every problem. They have all of the fear and worry, but nothing to do about it. Due to that, even more fear and worry come. Even if there is no problems, they make it into a huge problem like a mountain. You must have compassion for people like this, for so many people who have died like this.

Even if you haven’t met Dharma, you still need to subdue the mind. All of these sufferings look like they come from the outside, but it is not like that at all. They come from your own mind. Nothing, including this virus, comes from the outside; it comes from the mind. Therefore, the main work in life is to subdue the mind—to work on it and change it from bad to good. This is why we need to meditate, not just for peace of mind, or to be quiet, or achieve serenity. You have to have a brave mind and think: By my experiencing whatever problems, may all sentient beings be free from diseases, spirit harm, negative karmas, obscurations, and achieve enlightenment.  

Even if a person doesn’t have bodhichitta, if they have a good heart for everyone—including animals, insects, and people without discriminating based on color, nationality, and so forth—that person makes everyone happy everywhere they go, and everyone loves them, including animals. For bodhisattvas, being born in hell and experiencing suffering for numberless sentient beings is the greatest pleasure.

If we have a good heart, everything is pleasant. If a person dedicates their life and offers service to everyone with a good heart, not in a forced way but happily, then everything appears to that person as happy, everything appears as good.

Happiness comes from the way you think. Even if you get the virus, you can have a happy mind by having a good heart toward every sentient being. This is the best thing.

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 “Everyone Needs to Take Care of and Subdue Their Mind”:
https://youtu.be/B8njxXDSeHU

• Read the transcript of Rinpoche’s teaching “Everyone Needs to Take Care of and Subdue Their Mind.”
• Dedication Verses from Nagarjuna’s Jewel Garland, v. 483–485 (Updated May 13, 2020)
• Dedication Verses for COVID-19 Crisis Teachings (Updated May 13, 2020)

Find more advice and video teachings by Lama Zopa Rinpoche from Kopan Monastery during the COVID-19 crisis and also links to videos in translation, transcripts, MP3s, 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, May 2020. Photo by Ven. Lobsang Sherab.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche continues his video teachings from Kopan Monastery in Nepal during the coronavirus pandemic. Here is a summary of the most recent teaching:

This video begins with scenes from Kopan Nunnery and a testimonial from Geshema Namdol Phuntsok, one of the first female geshes, about her history and time there, as well as some advice on how to stay positive and strong amidst the current COVID-19 crisis.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche begins this teaching reminding us that the best attitude to have, and the best way to live life, is to take responsibility for sentient beings, including those that harm you. When we promise to benefit all sentient beings, that means if someone harms us or is angry with us, we have no time to get angry back or have self-cherishing thoughts.

Rinpoche suggests that instead of getting angry at our present situation, which causes us to be reborn in hell and is the heaviest suffering in samsara, why don’t we get angry at the anger? Our real enemy is the anger. The anger is not outside, it is in the mind. Do we like to be reborn in hell and suffer? The answer is no. What causes that is anger. So, logically, we must give up anger.

The antidote to jealousy is to rejoice at others’ happiness. When we are very attached to someone, we become jealous if someone is kind to them; we make ourselves crazy. Instead, we should rejoice and think: Everyone needs happiness, as I need it. How wonderful it is that they got happiness from that other person. When you don’t feel jealousy, your mind is free.

Even if you are not Buddhist, you can still be a good human being with a good heart. If you are concerned with others’ suffering, you can try to help others with a good heart. You can think of kindness toward others day and night, and rejoice in their happiness. If you want happiness, it has to come from your mind.

Instead of getting angry at a person for making mistakes, think that it is ignorance that is causing their actions. Then you can have compassion for the person instead of anger. We think: That person made a mistake, they are bad. We could think: I need to help that person, especially to reduce their ignorance.

Happiness and suffering come from your mind. This is why we have to take care of the mind by practicing Dharma. Your mind becomes the creator of problems in life, depending on how you think.

Until you die, you have a certain amount of time, so it is very important not to waste your life. How you live your life depends on how you think—if you think in a positive way or negative way.

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 “Happiness and Suffering Depend on How You Think “:
https://youtu.be/RGjkJUefULg

• Read the transcript of Rinpoche’s teaching “Happiness and Suffering Depend on How You Think.”
• Engaging in the Deeds of a Bodhisattva (Bodhicharyavatara) by Shantideva
• Dedication Verses from Nagarjuna’s Jewel Garland, v. 483–485 (Updated May 13, 2020)
• Dedication Verses for COVID-19 Crisis Teachings (Updated May 13, 2020)

Find more advice and video teachings by Lama Zopa Rinpoche from Kopan Monastery during the COVID-19 crisis and also links to videos in translation, transcripts, MP3s, 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, May 2020. Photo by Ven. Lobsang Sherab.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche continues his video teachings from Kopan Monastery in Nepal during the coronavirus pandemic. Here is a summary of the most recent teaching:

This video begins with a moving piece on Kopan Monastery’s health clinic. Ven. Thubten Gyatso, director of Thubten Shedrup Ling Monastery in Australia, shares the history of the clinic, which he ran during the monastery’s early days. Then Ven. Sangye Tenzin, the head of the Department of Health for Kopan Monastery and Nunnery, discusses the many ways the clinic serves the monks, nuns, and international students at Kopan, as well as the local community and also people in rural areas.

Rinpoche begins this teaching explaining that by transforming unfavorable conditions and difficulties into ultimate happiness with bodhichitta and with right view, anything we experience in this life—including cancer, viruses, relationship problems, sickness, depression, and so forth—becomes the remedy for us to be free from samsara.

By seeing the guru as Buddha, one is able to correctly follow the guru with thought and action. Our lazy mind makes it so difficult to follow the guru’s advice, Rinpoche explains, even though doing so is the quickest way to achieve enlightenment. By seeing the guru as all the buddhas, and by remembering the guru’s kindness, which is like the limitless sky, you are most happy to follow the advice because you see its importance and the great benefits it brings. By offering service to the guru, you receive more merit than if you made offerings to numberless buddhas, Dharma, and Sangha. Even a small gesture like offering shoes or a cup of water to the guru is more merit than offering to numberless statues, stupas, and scriptures. 

The blessings of buddhas cannot be received without a guru. The benefit of correctly practicing guru devotion is that it liberates you from oceans of samsaric sufferings and brings you to enlightenment. By pleasing the guru your negative karma is burned up in a second.

A serious practitioner’s mind is strong and nothing can distract it. They are determined to follow the guru’s advice in order to help all sentient beings. It is the most important thing to do, Rinpoche explains. It is not only for happiness in your life, it is to help others. Worldly thoughts are all excuses to achieve life pleasures for yourself.

The eight worldly dharmas are the source of all problems. Understanding the difference between worldly dharma and holy Dharma is so important. Otherwise, what happens is that you spend your whole life thinking you are practicing holy Dharma, but due to your misunderstanding, it becomes worldly dharma, clinging to this life’s pleasure.

The antidote to the eight worldly dharmas is meditation on impermanence and death.

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 “Transforming the Mind into Guru Devotion and Renouncing the Eight Worldly Dharmas”: 
https://youtu.be/C3XGOwCiMn8

• Read the transcript of Rinpoche’s teaching “Transforming the Mind into Guru Devotion and Renouncing the Eight Worldly Dharmas.”
• Door to Satisfaction by Lama Zopa Rinpoche
• Dedication verses for COVID-19 Crisis Teachings

Find more advice and video teachings by Lama Zopa Rinpoche from Kopan Monastery during the COVID-19 crisis and also links to videos in translation, transcripts, MP3s, 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 with Khen Rinpoche Geshe Chonyi (left), Ven. Thubten Tender, and other Sangha, reciting prayers while circumambulating stupas at Kopan Monastery, Nepal, May 2020. Photo by Ven. Lobsang Sherab.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche continues his video teachings from Kopan Monastery in Nepal during the coronavirus pandemic. Here is a summary of the most recent teaching:

Rinpoche begins his teaching saying that Westerners might have the view that studying Dharma is supposed to be quiet. In fact, studying and practicing Dharma can be done very loudly, such as in the case with the Kopan monks, [who can be heard debating in the background of the video] who make a lot of noise when debating in a large group. 

Debate is a very special way to develop wisdom and explore different subjects. It is like an inner science of the two truths: absolute truth and conventional truth. Rinpoche explains that in Lama Yeshe’s notes it said, “between the object of the mind and the mind itself, the study of the mind is more extensive and subtle.” Monks receive teachings from their teachers, who have studied in the monastery their whole lives, and they also learn from many other teachers, who are also very educated. Then the monks debate with many thousands of other learned monks. They learn so much from this.

Rinpoche quotes one Western monk who said that, depending on the teacher, one learns more Dharma by debating than by taking teachings from the teacher. Debating helps one understand the teachings in a deep and clear way and eliminates wrong thoughts. This way, Dharma education becomes very deep and sharp, not shallow or just words.

Without a good understanding of Dharma, you can go crazy in retreat, or lose faith and give up the Dharma. You have to be careful; you have to watch your mind. If you don’t take good care of your mind, it is dangerous. Even when you do receive correct teachings and meditates correctly, if you don’t have enough merit, or if you haven’t done enough purification, it can be dangerous. It is not enough to purify and collect merit for one day or one month. We need to do purification and collect merit every day. We have been creating negative karma from beginningless rebirths. So that everything you do becomes non-virtue, obscuring the mind. So we must practice purification and collect merit every day.

Even after meditating for many years, you might not get the understanding that you can receive through debate. What you don’t understand, you clarify though debate. Of course, if you don’t actualize the teachings once you’ve learned them, if you only have an intellectual understanding, that’s your own mistake—not the mistake of Dharma. And if you don’t practice, you can’t expect happiness to come from the outside.

Anger harms your health. People who have a temper, who are more angry or get angry easier, many of these people die from a heart attack. From the health side, understanding Dharma—learning, practicing, and meditating—is so important. It is urgent. An angry and violent mind destroys your immune system, Rinpoche explains. There are sicknesses with no remedy, no protection for your health. So by practicing patience and overcoming anger, you are looking after yourself and keeping a healthy mind.

It is unbelievably important for your health to generate loving kindness, compassion, and cherishing others. With a good heart, you can achieve success for yourself and others. You can cease all the wrong concepts and delusions, and achieve total realizations. Learning about Dharma is learning about your mind, studying your mind. By learning about your mind, you are able to cease all the suffering and the causes of suffering—delusion and karma. If you want happiness and don’t want suffering, don’t harm others.

There are many ways you can benefit others, such as blessing beings with mantras, prayer wheels, and so forth. Even going to the beach, as an example, you can benefit the beings in the ocean by praying for anybody who hears about the beach, sees the beach, and remembers the beach. Rinpoche suggests that you can pray for them to never be reborn in the lower realms and to be free from physical and mental sufferings, and for all of their wishes to succeed according to holy Dharma. And you can dedicate for animals and people.

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 “Debate, Study, and Meditation Are for the Purpose of Subduing the Mind”:
https://youtu.be/hOrbF2eaKAo

• Read the transcript of Rinpoche’s teaching “Debate, Study, and Meditation Are for the Purpose of Subduing the Mind”
• Dedication verses for COVID-19 Crisis Teachings

Find more advice and video teachings by Lama Zopa Rinpoche from Kopan Monastery during the COVID-19 crisis and also links to videos in translation, transcripts, MP3s, 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 2020. Photo by Ven. Lobsang Sherab.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche continues his video teachings from Kopan Monastery in Nepal during the coronavirus pandemic. Here is a summary of the most recent teaching:

Lama Zopa Rinpoche begins this teaching explaining that we must utilize the happiness and pleasures of this life, not only our suffering and unfavorable conditions, in the path to ultimate happiness, which is liberation from samsara. Lojong (thought transformation) isn’t only for suffering. We can make life most beneficial whether we are suffering or happy by using both for sentient beings. Then everything we experience becomes meaningful.

You need compassion to do perfect work and to help sentient beings. We need to change our mind and make it soft. Rinpoche explains that the self-cherishing mind is like a rock, and we have to make it soft like cotton—full of great compassion and loving-kindness for others: bodhichitta.

All the holy actions of the buddhas manifest in the guru. If you disrespect the guru, it becomes disrespect to all the buddhas. After one becomes a disciple of the guru, if you belittle them, you cannot achieve enlightenment in this life, Rinpoche explains. As such, it is a very heavy negative karma resulting in suffering.

Serving the guru is the quickest way to achieve enlightenment.

Anger arising for even one second can destroy one’s merit and the cause of happiness. So many times a day we follow anger and destroy our merit. It is so difficult to practice patience, however, the enemy of virtue is anger. It blazes like a fire and completely burns the seed of liberation.

If we don’t know Dharma, particularly the lamrim, we become angry, engage in heresy, or commit the heaviest negative karma, criticizing and losing faith in the guru. If you do know lamrim and are practicing it well, one is so fortunate. Without Dharma, even worldly activities that look good at the beginning will fail in the end, including the homes we have, the bodies we cherish, and the careers we cultivate. However, with Dharma, the result never goes down, it always goes up until one achieves enlightenment. Understanding the suffering of samsara, one has to learn and study Dharma in order to achieve nirvana or enlightenment.

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 “To Serve the Guru and Sentient Beings You Need to Know the Lamrim”:
https://youtu.be/oad_p5BJlhA

• Read the transcript of Rinpoche’s teaching “To Serve the Guru and Sentient Beings You Need to Know the Lamrim.”
• Engaging in the Deeds of a Bodhisattva (Bodhicharyavatara) by Shantideva
• Dedication verses for COVID-19 Crisis Teachings

Find more advice and video teachings by Lama Zopa Rinpoche from Kopan Monastery during the COVID-19 crisis and also links to videos in translation, transcripts, MP3s, 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 circumambulating 1,000 buddhas at night, Kopan Monastery, Nepal April, 2020. Photo by Ven. Roger Kunsang.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche continues his video teachings from Kopan Monastery in Nepal during the coronavirus pandemic.

Geshe Yeshe Kunga begins this video explaining that Kopan Monastery is engaged in charitable work in response to the COVID-19 crisis and invites us to rejoice in the generosity of all involved with this. Even if we don’t engage in a charitable act directly, rejoicing is an easy and beneficial way to create merit and participate in the generosity.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche starts this teaching explaining that as long as one is in samsara, there is no way to be well. We are always experiencing suffering, whereas Dharma happiness is a blissful state of peace and the total cessation of obscurations and the completion of realizations.

Meeting Dharma in this life is so precious and allows one to have the three great meanings in life:

When we are lazy with our precious human life, and not practicing Dharma, it is very easy to engage in attachment, anger, and ignorance—the delusions—and create so much negative karma. You become like “firewood in hell,” Rinpoche explains. However, if we utilize our misery and suffering—including this virus or whatever problems arise—in the path to enlightenment with bodhichitta, we make life useful to every sentient being.

As a motivation for listening to the teachings, Rinpoche explains, one should think: I am going to see the deep suffering of samsara of myself and others. Then realizing the truth, emptiness, I can establish the motivation that my life is to benefit others. Therefore, I must liberate numberless sentient beings from the oceans of samsaric sufferings and bring them to peerless happiness, which is the total cessation of obscurations and completion of realizations, by myself alone. I must achieve enlightenment. Therefore, I’m going to listen to the teachings. 

If you practice holy Dharma, even in this life, you will be happier. When you don’t practice Dharma, whatever you do doesn’t bring satisfaction. Since beginningless rebirths, we have been trying to get samsaric enjoyment but we are still suffering. If you want happiness, you must completely abandon desire. As long as you follow desire, you will never get satisfaction, only suffering. The most important thing to know is this: Less desire means more happiness in life. Otherwise, your Dharma practice doesn’t become real Dharma. You cheat yourself if you don’t renounce the world. 

Rinpoche also explains the meaning of the saying: “no anger, no enemy.” If you avoid anger, there is no enemy in the world. So in that way, it is up to you whether or not you have enemies. If you have loving-kindness, great compassion, and bodhichitta for every being, then everyone becomes precious and kind, and there is no separation between yourself and others—no enemy.

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 “Happiness Comes from Abandoning Desire”:
https://youtu.be/92rqMThrKqg

• Read the transcript of Rinpoche’s teaching “Happiness Comes from Abandoning Desire”
• Ten Innermost Jewels of the Kadampas by Zhabkar Tshogdrug Rangdröl
• Dedication verses for COVID-19 Crisis Teachings

Find more advice and video teachings by Lama Zopa Rinpoche from Kopan Monastery during the COVID-19 crisis and also links to videos in translation, transcripts, MP3s, 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 doing an incense puja at Kopan Monastery, Nepal, April 2020. Photo by Ven. Lobsang Sherab.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche continues his video teachings from Kopan Monastery in Nepal during the coronavirus pandemic.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche begins this teaching discussing the meaning of lojong (thought transformation). Transforming suffering into happiness doesn’t mean you use it to stop some kind of temporary pain, or to receive temporary day-to-day pleasure in life. It means that you utilize the suffering of life on the path to enlightenment in order to achieve enlightenment for all sentient beings, to free them from oceans of samsaric suffering and bring them to enlightenment. When we use lojong in that way, its transformative potential becomes huge, “bigger than the sky.”

The more you know, the more you can understand your own suffering and other sentient beings’ suffering. Then, you can develop more compassion for others, and as you develop more compassion for others, you can achieve enlightenment more quickly.

Rinpoche discusses the text the Ten Innermost Jewels of the Kadampas. Keeping in mind and understanding the Kadampas’ ten innermost jewels destroys our hallucination about the world. The clinging of attachment, which is unbelievably strong, gets destroyed and becomes non-existent, Rinpoche explains, when you keep this text in mind.

From the Ten Innermost Jewels of the Kadampas:

The Four Entrustments (or Reliances)
I must entrust the depths of my attitude to the Dharma.
I must entrust the depths of the Dharma to the beggar.
I must entrust the depths of the beggar to death.
I must entrust the depths of death to the cave.

The Three Vajras
I must proceed well with the uncaptured vajra. 
I must leave behind the shameless vajra. 
I must be accompanied by the transcendent wisdom vajra.

The Three Practices of Expulsion, Reaching, and Striving
I must practice being expelled from the rank of humans, 
reaching for the rank of dogs,
And striving for the rank of devas.

Rinpoche continues the teaching explaining how desire doesn’t bring happiness. If you think all the time that you want to be happy, that you want to be comfortable, then you don’t get happiness. However, when you think that you don’t need anything, your mind becomes free and peaceful. When you avert thoughts of desire, happiness starts.

The most important education one can receive is how to have a good heart. So that from a young age, not only your words, but your actions, are virtuous. When you die, Rinpoche says, you will have no worry because you lived life with a good heart, serving others. Because of the good heart, the next life will be successful, and you will have everything you need. By serving others, your wishes will be fulfilled.

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 Ten Innermost Jewels of the Kadampas and Give Up Desire”:
https://youtu.be/0XGnJNydyfs

• Read the transcript of Rinpoche’s teaching “The Ten Innermost Jewels of the Kadampas and Give Up Desire” 
• Engaging in the Deeds of a Bodhisattva by Shantideva
• Ten Innermost Jewels of the Kadampas by Zhabkar Tshogdrug Rangdröl
• Dedication verses for COVID-19 Crisis Teachings

Find more advice and video teachings by Lama Zopa Rinpoche from Kopan Monastery during the COVID-19 crisis:
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 looking at bees on a bush at Kopan Monastery, Nepal, April 2020. Photo by Ven. Lobsang Sherab.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche continues his video teachings from Kopan Monastery in Nepal during the coronavirus pandemic.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche begins this teaching discussing how to make life most beneficial, useful, and easy—particularly to other sentient beings. Even if we are having a happy life and enjoying it, it would be unfortunate if we wasted the opportunity of this precious human life.

Rinpoche tells the story of a former abbot of Sera Je Monastery, who survived prison following the Chinese invasion of Tibet by eating undigested beans found in the feces of Chinese prison workers left in the field near the prison. He was offered so little food, but with the beans in the feces, he was able to survive. He was educated at Sera Monastery, became a Madhyamaka and Prajnaparamita expert, and had nearly a thousand students. Many highly educated geshes, some who now serve in FPMT centers and elsewhere, as well as reincarnated lamas, were all students of his. Through the hardship of prison and hunger he was able to bring the teachings of Buddha to so many monks who have also had very beneficial lives teaching others as well.

When everything we do is in service to the ignorance holding the “I” as real, we are a slave and attachment is the master. This is who we are working for (self-cherishing), and for whom we create the cause of all the suffering and have to experience all the suffering. Even if you study Dharma but are still clinging to the happiness of this life, you aren’t practicing holy Dharma, it is worldly Dharma, non-virtue. Giving up attachment, clinging to this life, is the very beginning Dharma.

Before the karma is ripened, there is so much a human being can do: purification, collection of merit, and actualizing the path. But once it is ripened, because you didn’t get the practice done, you must experience it.

We need to practice holy Dharma to achieve peace and real happiness and to be free from all the problems and suffering of the world. From that happiness, one can achieve liberation from samsara—a blissful state of peace for yourself and ultimate happiness, the total cessation of obscurations and the completion of realizations.

Remembering impermanence and death at the beginning makes it possible to follow holy Dharma. In the middle, it is necessary to actualize the path. And at the end, remembering death and impermanence makes it possible to achieve enlightenment. This frees us from the poison of the eight worldly concerns. The realization of death and impermanence is so important. We shouldn’t think, “Oh, this doesn’t matter, it is only a beginning Dharma practice.” That is very foolish.

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 Very Beginning Dharma Is Giving Up the Attachment Clinging to This Life”:
https://youtu.be/4S9rlzUOSyI

• Read the transcript of Rinpoche’s teaching “The Very Beginning Dharma Is Giving Up the Attachment Clinging to This Life”
• Recognizing the False I (PDF,.epub, .mobi) is a commentary written by Lama Zopa Rinpoche with a set of short meditations to help students identify the object to be refuted—what Rinpoche calls “the false I”—during reflections on emptiness
• Dedication verses for COVID-19 Crisis Teachings

Find more advice and video teachings by Lama Zopa Rinpoche from Kopan Monastery during the COVID-19 crisis:
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.

The stupas of Khensur Rinpoche Lama Lhundrup (left) and Geshe Lama Konchog at Kopan Monastery, Nepal, April 2020. Photo by Ven. Lobsang Sherab.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche continues his video teachings from Kopan Monastery in Nepal during the coronavirus pandemic.

This video begins with a brief biography of Khensur Rinpoche Lama Lhundrup, the former abbot of Kopan Monastery in Nepal, who arrived at Kopan in 1973 and oversaw the growth and development of the monastery and nunnery for almost forty years, until his passing in 2011. Ven. Thubten Kunkhen, who served as Khensur Rinpoche’s attendant for two decades, shares stories of the much loved abbot’s history, accomplishments, and qualities, and introduces seven-year-old Thubten Rigsel Rinpoche, the recognized reincarnation of Khensur Rinpoche Lama Lhundrup.  

Lama Zopa Rinpoche begins this teaching discussing the number of people who have died in the United States due to the coronavirus. He then asks why the number is going down. Rinpoche explains that this is because people don’t know what is true and what is false; they use their whole life to create the cause of suffering. The right view is karma. From virtuous thoughts and actions, the result is happiness. From non-virtuous thoughts and actions, the result is suffering and problems.

Those who have met the Dharma are unbelievably fortunate because they can use their precious human bodies to achieve enlightenment. Using the example of Milarepa—who who didn’t even have one rupee to his name, lived on nettles and water, and faced many hardships in life while practicing Dharma—Rinpoche explains that if one has the will, perseverance, and patience, one can achieve enlightenment in one lifetime. Even if you don’t meet the Dharma, one still can think that the human body is so precious because you can cause happiness to others.

We wake up in the morning clinging and grasping to the happiness of this life. We get up, get dressed, wash up, eat breakfast, and go to work with the motivation of attachment and non-virtue. We think: When can I be happy? Meanwhile, many Tibetans recite OM MANI PADME HUM and engage in other Dharma practices while doing daily activities. This makes life unbelievably meaningful with constant purification and collection of merit.

The most important thing to practice is compassion. Without it, your life becomes empty.

We have to be very careful. If from the beginning we practiced Dharma, we wouldn’t need to experience the virus. There are people all over the world who won’t get the virus or die from it, while thousands of others die every day. This is why we have to watch our mind all the time—to police the mind. You are the guru, mother, father, and bodyguard of your own mind. When you follow delusion, you harm yourself. When you follow virtue, such as renunciation, bodhichitta, and right view, you are benefiting yourself and therefore benefiting numberless sentient beings, especially with bodhichitta.

All of the harm we experience comes from harming others in the past; and all happiness depends on what we do with our mind. Everything we experience depends on our way of thinking right now. Therefore, continual purification is so important. There are many practices one can do for purification, including Vajrasattva practice and prostrations to the Thirty-Five Confession Buddhas, and so forth, but the most powerful thing one can do for purification is to follow your guru’s advice and make your guru’s mind most happy. 

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 “If We Had Been Careful of Karma, There Would Be No Reason for the Virus to Happen”:
https://youtu.be/kbcjMW6kQ28

• Read the transcript of Rinpoche’s teaching “If We Had Been Careful of Karma, There Would Be No Reason for the Virus to Happen.”
• Dedication verses for COVID-19 Crisis Teachings

Find more advice and video teachings by Lama Zopa Rinpoche from Kopan Monastery during the COVID-19 crisis:
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 and Khen Rinpoche Geshe Chonyi with senior Kopan monks doing Nolsang to protect and mitigate the COVID-19 pandemic, Kopan Monastery, March 2020. Photo by Ven. Lobsang Sherab.

Now is the time to practice Dharma! This is what Lama Zopa Rinpoche is stressing during the COVID-19 crisis.

In regular video teachings from Kopan Monastery in Nepal, Rinpoche offers a consistent message that we can use these difficult times to strengthen and deepen our Dharma practice. Through discussions of compassion, emptiness, and thought transformation, and many inspiring stories, Rinpoche helps guide our understanding of how this global crisis can be transformed so that all can benefit. He urges us to go beyond engaging with the teachings as theory and to put them into actual practice in our daily lives.

In addition, these videos feature short introductory teachings from monks at Kopan Monastery, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary. Having glimpses into life at the monastery and the activities of the monks also provides an opportunity to connect more deeply with Kopan—the “bedrock” from which the international FPMT organization arose.

If you haven’t taken advantage of these videos yet, you can find them—plus summaries of the teachings, the videos in translation (Chinese, French, Italian, Russian, and Spanish), transcripts, additional advice from Rinpoche, and materials and resources to further explore the themes discussed—all in one page: “Advice from Lama Zopa Rinpoche for the Coronavirus Pandemic.”

Visit this regularly updated page, and through the wisdom of the Buddha’s teachings, discover the courage and strength to make the most of this challenging time.

Find links to these new videos and Rinpoche’s advice, plus links to many other resources on “Advice from Lama Zopa Rinpoche for the Coronavirus Pandemic”:
https://fpmt.org/fpmt/announcements/resources-for-coronavirus-pandemic/advice-from-lama-zopa-rinpoche-for-coronavirus/

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 from his room at Kopan Monastery, Nepal, April 2020. Rinpoche explains that the teddy bear behind him is wearing a mask because he is afraid to look at the world. Photo by Ven. Roger Kunsang.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche continues his video teachings from Kopan Monastery in Nepal during the coronavirus pandemic.

This video beings with Ven. Thubten Kunkhen of Kopan Monastery giving a short biography of the great yogi Geshe Lama Konchog.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche begins his teaching discussing lojong, or thought transformation. This means transforming all problems into happiness, not temporary happiness or today’s happiness, but ultimate happiness, which is liberation from samsara forever, Buddhahood. To understand the term “enlightenment,” one has to study the meaning of total awakening: that one has completed the realizations and there is nothing more to achieve, nothing more to learn. That means complete peerless happiness, forever.

This perfect, unbelievably rare human rebirth is a one-time opportunity to practice, receive teachings, and actualize the path, Rinpoche teaches. This is why it is so important to bear hardships, however difficult, in order to actualize the path within our mind. Then the mind becomes the path to enlightenment.

We are totally deceived by attachment, which is a hallucinated mind, a wrong concept. If you have not actualized Dharma at the time of death, suddenly you realize that you should have studied Dharma, but there is no time. You realize you should have practiced seriously instead of casually experimenting with Dharma, like you would restaurants or a trip around the world.  

Impermanence is easy to understand and, Rinpoche emphasizes, it is so important! It is difficult to control the mind and the delusions that our mind has been habituated with since beginningless rebirths. The time of death is uncertain. The best thing to think is that you might die today or tomorrow. Meditation on impermanence isn’t difficult, but we must think about it from our heart. Awareness of impermanence and death helps us receive realizations and complete the path. Otherwise, if you learn Dharma only intellectually, Rinpoche warns, your whole life is still meaningless actions of nonvirtue.

The purpose of this life is to benefit others. It is unbelievable what one can do. What you do with an ultimate good heart, bodhichitta, makes the best most meaningful life. Wisdom realizing emptiness is the only remedy for the wrong concept from where all suffering comes from—ignorance.

A Buddha doesn’t have negative imprints left by ignorance, which projects the hallucination of true existence. Bodhisattvas, even arya bodhisattvas, do. However, they know it isn’t real. It is like dreaming but knowing you are dreaming. They know it is a hallucination because they know nothing exists from its own side—they have a direct perception of emptiness.

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 “If You Don’t Remember Impermanence-Death, Your Life Becomes a Trip and Wisdom Eliminates the Two Obscurations”:
https://youtu.be/2HEyCke6rTE

• Read the transcript of Rinpoche’s teaching 
• The text for the Sur practice referred to in this teaching is forthcoming.
• Recognizing the False I (PDF,.epub, .mobi) is a commentary written by Lama Zopa Rinpoche with a set of short meditations to help students identify the object to be refuted—what Rinpoche calls “the false I”—during reflections on emptiness.
• Dedication verses for COVID-19 Crisis Teachings

Find more advice and video teachings by Lama Zopa Rinpoche from Kopan Monastery during the COVID-19 crisis:
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 walking the grounds at Kopan Monastery, Nepal, April 2020. Photo by Ven. Lobsang Sherab.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche continues his video teachings from Kopan Monastery in Nepal during the coronavirus pandemic.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche begins his teaching discussing how many people have died around the world from the coronavirus. This is because life is in the nature of impermanence, and we are born under the control of delusion and karma. However, those who have the karma to receive correct teachings and listen, reflect, meditate, and actualize the four noble truths correctly can become free from suffering and the cause of suffering. Through actualizing wisdom directly perceiving emptiness, they can cease the seed of delusion and karma.

Those of us born under the control of delusion and karma didn’t get to develop the mind and actualize Buddha’s teachings, and our lives have been under the control of laziness and a wrong concept of permanence, Rinpoche says. Even if we accept that we are going to die, when we wake up in the morning we think, I will live for a long time. Because of this hallucination of life, this wrong concept of permanence, Dharma is left out of life. Controlling and subduing the mind is left out, even if one knows the words from sutra and tantra, philosophy, lamrim, etc., we don’t practice and experience it. This is like having medicine but not taking it.

However many years we have left of life, half of those years are finished while sleeping. Rinpoche stresses that we can use this time for practicing Dharma, even though it is difficult. With a Dharma motivation, particularly with bodhichitta, even sleeping becomes the cause for enlightenment.

A person who generates bodhichitta, or at least the motivation of bodhichitta, is most lucky. Even if you meditate on bochichitta, it covers all sentient beings. There is no nationality, no race, nothing like that. Friends, enemies, and strangers are included.

Given the current situation in the world with the virus and all of the suffering, there is no choice but to develop compassion. Then, when considering karma, that this is due to ignorance not knowing Dharma, it makes you feel deeper compassion for others. This inspires you to abandon negative karma—the cause of suffering—and to practice virtue—the cause of happiness.

The doctors and nurses who dedicate their lives to others, even though there is danger that they could get the contagious disease, from their hearts they want to serve and take care. Even if they get the disease and die, they will never be reborn in the lower realms. This is the best thing for those who sincerely want to help—they are saved from the lower realms and will go to a pure land or have the opportunity to have a higher rebirth such as a deva or human. We all must die, so to die with compassion for others, this is a very good death. Rinpoche reminds that His Holiness says that dying with bodhichitta is the best death.  

One tries to have a long healthy life—watching the food we eat, going for walks, taking time off from working, etc. So, you cherish your life, but the real “I” you cherish is not there. However, Rinpoche says, any charity you offer to others that is bigger than a hair—any charity you give to others—you are offering your life, and from this you get happiness.

Do whatever you can to help animals and people: even a tiny insect like an ant, or a tiny being like a fishing worm; even a small gesture such as carrying heavy luggage for someone or offering your seat on the train or bus. From such a small virtue, the result is happiness.

In conclusion, on the basis of not causing harm, you serve others. The best thing is bodhichitta practice.

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 “Coronavirus Leaves Us No Choice But to Develop Compassion and 80,000 Eons of Benefit from Making Charity”:
https://youtu.be/u6YSt0xytYg

• Read the transcript of Rinpoche’s teaching “Coronavirus Leaves Us No Choice But to Develop Compassion and 80,000 Eons of Benefit for Making Charity.” 
• Rinpoche quotes verses from Khunu Lama Rinpoche’s Verses in Praise of Bodhichitta (published in English as Vast as the Heavens, Deep as the Sea)
• Dedication verses for COVID-19 Crisis Teachings
• For more advice on practicing bodhichitta in everyday life, read Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s Cultivating Mindfulness of Bodhichitta in Daily Activities.

Find more video teachings by Lama Zopa Rinpoche from Kopan Monastery during the COVID-19 crisis:
https://fpmt.org/media/streaming/teachings-of-lama-zopa-rinpoche/lama-zopa-rinpoche-teachings-in-kopan-2020-during-covid-19-crisis/

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.