Lama Zopa Rinpoche at Nalanda Monastery, Labastide St. Georges, France, May 2019. Photo by Nicolas Balthazar.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche dictated this advice during a Light of the Path retreat and had it distributed to the retreat participants. Rinpoche then also wanted it shared with people offering service at FPMT centers, projects, and service as well as with all beings everywhere.

How to Make Your Life Most Beneficial for Sentient Beings, Even with Your Speech

Freeing them from the oceans of samsaric suffering and bringing them to the peerless happiness of buddhahood—the total cessation of all obscurations and the completion of all realizations

It all depends on your motivation. If you are motivated by the self-cherishing thought, concern for only your own happiness, your own power, and have no concern for others’ happiness, your motivation is coming from your delusions, such as attachment, anger, ignorance, and so forth. Then your actions of body, speech, and mind will manifest as ugly, unpeaceful, and hurtful to others and, as a result, others will react in an ugly, unpeaceful, and hurtful way with their body, speech, and mind; for example, by getting angry at you. It is like a circle. How you treat others and how they treat you in return is similar, with such negative thoughts and actions. You have to be fully aware of that in your everyday life.

Generally you have to know that you are responsible to not cause others suffering but to bring them happiness. Even if you don’t think of practicing Dharma, to at least be a good human being you need to know this. You are totally responsible as to whether you bring happiness or suffering to others. It is totally dependent on your motivation and how you treat others; it’s up to you whether your motivation is pure or not. Even just to be a good person, a generous human being, you have to know that. If you have a bad motivation and your actions of body, speech, and mind are harmful for others, you make others create negative karma when they retaliate by harming you in return. By harming others you therefore cause them to be reborn in the lower realms; to lose their human rebirth and take a lower rebirth and suffer for eons. Can you imagine yourself being in the lower realms? That’s where you’re causing other sentient beings to go and have unhappiness instead of enjoyment.

In the Bodhicaryavatara, Shantideva said,

Smiling at others (showing them a pleasant face)
Causes you to have a beautiful body in future lives.

So you don’t need to have plastic surgery or other expensive procedures. Your positive mind can give you a pleasant, happy, smiling face and a peaceful, not a political, smile. Others will feel this and also become like that, having a good heart and being smiling and happy. Thus you always have to be aware of how others act toward you, positive or negative. It is totally dependent upon your own mind.

The morning motivation, the Method to Transform a Suffering Life into Happiness (Including Enlightenment), contains the details for keeping your mind positive. If you do this motivation every morning you will always act positively toward others for the rest of the day.

However, first think that all your past, present, and future happiness, including enlightenment, is received from every sentient being. You receive everything through the kindness of every sentient being, which includes even those people you don’t like—those who make you angry merely upon sight or when you hear their voice. It is so important to understand this evolution. Therefore you should hold all sentient beings in your heart and feel that they are most precious, most kind, most dear and wish fulfilling for you. Then there will be no way for your mind to get angry or to generate ignorance, attachment, selfishness, or self-cherishing, and therefore, no way for you to harm others. You absolutely dare not harm others, even in the slightest way.

Even Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha—in whom you always take refuge to be free from the lower realms and get higher rebirths; to be free from samsara and achieve liberation, lower nirvana; and to be free from the self-cherishing thought and achieve the peerless happiness of total cessation of all mistakes and completion of all realizations—even this Buddha, Dharma, Sangha in whom you take refuge and who give you all this happiness come from sentient beings, including the ones who are angry at or who harm you, who speak to you hurtfully, and so forth, sentient beings that you don’t like. Therefore they are all so precious, unbelievably precious to you. On top of that, they have been your kind mother from beginningless rebirths and even now; it’s unbelievable. So you have to think about this and the dependent arising I mentioned before as well. Think about these two things—it makes not harming and only benefiting others very deep. In that way your life will be only of benefit.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche arriving at Nalanda Monastery, Labastide St. Georges, France, May 2019. Photo by Nicolas Balthazar.

The conclusion is that to be free from the suffering of samsara as quickly as possible and to achieve peerless happiness, the total cessation of all mistakes and the completion of all realizations, then with this thought, smile at others, respect them with your body, speech, and mind, and speak to them in a nice, respectful way.

Treat people the way you’d like them to treat you: with respect, nice speech, and smiles that come from a good heart. If you do that, then, as a result of karma, many others will treat you in the same way. Otherwise others will be angry with you, speak to you rudely and hurtfully, and harm you with the actions of their body, speech, and mind.

So here I am mentioning how sentient beings are most kind, most precious, most dear and wish fulfilling. Then you can really enjoy life with them, bring them much inner happiness, and in your own mind you will also enjoy much inner happiness, and that will make them happy too.

His Holiness the Dalai Lama respects even ordinary people. He bends down in respect; Lama Yeshe also did this. Even when he heard about someone’s mistakes, some problems with monks, and so forth, when he later met them he showed respect. Like that, this is an incredible practice, rather than feeling pride, showing arrogance, and putting others down. Most people might do that, but in my experience, Lama Yeshe never did.

Behaving like this is a great, great, great responsibility of the center director, secretary, board members, office manager, treasurer, spiritual program coordinator, bookshop manager, and so forth. Especially these people, but in general, this is for everybody. It’s a question of karma, to not create negative karma and to create good karma. This not only makes you happy but also makes other sentient beings happy. So even with your speech you can make so many sentient beings happy. …

Read Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s complete advice “How to Make Your Life Most Beneficial for Sentient Beings, Even with Your Speech“:

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 Yangsi Rinpoche making extensive offerings to numberless Buddhas, Buddha Amitabha Pure Land, Washington, US, July 2019. Photo by Ven. Lobsang Sherab.

“When there was unceasing war in Kham (Me Nyak), Tibet, and nobody was able to create harmony, the Great Lord Yogi (Thang Thong Gyalpo) came to Kham, generated bodhichitta, and just by merely saying these true words and sprinkling flowers, all the vicious minds (jealousy and anger) were completely pacified and the war that had been continuous, ceased. There were prosperous harvests and so forth. The country became auspicious and peaceful. This is blessed vajra speech,” Lama Zopa Rinpoche said as preface to his translation of a prayer by the great tantric yogi Thang Thong Gyalpo.

“… Through whatever merits have come from making this translation available, may wherever this text is (whichever country) and also by reading this prayer, cause all the people’s hearts be filled with loving kindness, bodhichitta, and the thought to only benefit and not harm. May the sun of peace and happiness arise and may any wars that are happening stop immediately. May there be harmony, peace, and may there never be war or violence again.” Rinpoche made this translation of Thang Thong Gyalpo’s “Prayer for Peace” after the 9/11 terrorist attacks of 2001 in the United States.

Here Are the Words of Truth Pacifying the Dangers of Weapons

OM MANI PADME HUM

Great Loving Victorious One (Maitreya Buddha), Transcendental Sublime Compassionate Eye Looking One,
Wrathful Victorious Hayagriva, Fully Accomplished Totally Pure (Jetsun) Tara and so forth,
Merely hearing your holy names eliminates all dangers,
Objects of refuge in the nature of compassion, please pay attention!

When the sentient beings of the time of quarreling and five degenerations
By the explosion of the great ocean of evil karma and jealousy
Are tormented by the intensive suffering of fighting and quarreling
Please dry this up by the power of transcendental wisdom and compassion.

By letting great rainfalls of the nectar of loving kindness fall
On the migratory beings who are inflaming the conflagration of hatred-fire
Please grant blessings with the recognition of each other like father-mother
Then increase happiness and auspiciousness.

May the multitudes of the vicious evil spirits
Who enter the mental continuum and
Change it instantly to the mind of asura
From now on never run in this area (country/world).

I am requesting for even all the sentient beings who have died in the war
To abandon from that time onward all the evil karma, cause and effect,
Then having entered and been born in the Blissful Field (Amitabha’s Pure Land)
To lead all others to that Pure Land.

Please bless all those who are born and die (samsaric beings)
To have a long life, no sicknesses, to pacify all quarreling and fighting,
Enjoy the ten virtues, have rainfall at the right times, always have good harvests
And for all the habitat and inhabitants to be auspicious and increase.

By the ultimate reality which is pure by nature,
By phenomena having ultimate reality, cause and result are unbetrayable,
And by the compassion of the Guru, Mind-seal Deity and Rare Sublime Ones,
May these pure extensive prayers be completed.

Find this prayer on prayer flags available through the Foundation Store:
https://shop.fpmt.org/Prayer-Flag-to-Avert-War_p_392.html

This “Prayer for Peace” was originally posted by the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive, where you can read Rinpoche’s complete comments on it:
https://www.lamayeshe.com/advice/prayer-peace

Watch short videos from Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s recent teachings:
https://fpmt.org/media/streaming/teachings-of-lama-zopa-rinpoche/

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 prayers in El Retiro Park, Madrid, Spain, April 2019. Photo by Ven. Roger Kunsang.

While teaching in Madrid, Spain, in October 2018, Lama Zopa Rinpoche gave an introduction to thought transformation and explained its benefits, captured in the thirty-minute video below.

Thought transformation, Lama Zopa Rinpoche said, is about “how to utilize your problems, including death, sicknesses, whatever—something that you don’t like, something that your self-cherishing thoughts do not like, does not wish for, or your attachment doesn’t want—you are using that in the path to enlightenment. If you are experiencing obstacles to practicing Dharma, you utilize the obstacles in the path to enlightenment, to achieve enlightenment quicker. 

“You use that for every sentient beings, every hell being, every hungry ghost, every animal, every animal living in the ocean; numberless beings, the biggest the size of mountains, then the smallest, I don’t remember their name; those living in the bushes, the grass, the trees, the sky; then numberless human beings living in numberless universes; then numberless sura beings, asura beings. You use your problems in the path for every sentient being to achieve enlightenment quickly.

“So in this way you have no obstacle to practicing Dharma. Whatever is an obstacle, you utilize in the path to enlightenment.”

Rinpoche pointed out another benefit of training your mind in this way: “Your mind, your mental continuum, becomes so soft. Your mental continuum is not rough, but it becomes very soft, like soft cotton.

“By sitting next to a person who practices this, even without talking, just sitting, you feel that the person’s heart, their mind, is so soft, so subdued, so good-hearted, so warm with loving kindness and compassion. You can feel that, even without talking, just sitting next to the person, you can feel that.”

Rinpoche then recalled how happy participants were to meet and receive teachings from Lama Yeshe during their first visit to Australia. This was due to Lama Yeshe’s warm-heartedness and wisdom.

With the practice of thought transformation, Rinpoche concluded, you are not afraid of anything, not even cancer or death, as any obstacle turns into a chance to train the mind.

Watch a thirty-minute video of Lama Zopa Rinpoche teaching on mind training:
https://youtu.be/jB7KPZNtPxU

Quotations excerpted from Lama Zopa Rinpoche teaching in Madrid, Spain, October 20, 2018. Simultaneously transcribed by Ven. Joan Nicell. Lightly edited by Laura Miller, August 2019. (Find the complete unedited transcript here.)

Watch more short videos from Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s recent teachings:
https://fpmt.org/media/streaming/teachings-of-lama-zopa-rinpoche/

Find complete videos of Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s recent teachings:
https://fpmt.org/media/streaming/teachings-of-lama-zopa-rinpoche/

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 water to put in a city park pond to bless the fish and ducks in the pond, Madrid, Spain, October 2018. Photo by Ven. Roger Kunsang.

While teaching in Madrid, Spain, in October 2018, Rinpoche summarized the whole path to enlightenment, emphasizing the importance of the guru. The path also includes developing renunciation, bodhichitta, and an understanding of gross and subtle emptiness, and eventually practicing tantra. Here’s part of this teaching:

When your mind is living in correctly following the virtuous friend, realizing this, you are looking at each guru as all the buddhas, buddhas’ dharmakaya. You are not only looking with devotion and following with devotion, but your actions are fulfilling the wishes and following the advice of the guru.

Each time you follow what the guru advises you, for example, even reciting mantras—each day reciting two thousand or one thousand OM MANI PADME HUM—then each time you recite OM MANI PADME HUM, you become closer to enlightenment. You become closer to enlightenment by reciting OM MANI PADME HUM one time. The guru gave advice to recite every day one thousand mala or two thousand mala, so each time you recite OM MANI PADME HUM, you become closer to enlightenment, closer to being free from samsara, you understand? Then also the number of vows that have been given to you, as you follow the advice, each day, each hour, each minute, you become closer to being free from samsara and closer to enlightenment.

Like Milarepa, even when you are just so busy doing work, for example you are manager or you are a builder or something, but due to the guru’s advice, you are all the time working with the people, talking with the people, walking up and down, with each step you fulfill the guru’s advice and wishes. Then with each step, each action at work you do, you are collecting the most unbelievable merits and purification. Then you’ll more quickly be free from samsara and more quickly achieve enlightenment with each step, each talk you do, because it is according to the guru’s advice, fulfilling the guru’s wishes. When you are talking to the people, workers, it is like that.

Wow, wow, wow. Then you can realize how you are most fortunate. Otherwise you think you are just given work, work, work. …

Hear more from Rinpoche on following the guru and the path to enlightenment in this 12-minute video teaching:
https://youtu.be/FWUN-E2N-2M

Colophon: Excerpted from Lama Zopa Rinpoche teaching in Madrid, Spain, October 28, 2018. Simultaneously transcribed by Ven. Joan Nicell. Lightly edited by Laura Miller, July 2019. (Complete unedited transcript here.)

Find complete videos of Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s recent teachings, including teachings from the May-June 2019 Vajrayogini retreat at Institut Vajra Yogini in France:
https://fpmt.org/media/streaming/teachings-of-lama-zopa-rinpoche/

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 during the November Course, Kopan Monastery, December 2018. Photo by Ven. Lobsang Sherab.

During the 2018 November Course at Kopan Monastery, Lama Zopa Rinpoche outlined how to reach enlightenment based on the lamrim and the importance of studying it. Rinpoche emphasized that merely knowing the lamrim is not enough; it needs to be applied in daily life. Here’s an excerpt from Rinpoche’s teachings.

Practice mindfulness and the three principal aspects of the path to enlightenment—renunciation, bodhichitta, and right view. Then everything done with renunciation becomes the cause of liberation and does not become the cause of samsara. Then everything done with bodhichitta becomes the cause of enlightenment. Then with right view, everything becomes a remedy to samsara, a remedy to ignorance, which is the root of all your suffering, your samsara, the root of all your sufferings of samsara. It eliminates that; that’s what you need.

If you don’t like suffering, you have to put in effort to actualize emptiness, if you don’t like suffering. If you don’t like depression, if you don’t like any suffering, even diarrhea, whatever you don’t like, then you need to meditate on emptiness, and in particular you have to put effort into realizing emptiness. Study emptiness, all the extensive philosophy teachings, then lamrim, the essence, the short teachings, very important teachings.

You need to not only study—you leave it up to the intellect, you leave it up to the tape recorder, you invest so much information, you put in a tape recorder or computer—not like that. You invest in your brain so much information, but no practice, you only discuss, only to be an important professor—not like that. You need to actualize. So everything becomes practice, and through practice, you actualize. Everything becomes the antidote to your samsara, to your ignorance, which is the root of your samsara. So it eliminates the root of oceans of suffering of samsara. That’s what you need. If you don’t like suffering, you need to put effort in that. It’s extremely worthwhile.

Not only that, not only to free yourself from oceans of suffering of samsara, not only that, but with the help of bodhichitta, you collect inconceivable, inconceivable, inconceivable merits, with that support. Then with the wisdom realizing emptiness, you directly cease the obscuration, not only gross but subtle obscuration. Then you achieve enlightenment for sentient beings, and you are able to liberate all sentient beings from oceans of samsaric sufferings and bring everyone to buddhahood.

If you don’t like suffering, if you have problems—a relationship problem, a problem with the family, with the husband, with the wife or children, with friends, whatever—you should know that. The antidote—to be free from the suffering of samsara—you need to be free from delusion and karma; you need to be free from ignorance, the root of samsara. So you need to meditate on emptiness. That is what you need.  

Otherwise, your problems have no end. Then you rely on psychology. It has no end, relying on psychology or psychiatry. It has no end. Your going to hospital has no end; it’s endless. Your going to hospital, having an operation on your brain, it’s endless. It becomes endless. That is the nature of samsara.

When you have problems, think: “Oh, this is a sign that I’m in samsara. This shows me. This proves it to me. It is sign that I’m in samsara. So, oh, I need to be free from samsara, so then I should practice Dharma.” It should have that as a conclusion.

The conclusion you should come to is that. To actualize Dharma, the heart of Buddhadharma—renunciation, bodhichitta, right view—you should come to the conclusion to practice lamrim. You should come to that conclusion, then that is the best.

You have something to do that is most worthwhile for you and every sentient being—every hell being, they are numberless, for everyone, to benefit every ant, every fish, every chicken, every goat, sheep, what we eat, to benefit every mosquito, every small ant, small flies, so tiny, but numberless, to everyone, to benefit, especially with bodhichitta, then, every human being, every sura being, every asura being, every intermediate state being. Then instead of depression, you have so much happiness in life, because you know what to do, you know what you should do. You know the meaning of life!

Watch the 24-minute video of Rinpoche teaching at Kopan Monastery from which this excerpt is taken:
https://youtu.be/t1_k3Ifj85U

Colophon: Excerpted from Lama Zopa Rinpoche teaching at Kopan Monastery, Nepal, December 12, 2018. Simultaneously transcribed by Ven. Joan Nicell. Lightly edited by Laura Miller, July 2019. (Complete unedited transcript here.)

Find complete videos of Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s recent teachings, including teachings from the May-June 2019 Vajrayogini retreat at Institut Vajra Yogini in France:
https://fpmt.org/media/streaming/teachings-of-lama-zopa-rinpoche/

Visit Kopan Monastery’s website to learn more about the monastery and the lamrim courses offered there. Registration for this year’s November Course, scheduled for November 17–December 17, opens August 13:
https://kopanmonastery.com/

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 an event organized by Gendun Drupa Center, Martigny, Switzerland, November 2018. Photo by Harald Weichhart.

During teachings in Switzerland in 2018, Lama Zopa Rinpoche taught on the importance of generating patience and creating happiness for others, captured in this excerpt and video clip:

Even if you don’t believe in reincarnation and karma, even those who are listening for the first time, if you practice patience, if there is no anger from your side, that brings so much happiness to you as you live life, and to your family, to society, to the country, and into the world.

You can bring so much happiness, peace, into the world. I heard that the First World War began with one person. It actually started with one person. If you have influence and power, it becomes like that. So it stops when it does not happen like that, when you practice patience. This is so important.

Even if the other person doesn’t practice patience, when you practice patience it brings so much happiness to the other person. You have to understand. It creates so much peace in the family. If you can do that, then you can bring peace into the world. In a big way, you can bring peace into the world.

As I mentioned the first First World War started with one person. So it’s like that, even if you don’t believe in reincarnation and karma. It’s so important to understand this.

Children in schools, primary schools, need this education in how to practice patience. How much peace there is in the future will depend on the present day children, what kind of education they get. Whether the future will be full of wars and killing each other or more peaceful depends especially on the present day children. When we are all dead, it depends on the present day children and their education.

If they have sangpo, holy education, if they have positive education, good education, that stops harm to others and harm to themselves—making their life black, nonvirtue, suffering, always confused, and causing others so much suffering, making suffering in the world, making so much suffering in the world. You make so much suffering for your family, your society, your country, your world. So much depends on good education, a good heart.

Even if you don’t believe in reincarnation and karma, you need compassion and loving kindness for others—for insects, even ants, not only for people. You can see that nobody wants suffering, even the ants. Nobody wants suffering; everybody wants happiness.

Therefore, if you think about your own happiness, if you have concern for yourself, then don’t harm others! In that case, you don’t harm! If you harm others, of course, that is the cause. And the result is that others harm you.

So if you get angry or you say some bad words to others, immediately you hear bad words from others directed at you. You create the target. You say bad words to others; you hear others say bad words to you. Immediately you get the arrow. So much of life is like that.

If you want happiness for yourself, don’t harm others. With body, speech, and mind, don’t harm others. If you want happiness, cause happiness for others, which will cause your happiness, benefit you, help you; others will cause happiness for you. From the karma, from the action, you can cause happiness for others. From that action, that karma, the result is you will get happiness from others. They will cause you happiness. So concerning your happiness, it’s like that. That is the correct way. We always have to keep the attention on that.

We need to get education of that in schools. We need to learn that. We always need to keep the awareness of that. But the best, of course, is to live life for others, free others from suffering. Live life to cause happiness for others—all the different levels of happiness up to enlightenment. …

Watch the teaching “The Best Way to Live Your Life,” from which this excerpt is taken:
https://youtu.be/m_titxURGec

Colophon: Excerpted from Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s teachings in Martigny, Switzerland, November 16, 2018. Simultaneously transcribed by Ven. Joan Nicell. Lightly edited by Laura Miller, June 2019.

Find complete videos of Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s recent teachings, including teachings from the May-June 2019 Vajrayogini retreat at Institut Vajra Yogini in France:
https://fpmt.org/media/streaming/teachings-of-lama-zopa-rinpoche/

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 enjoying a park in Madrid, Spain, April 2019. Photo by Ven. Roger Kunsang.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche taught on how everything we receive, even the motivation of bodhichitta, comes through the kindness of other sentient beings during teachings given at Amitabha Buddhist Centre in Singapore in September 2018. Lama Zopa Rinpoche explained why and how all happiness comes from good karma and how good karma comes from the buddhas. He continued by explaining how we can stop rebirth in the lower realms and how the insight on the kindness of all sentient beings makes us want to repay their kindness. Here’s an excerpt from the teaching:

What makes life most beneficial to numberless sentient beings, the happiest life, is bodhichitta, living life with bodhichitta—the happiest life, no regret now and no regret in the future. It’s the happiest life, if you want to know.

With bodhichitta when you get sick, you are sick for sentient beings. You are so happy, unbelievably happy, even [if you have] cancer. Having sickness for sentient beings—with bodhichitta you are dying, dying for sentient beings—you are so happy. Anything, whatever happens to you, incurable disease, whatever, you are so happy; you experience it for sentient beings. It is the best, best life. So like that.

Whatever you are doing, you do for numberless sentient beings, including not only those who are helping you, even for those who don’t do harm or don’t help, even a stranger. When you generate bodhichitta, it is for everyone. There is no partisanship—you do if for some sentient beings, but some sentient beings you hate and you don’t do it for them. No, you do for everyone, so it is fantastic.

If you live life with bodhichitta, then you see that whatever happens to your life, it is for sentient beings—even if you have cancer, it is for sentient beings; even if you have health, it is for sentient beings; even if you have short life, it is for sentient beings; even if you have a long life it is for sentient beings—everything. [Living life with bodhichitta creates a] most happy, most happy life. Even if you have constant problems in this life, a difficult life, it is for sentient beings. There is nothing for you; it is all for sentient beings, numberless sentient beings, including your friends, strangers, enemies, everyone. It is really wonderful—wow, wow, wow, most wonderful life.

So, you see, there is incredible happiness. Your mind is always full of happiness, nothing involved with self-cherishing thoughts—only me, me, me. No, there is no problem with that, even though from beginningless rebirths, it has been like this—me, me, me, day and night, me, me, me, When I can be happy?, When I can be happy?, When I can be free from problems?—with the self-cherishing thought trying to achieve happiness for yourself. From beginningless rebirths, today is not the first time. We have been doing this from beginningless rebirths, still not complete, still not, so like that. …

Watch the teaching from which this excerpt is taken:
https://youtu.be/WRgkM2NVtUo

Colophon: Excerpted from Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s teachings in Singapore, September 19, 2018. Simultaneously transcribed by Ven. Joan Nicell. Lightly edited by Laura Miller, June 2019.

Find more video of Rinpoche teaching at Amitabha Buddhist Centre in Singapore:
https://fpmt.org/media/streaming/teachings-of-lama-zopa-rinpoche/amitabha-buddhist-center-2018/

Watch recorded video of Rinpoche’s recent teachings from the Vajrayogini retreat at Institut Vajra Yogini in France:
https://fpmt.org/media/streaming/teachings-of-lama-zopa-rinpoche/vajrayogini-retreat-2019/

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 being led to the gompa at O.Sel.Ling Centro de Retiros by center director Anne Wenaas and Ven. Topgye, Spain, May 2019. Photo by Ven. Lobsang Sherab.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche wrote a benefactor thanking them for their support of a center and explaining a center’s benefits.

I just want to send you these cards and tell you that I highly appreciate your kindness in helping the center. The purpose of the center existing continually is to help sentient beings, and what sentient beings need most is to be free from the oceans of suffering, which is what they have been experiencing from beginningless rebirths. That means to be free from the oceans of samsaric suffering—the sufferings of rebirth, old age, sickness and death, and so forth. This is the suffering of pain. Then there is the suffering of change—all the samsaric pleasures, which cannot continue.

When we achieve enlightenment, that is when Dharma happiness is completed. The nature of samsaric pleasure is suffering. The suffering of pain and the suffering of change come from the third suffering, which is pervasive compounding suffering.

To be free from these three sufferings forever, we need to cease the cause of suffering—delusion and karma. For this we can’t have an operation in the hospital, or have it taken it out by a doctor or take tablets so it goes away. We can’t do that, it’s impossible. The only method is Dharma, the Buddha’s teachings. The centers are for that. That’s why the center is teaching Dharma, providing qualified teachers, translators, a place to practice, to hear the teachings and so many things.

This is a most urgent thing for sentient beings, more urgent than anything else. Not only that, through this it brings sentient beings to buddhahood, the total cessation of all the obscurations and completion of all realizations. Therefore, the need for the center to exist and to continue is of utmost importance for sentient beings.

By helping the center, you are helping all sentient beings, because then people come to learn Dharma at the center, and to practice bodhichitta, as they do the practice for all sentient beings, to benefit all sentient beings. That is how the center benefits numberless hell beings, numberless hungry ghosts, numberless animals, numberless human beings, numberless sura beings, numberless asura beings and numberless intermediate state beings.

From Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s advice “The Center is of Utmost Importance,” posted on the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive in December 2018:
https://www.lamayeshe.com/advice/center-utmost-importance

Watch Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s recent teachings in Madrid, Spain:
https://fpmt.org/media/streaming/teachings-of-lama-zopa-rinpoche/madrid_2019/

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 making prayers at Tso Pema, India, January 2018. Photo by Ven. Lobsang Sherab.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche advised a student who wanted to help the sick and dying.

You don’t have to go [to the hospital] to help them; instead, wherever you stay, you can do the Eight Prayers to Benefit the Dead. Recite a different one, or two, each day, dedicated for them, for example, the “King of Prayers,” the “Prayer of the Virtuous Beginning, Middle and End,” the “Prayer to Be Reborn in Sukhavati,” Shantideva’s “Dedication Prayer,” and so forth. You can do that for them, as well as for every sentient being of the six realms.

Also, every OM MANI PADME HUM mantra you recite, or whatever mantras you do, such as Vajrayogini, you can do for every sentient being, including those who are sick and dying. That is helpful for them. Whatever you practice normally, do for others. Try to live your life for others—for every single sentient being, including every single insect, even the tiniest animals, and every single sura and asura. Whatever you do, try to help and dedicate it to everybody. That is very good.

Sometimes going to see people who are dying, if you don’t really know what helps them, then it can be that it doesn’t help and can even disturb their mind, causing attachment. Even if they regard it as good, actually it harms them by generating attachment. In the West people think attachment is very good, but they don’t know that generating attachment to the other person in reality is not helping but is harming.

Renunciation, bodhichitta, emptiness and correctly following virtuous friend [help those who are dying]. This is just talking from the side of sutra. This helps, otherwise it’s not so good. You have to know what is helping and what is harming. You have to know that. In the West, maybe the person is your enemy, but when that person is dying and you go to see them in hospital, if that person can’t speak, they may die with anger or attachment. So it harms them; it causes them to be reborn in the lower realms. I am using this as an example.

Anyway, for the time being it doesn’t come out to help those people who are dying and in the hospitals. What comes out best is to focus on your preliminary practices, retreats, and to do prayers for those people.

From Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s advice “How to Help People Who Are Sick and Dying,” posted on the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive website in December 2018:
https://www.lamayeshe.com/advice/how-help-people-who-are-sick-and-dying

For more advice from Rinpoche on death and dying, please visit our page “Death and Dying: Heart  Practices and Advice”:
https://fpmt.org/death/

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 in Madrid, Spain, April 2019. Photo by Alexis Roitmann.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche sent this letter to all the staff at an FPMT center, thanking them for working at the center.

My most dear, most kind, most precious, wish-fulfilling one,

My thanks, first of all, that you have taken a human rebirth, from many lifetimes practice, praying, and dedicating to receive a human body and especially a perfect human body, and now being able to practice the Dharma and meet the Mahayana teachings. From that, any practice you do always begins with bodhichitta.

The main purpose of one’s life is to free the numberless sentient beings in each realm from the oceans of samsara suffering and to bring them to Buddhahood—the peerless happiness. So therefore one needs to achieve Buddhahood in order to be able to do the perfect works for the sentient beings, without the slightest mistake.

Any Mahayana practice that you do begins with bodhichitta, to benefit all the sentient beings in the six realms. That means any practice you do with this motivation is helping the numberless sentient beings in every realm, that means every single hell being, hungry ghost, animal, human, sura, and asura in the numberless universes, so all the numberless sentient beings everyone.

The center you are at is not only helping people by giving them the opportunity to come to the center, but also by coming to the center then they find out about all the meditation subjects and the path to enlightenment.

By meeting Buddhism and finding out about meditation and the path to enlightenment, this is what helps them to purify past negative karma, to stop rebirths in the lower realms, by practicing morality, charity, and so forth. This creates the cause for higher rebirths in future lives, not even just for one lifetime. By practicing morality, keeping one precept, practicing charity, then this helps for so many hundreds and thousands of lifetimes. So it’s amazing, amazing the results.

In the Arya Sanghata Sutra the Buddha says, “The benefits of making charity to sentient beings, even the size of a single strand of hair, for eighty eons the result will be unbelievable wealth.”

Therefore in everyday life, practice charity with a healthy mind. I am saying this in a Western way, for those who don’t believe in reincarnation and karma. So then I say, a healthy mind, positive mind. So to practice with a mind without attachment, this is a peaceful mind. A mind with attachment is a disturbed mind, a contaminated mind, contaminated with suffering. So practice charity with a mind without attachment. Whether it is big or small charity, it is always helping, especially if it is to those in need, giving anything. So whatever you can give, this is the most important thing and this is creating a healthy life. From charity comes wealth and success in this life and next lives.

From pure morality, this leads to good rebirth, and being able to meet Dharma and to practice Dharma. Not only that, the next thing is be to free from samsara, by practicing the three higher trainings—the higher training of morality, the higher training of concentration, and the higher training of wisdom.

So now you can see by people coming to the center they learn how to be free from the oceans of samsara suffering. Not just for a few hours or a few days, but forever. Can you imagine?

So no matter how hard it is, it is so worthwhile because you are creating the cause for them to be free from death, free from suffering, free from birth, old age, and sickness, and so forth, to be free from the suffering of depression and dissatisfaction. Even the dissatisfaction of billionaires and zillionaires is worse than the suffering in the hell realms. Then there are the three kinds of suffering. There is the suffering of pain. Then, the suffering of change—which refers to all samsaric pleasures (such as the pleasures of music, surfing, jumping out of an airplane with a parachute, sex, drugs, alcohol, and so forth). All the samsara pleasures are in reality in the nature of suffering, but they appear as pleasure to begin with. This is what is called the suffering of change. Then the third suffering, the all-pervasive compounded suffering, is being under the contaminated seed of delusion and karma. So it is pervaded by karma, the seed. There is no worse suffering that the pervasive compounded suffering.

So to be free from all of this forever, this is by learning Buddhism, meditation, the three higher trainings, the five paths to liberation, and so forth. It is from this that one can know how to be free from samsara forever. Not only that, they meet the Mahayana teachings, learn bodhichitta on the basis of generating compassion to all sentient beings, practice the six paramitas, the sutra five paths and ten bhumis, and then they are able to meet the Mahayana tantra. And by practicing Mahayana tantra, they are able to achieve enlightenment in one brief lifetime of degenerate time.

It is by practicing the eight Mahayana precepts, or eight pratimoksha precepts, five lay vows, or even less than five, like four, three, two, or one, even just for one day, this is what helps for five hundred lifetimes to have a human rebirth or deva rebirth and so forth.

By practicing charity it brings the success of wealth and so forth, all the enjoyments, for many hundreds of lifetimes, or even thousands of lifetimes. This can come from even just one time giving charity. This is the real cause of success in your life.

Practicing the good heart is the most important thing and the best cause of success in your life. For however many times you are born in samsara, until you achieve the ultimate wisdom directly perceiving emptiness that ceases delusion and karma, which are the causes of the oceans of suffering in samsara, practicing the good heart is the real cause of happiness. Then there is no non-virtue, only virtue. The good heart is the best way to create virtue.

“In the service of others” is written in Spanish on the backs of t-shirts created for the Lama Zopa Rinpoche event in Spain, April 2019. Photo by Alexis Roitmann.

Of course people would think that it is from education. But there are so many uneducated people in the world, in less developed countries, who are so happy, whose wishes get fulfilled, who have wealth and all their wishes succeed, but they have no education. Education can help, but it is not the main cause; it is the condition. Many times, if you have education but don’t have a good heart, then having education causes problems such as ego, pride, non-virtuous thought, the thought to harm others and to destroy the world, and so forth.

Therefore some people have high degrees and very good education, but still they cannot find jobs, or it takes a long time. Of course if the person’s mind is open then I would suggest reading the Arya Sanghata Sutra and Golden Light Sutra in order to collect unbelievable merits and the causes of success. Then also my general advice is every day to help insects, people, animals, and especially those who have problems, to help them in any way possible.

So the ultimate conclusion is to practice the good heart. This is the best Dharma. With the good heart everything happens, especially enlightenment—the total cessation of all the obscurations and completion of all the realizations—not only to achieve enlightenment, but to free the numberless sentient beings from the oceans of samsara sufferings and to bring them to enlightenment.

So this is what you are doing and what the center does. All of you who are helping the center and working at the center, you are helping every sentient being, every animal, every ant in the differing universes, every mosquito, all the different kinds of fish, every slug, every mouse, every maggot, and every tiny flea.

Thank you very much. Please enjoy life with the good heart. That is the best way to enjoy the life. With a good heart, this causes inner happiness that goes up to enlightenment.

Thank you very much, see you soon.

With much love and prayers,

Lama Zopa

Colophon: Scribed by Holly Ansett, Taos, New Mexico, US, June 2017. Lightly edited by Laura Miller, March 2019.

Watch Lama Zopa Rinpoche teach live from Madrid, Spain, April 26-29:
https://fpmt.org/media/streaming/lama-zopa-rinpoche-live/

Find recordings of recent Lama Zopa Rinpoche teachings:
https://fpmt.org/media/streaming/teachings-of-lama-zopa-rinpoche/

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 water to put in the lake and benefit all beings there, Madrid, Spain, April 2019. Photo by Ven. Lobsang Sherab.

A student wrote to Lama Zopa Rinpoche about how she and her brothers and sisters responded to the murder of their father and grandmother. Lama Zopa Rinpoche wrote back to the student and then requested that his letter and an edited version of the student’s original letter be shared online so that all could read them. Here is Rinpoche’s letter: 

My most dear, most kind, most precious, wish-fulfilling one,

Thank you very much for your kind letter explaining your experience. Since you are a lawyer, what you would do normally, and what other people in the world would do normally, is only think of this lifetime, especially if someone had killed your father. That kind of harm is a huge and difficult one to bear.

Most people don’t think about karma, reincarnation, and so forth, and that all problems come from the mind, come from I. They don’t know that. Or even if they know intellectually, they don’t practice that. So they would put that person, whom they called “enemy,” in prison or they would kill that person, harm them back, or even do worse if they can. That is normally what people think and do in the world.

Then for a long time you were checking your experience and you realized that it is the result; you experienced the result of what you did in the past to others. The person who killed your father and grandmother were badly treated and harmed by you in the past.

Then you helped your brothers and sisters be harmonious and decide to help, instead of take revenge. This is the greatest practice. This is what Buddha said to do when somebody harms. This is what Buddha and what holy beings do in the world, and what bodhisattvas do. Somebody harmed you, worldly people say “an enemy,” but instead of harming back, you only benefit. This is what holy beings, bodhisattvas do, like that. Your actions follow that. This is the actual practice.

You made numberless gurus—His Holiness the Dalai Lama, all the gurus, all the buddhas, numberless bodhisattvas—most happy. You and your brothers and sisters made them most happy, pleased them the most. It is the best.

With my two hands together at my heart, I am thanking you a billion, zillion times from my heart to you and to your brothers and sisters. Please tell them I am thanking them. You pleased most His Holiness the Dalai Lama, the Buddha of Compassion, and then numberless buddhas and bodhisattvas.

The great bodhisattva Shantideva said in The Bodhisattva’s Way of Life:

My karma persuaded them,
Therefore, I received this harm.
Because of that, didn’t I make the person fall in the hole of the hell?

What it is saying is first why you received this harm. For example, relating to your life story, because you treated a person that way in a past life, the result happened: you received harm, and your father and grandmother were killed. By that action that happened, now the person who harmed is in the human realm, but soon that will end. That person will leave the human realm. And due to that negative karma, they will get born in the hole of the hell. Then suffer in the hell realms for an unbelievable, unbelievable, unbelievable length of time, suffer the heaviest suffering.

So that is not only practicing patience, but developing compassion, by thinking that the person who harmed you, which was due to your negative karma, now has to be born in hell and suffer for an unbelievable length of time. All that started originally from you; you harmed this person. This is a way to develop compassion—thinking about what obliged the person to do to harm, to engage in negative karma, to harm you. So please tell this to your sisters and brothers.

So in essence in Buddhism, first thinking only of your happiness, you see that to not receive harm from others, you don’t harm others. If you don’t harm others, then you don’t receive harm from others. If you benefit others, then as a result others benefit you, bring happiness to you. So that is only thinking of cherishing yourself, thinking only of you. So now thinking of numberless sentient beings, you stop harming others, then they don’t receive harm. The numberless sentient beings you benefit, they receive happiness. So this is incredible Mahayana Buddhism. This is the great vehicle, without talking about tantra. This is the basic practice of Mahayana Buddhism.

Similarly, the Tibetan people want to fight, like in the normal world, fight back at Mainland China, but His Holiness the Dalai Lama advised them to not fight. Without fighting the truth will win. He is talking only peace, in terms of dealing with Mainland China, only dealing in peace. If you fight, what happens is a similar story as you mentioned. Then you are creating the negative karma to receive harm from others, again and again. Then there is no end to suffering in samsara, no end, not only no beginning, but no end.

His Holiness the Dalai Lama advised that only by being peaceful, only by truth, will they win peace. It is so important this advice. This way you don’t receive harm back from others. You aren’t attacked by others. You don’t experience war. You get only the result—peace and happiness. You treat others peacefully, and as a result you receive peace, others help you. That is really Dharma practice.

Please tell your brothers and sisters, that is real practice, the best Dharma practice. What your family did, that should be an example to the world, to those who have highest scientific knowledge. Your family is a good example for all those billionaires and zillionaires. It is a good example for anyone—educated, uneducated, poor, rich. This is the best example for them.

Thank you very much.

With much love and prayers,

Lama Zopa

Here is the letter first sent by the student to Lama Zopa Rinpoche:

Dear Kyabje Lama Zopa Rinpoche,

… Five days after my ordination, my grandmother and father died in the same event. I felt shocked about losing my father. Just that day in the morning, he called me and asked me if I was happy with the ordination. He was Catholic, but respectful. I replied I was very happy. Then he replied he was happy for me too. Same day at night, he died with his mother in their house.

They were poisoned by gas in their house. The gas was coming from the kitchen, and they fell asleep and died. In time, we discovered they were killed. My father’s first cousin killed them in order to steal or inherit money and keep it from my family. When we discovered that, it was a great shock. I have two brothers and two sisters. We were very angry.

I was incredibly angry, very confused. Just being ordained, I was trying my best to have a good heart and good thoughts. On the other hand, I was very angry about what happened. Out of anger I decided to go and visit the person who killed my father. I took my purse and started to walk to the car. Suddenly an image of you, Rinpoche, came into my mind. You were sitting in meditation posture with a beautiful and exquisite smile. At that moment, I started to cry so deeply and I realized what had happened. Straight away I thought, “Only because of Rinpoche’s great compassion did he ordained me.”

Then I decided to not visit the person who damaged my family. I cried and cried for a couple of days, trying to put all the experience together. I just felt that ordination was protecting my mind from seeing (I was a lawyer before) revenge, killing, cheating, and stealing. Feeling so protected by you, feeling so, so fortunate, I made the following statement: “From now on, my aim and duty is going to be to reduce my anger. When I am capable of overcoming anger, then I will help my brothers and sisters.”

During many months I did analytical meditation about anger. After one year, the anger had been reduced very much. Then I started working with my brothers and sisters to reduce their anger. One day, continuing with analytical meditation, I thought, “Maybe that was family karma.” Then I thought, “If that is the case, that means that in the past we have created the same, killing and stealing an inheritance for our own family.”

I imagined killing my own family and stealing from them, and it was so difficult to believe. Because in this life I have not killed a human being. And I had the belief that I was a good person. I continued meditating and analyzing. And then I got an insight: “I cannot experience anything that I have not created.”

So I imagined again myself with my two brothers and two sisters killing someone’s father and stealing the inheritance. Oh, Rinpoche, the biggest pain I’ve ever experienced came, thinking and understanding that in a past life I had dared to kill someone, so painful. It’s very difficult to overcome that. By thinking about it over and over, after two years I felt some peace, to understand that we were experiencing the result of actions that we had created. If we created it, we deserved the result.

Then I thought, if we created it in another lifetime, in this life the best thing to do is not to put that person in jail but to offer the inheritance to the person who killed and stole from my family. After many meetings with my brothers and sisters, we decided to give away the money and properties from the inheritance to the cousin who killed and not to put her in prison. We decided peace in death was more important than inheritance, and peace in life was more important.

This story, Rinpoche, is to voice my huge gratitude to you. From the bottom of my heart, thank you so, so much Kyabje Lama Zopa Rinpoche for saving my life and protect my mind all the time. …

Colophon: Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s letter scribed by Ven. Holly Ansett, Nepal, March 2017. Both letters lightly edited by Laura Miller, March 2019.

Watch Lama Zopa Rinpoche teach live from Madrid, Spain, April 26-29:
https://fpmt.org/media/streaming/lama-zopa-rinpoche-live/

Find more advice from Lama Zopa Rinpoche:
https://fpmt.org/teachers/zopa/advice/

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 Tushita Meditation Centre, McLeod Ganj, India, February 2019. Photo by Ven. Lobsang Sherab.

During the 2018 retreat in Australia, Lama Zopa Rinpoche gave advice on how to prepare for retreat, captured in this excerpt and video clip:

… I escaped [Tibet] through Bhutan to Buxa [Duar in India]. For eight years I lived in Buxa. Other monks lived there for ten years then went to Bylakuppe and Mundgod. I received teachings from my gurus and took part in debating. Of course my study was like that of a little child. My study was just child’s study, so nothing much.

So after coming back to Lawudo [in Nepal], reading the text of the Kadampa geshes’ advice on how to practice Dharma [Opening the Door of Dharma: The Initial Stage of Training the Mind in the Graduated Path to Enlightenment, a collection of advice by Lodro Gyaltsen] I checked back over my life.

All those lives I checked back, which become Dharma or not, what became Dharma or not, what I did and whether it became Dharma or not. When I looked back by reading that text, nothing became Dharma. All those things I did didn’t become Dharma. I realized that nothing became Dharma.

Then because of that I was able to clean my mind like you clean the room, like you clean the house of garbage—it makes the house dirty so you clean it out. I was able to clean my mind by reading that.

Then I began the Vajrayogini retreat, my first time. So because of that, it was unbelievable, incredible, hard to believe the first day, hard to believe that if my life could be like this, my whole life could be like this. I couldn’t believe, incredible peace and happiness, peace was incredible, unbelievable, couldn’t believe the whole life could be like that. The retreat became really very pure because of having read that text and cleaned out the garbage of the mind.

So the garbage is the eight worldly dharmas. This is an idea for you, if you want to do retreat, the best thing is to read this text. I gave teachings in Bodhgaya so there is book, what is it called?

Student: The Door to Satisfaction.

Rinpoche: It is not completely translated from the Tibetan text, most has been, but not completely translated. So to read that before doing retreat, my experience is to clean your mind first then you begin tantra retreat, then it becomes clean, very pure. Then you taste the Dharma, your mind becomes Dharma. …

Watch more of Lama Zopa Rinpoche teaching on “Why to Abandon the Eight Worldly Dharmas, How to Prepare for Retreat”:
https://youtu.be/uJzPi45Rc-U

Colophon: Excerpted from Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s teachings at the Great Stupa of Universal Compassion, Bendigo, Victoria, Australia, April 8, 2018. Simultaneously transcribed by Ven. Joan Nicell. Lightly edited by Laura Miller, February 2019.

Find complete videos of Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s recent teachings:
https://fpmt.org/media/streaming/teachings-of-lama-zopa-rinpoche/

Rinpoche teaches in Spain, April 26-29, then leads a Vajrayogini retreat at Institut Vajra Yogini in France, beginning May 10. Public teachings from these events will be streamed live:
https://fpmt.org/media/streaming/lama-zopa-rinpoche-live/

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.