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Advice from Lama Zopa Rinpoche
Lama Zopa Rinpoche teaching in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, March 2016. Photo by Ven. Lobsang Sherab.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche wrote a letter to to one old student who had broken her arm:
My very dear precious one, most kind one, most dear one, wish-fulfilling one,
How are you? I hope you are well. I am sorry your arm is broken; I will pray for you.
Your breaking your arm is to remind you of the shortcomings of being in samsara – it is exactly like a teaching that you must be free from samsara, liberated from samsara. It is another form of teaching. It is like the guru explaining suffering; it is like the guru reminding you of the suffering of samsara.
It is said in the Kadampa teachings [by Geshe Kharag Gomchung] that:
Bad conditions – these are the guru explaining the nature of samsara and how you need to be free.
The obstacles are persuading you to create virtue.
Sicknesses and spirit possession are the broom cleaning away negative karma.
Suffering is the manifestation of emptiness.
Thank you very much! Take care of your life with bodhichitta, to make it the most beneficial for sentient beings. Even if you have only an hour to live or one day to live, make it the most beneficial for sentient beings.
Thank you very much, I hope to see you soon!
With much love and prayers,
Lama Zopa
Scribed by Ven. Holly Ansett, Sera Je, India, January 2016. Edited for inclusion on FPMT.org.
Learn more about Lama Zopa Rinpoche, spiritual director of the Foundation for the Preservation of Mahayana Tradition (FPMT), and Rinpoche’s vision for a better world. Sign up to receive news and updates.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche at long life puja, Amitabha Buddhist Centre, Singapore, March 2016. Photo by Ven. Lobsang Sherab.
A student asked Lama Zopa Rinpoche for advice after having a mastectomy and experiencing great physical difficultly while on chemotherapy.
My very dear, precious, kind, wish-fulfilling student,
Please recite the Vajra Cutter Sutra a few times. Also, I will do some prayers and recitations for you now.
Also, please recite Guru Shakyamuni Buddha’s name mantra. If you have a thangka or statue, think that Buddha is actually there. Buddha sends nectar with much loving kindness and it purifies you completely. All your disease and spirit harm and where all sickness comes from – delusions and karma – gets purified totally. What has been collected from beginningless rebirths gets completely purified. Recite the name mantra and think this very strongly.
Also, think strongly about the quotations from the Kadampa Geshes, such as the quotation that the bad conditions one is experiencing now are like one’s virtuous friends. Look at it that way, think of it that way.
Then, the next one is “This suffering is a manifestation of emptiness.” Meditate on emptiness. “The ‘I’ is not truly existent” – that is the meditation.
The next meditation is “It is a dependent arising.” (Mainly think about subtle dependent arising, the Prasangika-Madhyamaka view.). So this means: “What is ‘I’ is nothing, except for what is merely labeled – what exists in mere name – by the valid mind on the merely labeled aggregates.”
You can do other meditations on emptiness that are effective for you. Spend a little bit of time on each point. Meditate on how the “I” exists in mere name, merely labeled by the valid mind on the valid base – the aggregates – that is also merely labeled by the mind. Meditate on that.
Then, experience this cancer that exists in mere name, merely labeled by the mind.
Nothing exists from its own side. No cancer exists from its own side. The object also – the cancer itself – exists in mere name, merely labeled by the valid mind. “What I believe as real cancer does not exist at all from its own side; it’s totally empty from its own side.” Meditate on that.
The other thing is to do tong-len. You have probably already received teachings and advice on this, so you can use the Lama Chöpa verse [v. 95] or Nagarjuna’s verse or other different ways.
This is the best meditation to purify from where cancer comes, from the obscurations collected from beginningless rebirths, and to collect more than skies of merits. Each time when you take the suffering of others and the causes with compassion and with loving kindness, and then give away one’s body, possessions, three times’ merit and all the results up to enlightenment, you collect more than skies of merit. Numberless times! Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow! That’s very, very good. It makes you achieve enlightenment in the quickest way; it makes you able to free the numberless sentient beings from the oceans of samsaric sufferings quicker. It means that it’ll be much faster for you to bring sentient beings to full enlightenment: sangye, the cessation of all the obscurations and the completion of all the realizations.
If you can come to India, there is geshe who used to live in Dharamsala called Geshe Tobgye. He is very old and he used to heal many people of cancer by giving mantras. In the meantime, do this practice.
With much love and prayers,
Lama Zopa
Scribed by Ven. Holly Ansett, India, January 2016. Edited for inclusion on FPMT.org.
Learn more about Lama Zopa Rinpoche, spiritual director of the Foundation for the Preservation of Mahayana Tradition (FPMT), and Rinpoche’s vision for a better world. Sign up to receive news and updates.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche and Khadro-la making prayers at Boudhanath, Nepal, February 2016
A student in prison wrote Lama Zopa Rinpoche to ask Rinpoche to be his guru.
My most dear, most kind, most precious, wish-fulfilling one,
Thank you very much for your kind letter. I accept. I am not qualified, but I accept to do what I can.
Please find enclosed the practice that is my advice to do every day. Also, I am sending you some past advice I have given to people in prison, maybe you have read this already.
The way to think is that being in prison can be like being in retreat. People live outside of prison, with all the opportunities and having freedom, but they often don’t practice Dharma. You should think that even though you don’t have freedom, it can be like being in retreat. Being in prison gives you time to meditate on the path to enlightenment; to do purification practices, to purify past negative karma collected since beginningless time; to collect extensive merit; and to meditate on the lam-rim – the graduated path to enlightenment – such as renunciation, the sufferings of samsara, the six realm sufferings, bodhichitta, emptiness and so forth. It gives you time to understand that we have to free the numberless sentient beings from the oceans of samsaric sufferings and to do that we must purify our defilements, which are the causes of suffering, which have caused one to be in prison. Also, we need to collect extensive merit and actualize the path. To do that, we need to meditate on the lam-rim and to have experiences of the lam-rim, such as the six realm sufferings, especially the sufferings of the lower realms and so forth.
The idea is to spend your time in prison practicing Dharma; then there will be great success as it becomes a place of retreat and gives you the opportunity to have mental freedom for yourself. In this way, there is not just the happiness of this life, but the happiness of future lives and liberation and enlightenment.
The main thing is to have peace of mind wherever you practice Dharma and to achieve happiness now and in future lives for oneself and for the numberless sentient beings. This is not just temporary happiness, but ultimate happiness – liberation from the oceans of samsaric sufferings in the six realms, ultimate freedom. And not only that, but the peerless happiness, the total elimination of all the obscurations and completion of all the realizations. You will be able to free them from the oceans of samsaric sufferings and, not only that, bring them to full enlightenment, the peerless happiness.
This is the purpose of being in prison, the ultimate purpose of one’s life in prison. You should know this. It gives yourself, by your mind, total freedom – freedom to achieve enlightenment.
If you can get some Dharma books to study (maybe you can ask Liberation Prison Project if they can send them to you) such as books on the lam-rim, lojong, The Wheel of Sharp Weapons, a commentary on the Heart Sutra, a commentary on the “Eight Verses of Mind Training” and on the “Seven-Point Mind Training” and so forth – read and study these books. [Note: These specific links are offered by the editors.]
The main thing is for you to not see all this – not having freedom – as an obstacle. You should think that you have the best freedom to free yourself and all beings from samsara by practicing the path. This is the BEST OPPORTUNITY!
Please try to think this way.
With much love and prayers,
Lama Zopa
Scribed by Ven. Holly Ansett, Kachoe Dechen Ling, California, United States, November 2015. Edited for inclusion on FPMT.org.
Liberation Prison Project (LPP) is an FPMT international project dedicated to supporting students in prison who wish to study Dharma. Find more Mandala archive stories about LPP online.
Learn more about Lama Zopa Rinpoche, spiritual director of the Foundation for the Preservation of Mahayana Tradition (FPMT), and Rinpoche’s vision for a better world. Sign up to receive news and updates.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche at Amitabha Buddhist Centre, Singapore, March 2016. Photo by Ven. Roger Kunsang.
A student wrote Lama Zopa Rinpoche because he was having a hard time after breaking up with his partner and was finding it hard to practice.
My very dear, precious, kind, wish-fulfilling student,
Thank you very much your kind email some time ago. This time I want to share some quotations with you, so that you can understand more clearly now.
It is said in the teachings [from The Thirty-Seven Practices of the Bodhisattva, v. 9]:
The happiness of the three existences (samsara)*
Is like the water dew on the grass: it is in the nature of phenomena; it perishes momentarily.
That which never changes is the sublime state of liberation.
Seeking this is the bodhisattva’s practice.
What this verse is saying is that in the desire realm, form realm and formless realm (i.e., “samsara”), the happiness there is temporary, not ultimate, not everlasting. Why temporary? Because it is in the nature of suffering: the suffering of pain, suffering of change and pervasive compounded suffering (the suffering of pain and change arise from pervasive compounded suffering). This happiness doesn’t last. The example here is “water dew on the grass.” It can drop down anytime. It can disappear at any moment.
We have to realize that. Otherwise, if we don’t realize the nature of impermanence, then the concepts believing in true happiness and permanence then cheat us, cheat our life. That attachment to the wrong concept doesn’t allow us to achieve liberation from samsara: everlasting happiness. Instead, we’re always hallucinating and then always suffer in samsara.
Please recognize what Buddha has taught in the Dharmapada:
The end of all the collections is finished, the end of rising up is falling down (even a mountain has to fall down, like the highest towers in the world – at the end – disintegrate),
The end of meeting is SEPARATION,
The end of living is death.
Then, from the Dharmapada [v. 182]:
This human body is extremely difficult to achieve.
For those who are definitely dying, so difficult to be alive,
(Even more so,) it is so difficult to hear the holy Dharma (because it’s so difficult for Buddha to descend to the world).
Also it is said, perhaps by Milarepa:
The connection of relationships – one always wants company without separation,
But it is definite one will be separated.
Even desiring to abide always in this comfortable bedding without separation,
But it is definite one will leave from here.
Even desiring to enjoy always the enjoyment of happiness/pleasure without separation,
But it is definite one will lose it.
This is my advice for you to not forget in your daily life and normal-life mindfulness meditation.
With much love and prayers,
Lama Zopa
*The words in parentheses were added to the verses by Lama Zopa Rinpoche.
Scribed by Ven. Holly Ansett, Aptos, California, United States, October 2015. Edited for inclusion on FPMT.org.
Learn more about Lama Zopa Rinpoche, spiritual director of the Foundation for the Preservation of Mahayana Tradition (FPMT), and Rinpoche’s vision for a better world. Sign up to receive news and updates.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche at Maratika Caves, Nepal, February 2016. Photo by Ven. Roger Kunsang.
A student close to passing away wrote Lama Zopa Rinpoche saying she didn’t get to finish her preliminary practices and was not clear what to think and practice.
My most dear, most kind, most precious, wish-fulfilling one,
Please read Practicing the Five Powers Near the Time of Death. Not only read, but really try to understand it.
Regarding your question: it’s OK that you haven’t finished the practices. Focus now on practicing rejoicing, doing a mala of rejoicing in yourself, your own merit, and also a mala rejoicing in others, in all sentient beings’ merit. When you rejoice in all your merit, this means all your past, present and future merit. Then, the second one is all sentient beings’ past, present and future merit. The third is numberless buddhas’ and bodhisattvas’ merit – all their past, present and future merit. Rejoice!
Do one mala of rejoicing for each or even three malas. Do not only do them in the morning, but, if you can, also do them in the afternoon and evening time. You can do it like that three times a day or at least two times a day or at least once a day.
You mentioned you were reciting Migtsema mantra (Lama Tsongkhapa’s mantra). When you are doing this, do the whole Lama Tsongkhapa Guru Yoga with a lam-rim prayer, such as “Foundation of All Good Qualities.”
Don’t worry about not completing the other practices, but try to keep any commitments you have taken from initiations.
The other most essential practice at this time is reciting the names of the 35 Buddhas and Vajrasattva practice. Pay more attention now to purifying negative karma collected from beginningless rebirths from having broken pratimoksha, bodhisattva and tantric vows (if you have taken them). It is so important to purify and the 35 Buddhas are very powerful. You can have your hands just in the mudra of prostration and then, if you have received the initiation, visualize your body as Thousand-Arm Chenrezig. Your body as the deity then fills the whole earth. Numberless Chenrezigs doing prostrations to the merit field. However many there are in the merit field, this is all one’s root guru. With that awareness, recite the names. It’s very, very important, as well as with Vajrasattva practice, to do the four opponent powers; it becomes very powerful purification. Without doing with the four opponent powers, then the practice is not so powerful.
In regard to rejoicing: without merit, there is no success, no happiness. There’s no enlightenment – the ultimate happiness – liberation from samsara, but also there’s not even temporary happiness in this life and the next life. Therefore, merit is sooooo precious, unbelievably precious. Think: “I have collected merit from beginningless rebirths up to now.” Rejoice how wonderful it is! How wonderful it is! Rejoicing means your mind feels happy.
You have to know that this human rebirth comes about just one time and this opportunity to rejoice comes almost just one time. Rejoice in the collected merit. It is also extremely rare, so rejoice in all the collected merit from beginningless rebirths up to now so that your mind feels happy. How wonderful it is! How wonderful!
The first time, when you rejoice in all the merit collected from beginningless rebirths up to now, it doubles. When you rejoice the second time, the merit is multiplied by four. The third time, it is multiplied by eight. All the merit collected from beginningless rebirths up to now – wow, wow, wow! So amazing! When you do one mala, can you imagine? When you do two malas or three malas? Wow, wow, wow, amazing, amazing, amazing! Many people may not know how rejoicing is so important. Even most Buddhist people may not know. Even those who practice Mahayana teachings may not know how important it is.
Lama Tsongkhapa said that to collect merit, the best practice is rejoicing. This was in Lama Tsongkhapa’s “Hymns of Experience of the Path.”
When you rejoice in your own merit, it is like this. So in daily life, we should rejoice. One is able to collect more merit. During the second time, when you rejoice is other sentient beings’ merit, by rejoicing in the merit of those whose level of mind is lower than you, you collect double the merit. If your level of mind is the same as theirs, then you collect the same amount of merit. If their level of mind is higher than yours, then however much merit is collected by them, you get half.
For example, I used to explain to people that there is the Maitreya Project that would be 50 stories high if it were built. And there would be not just that large statue, but there would be many statues inside and so many statues outside. If somebody comes along and rejoices in the merit and if that person’s level of mind is higher than ours, then that person collects double the merit. So however much merit we collect, that person collects double the merit. If that person has the same level of mind and then she rejoices, she gets the same merit as we get having built the main statue and all the other statues. If her level of mind is lower than ours, then that person collects half the merit that we collect having built the statue.
For example, if one who doesn’t have bodhichitta rejoices in one bodhisattva, one gets half of the merit that bodhisattva collects in one day in that one second of rejoicing. Without rejoicing, if you are going to try and collect that much merit, it takes 13,000 years. This is according to Dechen Pabongka Rinpoche in the Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand. So, by rejoicing for one second – even if you don’t have bodhichitta – you collect so much merit. It’s unbelievable, unbelievable, unbelievable!
There are numberless sentient beings whose level of mind is lower than yours, numberless sentient beings whose level of mind is the same as yours, and numberless sentient beings whose level of mind is higher than yours. Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow! When you rejoice, so much merit is collected so quickly and that means more purification; it means quicker freedom from the oceans of samsaric sufferings – not only from cancer – but from the oceans of samsaric sufferings and delusion and karma, and quicker achievement of peerless happiness, the total cessation of all the obscurations and completion of all the realizations: full enlightenment.
It is so important to know how to practice Dharma. I am only talking about rejoicing, explaining how to practice – it is so, so important. For example, there could be one person who lives 100 years – even a Buddhist who relied on Buddha, Dharma, Sangha and practiced the Mahayana teachings – but who doesn’t know about the important practice of rejoicing. However, even if you only live one day but know how to practice rejoicing – wow, wow, wow! The merit collected in that day is so precious. It’s unbelievable, unbelievable, most unbelievable – like skies filled with a billion dollars, filled with wish-granting jewels. It’s more than that. Skies filled with gold, filled with wish-granting jewels is nothing compared to the merit created. It is unbelievable, unbelievable, unbelievable – can you imagine? Merely owning gold, wish-granting jewels, and zillions of dollars cannot help you to be free from the oceans of samsaric sufferings.
Please think about this and read this over and over so that you are really familiar with it.
With much love and prayers,
Lama Zopa
Scribed by Ven. Holly Ansett, Tso Pema, India, January 2016. Edited for inclusion on FPMT.org.
Learn more about Lama Zopa Rinpoche, spiritual director of the Foundation for the Preservation of Mahayana Tradition (FPMT), and Rinpoche’s vision for a better world. Sign up to receive news and updates.
His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Lama Zopa Rinpoche, Blue Mountains, Australia, June 2015. Photo by Ven. Thubten Kunsang.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche has recently said that in order to purify our karma students can do the following practices dedicated for the health and long life of His Holiness the Dalai Lama:
- “Prayer to Guru Rinpoche to Clear Away Obstacles on the Path” (“Barche Lamsel”): the long or the short version
As many people have already been doing and continue to do the long Kshitigarbha mantra to pacify earthquakes, they can also dedicate this practice to His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s long life.
His Holiness is currently resting after receiving treatment at the Mayo Clinic in the United States. He will resume his teaching schedule in March 2016.
On February 4, His Holiness recorded a video message for Losar, Tibetan New Year. His Holiness speaks to Tibetans in Tibet and in exile as well as friends and supporters worldwide from Rochester, Minnesota, US. His Holiness speaks in Tibetan with English subtitles.
More information, photos and updates about FPMT spiritual director Lama Zopa Rinpoche can be found on Rinpoche’s webpage on FPMT.org. If you’d like to receive news of Lama Zopa Rinpoche and FPMT via email, sign up to FPMT News.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche on the beach in California, November 2015. Photo by Ven. Thubten Kunsang.
“Lama Zopa Rinpoche has been bringing it up many, many times and feels that this is extremely important: it is inevitable an earthquake will happen in California and according to Rinpoche it seems next year is quite possible. Rinpoche has checked and below are some things that need to happen as soon as possible,” Ven. Roger Kunsang wrote in an email that went out to FPMT centers, projects and services in California in early November.
“The below needs to be completed by February 2016,” he wrote:
- 1,800,000 recitations of the long Kshitigarbha mantra done as part of a Kshitigarbha practice.
- Taking the Eight Mahayana precepts 300 times.
- Performing the extensive Medicine Buddha puja – ongoing.
- Reading of the Tengyur four times – to be done at Sera Je Monastery.
“We need to accumulate 163,099 mantras weekly – 23,300 daily – by January 31 in order to meet the goal,” said Ven. Tenzin Tsomo at Land of Medicine Buddha. By Tuesday, November 17, about 8,200 long Kshitigarbha mantras have been accumulated.
Kshitigarbha
The advice was given to Bay Area students to do these practices, but Rinpoche said that students around the world can also participate with the mantra accumulation, sending in their counts. “Basically, we need a lot of people to help contribute mantras. To give you an idea, if everyone is willing to commit 21 mantras a day, we still need over 1,000 people,” Ven. Tsomo said.
FPMT Bay Area centers have created a website with more information and ways to make pledges and report mantra recitations; contribute to the Tengyur recitations; and report the taking of the Eight Mahayana precepts. For more and to participate go to:
www.pacifyearthquakes.org
Lama Zopa Rinpoche compiled a new Kshitigarbha practice that is available as a free PDF download for people to do who want to contribute their recitations of the Kshitigarbha long mantra. There is also an MP3 of Rinpoche chanting the long Kshitigarbha mantra.
Rinpoche said that the dedication for all the above practices should be to pacify all earthquakes in California, Nepal and worldwide as well as the normal FPMT dedications.
More information, photos and updates about FPMT spiritual director Lama Zopa Rinpoche can be found on Rinpoche’s webpage. If you’d like to receive news of Lama Zopa Rinpoche and FPMT via email, sign up to FPMT News.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche at Land of Medicine Buddha, California, US, October 2015. Photo by Ven. Thubten Kunsang.
After returning to the United States from South America in early October, Lama Zopa Rinpoche visited Land of Medicine Buddha where he gave this dynamic, seven-minute talk on the significance of Dharma centers.
You can listen to the audio recording of this advice by clicking on the player or clicking on this link:
https://fpmt.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/22/why-we-need-dharma-centers-audio/151006-011-LZR_LC-talk-part-3c_Dharma-Centres.mp3
This audio was recorded during Lama Chopa tsog at Land of Medicine Buddha, Soquel, California, US, on October 6, 2015.
More information, photos and updates about FPMT spiritual director Lama Zopa Rinpoche can be found on Rinpoche’s webpage. If you’d like to receive news of Lama Zopa Rinpoche and FPMT via email, sign up to FPMT News.
Offerings and scores of images of the 35 Buddhas of Confession in Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s room at Buddha Amitabha Pure Land, Washington, US, June 2015. Photo by Chris Majors.
A student wrote Lama Zopa Rinpoche:
You asked me to read an article about how to transform depression into the path and also to concentrate on purification practices like confession to the Thirty-five Buddhas. I did not faithfully do them every day. However, I would like to thank you as you told me my depression and sufferings are a result of purification, of me trying to do something about Dharma.
Since I took refuge, everything in my life has gone wrong: my relationships, my health and my ability to work. I woke up each day and was fearful, wondering how I could cope with another day. However, while all these problems were manifesting, I had incredible opportunities to do retreat and to meet with a lot of holy beings who guided me personally. I also had, and still have, the opportunity to study Dharma. The most important thing, I feel, is that I am glad that I did not give up my lama.
Now after all these years of things going wrong, I suddenly realized that I am happy that all these have happened. It became so clear that everything—friends, relatives, this world and even my body—are all sufferings. I don’t think this is renunciation, but at least now I am recovered from depression and have started to reclaim my life: to eat right, to sleep right, and to start to have the energy and mind to take care of my personal household matters and work hard. Anyway, I just want to thank you and tell you that I truly am happy that I had all of these sufferings. They groomed me for who I am now
Rinpoche responded:
My very dear, precious, kind, wish-fulfilling one,
Thank you very much for your kind letter and I’m so happy that you realized all the difficulties you have been through are positive.
Generally, the whole lam-rim is thought transformation, but there is thought transformation separate from the lam-rim. That thought transformation is when you utilize obstacles to practicing Dharma on the path to enlightenment–then you don’t have obstacles to practice Dharma! You use any difficulties like this for sentient beings to achieve enlightenment, not just temporary happiness and for yourself to achieve enlightenment. It’s unbelievable, most unbelievable and makes your life—even your death—most beneficial for sentient beings. This is what really we should practice.
The Kadampa Geshe Khamlungpa said among his advices: “This present small suffering being experienced purifies past negative karma (collected from beginingless past lives). Therefore, there will be happiness in the future. Therefore, rejoice in the suffering.” This means that experiencing suffering is very good, positive—that’s what he is saying. This is Kadampa Geshe Khamlungpa’s advice. So, all the usual complaints against you then are very positive.
Any praise, any good things are a cause for delusion to rise, so that’s no good and the opposite to renunciation. The bodhisattva Togme Sangpo has advised that whether you experience good or whether you experience bad, it’s all to use for enlightenment. It all depends on which label you chose to give. If you give a bad label to everything, everything becomes bad, becomes lung. So it’s very, very, very good that you took everything, that you understood everything as a way to achieve enlightenment. The way you think helps the mind to be more satisfied; everything brings peace of mind; everything becomes Dharma. That’s very wise; that’s REAL wise. Even for top political people in the world, I don’t think they know this. Take it as positive.
Thank you very much. Have a good life.
With much love and prayers,
Lama Zopa
Scribed by Ven. Sarah Thresher, Root Institute, Bodhgaya, India, February 2015. Edited by Mandala for inclusion on FPMT.org.
Learn more about Lama Zopa Rinpoche, spiritual director of the Foundation for the Preservation of Mahayana Tradition (FPMT), and Rinpoche’s vision for a better world. Sign up to receive news and updates.
One of hundreds of buddha statues at Buddha Amitabha Pure Land, Washington, US, July 2015. Photo by Chris Majors.
A student was going through relationship problems and Lama Zopa Rinpoche offered some advice on how to think while experiencing them:
All the problems are very good because they purify negative karma accumulated in the past. All those difficulties and problems in your life purify past very heavy negative karmas collected in many past lifetimes. And, by purifying those, you will experience much happiness in the future like the sun shining. So, it’s positive.
Remember, you received so many teachings for a long time, and especially on Chöd practice. Chöd should be not just chanting, but practice, especially dealing with all these problems that you are experiencing, difficulties you can utilize as the quickest way to achieve enlightenment for yourself and then free the numberless sentient beings from oceans of samsaric suffering and bring them to peerless happiness, the state of omniscience.
[Contemplate:]Should even all the beings of the three realms without exception
Become angry at me, humiliate, criticize, threaten, or even kill me,
I seek your blessings not to be agitated, but to complete the perfection of patience
That works for their benefit in response to their harm.
There are also some teachings on patience I have given at Root Institute I will send you.
The essence is what is explained in Lama Chöpa:
Even if the environment and beings are filled with the fruits of negativity,
And unwished for sufferings pour down like rain,
I seek your blessings to take these miserable conditions as a path
By seeing them as causes to exhaust the results of my negative karma.
Please take time to think of the meaning.
Scribed by Ven. Sarah Thresher, Root Institute, Bodhgaya, India, March 2015. Edited by Mandala for inclusion on FPMT.org.
Learn more about Lama Zopa Rinpoche, spiritual director of the Foundation for the Preservation of Mahayana Tradition (FPMT), and Rinpoche’s vision for a better world. Sign up to receive news and updates.
Hundreds of tsa-tsas at Buddha Amitabha Pure Land, Washington, US, June 2015. Photo by Chris Majors.
A student completed Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s advice of accumulating 200,000 Vajrasattva mantras and wrote Rinpoche to let him know. Rinpoche responded with thanks and teachings on the power of bodhichitta:
My very dear, most precious, most kind, wish-fullfilling one,
Thank you a billion, million, zillion times for following my advice and doing a 200,000-Vajrasattva retreat and for now doing OM MANI PADME HUM. I’m sure that you must be doing it with a bodhichitta motivation to free sentient beings – numberless hell beings, hungry ghosts, animals, humans, suras and auras – from oceans of samsaric suffering and bring them to the state of omniscience, sangye, elimination of all the obscurations and completion of all the realizations. In that case, with each OM MANI PADME HUM and Vajrasattva mantra, you are purifying the obscurations created over beginningless rebirths and collecting more than skies of merit.
Lama Atisha said in the Lamp of the Path to Enlightenment, quoting the Sutra Requested by Pachin [verses 16-17]:
“If somebody offers buddha fields, buddha worlds, equaling the sand grains of the river Ganga (here, ‘equaling the number of sand grains of the river Ganga,’ when it talks about the benefits of bodhichitta, ‘the river Ganga’ doesn’t mean the Indian river Ganga, it means the Pacific Ocean, the sand grains of the Pacific Ocean) filled up with the seven different jewels like gold, diamonds, sapphires, etc., and offers that to the buddhas, but then somebody puts the palms together at the heart and simply generates bodhichitta, this offering is greater and it has no limit.”
What it is saying is, for example, if you offer buddha worlds filled with the seven different jewels equal to the number of sand grains in your hand, even that merit is beyond our understanding. We can’t figure that merit out. That is unbelievable, unbelievable – most unbelievable merit. Now, here, it is talking about buddha worlds equaling the number of sand grains of the Pacific Ocean filled up with seven different jewels, so there’s no way we can understand the merit. It’s amazing, amazing, amazing, amazing, amazing.
Now, somebody simply puts their hands at the heart and thinks: “May I achieve full enlightenment in order to free all the sentient beings from the oceans of samsaric suffering and bring them to a state of omniscience.” This creates more than skies of merit – much, much, much, greater than the previous example. The merit from the previous example becomes very small by comparison, even though it’s beyond our conception.
Therefore, you have so much to rejoice about in this life.
Thank you so much,
With much love and prayers,
Lama Zopa
Scribed by Ven. Sarah Thresher, Root Institute, Bodhgaya, India, March 2015. Edited by Mandala for inclusion on FPMT.org.
Learn more about Lama Zopa Rinpoche, spiritual director of the Foundation for the Preservation of Mahayana Tradition (FPMT), and Rinpoche’s vision for a better world. Sign up to receive news and updates.
One of hundreds of buddha statues in Lama Zopa Rinopche’s altar room at Buddha Amitabha Pure Land, Washington, US, July 2015. Photo by Chris Majors.
A student asked Lama Zopa Rinpoche a question:
I’m doing my best for my parents and family at this juncture, but we’re going through a very difficult time now. My dad’s business failed and has since chalked up a huge debt. He can’t afford to pay the debt; anytime now, once the bank seizes the property, we’ll be homeless. They are already in their late 60s, turning 70. I don’t think they can face the failure and take it in stride. I’m so sad and stressed out that I can’t do much for them. I’m watching over them for fear that they have suicidal thoughts.
Rinpoche responded:
My very dear, most precious, most kind, wish-fulfilling one,
I got your emails. If you tell your father that there is no need to commit suicide, that I dedicate all my merits to him and to the family, that’s like money, good karma, good luck. He should read, if he can, the Vajra Cutter Sutra three times. Also, I have made prayers. If you can, pass that message to your father, even though he doesn’t like Buddhism or Buddhists. But just pass along the message.
Courage is so important. Committing suicide when some problem comes and you don’t know how to deal with it comes from mental exaggeration. That’s a very ignorant thought that does not think about the next life, that does not allow one to think of the next life. There is continuation of consciousness. Even though the body stops, there’s a continuation of consciousness. Because we are born with suffering, that means there was life before this one. There was life before and this is the result of that life. There was suffering then, so there is suffering now. If the previous life were free from suffering, the oceans of samsaric suffering and their causes – delusion and karma – then in this life there would be no suffering, only ultimate happiness. So the suffering from beginningless lives goes back like this.
If it’s 100 percent certain you are going to go to a pure land or even a perfect human rebirth in the next life, it’s okay to die. But mostly we go to the hells, hungry ghost realm, or animal realm. The suffering there would be the greatest suffering. For example, compared to one small spark of hell fire – to describe how hot it is if it were up here – the entirety of fire from the human world put together, that hotness, is like falling snow or air conditioning. This is just an example of lower realm suffering, especially the hells. Wow, wow, wow, wow; you can’t imagine, you can’t imagine; you can’t imagine. How unbelievable it would be if you were born not in a major hell, but in a secondary one, the hell realm in lava.
So committing suicide is like deceiving yourself to immediately join with the heaviest suffering of the hells after this life. This life – even if you have those failures that are believed in in the West, that are made so much by attachment and delusion – is incredible peace. Committing suicide is like completely deceiving yourself with ignorance. Whenever suicidal thoughts come, the remedy is to think of reincarnation, the continuation of life.
With much love and prayers,
Lama Zopa
Scribed by Ven. Sarah Thresher, Root Institute, Bodhgaya, India, February 2015. Edited by Mandala for inclusion on FPMT.org.
Learn more about Lama Zopa Rinpoche, spiritual director of the Foundation for the Preservation of Mahayana Tradition (FPMT), and Rinpoche’s vision for a better world. Sign up to receive news and updates.