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Lama Zopa Rinpoche and Lama Yeshe in group photo for the 16th Kopan Meditation Course, Fall, Kopan Monastery, Nepal, 1983. Photo courtesy LYWA.
Lama Yeshe gave a teaching on refuge, the five lay precepts, the bodhisattva vows and more on December 9, 1983, during the Sixteenth Kopan Meditation Course held at Kopan Monastery, Nepal. This was one of Lama’s last teachings before he passed away in March 1984. Edited by Uldis Balodis. This teaching is now published in the LYWA book: Knowledge-Wisdom: The Peaceful Path to Liberation. Please enjoy an excerpt from this teaching:
Taking refuge is actually very important. Anyway, we do take refuge—in food, clothes, friends and security. We try to be secure, to make life comfortable—this is taking refuge. Even mosquitoes and chicken take refuge. Refuge is not something new. I want you to know this clean-clearly. Even when we are babies we cry: “Ehhhhhh! I want milk; I want milk, Mama!” The baby doesn’t say “milk,” but the “ehhhhhh,” cry is itself the asking for milk and saying, “I’m thirsty.” Everything that we try to do physically or mentally is an expression of trying to take refuge. That’s why taking refuge is not a new thing. It’s important to know that taking refuge is not something new; it’s our trip. We do everything to try to make ourselves happy.
In an industrialized country we take everything—the minerals of the earth, everything—don’t we? This is taking refuge. Those big companies digging for oil are taking refuge, aren’t they? You know what I mean—to make a better world, they say. Maybe it’s true to some extent. All of you appeared here like mushrooms, coming by plane. Maybe those companies worked hard and did research. Anyway, we mean well; everybody means well. We take refuge to make life better, more comfortable, richer or whatever.
I agree we human beings need comfort; I agree we need a peaceful and healthy body. There’s no disagreement with the Western philosophy of having a healthy body; we agree. However, if we take refuge only in a healthy body and forget about a healthy mind, that is unfortunate, because we are forgetting the principal thing, or nucleus of life and we are just trying to do something unimportant, secondary. We should try to put effort into the important things. The Buddhist point of view is that the mind is the most important thing so that whether we are healthy or sick physically, our mind will be healthy and happy. The mind is the most important thing in order to have clarity and satisfaction, because the mind is what has the experience of misery or happiness. That’s why taking refuge in a temporary object is alright; taking the right food and right medicine for our body is important. Please continue to read the entire teaching.
Excerpted from a talk given by Lama Yeshe on December 9, 1983 at Kopan Monastery, Nepal, and published in Knowledge-Wisdom: The Peaceful Path to Liberation.
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Foundation for the Preservation of Mahayana Tradition (FPMT), is a Tibetan Buddhist organization dedicated to the transmission of the Mahayana Buddhist tradition and values worldwide through teaching, meditation and community service.