receive our newsletters
join Friends of FPMT
Lama Zopa Rinpoche taking blessings from the Sutra of Great Liberation, which he started to an give oral transmission of on Saka Dawa, Kopan Monastery, Nepal, June 2020. Photo by Ven. Roger Kunsang.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche continues his video teachings from Kopan Monastery in Nepal. Here is a summary of the most recent teaching:
Lama Zopa Rinpoche begins this teaching reminding us that our precious human rebirth is more precious than a whole sky filled with wish-granting jewels. With the precious human life, one is able to plant the seed of virtue, supreme enlightenment.
If one has good karma, whatever is wished for can be achieved. However, even skies of wish-granting jewels can’t purify negative karma and give you a perfect human rebirth, liberation from samsara, and enlightenment. With this perfect human rebirth, you can do these things, you can purify negative karma, which causes birth in the lower realms. Due to this opportunity, it is the time to do one’s best: to not be lazy, not be distracted. Right now we are so attached to this life. We have attachment, anger, ignorance, pride, jealousy, and all the delusions. We are experts at following these, all aspects of a selfish mind. We don’t see the mistakes of this or how all of the suffering in samsara comes from I-grasping ignorance. In this way, we are a slave to self-cherishing. The self-cherishing mind is like a dictatorship.
You found a precious human rebirth and this is so precious, unbelievable. So don’t waste it! Doing so is similar to food becoming poison and causing death, like using your human body and life to become firewood in hell.
When the guru is sweet and speaks nice words, gives presents, we are happy and we like them. But if the guru scolds us or they are displeased with us, the tendency is to give them up, throw them away like garbage. How can we achieve enlightenment, or even renunciation, if we give up the guru when the guru does something that our self-cherishing thought doesn’t like?
According to Phabongka Dechen Nyingpo in Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand, there are eight benefits of correctly following the guru:
- You become closer to enlightenment.
- You please all the buddhas.
- You don’t get harmed by maras and evil friends.
- All your delusions and wrong concepts naturally stop.
- All your paths, bhumis, and realizations increase more and more.
- In all lifetimes you are never without virtuous friends.
- You don’t fall down into the lower realms.
- All your temporary and ultimate wishes succeed effortlessly.
Conversely, not following the guru has the following eight shortcomings, also according to Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand:
- If you criticize the guru, you criticize all the buddhas.
- For however many seconds you get angry at your guru, you will be reborn in hell for that many eons.
- Even if you practice tantra, you can’t achieve the sublime realization.
- Even if you practice tantra with much effort, it is like achieving hell and so forth.
- The qualities you didn’t generate before are not generated and the qualities you generated in the past are lost.
- In this life, you are tormented by diseases and so forth.
- In your next lives, you wander in the lower realms for eons and eons.
- In all lifetimes, you will be without virtuous friends.
At the conclusion of this video, Rinpoche gives the lung of Sutra of Great Liberation up to page 22 in the Tibetan text. Rinpoche says he will continue giving the lung of this sutra, a little at a time.
We invite you to go deeper into the topics presented here, plus many others, by watching Rinpoche’s video and reading the full transcript of Rinpoche’s teaching.
Watch Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s teaching “Do Your Best in This Life!“:
https://youtu.be/tUyfKZOjo6s
- Read the transcript of Rinpoche’s teaching “Do Your Best in This Life!”
- Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand by Phabongka Dechen Nyingpo
- Dedication verses for COVID-19 Crisis Teachings
Find more advice and video teachings by Lama Zopa Rinpoche from Kopan Monastery and also links to videos in translation, transcripts, MP3s, and more:
https://fpmt.org/fpmt/announcements/resources-for-coronavirus-pandemic/advice-from-lama-zopa-rinpoche-for-coronavirus/
Practice advice from our teachers, Dharma study-from-home opportunities, and more can be found on the page “Resources for the Coronavirus Pandemic.”
Lama Zopa Rinpoche is the spiritual director of the Foundation for the Preservation of Mahayana Tradition (FPMT), a Tibetan Buddhist organization dedicated to the transmission of the Mahayana Buddhist tradition and values worldwide through teaching, meditation and community service.