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Lama Zopa Rinpoche and monks offer incense puja on top of hill at Kopan Monastery, Nepal, August 2020. Photo by Ven. Lobsang Sherab.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche continues his video teachings on thought transformation from Kopan Monastery in Nepal. Here is a summary of the most recent teaching:
Lama Zopa Rinpoche begins this teaching explaining that we are extremely fortunate to be alive today. Rinpoche shares the news that a young Tibetan nun from Kopan Nunnery, Ani Dechen, died. Rinpoche invites everyone to recite King of Prayers and do Chenrezig practice.
Rinpoche shares several stories of individuals recalling their past lives, including Rinpoche’s own experiences.
The real meaning of life is to benefit sentient beings. It is not enough to achieve the blissful state of peace, liberation from samsara, for oneself, but to free everyone from the oceans of samsaric sufferings and bring them to enlightenment by oneself alone.
One is so lucky to even be able to think about bodhichitta. Even if you don’t have a realization of bodhichitta, to even be able to think of and recite the words is unbelievable.
If you work for an FPMT center, you are practicing guru yoga. If you are a director, you should expect that people will criticize you. If you expect it from the beginning, then it doesn’t become a shock for you. Receiving a billion dollars a day is nothing compared to the benefits of serving the guru. You have to study the subject of guru devotion and relate it to working at a center. Then, you can see that working for a center makes your life most meaningful, not only for yourself but for numberless sentient beings.
For ordinary beings, the meditation on death and impermanence is the most important. By remembering impermanence and death, you conquer laziness and whatever you do becomes holy Dharma. The reality is: by tomorrow your body could become a corpse. You cannot just live a comfortable life thinking, “I won’t die today.” When you think of death and impermanence, there is no choice but to practice Dharma.
Phabongkha Rinpoche explains in Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand: By remembering death, at first, it makes you follow Dharma. In the middle, it persuades your mind in Dharma. At the end, it makes you actualize Dharma, that is, achieve enlightenment.
One must meditate on the aspects of death. For example, meditate on death by visualizing your own death according to the customs of the country in which you live. You must think that death is definite. There are three reasons why death is definite:
- The Lord or Death will definitely come and no condition can stop it.
- Nothing can be added to your life, and it is continuously decreasing.
- Even while you are alive, there is no time to practice Dharma (because your motivation is your attachment to the happiness of this life).
Rinpoche then leads practices for the Kopan nun who died. He advises, “Everybody should pray for her. The Kopan nuns and monks, everybody, should pray for her, and, of course, if possible all FPMT Sangha and lay [people].” King of Prayers and Chenrezig Mantra and Request are then recited. (For links to materials, please see below.)
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 “For Ordinary Beings, the Meditation on Death-Impermanence Is the Most Important”:
https://youtu.be/UN1UInXwQUk
- Read the transcript of Rinpoche’s teaching
- King of Prayers
- Chenrezig Mantra and Request
- Chenrezig Longest Mantra
- Dedication verses for COVID-19 Crisis Teachings
Watch more from the video series Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s Teachings on Thought Transformation during the Time of COVID-19 and find links to videos in translation, transcripts, MP3s, additional practice advice, 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.