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Lama Zopa Rinpoche teaching from his room at Kopan Monastery, Nepal, April 2020. Rinpoche explains that the teddy bear behind him is wearing a mask because he is afraid to look at the world. Photo by Ven. Roger Kunsang.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche continues his video teachings from Kopan Monastery in Nepal during the coronavirus pandemic.
This video beings with Ven. Thubten Kunkhen of Kopan Monastery giving a short biography of the great yogi Geshe Lama Konchog.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche begins his teaching discussing lojong, or thought transformation. This means transforming all problems into happiness, not temporary happiness or today’s happiness, but ultimate happiness, which is liberation from samsara forever, Buddhahood. To understand the term “enlightenment,” one has to study the meaning of total awakening: that one has completed the realizations and there is nothing more to achieve, nothing more to learn. That means complete peerless happiness, forever.
This perfect, unbelievably rare human rebirth is a one-time opportunity to practice, receive teachings, and actualize the path, Rinpoche teaches. This is why it is so important to bear hardships, however difficult, in order to actualize the path within our mind. Then the mind becomes the path to enlightenment.
We are totally deceived by attachment, which is a hallucinated mind, a wrong concept. If you have not actualized Dharma at the time of death, suddenly you realize that you should have studied Dharma, but there is no time. You realize you should have practiced seriously instead of casually experimenting with Dharma, like you would restaurants or a trip around the world.
Impermanence is easy to understand and, Rinpoche emphasizes, it is so important! It is difficult to control the mind and the delusions that our mind has been habituated with since beginningless rebirths. The time of death is uncertain. The best thing to think is that you might die today or tomorrow. Meditation on impermanence isn’t difficult, but we must think about it from our heart. Awareness of impermanence and death helps us receive realizations and complete the path. Otherwise, if you learn Dharma only intellectually, Rinpoche warns, your whole life is still meaningless actions of nonvirtue.
The purpose of this life is to benefit others. It is unbelievable what one can do. What you do with an ultimate good heart, bodhichitta, makes the best most meaningful life. Wisdom realizing emptiness is the only remedy for the wrong concept from where all suffering comes from—ignorance.
A Buddha doesn’t have negative imprints left by ignorance, which projects the hallucination of true existence. Bodhisattvas, even arya bodhisattvas, do. However, they know it isn’t real. It is like dreaming but knowing you are dreaming. They know it is a hallucination because they know nothing exists from its own side—they have a direct perception of emptiness.
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 “If You Don’t Remember Impermanence-Death, Your Life Becomes a Trip and Wisdom Eliminates the Two Obscurations”:
https://youtu.be/2HEyCke6rTE
- Read the transcript of Rinpoche’s teaching
- The text for the Sur practice referred to in this teaching is forthcoming.
- Recognizing the False I (PDF,.epub, .mobi) is a commentary written by Lama Zopa Rinpoche with a set of short meditations to help students identify the object to be refuted—what Rinpoche calls “the false I”—during reflections on emptiness.
- Dedication verses for COVID-19 Crisis Teachings
Find more advice and video teachings by Lama Zopa Rinpoche from Kopan Monastery during the COVID-19 crisis:
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.