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Lama Zopa Rinpoche teaching at the fifty-third Kopan lamrim meditation course, Nepal, December 17, 2022.
We bear unbelievable hardships for this body that we cherish more than anything. We keep it clean, spend lots of money on clothes and food for it, spend time exercising, doing hard work for money, and so much worry and fears taking care of the body. This is the same for billionaires and poor people, there is so much discontentment and dissatisfaction, we try to get everything we can from the world, we try to find happiness but we experience continual physical and mental problems, relationship, and business problems. In spite of all these hardships we bear for the body, one day we will die, Rinpoche explains in this teaching given on December 17 from Kopan Monastery during the fifty-third lamrim meditation course. All of these efforts and hardships we undertake for our body, if done with attachment to this life, becomes negative karma. It is so difficult to think of future lives, we can’t bear it. We don’t think of impermanence-death in everyday life. Every day we think we are going to live many years. Even on the same morning that we die, we may think this. We cheat ourselves bearing hardships for this body, which we only have for this one life.
Rather than using this body to obtain things that have no meaning, we can use it and bear all hardships to practice Dharma, for the happiness of future lives. If we postpone our Dharma practice, we have no way of knowing how long we are going to live. Some people think they will practice Dharma only when they are old. But there’s no guarantee we will ever become old.
This body which we bear so many hardships for, and which we cherish more than anything, is the cause of all of our sufferings from beginningless rebirths. Rinpoche shares that the Seventh Dalai Lama, Gyalwa Kelzang Gyatso said, “This body is like a sack filled with khaka.” Rinpoche explains that this means the body is in the nature of suffering. To generate bodhicitta, to generate compassion for numberless sentient beings—this comes from renunciation, realizing that this body is in nature of suffering. By recognizing this we don’t get attached, we are liberated from the suffering body.
Rinpoche explains the benefits of receiving lungs (oral transmissions) and the motivation for receiving them. Rinpoche then offers those in attendance the oral transmissions of “Calling the Guru from Afar,” and the Dorje Khadro fire puja (at 1:30:52 in the video).
We invite you to go deeper into the topics presented here, plus many others, by watching Rinpoche’s video below, and reading the full transcript of Rinpoche’s teaching. An unedited video recording with the live transcription alongside Rinpoche’s teaching is also available.
Watch Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s teaching “Use Your Body and Bear Hardships to Practice Dharma”:
https://youtu.be/9hnSIOQNW1E
This summary of Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s teaching is by Carina Rumrill based on the transcript by Ven. Joan Nicell. Editorial input and additions by Justin Jenkins.
This summary is meant to highlight key topics presented by Rinpoche in the recorded video and is not intended to serve as a full representation of Rinpoche’s teaching, which is best received through watching the video.
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.