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Lama Zopa Rinpoche reciting mantras and making prayers on stuffed toys before giving them away. The mantras recited on them bless anyone who then sees or touches them, Kopan Monastery, June 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:
Rinpoche begins this teaching explaining that keeping morality is the basis for practicing lojong (thought transformation). The habit for negative karma causes us to suffer in samsara continuously. By practicing the lamrim, with morality as the basis, you develop the inspiration and energy to stop your habit of non-virtue. Instead of becoming habituated toward negative karma, you develop the habit of living your life with bodhichitta and the awareness of emptiness. Everything we see, whatever appears, is a total hallucination based on the habits of our mind. So if possible, we should get into the habit of meditating on emptiness no matter what we are doing. And by developing the habit of bodhichitta, the good heart—wow—this is like making life into a diamond.
In this life we are responsible for our future lives’ happiness and suffering. To eliminate the suffering of future lives we have to stop running toward whatever we think is the best pleasure and following desire without thinking of future happiness or enlightenment. Samsaric pleasures are like a cheating cannibal. At first you completely trust them, think they are very sweet and kind to you, but then after some time they eat you.
To generate real bodhichitta, first you need to have strong renunciation. You need to see sentient beings’ suffering as if you fell into a red-hot fire. And before that, you have to have strong renunciation in your own samsara. With full renunciation of the three kinds of suffering (suffering of pain, suffering of change, and pervasive compounding suffering) comes great compassion for the suffering of others. The more compassion and bodhichitta you have, the happier you are to take responsibility for freeing others from the oceans of samsaric suffering by bringing them to enlightenment.
It is important to continuously have determination to practice your vows correctly and to learn at least the essence of the vows. Even if you don’t learn an extensive explanation of the vows, if you have the essence, then mistakes are not as likely to happen. In order to protect yourself, you have to have a plan for what to do after you ordain. You have to have somebody teaching you and guiding you. One of the purposes of reciting Six-Session Guru Yoga is to go over the vows you have taken.
There are many purification practices one can engage in to purify negative karma created: self-initiation, prostrations to the Thirty-Five Buddhas, Vajrasattva practice, tsog offering, and reciting mantras. You also need to know the four doors for creating downfalls (breaking vows): lack of conscientiousness, lack of respect, not understanding the vow, and having many delusions. Even if you don’t know the vows extensively, understanding the essence is very important.
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 “The Benefits of Keeping Vows and the Shortcomings of Degenerating Them”:
https://youtu.be/rqX2BuhPu0k
- Read the transcript of Rinpoche’s teaching
- Dedication verses for COVID-19 Crisis Teachings
- You can find practices mentioned by Rinpoche in the FPMT Foundation Store
- For more on mantras, see our Mantras resource page
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.