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Lama Zopa Rinpoche, Pokhara, Nepal, December 2021. Photo by Ven. Roger Kunsang.
The following video is an Essential Extract from Lama Zopa Rinpoche. Essential Extracts are short videos extracted from a longer teachings that focuses on a specific topic. We have more than two hundred Essential Extract videos available on our website. We also routinely share these Essential Extract videos in blog posts, which include transcripts and links to additional materials. Here is a short Essential Extract on generating the mind of bodhicitta.
In the video, Rinpoche describes how you need to develop unbelievably strong compassion before realizing bodhicitta. The example given is of a mother whose greatly cherishes child falls into a fire. She can’t stand that her child is suffering in the fire for even one second. However many minutes or seconds it takes to save the child, it’s too long for her mind. Rinpoche explains that our minds should be like the mother’s mind: we can’t stand that the countless mother sentient beings are experiencing unbearable suffering for one more second. And on this basis, we develop the effortless wish to achieve omniscience.
In the video Rinpoche is referring to Phabongkha Rinpoche’s commentary on Lama Tsongkhapa’s Three Principal Aspects of the Path. In particular, the commentary is on this stanza from the section “The Definition of Having Generated the Mind of Enlightenment”:
In short, if like the mother whose cherished son has fallen into a pit of fire
And who experiences even one second of his suffering as an unbearable eternity,
Your reflection on the suffering of all mother sentient beings
Has made it impossible for you to bear their suffering for even one second
And the wish seeking enlightenment for their sake arises without effort,
Then you have realized the supreme precious mind of enlightenment.
Watch the video “The Definition of Having Generated Bodhicitta”:
Read the transcript for this Essential Extract:
https://fpmt.app.box.com/s/af91ega3quffors6clch5g2mkak0m4j4
The above video is extracted from a Thought Transformation Teaching video recorded on October 24, 2020, at Kopan Monastery in Nepal. You can find more blogs with short video clips from Rinpoche’s teaching as well as the complete collection of these “Essential Extracts” videos on FPMT.org.
Watch videos from the series Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s Teachings on Thought Transformation and find links to transcripts, MP3s, additional practice advice, and more. Read an in-depth summary of Rinpoche’s thought transformation teachings given in 2020 in the Mandala 2021 article “The Time to Practice Is Now.”
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.