Lama Zopa Rinpoche arriving at the teaching venue during the 100 Million Mani Retreat at Istituto Lama Tzong Khapa, Italy, October 2017. Photo by Piero Sirianni.

During a teaching given at the 2017 100 Million Mani Retreat held at Istituto Lama Tzong Khapa, Italy, Lama Zopa Rinpoche explains how we incorrectly see things.

In the text it says that rabrib, or defective view, is like when you have a vision of hair falling down while you are eating food. There is no hair falling down, but you have a vision of that. It is like when you close your eyes—not totally close them, but close them a little bit when the sun is shining—and [it appears as if] there is all kinds of hair going around. So it is the same for rabrib. It appears to you, but it is not there. So that is the example.

The I, action, object, six sense objects, forms, sounds, smells, tastes, tangible objects, senses, everything, even though it is merely labeled by the mind, it doesn’t appear to me or to you, it doesn’t appear as it is—merely labeled by the mind. Right now, it is merely labeled by the mind. Right before this second, it was merely labeled by the mind. But when it appeared to you, it appears from its own side, existing from its own side, as the real one.

Everything—I, action, object, hell and enlightenment, sense objects, senses—as the Heart Sutra says, all that—elements, the four noble truths, the twelve links—so the real one appearing from there, never came from your mind, nothing to do with your mind. Not merely labeled by the mind, not even came from your mind, just from there. Do you understand what I’m saying? It is a total hallucination. It is decorated, projected there by the ignorance.

It is exactly the same as the hallucinated rabrib. It appeared real, but it is not there. What appeared real to you, what you one hundred percent believe, is not there. This is the same, your daily life—your car, your house, Lama Tzong Khapa Institute—what you see as real is not there.

It is the same as rabrib, as I described—what you see with eyes not completely closed, then you see all these things—but it is not there. It is like when you don’t recognize a dream as a dream. You believe it is real. You see a mirage, you believe the mirage is water, but there is no water. You understand?

While you are walking—real trees, real sky, real road, real pizza—all this, everything is rabrib. You have to meditate like that. You have to practice awareness. …

Watch more from Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s teaching on the defective view in this video clip:
https://youtu.be/9BmWT0nDIQc

Colonphon: Excerpted from Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s teaching at Istituto Lama Tzong Khapa, Italy, October 13, 2017. Simultaneously transcribed by Ven. Joan Nicell. Edited by Nicole Parisi-Smith and Laura Miller, August 2018.

Find complete videos of Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s recent teachings:
https://fpmt.org/media/streaming/teachings-of-lama-zopa-rinpoche/

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.