Lama Zopa Rinpoche during a video teaching on thought transformation, Kopan Monastery, Nepal, August 2021. 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 by reminding us of how fortunate we are to wake up in the morning with a perfect human rebirth that is qualified by the eight freedoms and ten richnesses. The life we have is like a candle flame in the wind or a bubble in the water, and can be stopped at any time by death. Rinpoche references verse 55 from Nagarjuna’s Letter to a Friend:

Since there are many harms to life, it is more impermanent
Than even a water bubble that can be popped by the wind.
Therefore, how wonderful it is to have the freedom
To be able to wake up from sleep, breathing in and out.

Last night many people went to bed, thinking they had another day to live, but their body became a corpse instead. However, you were able to wake up. Every day you are able to wake up is a real birthday. If you can recognize impermanence and death, it is like skies of happiness! You didn’t die! You aren’t in hell! You weren’t reborn as a hungry ghost or an animal! You can still use your perfect human rebirth to collect merit and purify negative karma. Even reciting OM MANI PADME HUM without a bodhichitta motivation, you collect more merits than drops of water in the ocean, more than blades of grass growing on the hills.

When your breathing stops it will be difficult for your mind to be happy. A verse from Gungthang Tenpai Dronme’s Verses of Advice for Meditating on Impermanence says:

While you are still breathing,
If you don’t accomplish stable happiness,
When your breathing in and out stops,
It will be difficult for your mind to be happy.

Rinpoche then reminds us of the motivation for listening to these teachings. At this time, while we are still breathing, it is not enough to achieve liberation from samsara for oneself. That alone would be a meaningful life, but it is not sufficient. The main purpose of life is to benefit sentient beings, not harming a single one, and more than that to free them from oceans of samsaric suffering and bring them to enlightenment by oneself alone. To do that, we must achieve full enlightenment. Therefore, with a motivation to accomplish this, we listen to the teachings.

Rinpoche offers advice to the gelongs about what brings happiness according to several verses of the Sutra of Individual Liberation (from sojong). You can hear Rinpoche discuss these verses and his commentary on each starting at 11:50 in the video. 

Without morality, Rinpoche stresses, we cannot accomplish our own work, let alone successfully work for others. “Therefore,” as noted in the Thirty-Seven Practices of a Bodhisattva by Thogme Sangpo (verse 26cd), “to protect morality without wishing for samsara is a practice of a bodhisattva.”

For a bodhisattva, those who offer harm are like a precious treasure (Thirty-Seven Practices of a Bodhisattva, verse 27ab):

For the bodhisattvas who desire the enjoyment of virtue,
All harm-givers are like a precious treasure.

Therefore, cherish evil beings like a precious treasure, as advised in Eight Verses for Training the Mind by Langri Tangpa:

When I see sentient beings of evil nature
Who engage in negative karma and have much suffering,
Since they are difficult to find I will cherish them,
Like finding a precious treasure.

Rinpoche stresses that it is important to understand what this means. People who create harm for others create so much negative karma and have so much suffering. When you see that it is like you have found a precious treasure, a diamond, gold, a sapphire, a wish-granting jewel in the garbage. They are so precious and rare that you must cherish them, like how some cherish money so much! Why? Because by cherishing them you generate strong renunciation of your own samsara and sooo much compassion for them. From that, you generate strong bodhichitta, and from that, quick enlightenment. And with that you can liberate the numberless sentient beings from oceans of samsaric suffering. A jewel or money doesn’t do that, but this type of person can! So cherish them.

Another verse Rinpoche emphasizes in this teaching and suggests we write down in our prayer books is verse 28 from Thirty-Seven Practices of a Bodhisattva:

Since even the hearer-listeners and solitary realizers, who achieve only the works for self,
Are seen to make effort, like putting out a fire on the head,
It is a practice of a bodhisattva to make effort to receive all qualities
For the sake of all transmigratory beings.

Even when you seek liberation for just yourself, when delusion arises, you put effort into getting rid of the delusion, like putting out a spark of fire on your head. But when you do it to liberate every single hell being, hungry ghost, animal, and human being, you do it so they will achieve all the qualities from the Mahayana path, for all of their negative karma and delusions to stop. This is unbelievable! Achieving liberation for oneself is nothing when compared to doing this for numberless beings. You are just one person, but transmigratory beings are numberless. Even mosquitoes and ants are just as important as yourself. So you stop delusions from arising in your own mind for them. It is so important to work for them, to free them from the lower realms and samsara, and to help them achieve enlightenment.

Write the above verse down so you can learn it, Rinpoche says. Otherwise, your motivation will always be controlled by the self-cherishing thought. “Today I don’t feel like it. I don’t want to recite my prayers or OM MANI PADME HUM. I feel too depressed.” Reading this verse helps you remember that you are doing it for all transmigratory beings, not just for yourself.

Rinpoche also suggests writing this verse down so we can remember it (from Shantideva’s Bodhicharyavatara, verse 5.12):

Since the sentient beings who disturb you are like space,
You can never finish destroying them.
But if you destroy the mind of anger alone,
It’s like you have destroyed all outside enemies.

The one enemy you have is inside you—your mind, your anger. How you destroy this enemy is by practicing patience. By controlling the mind, everything else is controlled and you have no fear. The most important practice is to control your mind. Subduing one’s own mind is the teaching of Buddha, the essence of everything.

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 Most Important Practice Is to Control Your Mind”:
https://youtu.be/wX6E2ja5TgM

• Read the transcript of Rinpoche’s teaching
• Shantideva’s Bodhicaryavatara Color PDF translated by Toh Sze Gee
• Eight Verses of Thought Transformation eBook & PDF by Langri Tangpa
• Find Rinpoche’s Teachings on Thought Transformation translated into Spanish, Italian, French, Chinese, and Russian
• Dedication verses for COVID-19 Crisis Teachings

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 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.