Lama Zopa Rinpoche at Kopan Monastery, Nepal, September 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 discussing how millions of people in the West suffer from depression and that some sadly died by suicide. Rinpoche suggests this is because they don’t have meaning in their lives and they haven’t met the teachings of Buddha, so they don’t know how to live life. When one doesn’t have a heart understanding of reincarnation and karma, one doesn’t know that even though the body stops, the mind continues. According to their incomplete knowledge, a depressed person may believe that when they die, they are finished and don’t exist, and therefore, they no longer suffer from their problems. But that is a mistaken view.

Also, if someone has problems with attachment, the self-cherishing mind, anger, and so forth, then spirits can connect with those problems and invade the person’s mind, Rinpoche explains. Then they don’t know that spirits are influencing their thoughts. So you have to question your thoughts and analyze your decisions—ask, “Why am I doing this?” Otherwise there can be danger to yourself; you can become your own enemy. But with analysis and logic, you can help yourself. When you practice Dharma, especially when you practice bodhichitta, you become a guide to yourself, your own guru. Then you can generate the path.

Because of the virus, Rinpoche explains, he has been discussing lojong, thought transformation. Sentient beings experience so much suffering—depression; the suffering of old age, sickness, death, and rebirth; the suffering of not finding a desirable object or finding an undesirable object; and the suffering of change, that what you believe to be pleasure doesn’t last. We think that we stop one suffering and replace it with pleasure, only to have another suffering emerge, and so on. This is called samsaric pleasure. So you need to analyze and understand that what you label “pleasure” comes from your mind and that it is suffering. Desire and craving bind you to samsara. From beginningless rebirths we have been doing this; your attachment and desire have cheated you. Samsaric pleasures cause you to be reborn into oceans of samsaric suffering.

Because our aggregates are totally under the control of karma and delusion, we experience pervasive compounding suffering. And that is why Buddha has shown the four noble truths. Buddha taught how to get rid of the cause of suffering, which is delusion and karma. The teachings of the Buddha—this philosophy, lamrim is its essence—explain this in detail. This is why one must study—not just meditate, but study the teachings.

All the sufferings in the world, including depression, come from the ignorance that believes that the “I” exists from its own side. Since beginningless rebirths, your hallucinated mind has had this mistaken belief of how the “I” exists. Rinpoche then explains the Prasangika view of the object to be refuted, which is an understanding of how the extremely subtle mind relates to the merely labeled “I,” and how it doesn’t exist at all from its own side.

When you recognize the extremely subtle object to be refuted, when you recognize that what you thought existed from its own side is false, Rinpoche explains, the object to be refuted doesn’t go anywhere, but while you are holding it, you recognize that it is not there. For lower intelligence beings, this recognition is a huge shock because they have been believing the wrong view since beginningless rebirths. For higher intelligence bodhisattvas, tears of unbelievable happiness come.

But even if you have the experience of understanding how things truly exist, if you don’t meditate and don’t have realizations, then outside objects control your mind and the experience goes away. This is why you can’t manage when life changes. You aren’t able to practice Dharma, you aren’t able to control your mind, and outside objects control you. The clouds of delusions come and there is so much suffering.

Buddha revealed how to realize emptiness. If you meditate well on dependent arising, your realization of emptiness becomes correct. Everything that exists is merely labeled by the mind because there is a valid base. Therefore, nothing exists from its own side. Many meditators who don’t have the karma and extensive merits to realize this fall into nihilism and think that nothing exists at all.

Rinpoche concludes by explaining that there are extensive benefits to meditating on dependent arising and emptiness. 

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 Root of All the Suffering in the World Is Ignorance“:
https://youtu.be/wognV3ndrOA

• Read the transcript of Rinpoche’s teaching 
• For more from Rinpoche on the object to be refuted, please see Recognizing the False I
• 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.