Lama Zopa Rinpoche at Kopan Monastery, Nepal, April 2021. Photo by Ven. Lobsang Sherab.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche continues his video teachings on thought transformation from Kopan Monastery in Nepal. A Note About Safety: All who attended this teaching with Rinpoche have tested negative for COVID-19, are wearing masks, and are socially distanced from one another in the room where Rinpoche teaches.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche continues offering advice for Sangha in this new teaching. Here is a summary of it:

Rinpoche begins by explaining that the Sangha should not think of themselves as hopeless, or like garbage. Sangha should realize that they are living the best life as a human being—becoming a hero or heroine.

In this world, if someone has killed thousands of people, big statues may be made of them, and they may be labeled “hero.” However, those who gave the orders to kill—the president, the head of the military, and so forth—have created the same karma as those who did the killing. Rinpoche then explains that even at a five star restaurant where they kill animals to serve as food, when you give the order for them to be killed, it is the same as if you are killing them yourself. Therefore, if a restaurant is vegetarian, this is unbelievably good. It is protection for human beings from this kind of negative karma.

People use animals like tissue paper because they don’t think of karma and future lives, Rinpoche explains. The animals are just like you—they want happiness and don’t want suffering. But because a person wants to make money, they use the animals, they kill them. This is having no understanding of Dharma, of karma. It is only thinking of the people, not the animals. When you go to kill an animal, they make a noise, they move away. You can tell they don’t want suffering! But due to skies of ignorance you don’t have the merit to understand karma. Negative karma is difficult to change. You have to be very careful with it.

When you kill others, you create more and more enemies for yourself. The negative karma increases. If you want happiness and you don’t want suffering, you must eliminate that which causes you to harm numberless sentient beings, such as anger and the self-cherishing thought. Nagarjuna said, “If you kill your anger, you kill all your enemies.” Your anger is your inner enemy, Rinpoche explains. If you get rid of it, then there is no outer enemy. So you must practice patience. And you must rid yourself of the self–cherishing thought and the root of samsara, which is the ignorance holding the I as real, as existing from its own side.

We are the most fortunate to have met the holy Dharma. You have to think like this, Rinpoche emphasizes. Otherwise, even being Sangha, you might not have much interest in being ordained. Then suddenly you die, and that’s it. Finished. While you have this precious human rebirth, practice virtue as much as you can. Rinpoche shares these verses from Shantideva’s Bodhicharyavatara (chapter 4, verses 17–19) on precious human rebirth, which he says are “very, very, very” important:

By my conduct like this,
I won’t achieve even a human rebirth.
If I don’t achieve a human rebirth,
There will only be negative karma; no virtue.

If even when I have the fortune to practice virtue,
I don’t practice virtue;
When I’m totally ignorant and suffering in the lower realms,
At that time, what will I be able to do?

If I don’t practice virtue
And even collect negative karma,
For a hundred times ten million eons
I won’t hear even the voices of the happy transmigratory beings.

Rinpoche explains, it is very important to remember these verses when you meditate on the lamrim. When you meditate on precious human rebirth and think about how you waste your time, remember this. It is very important—write it down in your prayer book!

Enlightenment and hell are in your hands. Happiness and suffering—every hour, every minute—this is in your hands. It depends on how you think. If you think in a negative way, a wrong way, with the wrong concept and hallucination, you create suffering and life becomes a problem. If you think in a positive way it brings happiness to yourself and others. Wow! This totally depends on your mind! Enlightenment or hell is in your hands. 

By practicing patience you bring happiness to the world. If you practice patience and not anger, there is no enemy outside. This brings peace in the world. There are numberless universes. Life to life, you bring peace and happiness to numberless universes and to all the sentient beings. You have to know that you are responsible. Every day, every hour, every second, you have total responsibility.

The real heroes are those who are practicing Dharma. Many people don’t understand Buddhists; they don’t understand Sangha living in the West. They don’t know what you are and don’t like you. They are not attracted to you, don’t want to see you, and think you are very strange. However, you are the real hero! Not like a statue of someone who has killed many people—not like that at all. You are practicing Dharma, guru devotion, renunciation, contentment. Contentment is a great source of peace and happiness to you and others. And you are practicing bodhichitta—wow! This brings all happiness to you and every single being all the way up to enlightenment.

Also, you study emptiness. You meditate on the correct teachings—what Lama Tsongkhapa and Manjushri taught, what Buddha taught. Every time you meditate on emptiness, you are making preparations to realize the Prasangika view, the unmistaken ultimate view to eliminate the root of samsara, which is the ignorance that holds the I as real when it is not. You are gradually realizing emptiness. By continuing that—combining shamatha and the great insight, the wisdom realizing emptiness—you cease karma and delusions. You cease all the causes of samsara and become free from suffering. You achieve total cessation forever! It is not just like a vacation for a week—it is forever. You have to think like that. 

People should build statues as high as Mount Everest of the ordained Sangha. People should explain how monks and nuns live their lives, how they practiced bodhichitta and emptiness, and how they practiced tantra—the quick way to achieve enlightenment and cease all the dualistic views and ordinary concepts, the quick way to achieve enlightenment in one life. Rinpoche urges that Sangha have to feel that they are the heros. “The real hero is you, the Sangha!” Rinpoche exclaims. It is a totally different reality than the ordinary world or what ordinary people think of as a hero.

Whenever anything undesirable happens, remember that this is the result of your karma of harming others. And also, if something good happens, this is because you created good karma by benefiting others. Remember this immediately when something happens. Rinpoche explains that this makes you realize that you need to purify your negative karma and stop creating the negative karma of harming others. Also, by harming others, you make them create the negative karma of harming you! This causes them to disappear from the human world and be born in hell, like falling down into the hole of hell. Therefore, the sentient beings who harm you are only objects of compassion. Even if you recite one mala of OM MANI PADME HUM for them and dedicate for them not to be reborn in the lower realms, even that can help. You do not need to get angry back, they are truly an object of compassion.

Monks and nuns are the real heroes because they are defeating the delusions. What causes all the suffering to you and to sentient beings? Your delusion, the three poisonous minds. You are defeating them. You are the real hero. Those other people who the world calls “heroes” for killing people, they may be leaders, but they are also totally a slave to their egos, totally a slave to the self-cherishing thought, totally a slave to ignorance from beginningless rebirths, which made them kill so many sentient beings. You are the real one defeating the delusion from where all your suffering and other sentient beings’  past, present, and future suffering come from. You are defeating the delusions by practicing morality! By living in ordination! You have to know that! You have to recognize that! That’s why you became a monk or nun. You are a real hero.

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 Sangha Are the Real Heroes Because They Are Defeating the Delusions“:
https://youtu.be/ee-4eC22QJE

• Read the transcript of Rinpoche’s teaching
• Learn more about the monks and nuns of FPMT, including opportunities to offer support and information on Sangha communities and how to become a monk or nun
• 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.