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From Kopan Monastery, Rinpoche offering a talk to Sangha at the beginning of a three-month Vinaya course held at Istituto Lama Tzong Khapa, Italy, March 7, 2022. Photo by Ven. Lobsang Sherab.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche offered this video teaching on March 7, 2022, from Kopan Monastery in Nepal to ordained Sangha at the beginning of a three-month course on the Vinaya being held at Istituto Lama Tzong Khapa in Italy. This teaching contains advice that is useful to all of us, lay and ordained alike. Here’s a summary of the teaching with the video below:
In order to live a meaningful life, we need a precise plan, Rinpoche says. This means establishing a daily intention to improve our lives. For example, while establishing a lamrim motivation for the day, one can make the determination not to be controlled by anger, no matter what happens in life that day. This way, during the day when the conditions arise and you are about to get angry, you can remember what you promised in the morning.
Because our minds have been habituated with anger since beginningless rebirths, anger comes like a tsunami. And it is very dangerous. It destroys our liberation by destroying our merit. It also harms others by causing them to get angry, thus destroying their merit and liberation. Since we have a responsibility for every sentient being, we must keep our minds in peace by practicing loving kindness, compassion, patience, contentment, and especially bodhicitta. Furthermore, all of our happiness, including buddhahood, comes from every sentient being.
Rinpoche then addresses the Sangha directly, explaining that Western Sangha are “the real heroes” because becoming ordained in Western culture is very difficult, and it is also very difficult to keep vows in the West. In our culture we praise people who command armies or participate in killing as heroes, but so much negative karma is accumulated, including suffering in the lower realms for eons. The Sangha, however, make war on the delusions, which are the cause of so much suffering to one’s self and others, and they defeat them. They are the real heroes.
Protecting one’s ordination is preserving the Buddha’s teachings. Buddha said in the Sutra of Individual Liberation that the practice of morality is the Buddha. “Kyabje Phabongkha Dechen Nyingpo said your morality is ku tshab, is Buddha, is a substitute of Buddha, a regent of Buddha. Thinking in that way, you must cherish and protect your morality,” Rinpoche explained.
Morality in a country depends on whether or not there are people there practicing Buddha’s teachings. And the presence of teachings depends on whether or not Sangha are there.
“You abandon your happiness by breaking your morality,” Rinpoche warns. There are so many benefits to living in vows, even for lay people living in vows for one day. Rinpoche then outlines and offers commentary on the four doors for receiving downfalls from breaking vows and offers advice on how to prevent downfalls.
In essence, Rinpoche advises, in each second during this one time we have this human rebirth, if we live with renunciation, whatever we are doing becomes a cause of liberation, not a cause of samsara. Each second of remembering emptiness becomes an antidote to samsara; it destroys the root of samsara—ignorance. And in each second, if you remember bodhicitta, everything you do becomes a cause of enlightenment. This is how you can make your life most beautiful, most meaningful, to yourself and to all sentient beings.
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 this teaching.
Watch Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s teaching “The Western Sangha Are the Real Heroes”
This summary of Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s teaching is by Carina Rumrill, based on the live transcript by Ven. Joan Nicell and checked by Laura Haughey, with editorial input and additions by Laura Miller. This summary is meant to highlight key topics presented by Rinpoche in the recorded video and is not intended to serve as a full representation of Rinpoche’s teaching, which is best received through watching the video and/or reading the full transcript.
Visit FPMT.org, where you can watch more video teachings from Lama Zopa Rinpoche as part of his Teachings on Thought Transformation and find links to related videos, transcripts, MP3s, and additional practice advice, and where you can also discover more advice from Rinpoche specifically for Sangha.
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.