Lama Zopa Rinpoche in Maratika, Nepal, September 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:

Lama Zopa Rinpoche begins this teaching by explaining that people who don’t understand holy Dharma use prayers to pray for success in this life alone—for their relationships, their children, and other situations that will end at the end of this life. No matter how many degrees they have from Oxford or Cambridge University or how much they study science, they pray for this life only without praying for enlightenment or liberation from samsara or even the happiness of future lives. They don’t know about Dharma, karma, reincarnation, or past and future lives. And if human beings are like this, what about animals? They just run around after food all of the time. This is ignorance.

When you experience happiness, it is due to the kindness of mother sentient beings—every hell being, every hungry ghost, every animal, every human being, every sura being, every asura being, every intermediate state being. When you experience happiness, it is important to think, “I have received this by the kindness of others.” The other thing to think about when happiness occurs is that every happiness is thanks to the kindness of the guru.

Just like your consciousness has no beginning, your wrong concepts—which mean your delusions, ignorance, self-cherishing thought, attachment, and anger—are also beginningless. The antidote to impure appearances is tantra, Rinpoche explains. In tantra you visualize everything as pure—yourself as the deity, the place as the mandala, the beings you encounter as deities, sounds as mantras, thoughts as the dharmakaya. In tantra, the root of samsara is the impure subtle consciousness and wind. The continuation of all the wrong concepts has no beginning, so your suffering of samsara’s continuation also has no beginning. If you can remember that samsaric suffering is beginningless, you will immediately abandon nonvirtue and practice virtue. Once you think about beginningless samsaric suffering, hell, and the sufferings of all the realms, there is no time for self-cherishing, no time for all the negative karma.

In the West, people think, “I am alone, nobody loves me!” If you are Buddhist you must know that numberless buddhas and bodhisattvas cherish you the most! You are never alone. Buddha gave away his wives, sons, wealth, and body for sentient beings—including you! He practiced the six paramitas for sentient beings, including you! Buddha has perfect power—perfect holy body, holy speech, and holy mind—unlike us, who are limited. Buddha’s holy mind is everywhere. Once your obscurations are purified, you will see numberless buddhas wherever you are. Buddha’s compassion embraces all sentient beings, including you, all the time.

From the buddhas, you receive a perfect human rebirth, the happiness of this life, the happiness of future lives, liberation from samsara, and enlightenment. They buddhas are working for you by manifesting in the ordinary aspect of the guru. All of your happiness comes from the guru. This is a very important thing for you to remember!

All of your happiness comes from the guru, but all of your suffering comes from harming others. Shantideva’s Bodhicharyavatara says:

If I hadn’t harmed others,
Nobody could harm me.

That means that if you have problems, suffering, depression, even if somebody kills you, beats you, gets angry at you—this is because you harmed them in the past, in past lives. It could have been numberless eons ago. Sometimes as soon as the person sees you in this life, they shoot you, they are angry with you, even before meeting them in this life.

In the view of your disturbed mind, whatever your delusions believe appears to be good. In the view of anger, you think it is good to destroy and harm others. In the view of ignorance, you think it is good to believe things are real. In the view of pride, you believe that it is good to think about how you are better than everyone else. This is all totally wrong. But in your impure view, you believe what you are doing is good. This is the dance of a crazy person.

Someone who harms you is only an object of compassion. You abused that person in past lives, so now they are creating negative karma by harming you. If you hadn’t ever harmed them in the past, they wouldn’t have to harm you now due to karma! And because of harming you, they will have to get lost in the hole of hell. This is why you must only have patience when someone harms you; don’t harm them back. You must help the person, even just recite OM MANI PADME HUM. Do whatever you can do to create benefit.

If you have depression, cancer, the virus, or any suffering, think, “By experiencing this, may all sentient beings be free from disease, spirit harm, negative karma, defilements, and achieve enlightenment.” This will help you from sinking into despair, thinking, “Why is this happening to me? I’m the only one who this happens to!”

The main purpose of practicing thought transformation is not to stop suffering. While you are suffering with pain or a problem, you use that as the path to enlightenment, to benefit sentient beings and cause them to achieve enlightenment. If the problem stops, you have no condition to use in the path to enlightenment. If you want to stop the problem—you can do this with the power of bodhichitta and the good heart.

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 “What to Think When You Are Depressed”:

• Read the transcript of Rinpoche’s teaching
• Find Rinpoche’s Teachings on Thought Transformation translated into Spanish, Italian, French, Chinese, and Russian
• Dedication verses

Watch more from the video series Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s Teachings on Thought Transformation 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/

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.