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Lama Zopa Rinpoche, Khen Rinpoche Geshe Chonyi, and Kopan monks offering Most Secret Hayagriva tsog kong puja; this puja was one of a few that was advised by Khadro-la for Rinpoche’s health and long life, Kopan Monastery, Nepal, August 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 explaining why it is important to take blessings from holy beings. Holy beings are free from suffering and the causes of suffering, and have generated bodhichitta and have clear light realizations. For someone with those qualities, when they touch a sentient being, it purifies the negative karma for that sentient being and anyone who is around them. Rinpoche explains that there are eight benefits (which he will explain in a later teaching) of receiving a blessing from a holy being. Rinpoche shows how to put ones hands together to receive a blessing, with palms together and thumbs tucked in, like offering a jewel.
If you follow desire, you cannot find happiness or satisfaction. If you control your mind and practice Dharma, you make your mind content and satisfied, and then you can find happiness. The poor think the rich are happy, and the rich think the poor are happy, but both are suffering. The way to generate renunciation is to renounce pervasive compounding suffering, which is the nature of suffering with the aggregates being totally under the control of delusion and karma. With this suffering, there’s no freedom at all, not even a second free from beginningless rebirths. Every moment is contaminated with the seed of delusion and karma. Then it again happens—from the seed, delusion arises, then suffering arises. Again and again. From that, the suffering of pain and suffering of change arise.
The suffering of being in samsara is like being in a prison, or like being in a fire that you become one with. We don’t recognize it; instead we try to enjoy the big hallucination. Those who have renunciation see that they are sitting on a thorn bush. Only when there are problems do you want to try something else. And until you meet Dharma, you don’t know what else to try. Whatever you do is suffering. Whether you live alone, whether you live in the mountains—wherever you live there is suffering. Whatever you enjoy, it is suffering.
The most important thing in life is to free others from all the suffering in each realm. Bodhichitta is not just expressing some nice words. It is wanting to free all beings from all the suffering. Bodhichitta is the most necessary thing for your happiness and for the happiness of every single sentient being. Not one single sentient being in any realm in numberless universes is left out from this, including your enemies, including the mosquitoes! It is so important to generate the thought to achieve enlightenment for them, to benefit them. There is nothing better. It is the happiest life—not drinking alcohol and doing drugs, or climbing Mount Everest, where an avalanche can happen, or you get lost. What more than the happiness of benefiting others can you look for? Where? This you can do wherever you are.
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 “Why and How to Take Blessings from a Holy Being“:
https://youtu.be/2cPuNH3QGHk
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 translation, 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.