The cover photo for Enjoy Life Liberated from the Inner Prison by Lama Zopa Rinpoche; Rinpoche is enjoying the flower offerings at the Jewel, Singapore, 2019. Photo by Ven. Lobsang Sherab.

Enjoy Life Liberated from the Inner Prison is a new book from Lama Zopa Rinpoche.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche, who serves as the spiritual director of the Liberation Prison Project, asked Ven. Robina Courtin, who ran the project until 2009, to compile the more than one hundered letters he had written over the years in response to people in prison who’d contacted him. She edited Rinpoche’s spiritual advice into a narrative that covers all points of the path to enlightenment. 

About the book: “Direct and uncompromising, Rinpoche makes it crystal clear that being in prison is a perfect opportunity for developing the radical approach, perfected by all great Tibetan practitioners, of transforming despair and hopelessness into happiness and liberation.

“The extent of the heartfelt compassion and love that Rinpoche offers the people who write to him is incredible. He empowers them to never give up on the development of their potential and their ability to help others.

“This advice is not just for prisoners. It is for all of us.”

Here’s a short excerpt from Chapter 1:

Prison Is Not the Real Prison

Living one’s life under the control of ignorance is actually the heaviest prison—and everyone is living in it.

The inner prison

People who are not in prison think that only people like you are in prison, but they have no idea about all the prisons they themselves are in. Ordinary people, those who are not practicing Dharma—including people from the courts, the police, kings, and presidents—are actually living in prison. People who are free to travel around, going wherever they want, doing whatever they like, or billionaires who think they have everything, all the desire objects, are all living in prison. Your external prison, the building you live in, is nothing in comparison with their inner prisons! It is very important to look at other sentient beings in this world and see how much they are suffering. They are the real prisoners. There are so many examples of this, people who are suffering so much, their inner life is so miserable, they are crying and unhappy. Wealthy people, for example, having so many things but still not having found satisfaction, can be more unhappy than people who have very little. Even if they’re billionaires, trillionaires, zillionaires, living in a house made of diamonds, with billons of cars, swimming pools, millions of servants—they are not happy. Some years ago, the most successful person of the year was on the cover of Time magazine—successful in making money, that is. After he became rich he couldn’t even go outside, because he was so scared that people would kidnap him. So he stayed inside his whole life, which means it was exactly like living in prison, mentally living in prison, and mentally suffering even more than a person in prison. So much suffering!

The prison of wrong concepts

In fact, we are all in these inner prisons. We are trapped in the prison of wrong concepts: believing that impermanent phenomena are permanent; believing that samsaric temporal pleasure is happiness; believing that the body, which is only a container of dirty things, is clean. There are so many wrong concepts and views, and these prisons are from time without beginning.

The prison of attachment

We are living in the most harmful prison, the prison of attachment, of desire. Normally we live just for this life’s happiness. We look at samsara as if it’s a beautiful park, but in reality it is suffering. When we live with attachment—doing the things that attachment wants twenty-four hours a day, always working for attachment, always clinging to this life—all our actions become negative karma, the cause of samsara. Attachment traps us like a fly trapped in the hot wax of a burning candle. It overtakes us like a giant tidal wave. The result is so many problems, one after the other. Our heart is filled with misery. There is no peace. There is only confusion and dissatisfaction. 

The prison of anger

And when we don’t succeed in getting what our attachment wants, anger arises and we harm other sentient beings, thus destroying the causes of our happiness, our merit and good karma. Our mind is wild, not only now but since beginningless rebirths. We are wild, out of control, like a mad elephant.

The prison of self-cherishing

We live in the prison of self-cherishing, living our life with self-cherishing thought. We feel this self is the most important one, more precious than others, the most precious one among all sentient beings. Perhaps we think that we are the most important one even among all the holy beings, the buddhas and bodhisattvas! When we follow the self- cherishing thought, whatever we do, all the actions of our body, speech, and mind, become an obstacle to achieving happiness and, eventually, enlightenment, and an obstacle to liberating numberless sentient beings from the oceans of samsaric suffering and leading them to enlightenment. …

For more on Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s new book Enjoy Life Liberated from the Inner Prison and to read the complete first chapter:
EnjoyLifeLiberatedFromTheInnerPrison.com

Enjoy Life Liberated from the Inner Prison has been published as a fundraiser for Liberation Prison Project by Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive and sponsored by The Bodhichitta Trust. For the past twenty-five years the Liberation Prison Project has been a lifeline for people in prison worldwide, who turned to it for Buddhist books and spiritual advice in an effort to find meaning in life when everything else was lost.

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.