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Lama Zopa Rinpoche with canine friend, Adelaide, Australia, May 2015. Photo by Ven. Thubten Kunsang.
During a teaching in Florence, Italy, in 1990, Lama Zopa Rinpoche taught on tong-len and other topics. Here’s an excerpt from this teaching, recently published on the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive.
“… Everyone wants happiness and does not want suffering. It is for this reason that some people spend their life doing retreat or studying the path, or going to school and then university to get a degree in order to find a job and have a comfortable, happy life without any problems. These things are done with the aim to have a happy life with wealth, power, reputation and so forth. Looking for happiness, you may sit in meditation in your house at certain times each day. However, when there is a problem in our life we have to apply the real meditation, the real Dharma, the real spiritual practice. When we have a problem, that is the time we really have to use meditation. The purpose of doing all these things, sitting in meditation every day, is to help us when we meet difficulties in our life. It benefits us at that time.
“Now, problems don’t come from outside, but from your own mind. From your own side you have looked at the situation as a problem, so it appears to you as a problem. First you look at the situation as a problem, so it then appears to be a problem. How does this happen? You look at the situation as a problem by labeling it, ‘This is a problem.’ When you interpret the situation as a problem and then label it as such, your life situation appears to be a problem. Because you see it as difficult, it appears to be difficult. That is how the problem comes from your own mind. There is no external problem. You made up the problem.
“When you have a problem, for example, some disease, think of all the other people with much greater problems than you, with more serious diseases. By thinking of others with greater problems, you don’t feel so much depression and fear. You feel happier because you don’t have such a heavy disease as those others. Even if you are poor and cannot afford a luxurious, comfortable life, think of those who have a much harder life, who are dying of starvation. You then feel very fortunate that you don’t have such great problems. When you compare your situation with the problems of others like this, you feel happier. When you look only at your present problem, you think it is so great. Even though it is actually a small problem, you make it big. You think, ‘This is unbearable!’ and make it huge. In this way it makes you depressed, more and more unhappy, with more worry and fear. You can see that with an unskillful way of thinking there is unhappiness; with a skillful way of thinking, there is immediate happiness. So, your own mind creates the happiness; your own mind stops the worry, depression and so forth. With your own mind you can do that. …”
You can find the teaching “Taking the Suffering of Others” at:
https://www.lamayeshe.com/index.php?sect=article&id=1055&chid=2599#sthash.L3atZABj.dpuf