receive our newsletters
join Friends of FPMT
Lama Zopa Rinpoche, Geshe Wangchen and Geshe Tharchin blessing the large Buddha statue at Chandrakirti Centre, Nelson, New Zealand, May 2015. Photo by Ven. Thubten Kunsang.
“First, the I from beginningless rebirths – the way the I is perceived by us, it appears to us as truly existent, existing from its own side,” taught Lama Zopa Rinpoche at a refuge ceremony at Amitabha Buddhist Centre, Singapore in March 2013. “The real I appears like that. The real I is not in the head, not in the legs, not in the toes, not in the head, not in the brain, not in the nose, not in the ears, not in the fingers. The real I is not in the toes, not in the legs, not in the stomach, and not in the kaka. You are not living in the kaka. The real I is not living in your throat; it’s not in the beating heart. What else is there? The real I is not in the lungs. We can’t find it; we can’t find any details; we can’t find it in any detailed place. When we check, the real I is not anywhere. Normally we think it is here, we point here [to the chest]. Happy or sad, we point here. Or if somebody says: “Are you telling me? Me!” We always point there.
“When we don’t examine, when we are not aware, it is like that. We are following the wrong concept, ignorance, holding I, action, object, everything, as truly existent, in particular, somewhere in the chest, somewhere there. But when we look for it; when we check in the heart, liver, lungs, the real I is nowhere to be found.
“For this real I to be happy, we do all kinds of things. If we have power, we make wars and kill millions, millions, millions of people. This has happened already, many times in this world. That is in a big way. Then in a small way, we kill the enemy to get happiness for this I, for the real I. But when we look for it, if we go through an x-ray or we are in the hospital and our body is cut open, we cannot find it. But believing it is there, we kill many millions of people in the world, or we kill just one person, the enemy. Killing, stealing, sexual misconduct, telling lies, all the alcohol – all this is to get happiness for this real I, which is not there. From the hair down to the toes, it cannot be found at all.
“In daily life, the hallucination is there, somewhere there, in the chest, one hundred percent, no question. No question, we believe it one hundred percent. Then we do everything for that, to get happiness for that – even negative karma, anything, telling lies, cheating. Our whole life is spent like that, to get happiness for this I. Even in business, we cheat others to get happiness for this I. If somebody criticizes us or blames us, then we make a court case and we put them in prison. We spend so much money on court cases, to put others in prison, we do anything we can to the person we don’t like or who harms us.
“Can you imagine, how we use our whole life is like that, to get happiness for the real I which we can’t find there? This real I is not there. We can’t find it anywhere. Life is like that, a hallucination, a total hallucination. It is very interesting to really check the life.”
Excerpted from “Seeing How the I Exists” (http://bit.ly/seeing-how-the-i-exists) made available by the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive.
Learn more about Lama Zopa Rinpoche, spiritual director of the Foundation for the Preservation of Mahayana Tradition (FPMT), and Rinpoche’s vision for a better world. Sign up to receive news and updates.
Video of Rinpoche’s teachings from New Zealand, both live and recorded, can be found on FPMT’s Livestream page.
To learn more and offer support to FPMT’s Nepal Earthquake Support Fund, which will be used for immediate relief and rebuilding, visit:
https://fpmt.org/support/socialservices/
For “Prayers and Practice for Earthquake in Nepal,” see:
https://fpmt.org/edu-news/prayers-and-practices-for-earthquake-in-nepal/
For continuing updates and news from Kopan Monastery and other FPMT centers and projects in Nepal affected by the earthquake, please visit our “Updates from Nepal after the Earthquake” page:
https://fpmt.org/nepal-earthquake/