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Lama Zopa Rinpoche teaching at Kopan Monastery, April 8, 2023.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche offered teachings and advice to a group of Vajrasattva retreaters at Kopan Monastery on April 7, 8, and 9, 2023. In his second teaching from this series, Rinpoche discussed the benefits of purification practice, the necessity of pleasing and receiving the blessings of the guru, the importance of meditating on death and impermanence, and continues offering the oral transmission of The Essential Nectar. This was one of the last teaching events Rinpoche offered before showing the aspect of passing away on April 13, 2023.
Mediation on impermanence and death is the most important mediation, Rinpoche stressed:
“You have to be careful with this life, This life has to be the best! You have to live the best, to do everything the best, because a human life is received just about one time. In a human life, you don’t know what will happen. You might think, ‘Oh, I will live for many, many years,’ but your life can be stopped at any time. You can’t say whether it will last even today. You can’t say whether you can still be a human being tomorrow or not. There are many people who will die tonight. Tomorrow morning, when it’s time to wake up, their body is a dead body.
“This will happen to many people tonight. It’s not sure whether you will be in that group. So many people alive today will be dead this year, this month, this week, tomorrow, or even tonight. It’s not sure—you can be dead at any time. I mean, you go to the bathroom, but it’s not sure you can come back. You can go to the kitchen to eat food, but it’s not sure you can come back. You can go to sleep, but it’s not sure you can wake up. It’s like this with everything. Everything. You can’t really tell. Death can happen in any moment. This is the reality. If you check, this is the reality. Impermanence and death can happen at any time. In Buddhism, meditation on impermanence is most important. Meditation on impermanence and death is what makes you begin to practice Dharma, to continue to practice Dharma and achieve realizations of the path, and to complete your Dharma practice. You have to keep this in mind.”
Ignorance doesn’t help death, Rinpoche explained:
“Because most people haven’t met Dharma, they’re ignorant. They try not to think about death, try to block it out, but that doesn’t help. When death comes, the first suffering is separating from the family. People have so much attachment to “my family, my wife.” Second is “my possessions.” Third is “my body,” which has been cherished most, more than all the sentient beings. The first thing is this. They try to ignore death, but that doesn’t help. You have unbelievable suffering.
“They don’t believe in a next life, then the next life comes. Even though, intellectually, they don’t believe in reincarnation, some people intuitively feel that some bad, heavy thing is going to happen after this life. There are people who naturally feel this. There are such people—I’ve met them. Even though, intellectually, you think there’s no reincarnation, but you naturally feel that something very bad is going to happen to you.
“So, when you think of next lives, it’s another world. Since you lived your life with a selfish mind, everything is negative. All your life you harm others, and harm to others means harm to yourself. Your whole life you harm others with your body, speech, and mind—cheating others, killing others—to get happiness and power for you and for your family. If you become the prime minister or president, the whole population becomes upset with you, because you have not looked after their happiness, and everybody protests.”
While continuing to offer the oral transmission of The Essential Nectar (starting at 54:40 in this video), which Rinpoche started the day prior, he stopped to discuss the importance of imprints:
“Imprints are very, very important. If we always think negative things in our life, our mind gets used to those negative things, and negative imprints are left on our mind all the time. What is advertised in the West by businesses in order to make money develops attachment, self-cherishing thought, and so forth. They are advertising objects of attachment. In the West, what is advertised is all the objects to which we’re most attached. They try to advertise in the best way and that’s what people buy. However, watching that and thinking of that leaves negative imprints on the mind. And so much negative imprint affects this life, and then life to life. The negative imprints that are left affect this life, then life to life for eons and eons. That is the wrong effect not the right effect. …
“You have to know how important positive imprints are in making preparation in the mind for enlightenment, for omniscience. They are so important. This mind, which is formless, colorless, shapeless, but able to perceive objects, can create hell, can create samsara, can create nirvana, can create enlightenment. This mind has that potential, negative and positive.”
We invite you to go deeper into the topics presented here, plus many others, by watching Rinpoche’s video below and reading the full transcript of Rinpoche’s teaching.
- Read the transcript of Rinpoche’s teaching.
- Find links to resources to support your Vajrasattva practice in the Foundation Store.
Teachings offered by Lama Zopa Rinpoche to the 2022 Vajrasattva retreatants at Kopan Monastery:
Read a letter from Lama Zopa Rinpoche to a student who offered 100,000 Vajrasattva mantras to Rinpoche:
Lama Zopa Rinpoche was 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.
For more video teachings of Lama Zopa Rinpoche please visit:
fpmt.org/media/streaming/teachings-of-lama-zopa-rinpoche