Lama Zopa Rinpoche writing out the Prajnaparamita Sutra, Kopan Monastery, Nepal, January 2022. Photo by Ven. Roger Kunsang.

During these difficult times, FPMT Spiritual Director Lama Zopa Rinpoche continues to offer profound advice and inspiration to the FPMT organization. Rinpoche’s message in the FPMT Annual Review 2021: Sharing and Preserving the Dharma in a Changing World focuses on having the correct motivation. He explains how our purpose in life is to benefit every single living being, to cherish and offer compassion to not only those who benefit us, but those who are strangers, and even those who harm us. Here is an excerpt from Rinpoche’s advice:

My Most Dear, Most Kind, Most Precious Wish-fulfilling Ones,

It is so important to continually develop compassion for sentient beings. That is the source of happiness for every single hell being, hungry ghost, animal, human being, sura being, asura being, and intermediate state being.

It is said in the sutra Perfectly Contained Holy Dharma of Arya Compassionate One (འཕག་པ་སྤྱན་རས་གཟིགས་གྱི་ཆོས་ཡང་དག་པར་སྡུད་པ་ལས):

If you wish to achieve enlightenment quickly, do not follow many Dharmas. Follow one Dharma. What is that? That is great compassion. Whoever has great compassion has all the Dharmas of the buddhas in the palm of their hands. They are achieved without effort. In short, great compassion is the root of all Dharma.

It is said in the Middle Gomrim:

Even if you are standing, even if you are going, you should meditate on great compassion toward sentient beings.

This just mentions two activities as an example, but it means all the actions—sleeping, eating, working, reading, writing, everything—should be done with compassion. This is the advice. Especially during that time, you yourself will be at peace and have happiness and other sentient beings won’t receive harm from you.

And it is said in the first verse of the Eight Verses of Thought Transformation, as you know well:

Determined to obtain the greatest possible benefit
From all sentient beings,
Who are more precious than a wish-fulfilling jewel,
I hold them most dear at all times.

This means by cherishing not only the people who help you but even strangers, who neither help or harm you, and then especially cherishing those who harm you—of course, bodhicitta is the best of great compassion—what you get from that person is enlightenment, the total cessation of every mistake, every defilement, and every subtle negative karma, and the completion of all realizations, sang gyä. That is what you get from that person who you call enemy, who abuses you, who harms you with their body, who harms you with their speech, or who harms you with their mind.

As I have mentioned many times in advice given to others, from every sentient being you receive all the past, present, and future happiness, including enlightenment, even the happiness you have in a dream. I can repeat it again here. From this obscured suffering sentient being, even the one who you call enemy, great compassion arises, wishing not only to free sentient beings from suffering but to take that responsibility upon yourself. Then, from there, bodhicitta arises. From bodhicitta, a bodhisattva arises. From a bodhisattva, a buddha arises. A buddha has two actions, one is their own heart’s action and one is within us sentient beings—that is, when we create good karma. So, all our good karma is the buddhas’ actions. Now you can see that from that buddha’s action, good karma, all the past, present, and future happiness, including enlightenment, happened.

Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha, who we take refuge in at the beginning of a practice, cause us to protect karma, liberate us from the lower realms, free us from samsara, and cause us to practice the three higher trainings. And not only that, they cause us to achieve enlightenment by freeing us from being caught in the lower nirvana for many eons. Then they cause us to generate bodhicitta, practice the six paramitas, and so forth. Even these extremely precious ones, Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha, come from every sentient being, from your friends, strangers, and even your enemies. Therefore, the numberless Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha, from whom you get all these benefits, come from this mosquito, from this tiniest insect near you on the table, on humid wood, or anywhere. So therefore, these sentient beings are the most precious, most kind, most dear, most wish-fulfilling. Even from this, it makes you think, “How dare I cause them unhappiness?” There is no way to do that. It is totally opposite: they are to be cherished the most. You can see they are the most important, precious one in your life.

So, as it says in that quotation from Middle Gomrim, all day and night your motivation should be compassion. Whatever action you are doing, you are doing it for sentient beings, dedicating it for sentient beings. …

Read Rinpoche’s complete advice in this years online annual review.

Visit FPMT.org, where you can watch more video teachings from Lama Zopa Rinpoche as part of his Teachings on Thought Transformation and find links to related videos, transcripts, MP3s, and additional practice advice.

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.