Lama Zopa Rinpoche with young monks and stuffed”friends” with Dharma messages written upon them, Kopan Monastery, February 2021. Photo by Ven. Roger Kunsang.

In an introductory talk at the first Light of the Path retreat in 2009, Lama Zopa Rinpoche explains why everything—good and bad—depends on our mental attitude and why having a good heart wishing to benefit all living beings is so essential. This teachings, which includes stories from Rinpoche’s own early life, is available as the multimedia teaching Everything Depends on Your Attitude. Here is a short excerpt from it:

Our Lives Have Been Most Fortunate

It seems that many old minds have come back to attend this Dharma course, and however our lives have been up to now, that is extremely worthwhile.

I would say that compared to others, our lives have been most fortunate. First of all, many of us have heard the heart of the Buddhadharma, the very essence of the 84,000 teachings of the Buddha, the very precious teaching on the stages of the path to enlightenment (lamrim) many times. We have even heard this from His Holiness the Dalai Lama himself, who is the real living Chenrezig, the Compassion Buddha manifested in the human form of a monk—the aspect that can most perfectly guide us. Just that alone is most amazing and inexpressible. It is the most unbelievable, rare, fortunate, and precious thing that could have happened to us this life.

Then we have met many other great teachers and unbelievably qualified virtuous friends who preserve the whole entire Buddhadharma—the Lesser Vehicle, Mahayana Paramitayana, and Mahayana Tantrayana teachings. Particularly, many of us older students have met and received teachings and initiations from Lama Yeshe, who was kinder than all the numberless past, present, and future buddhas, and whose holy name is extremely rare and difficult to express.

So really, if we look at what has happened to us so far in this life, it is most amazing to have met so many qualified virtuous friends who can reveal the complete path to enlightenment from their own experience. Can you imagine how most unbelievably fortunate our lives have been?

But of course, this incredible opportunity will not last long. It is just like lightning on a very dark night that for a short time reveals everything clearly and is then gone.

Life is not long and we can’t really tell when death will come. There are many conditions for death, like the 400 different types of disease, 360 spirit possessions, 1080 interferers, and these days there are new diseases that were never heard of before like swine flu. (There is no kangaroo flu yet — only pig flu!) Then there is cancer. We hear all the time about this and that friend or family member suddenly getting cancer. Up to now we have been hearing about our family members, friends, students, and others having cancer, but how can you tell that sooner or later other people won’t hear your own name with the word “cancer” next to it and a “has” in between? This happens to many people in the world. Already many older students we have known, who had been studying Dharma for some time, have passed away in different countries. We can never tell. We might be next. That is how life is.

Then there are many other sicknesses. For example, I have diabetes and that brings many symptoms. Sometimes I have been a friend of diabetes and sometimes an enemy. We cannot always live our lives with the concept of permanence, thinking “I am going to live forever.” Well, maybe not “forever”—unless you are on drugs or hallucinating! But anyway, life is very short, and there is not much time left.

Generally, life is very short in degenerate times and even things that are supposed to support life can become the conditions for death. For example, medicines can have side effects leading to death and many people die when their houses collapse or while eating food. …

Rinpoche continues this teaching discussing his experience at the refugee camp Buxa Duar, the early Western supporters and practitioners of Tibetan Buddhism he met in India, the importance of lamrim study and practice, and how we must cultivate the bodhichitta motivation.

Experience Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s entire teaching Everything Depends on Your Attitude in a multimedia format that weaves together video, audio, transcripts, and photos on the topic of one’s motivation, edited by Venerable Sarah Thresher with Megan Evart for the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive:
http://multimedia.lamayeshe.com/everything-depends-on-your-attitude 

There are more than twenty multimedia presentations from the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive for students at any level to explore and deepen their understanding of the teachings of Buddha as shared by Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche.

Currently, Lama Zopa Rinpoche is taking a break from offering his video series Teachings on Thought Transformation during the Time of COVID-19. Find links to the ninety published videos in this series as well as transcripts, MP3s, additional practice advice, and more:
https://fpmt.org/fpmt/announcements/resources-for-coronavirus-pandemic/advice-from-lama-zopa-rinpoche-for-coronavirus/

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.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche and Khadro-la during the consecration of large appliqué thangkas of the Twenty-One Taras and the Eight Taras That Save From Fear in the courtyard outside of the main gompa at Kopan Monastery, Nepal, January 2021. Photo by Ven. Roger Kunsang.

The Six Perfections: The Practice of the Bodhisattvas is a recent book from Lama Zopa Rinpoche, in which Rinpoche walks us through this key Mahayana Buddhist teaching. Here’s an excerpt from Rinpoche’s teaching on the perfection of charity:

Keeping our mind pure—free from pride, miserliness, and so forth—is very difficult for ordinary people like us. If we could give simply, without all these disturbing thoughts clouding our giving, our generosity would be perfect and attaining another perfect human rebirth would be easy. But this is a struggle for most of us. That is why we must always check our motivation and be diligent in observing our karma.

The villagers of Solu Khumbu, where I was born, have a very good custom to protect themselves and others. Because they are incredibly poor, theft is always a problem. Things are often stolen: cooking pots, money—even potatoes. In many villages the people bury pots of their precious potatoes outside to keep them safe, but thieves can generally guess where the pots are buried, and they dig them up. Also, sometimes people borrow things and don’t return them, no matter how much the owner complains and shouts.

In such cases of theft, the villagers often go to a monastery and ask the lama there to say prayers and dedicate the merit of the prayer to the thief, totally offering them that thing. Whether or not this becomes a virtuous act does not depend on the lama but on the mind of the victim. If the person can renounce the stolen object completely and offer it to the thief with compassion, then it is virtuous. The owner needs the object, but the thief also needs it, and so by renouncing it and offering it to the thief with compassion, the dedication becomes a virtuous action.

If somebody stole a hundred dollars from us and we cannot do the practice of dedication—if we cannot take the loss upon ourselves and offer the victory to that sentient being; if we still cling to that hundred dollars—how can we perfect the practice of charity? Even without considering how kind that sentient being has been, how precious they are, we should rejoice that they needed something and now they have it. Like us, they want happiness and do not want suffering—in that way they are completely equal to us—so why can’t they have that hundred dollars? If we were to find a hundred dollars, how happy we would be. If we were to find a thousand dollars or a million dollars, we would be so surprised and excited. We would clap our hands with joy. So why can’t we do the same thing for this sentient being who has come across a hundred dollars?

Learn more about The Six Perfections: The Practice of the Bodhisattvas, including order information, on Wisdom Publication’s website or order from the FPMT Foundation Store.

During February 2021, Lama Zopa Rinpoche is taking a break from offering his video series Teachings on Thought Transformation during the Time of COVID-19. Find links to the ninety published videos in this series as well as transcripts, MP3s, additional practice advice, and more:
https://fpmt.org/fpmt/announcements/resources-for-coronavirus-pandemic/advice-from-lama-zopa-rinpoche-for-coronavirus/

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.

Khadro-la and Khen Rinpoche Geshe Chonyi offering a dharmachakra to Lama Zopa Rinpoche, during a long life puja for Rinpoche, Kopan Monastery, December 2020. Photo by Ven. Lobsang Sherab.

In the following half-hour Essential Extract video, from a teaching Lama Zopa Rinpoche gave in December 2019 at Kopan Monastery, Rinpoche explains the difference between the appearance of our body as a base to be labeled “I,” the label itself, and the mistaken view that this I exists from its own side and that we are the aggregates. He compares this with mistaking a rope at dusk for a snake. Rinpoche emphasizes that everything is empty, but that this does not mean nothing exists. We have to bring the two truths together. For example, when we get angry, we can apply this meditation to realize that the “real I” that gets angry does not truly exist. Then the anger is gone immediately. The same goes for attachment and all delusions. And even birth and death do not exist from their own side. We think we have a “real” son or “real” daughter or “real” wealth. That is impossible, Rinpoche teaches, as there is not even a “real I.”

Watch the video “The ‘Real I’ That Gets Angry Does Not Exist”:
https://youtu.be/Bn7eHOeVU_s

Transcript: Then using the example, the body and mind in your view, the way you think, the way you believe your body and mind is like a piece of rope on the road curled like a snake, different colors and curled. Nang sel … means the way it appears to you, the body and mind are like a piece of rope, a piece of different colored rope curled. That is the appearance, then believing, then you label, because of the way it is curled and the different colors, you see, somebody who doesn’t have clear eyes, shimmering, evening time after sunset, thinks, “Oh, there is a snake.” By labeling “snake” and believing your label, snake, you get frightened. But there is no snake from the tip of the hairs, down to … The piece of the rope, every hair you look at, there is no snake there, but you label [“snake”] because in the evening time, at dusk time, the different colors and the way it is curled, it appears as a snake and then you get fear, terror.

So like that this body and mind are not I. They are not I at all. I told you yesterday or the day before yesterday. You remember I told you? But you label “I” on that and believe that is I, like you label “snake” and the fear comes, like that. It is not I, it is the base to be labeled but not the I.

You remember I mentioned M? There is the base to be labeled “M” and “M” is what is to be labeled. Tag zhi is the base to labeled, and “M” is what is labeled. They are not separate but [they are] two different things. Remember I told you the I and aggregates are two different things but not separate? You must know that, otherwise, you get caught in a hallucination, a wrong concept. You believe the body and mind are I, then all the worry-fear, everything. From that hallucination, wrong concept, hallucination, the ignorance, then all the fear, all the wrong, means all the fear comes.

Then, (Tibetan) then, “you call, you believe that is I, then suffering of pain, suffering of change, pervasive compounding suffering of samsara,” all the sufferings of samsara come in these three, you experience all that suffering. From beginningless rebirths up to now we have been suffering. [That] who made you suffer is the wrong concept, ignorance, believing your body and mind are I. You understand? You should know that. Due to that wrong concept you have suffered from beginningless rebirths. Then again if you don’t realize emptiness in this life, you will suffer again without end. Your wrong concept, ignorance, makes you suffer like by labeling “snake” on a piece of curled rope, then you get all the fear. But the snake you can’t find, it is not there. Like that, the hallucination. That is a very good meditation.

So the different examples how to meditate, there are many. There are many but some I don’t know. I received so many teachings, but due to laziness I didn’t study. I just give you some to meditate on. You understand? The easy ones. Then, that is your wrong concept, ignorance, that makes the suffering of three types—suffering of pain, suffering of change, pervasive compounding suffering—from beginningless rebirth, then again if you don’t realize emptiness, study emptiness, realize emptiness, two truths, [there is that] danger. Therefore, you need to study. You need to meditate. …

Read the complete transcript for this video extract.

Watch more videos from Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s teaching from the 2019 Kopan Course, the annual month-long lamrim course at Kopan Monastery in Nepal:
https://fpmt.org/media/streaming/teachings-of-lama-zopa-rinpoche/kopan-2019/

Find more Lama Zopa Rinpoche Essential Extracts videos:
https://fpmt.org/media/streaming/essential-extracts/

During February 2021, Rinpoche is taking a break from offering his video series Teachings on Thought Transformation during the Time of COVID-19. Find links to the ninety published videos in this series as well as transcripts, MP3s, additional practice advice, and more:
https://fpmt.org/fpmt/announcements/resources-for-coronavirus-pandemic/advice-from-lama-zopa-rinpoche-for-coronavirus/

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.

Lama Yeshe during a family gathering at Vajrapani Institute, California, US, 1983. Photo by Carol Royce, courtesy of Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive.

The Tibetan New Year, Losar, falls on February 12 this year. For FPMT students, this day has additional significance as it commemorates the anniversary of the parinirvana of Lama Thubten Yeshe, who co-founded FPMT with Lama Zopa Rinpoche.

Lama Yeshe’s heart stopped beating just before dawn on Losar, March 3, 1984. He was forty-nine years old. In 1959, Lama Yeshe fled the Chinese Communists in Tibet, going into exile in India. He survived tremendous hardship living as a refugee monk in Buxa Duar, where Lama Zopa Rinpoche became his heart disciple. In 1967, the two lamas began teaching Western students, leading to the establishment and flourishing of Kopan Monastery in Nepal and the FPMT organization throughout the world.

As part of Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s advice on how to celebrate Losar and the Fifteen Days of Miracles, Rinpoche recommends sharing stories and remembrances about Lama Yeshe. Here Rinpoche discusses the qualities of Lama Yeshe during a teaching given at Kopan Monastery in 2009:

Lama Yeshe was kinder than all the three times’ buddhas. For the tantric meditators, when you bring the wind into the central channel, the in-breath and out-breath are equalized, without one being stronger than the other. When the wind abides in the central channel the belly does not move; it stays calm. There’s no breathing through the nostrils during the absorption when the gross mind stops and only the most subtle mind is actualized.

That meditation on emptiness is like an atomic bomb, the quickest way to cease the defilements and achieve enlightenment. That becomes the direct cause of the dharmakaya. My guess is that when the mind becomes extremely subtle, when the gross mind stops, at that time the heart stops beating, there is no rising or falling of the belly and no breathing through the nose. I’m not sure; that’s just my guess.

Externally, what Lama Yeshe manifested was a heart problem. That’s what people saw; that’s what the doctors diagnosed it as. Lama actually used this heart problem that outside people saw for his meditation session. Lama’s meditation sessions were often Lama lying down and people took that to be him resting or sleeping; that was the view of other people. Actually, for Lama Yeshe that was a meditation session. It was a very high tantric meditation, part of the completion stage practice, the practice of clear light and the illusory body, the direct cause of the dharmakaya and the rupakaya. He did this at night and always after lunch. To other people he was resting or sleeping, but it was actually a meditation session.

Lama didn’t show much sitting in a formal meditation posture with eyes closed and so forth. He did sometimes, later, but it wasn’t normal for him. He was a very high yogi, a very accomplished master, so his way of doing this was kind of secret. That is what was happening internally.

Outside, whoever he was with, he fitted in with them. If he was with children, he fitted in with them; when he was with old people he fitted in with them. Whoever came he fitted in with them, acting in a way that was best for them, in order to make everybody happy. Therefore, everybody saw Lama differently. Some people even saw him as a big businessman. But in reality he was a great meditator who had realizations of emptiness and bodhichitta. He realized emptiness while still in Tibet. He said he realized emptiness while they were debating Madhyamaka philosophy many years ago in Tibet. And I remember something happened while we were in Delhi and Lama said he could never get angry at even one sentient being, he could never renounce even one sentient being. That shows he had the realization of bodhichitta a long time ago.

I pushed Lama to come to Kopan to help with the course. Usually I talked about the eight worldly dharmas and the negative attitude and the lower realms, and I’d spend about two weeks or so on that, then everybody got very depressed, by hearing all the negatives. Then Lama Yeshe came and made them laugh, releasing them from that sadness and depression. This is how we did it.

Excerpted from The Path to Ultimate Happiness, teachings given by Lama Zopa Rinpoche during the forty-second Kopan lamrim course in 2009 at Kopan Monastery, Nepal, lightly edited by Gordon McDougall and Sandra Smith, and published by the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive:
https://shop.fpmt.org/-The-Path-to-Ultimate-Happiness-eBook-PDF-_p_3134.html

You can find teachings from Lama Yeshe on FPMT.org and Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive.

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.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche with Khadro-la, Khen Rinpoche Geshe Chonyi, Kopan Lama Gyupas, and Kopan nuns, during consecration of the large appliqué 21 Taras and 8 Taras That Save from Fear thangkas outside Kopan Monastery’s main gompa, Nepal, January 2021. Photo by Ven. Roger Kunsang.

In the following Essential Extract video, from a teaching Lama Zopa Rinpoche gave in December 2019 at Kopan Monastery, Rinpoche explains the wheel of life drawing and reminds us that death can happen at any time. In the drawing you can see that the whole wheel is in between fangs. During our whole life we are between the fangs of Yama. And they can close any time. Rinpoche recalls a couple of events where people have died suddenly and unexpectedly. He strongly encourages us to meditate on death and impermanence. Otherwise you live your live with the concept of permanence, thinking “I will live long,” while wasting time. When you lie in bed, think, “Now I am lying here in my bed, but tomorrow I can already be on the pile of firewood in the cremation ground.” When you think this, attachment and anger have no reason to exist, and the mind is at peace.

Watch the sixteen-minute video “Our Whole Life We Are in between the Fangs of Yama”:
https://youtu.be/8HvK38Cm0HE

Transcript: So, I mentioned that the dongka, this is fangs, like you are in the mouth of Yama, impermanence, nature of impermanence, under impermanence. So holding like this, but anytime can be like this, mouth can close. So anytime death can happen. You never know, never you know. By next time this year, you are somewhere else—you never know—hell or deva realm, you never know where, by this time next year, by this time tomorrow. We can’t say—can close the mouth, you are inside now, between the fangs, but it can close anytime. So that is a very good meditation—it can close anytime. (Rinpoche closes his fingers.) It can close anytime, so death can happen anytime. You never know.

Even recently, I think in America or somewhere, it might be in the house, [someone] just suddenly died, who, I forgot. (Pause) Pende’s mother. Father and mother [were] talking in the house. They were talking to each other, and father did like this (Rinpoche turns his head), during that time mother, dead. They were just talking, the father and mother. Father went this way, then mother dead. So it always happens that.

One student here, she wanted to become a nun so much, unbelievable, so much. Khadro-la would see, of course. She is young, I think didn’t inspire her to become nun. Of course, Khadro-la can see past, present, and future. She [the student] died here in the toilet. She died here in the bathroom. I forgot her name. I have a big buddha in my room, I told them to make for her purification, good rebirth. I was thinking that her father to keep the buddha in the house, but the father didn’t want, so I have it in my room. … (Rinpoche offers more examples, see complete transcript.)

Like that anytime it can happen. I think that is the most important meditation, that is my, well, I haven’t started Vajrasattva, but my last advice is that. To remember, to always remember mindfulness, to always remember impermanence-death, that is my last very important advice, very important advice. I think that was also said by the Buddha, I forget now, to his disciples. Oh, that.

Kadampa geshe Sharawa said, “Even you have one hundred qualities, but you are under one mistake.” (Tibetan) So many, so many degrees from university, all this, all that, so many, like that, wow—but then even Dharma, even Dharma, “Oh, I know this, I know Madhyamaka, I know Pramanavartika, I did this retreat, that retreat, bah, bah, bah, bah.” But if you haven’t thought of impermanence-death, then there is the concept of permanence, so your life is under the control of hallucination. So “even if you have a hundred qualities but you are under one mistake,” so learned in Dharma texts, so many things, but you never thought of impermanence-death, yourself, or yourself, so then always you live with a concept of permanence, “I will live very long, I will live long,” always the concept of permanence. Then your actions of body, speech, and mind don’t become Dharma. You are very learned in Dharma, yes, unbelievable, but you never think of impermanence, your life is impermanence-death, you never think, so “I’m going to live long,” then your actions of body, speech, and mind don’t become Dharma. So here, even you are expert in Dharma but you waste your life. You understand? So like that. Did that retreat, this retreat, bah, bah, bah, but never, your own life impermanence-death, you didn’t think, so always wrong concept of permanence.

That is what Kadampa geshe Sharawa said. Even living in the monastery, doing extensive study, understanding and can explain, but never thought of impermanence-death, so your actions, with the concept of permanence then your actions didn’t become Dharma. Then death happens, then you know you cheated yourself. That is what you come to know, totally. There are more words, but… As I said, as I told before, same thing, even you are not learned in Dharma, nothing, but a lot of degrees, a lot of education in science, this and that, so many things, but never thought your life is impermanent, then suddenly—but you always live in concept of permanence—then suddenly when death happens so regret, so upset, so regret, bah, bah, bah, because you didn’t expect it, bah, bah, bah.

If you normally meditate, or you normally think, mindful in your life of impermanence-death, if you practice mindfulness every day remember, the awareness in that, even when death comes suddenly, you are not surprised. You are not worried because you did preparation. You did preparation because of mindfulness of that, so you did already preparation. So future life, to achieve happiness, body of happy transmigratory being, liberation from samsara, then enlightenment, thinking of impermanence-death, so then you have no worry when time of death comes, the actual time of death comes. Even for business people it is easier, normally you think so therefore it is easier. But normally you don’t think, so then it is incredible fear, bah, bah, bah, can be anger, like the Japanese boy, sssssh, can be incredible fear. Then of course, then, next life reincarnation, bah, bah, bah, good rebirth, higher rebirth, negative karma, lower rebirth, sssssh, there is another one.

So here it says, it is a good body, the body is here now, body is in your bed, body is here, but by this time tomorrow the body can be on the firewood, burned, skull coming out. You see the skull. (Rinpoche snaps his fingers.) Just anytime this can happen. (Rinpoche snaps his fingers.) It is so good, so good even meditating that you are dying, now you are dying. The whole thing, what is going to happen, going to the cemetery, the body by this time tomorrow, cemetery and fire, next year or next month, next week, tomorrow, the body could be there. That is so good, good meditation, so good meditation, that, to meditate, to think that. It is the reality. (Rinpoche snaps his fingers multiple times.) Then attachment to this and that, anger to this, bah, bah, bah, then you have no, there is no purpose to get angry and to be attached. This and that, all the problems, there is no reason to arise anger and attachment. The mind has great peace, free from attachment, free from anger.

Watch more videos from Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s teaching from the 2019 Kopan Course, the annual month-long lamrim course at Kopan Monastery in Nepal:
https://fpmt.org/media/streaming/teachings-of-lama-zopa-rinpoche/kopan-2019/

Find more Lama Zopa Rinpoche Essential Extracts videos:
https://fpmt.org/media/streaming/essential-extracts/

During February 2021, Rinpoche is taking a break from offering his video series Teachings on Thought Transformation during the Time of COVID-19. You find links to the ninety published videos in this series as well as transcripts, MP3s, additional practice advice, and more:
https://fpmt.org/fpmt/announcements/resources-for-coronavirus-pandemic/advice-from-lama-zopa-rinpoche-for-coronavirus/

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.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche circumambulating Boudha Stupa late at night, Nepal, January 2021. Photo by Ven. Roger Kunsang.

Patience: A Guide to Shantideva’s Sixth Chapter is a recent book of Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s teachings on the perfection of patience, a topic Rinpoche has taught on extensively. In this book, Rinpoche gives commentary on the verses on patience in Shantideva’s A Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life. Here’s an excerpt from the chapter “How to Accept Suffering”:

Shantideva next explained that whatever we do will become easier the more we practice it. This is very important advice. Whether something is easy or difficult depends on how acquainted we are with it. It all depends on training. Say we have been living with bugs for a long time: fleas, bedbugs, and so forth. This becomes normal for us. Fleas in our clothes, lice in our hair—they don’t bother us at all after a while. On the other hand, if we have never come across bugs before, if we are used to sleeping in a clean, soft bed and living a very luxurious lifestyle, to encounter bugs for the first time is a great shock. While there are fleas in our house we can’t do anything. We want them killed or we want to buy a new house!

Training the mind in patience can be done for worldly reasons or for the Dharma. I mentioned the people in India who cut and burn their bodies and fast for many days—something we cannot do. They can do this because they have trained their minds to accept that suffering, mistakenly thinking it is worthwhile. It all depends on how the mind—the colorless, shapeless, immaterial mind—interprets things. Something we find impossible to do can be done by somebody else easily. For a person who seeks worldly pleasure, practicing the Dharma is extremely difficult because their mind sees it as difficult. On the other hand, they will persevere for what they dearly want—possessions, reputation, and so forth—no matter how difficult, willingly undergoing hardships and danger.

For a Dharma practitioner it is completely the opposite. All the hard work needed to gain possessions, reputation, and so forth seems utterly pointless, but they willingly accept suffering to obtain the happiness of future lives, liberation from samsara, and enlightenment. Whereas the smallest samsaric thing is unbearable, they are happy to do the most difficult Dharma work.

Shantideva said we should not be impatient with things such as heat, cold, insect bites, and so forth, because if we are, then we will become increasingly intolerant of them. Conversely, we need to slowly build up our acceptance of small sufferings so we can start to accept greater ones.

Things that irritate us now, such as bad weather, can be the beginning of our training, learning to accept them for the sake of other sentient beings because we see the importance of developing patience on our road to enlightenment. Gradually, once we train our mind in these small sufferings, we can learn to become like the Buddha when he was a bodhisattva and give our body to a starving tiger.

Therefore it is greatly worthwhile to train the mind in patience in this way. If we live in a place that is full of snakes, mosquitoes, fleas, and bedbugs, it is like living in a palace full of jewels.

Excerpted from Patience: A Guide to Shantideva’s Sixth Chapter by Lama Zopa Rinpoche, edited by Gordon McDougall, published by Wisdom Publications:
https://shop.fpmt.org/Patience–A-Guide-to-Shantidevas-Sixth-Chapter-eBook_p_3366.html

Watch the video series “Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s Teachings on Thought Transformation during the Time of COVID-19” and find links to videos in translation, transcripts, MP3s, additional practice advice, and more:
https://fpmt.org/fpmt/announcements/resources-for-coronavirus-pandemic/advice-from-lama-zopa-rinpoche-for-coronavirus/

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.

Khadro-la, Lama Zopa Rinpoche, and Ven. Thubten Tendar, Kopan Monastery, December 2020. Photo by Ven. Lobsang Sherab.

Patience: A Guide to Shantideva’s Sixth Chapter is a new book of Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s teachings on the perfection of patience, a topic Rinpoche has taught on extensively. (Perhaps this is not surprising since Rinpoche’s name “Zopa” means “patience.”) In this book, Rinpoche gives commentary on the verses on patience from Shantideva’s A Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life. Here’s an excerpt from the chapter “Overcoming the Wish to Retaliate” where Rinpoche discusses the conventional reason anger is inappropriate:

Ultimately, the enemy who gives harm and the harm itself are both empty. Neither exists inherently in any way. Because we are unable to see it like this, we should train to see things as like illusions, like dreams—maybe like hallucinations that happen when we take LSD! Because everything is dependent on other factors and nothing governs itself, these illusion-like phenomena are nothing to get angry about. It is like in our dreams there might be an enemy, but when we awaken we realize there is no enemy there, existing by its own nature.

The enemy is like a dream enemy, but that does not mean they are actually a dream, that is, nonexistent. When we are meditating on emptiness, we must be so skillful not to fall into nihilism. In his Four Hundred Stanzas, Aryadeva said that believing that nothing exists—including the I and karma—and hence falling into nihilism creates karma heavier than having killed a hundred million people.

If the emptiness of the I meant there were no I at all, either truly existing or merely labeled, then nothing would exist. No suffering would exist; no pleasure would exist. There would be no need to move the body, no need to breathe. Everything would be completely pointless. Everything we do is to attain happiness and stop suffering, but if there were no I at all, none of our actions would have any effect. With no I, why have expensive treatments in hospital to cure the I that doesn’t exist?

Many mistakes arise when we mistakenly think that the I doesn’t exist at all. We meditate to try to attain a peaceful, happy mind, but this I cannot receive any peace because it doesn’t exist. There is no karma, no cause, and no effect. There is no point to anything and no reason to refrain from creating negative actions.

To think that because there is no I, no enemy, no phenomenon, and therefore nothing matters, we deny karma. That is a completely dark mind; it is very dangerous. Emptiness is not nothingness; meditating on emptiness is not watching nothing, like sitting in a helicopter looking at blank sky.

Nothing exists ultimately, but because everything is a dependent arising, everything exists conventionally, existing in dependence on causes and conditions. The enemy, the anger they have, the harm they give us, all arise due to causes and conditions. The suffering we feel from that person’s anger has arisen due to karma, the negative actions we have done in the past, therefore we should not become angry in return.

For instance, it might seem that being criticized is a cause of anger, but if it that were so, then anybody who ever received criticism would have to get angry. That is not so. Somebody could criticize a buddha or a bodhisattva and no anger would arise at all. Even many ordinary goodhearted people will not react to criticism and other harmful actions.

A higher bodhisattva, who has totally renounced the self and only cherishes others, has still to remove the subtle imprints to knowledge, but all the grosser disturbing-thought imprints have been destroyed, so it is impossible to become angry even if somebody tried to harm them. Anger is only a condition; it is not an inherent cause. And because the cause is our own delusion, there is no reason to be angry at the person who has harmed us.

Excerpted from Patience: A Guide to Shantideva’s Sixth Chapter by Lama Zopa Rinpoche, edited by Gordon McDougall, published by Wisdom Publications (WisdomExperience.org).

Watch the video series “Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s Teachings on Thought Transformation during the Time of COVID-19” and find links to videos in translation, transcripts, MP3s, additional practice advice, and more:
https://fpmt.org/fpmt/announcements/resources-for-coronavirus-pandemic/advice-from-lama-zopa-rinpoche-for-coronavirus/

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.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche prostrating to the giant Guru Rinpoche thangka during the Guru bumtsok at Khachoe Ghakyil Nunnery, January 2020

Lama Zopa Rinpoche explains that the solution to our problems is to do purification practice every day. These practices include reciting the names of the Thirty-Five Buddhas while prostrating to them, reciting powerful mantras such as Buddha Shakyamuni’s name mantra, doing self-initiation, and reciting OṂ MAṆI PADME HŪṂ, which purifies not only ourselves but even the microscopic creatures living in our bodies.

In the following short excerpt from Rinpoche’s video teachings on thought transformation, Rinpoche emphasizes that if we know these practices, we should do them now because we can die anytime!

Watch the eight-minute video “Purify Now Because You Can Die Anytime!”:
https://youtu.be/KNcFuxuCcpo

Here is the transcript of Rinpoche’s teaching in this video:

The Solution to Suffering Is to Do Purification Every Day

So therefore, you can see now that purification is so important. The solution is purification every day. Practice as much as possible purification. We are soooooooo most unbelievably, most unbelievably fortunate.

1. Purify by Reciting the Thirty-Five Buddhas’ Names

There are many different buddhas’ names to purify different negative karmas. There are many different mantras that are so powerful, not only Vajrasattva. But the Thirty-Five Buddhas are so powerful. Bah, bah, bah. By reciting [their names] one time, by practicing well the Thirty-Five Buddhas, it purifies the tsham me nga, the very heavy five heavy negative karmas without break: killed father or mother or an arhat, harmed a buddha, [caused] disunity among the sangha. So, that means there is no question about the ten nonvirtuous actions collected in this life and past lives. Then no question. Even the very heavy negative karmas without break, the five, the five heavy negative karmas, even them, they get completely purified, bah, bah, bah, those collected in this life and past lives. Ssssh. Wow, wow, wow.

That’s why Lama Tsongkhapa did so many hundreds of thousands of prostrations by reciting the Thirty-Five Buddhas. He did so many, so much, not just seven hundred thousand, but so many. That’s why in Lama Tsongkhapa’s teachings, the Gelugpa lamas, the lineage lamas, every day they did much prostrations, so many prostrations. I think one lama, I don’t remember the name, Buton Jampa Rinpoche or some lamas do a thousand prostrations a day. Then, many do a hundred prostrations by reciting the Thirty-Five Buddhas. Ssssh.

2. Purify by Reciting the Powerful Mantras

Then there are many mantras, ssssh, very powerful. Even by reciting Buddha’s name mantra:

Buddha Shakyamuni’s Name:

[LA MA] TÖN PA CHOM DÄN DÄ DE ZHIN SHEG PA DRA CHOM PA YANG DAG PAR DZOG PÄI SANG GYÄ PÄL GYÄL WA SHA KYA THUB PA LA CHHAG TSHÄL LO
To [Guru,] Founder, Bhagavan, Tathagata, Arhat, Perfectly Completed Buddha, Glorious Conqueror, Shakyamuni, I prostrate.

Buddha Shakyamuni’s Mantra:

TADYATHA OṂ MUNE MUNE MAHĀ MUNAYE SVĀHĀ

It is said in Kangyur, the Buddha’s teachings, it purifies, by reciting it one time it purifies a billion, 80,000 billion eons of negative karma. Eighty, 80,000 billion eons of negative karma by reciting one time Buddha’s name mantra. You should know that. Everybody should know that. So, take the opportunity, rather than leaving it in the sky! That doesn’t help. You have to practice! Do what you come to know! Practice Dharma! Aaaah. These are incredible methods of sutra and tantra. Bah, bah, bah. Yeah.

3. Purify by Doing Self-Initiation

And those who received a highest tantra initiation, yes, then there is dag jug, self-initiation. You take the initiation yourself. There is a long one, elaborate, middle one, and short one according to your time. It is so good if you break the bodhisattva vow or tantric vow. If you break the pratimoksha, bodhisattva, or tantric vow and general negative karma, it all gets purified. His Holiness does every day Yamantaka self-initiation. His Holiness does it every day. No matter how much busy he is, he does it every morning before he comes out. So, like that, if even His Holiness does it, of course, there is no question that we have to do it.

So, this is the answer of what to do! You have to know this—what to do! Aaaah. Then, yeah, do purification. Aaaah. Purify all the negative karmas you have collected from beginningless rebirths! Beginningless rebirths! Yeah, not just today, not just this life. No. Many people just do this life, maybe. Even that is good but …

4. Purify by Reciting OṂ MAṆI PADME HŪṂ

Then by reciting OṂ MAṆI PADME HŪṂ, wow, wow, wow, that purifies unbelievable, most unbelievable. Purifying yourself, being Chenrezig purifies yourself. Then together are all the simbu nyetri, the twenty-one thousand creatures inside your body living, it is said in a text. So, they all get purified at the same time. So, for example, when you go around a holy object, also they get purified. They get the cause of enlightenment. We carry animals and then we go around for them to achieve enlightenment. The same thing, all the creatures, the twenty-one thousand living inside your body, all those sentient beings get purified and they also create the cause of enlightenment, not only yourself, not only yourself alone. No. You have to know that. Bah, bah, bah.

Do These Purification Practices Now Because You Can Die Anytime!

So, mantras and those things, [reciting] the buddhas’ names, if you heard them, if you know them, don’t leave them just there. No. Practice! Do it now because you can die anytime! Aaaah. You can die anytime. Aaaah. You can die in the middle of the night and the next morning you become a corpse. So, like that, it is never sure, never. Whatever happens to others, it happens to you. So, you can die anytime, so therefore, you must practice now! Just leave it for later, keep it for later, you keep it but don’t practice, that is laziness. Tsk, tsk. Myself too does like that. Many mantras have so much power, so much benefits, but you leave them there. So, you don’t make your life beneficial. Ha-ha. It is like information you found in Skype or something. It is like that, then you leave it there. You didn’t use it. Ha-ha. Okay. All right!

You can find more resources and links on the FPMT Education pages Purification and Mantras.

Watch more from the video series Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s Teachings on Thought Transformation during the Time of COVID-19 and find links to videos in transcripts, MP3s, additional practice advice, and more:
https://fpmt.org/fpmt/announcements/resources-for-coronavirus-pandemic/advice-from-lama-zopa-rinpoche-for-coronavirus/

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.

Long life puja offered to Lama Zopa Rinpoche at Kopan Monastery, December 25, 2020. Photo by Ven. Lobsang Sherab.

On December 25, 2020 a White Tara Long Life Puja was offered to Lama Zopa Rinpoche on behalf of all FPMT centers, projects, services, and students. For seven days leading up to this puja Rangjung Neljorma Khadro Namsel Drönme (Khadro-la), Khen Rinpoche Geshe Chonyi, thirty-five senior monks, and fifteen senior nuns completed many hours of preparation practices at Kopan Monastery in order to make the long life puja as powerful as possible. There were two sessions of White Tara practice a day during which the forty-five to fifty individuals in attendance recited many White Tara and Tara mantras to eliminate obstacles to Rinpoche’s long life. They also recited a special mantra that combines the White Tara mantra with Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s name mantra:

Long life puja for Lama Zopa Rinpoche. led by Khadro-la, Kopan Monastery, December 25, 2020. Photo by Ven. Lobsang Sherab.

Please enjoy this short video of highlights from this most auspicious event:
https://youtu.be/-juSPvEPU3g

Another upcoming long life puja will be offered to Lama Zopa Rinpoche during the third Tibetan month (actual date still to be determined). This will be an Amitayus Long Life Puja and will also be preceded by seven days of preparation practices at Kopan Monastery, led by Khadro-la.

Ven. Roger Kunsang offering body, speech, and mind mandala to Lama Zopa Rinpoche during the long life puja held at Kopan Monastery, December 25, 2020. Photo by Ven. Lobsang Sherab.

All are welcome to participate in this upcoming puja by offering prayers from your heart on the day of the puja or offering any amount towards the puja. We also invite you to rejoice in the completion of the December 25 long life puja, with strong prayers of dedication for Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s long life.

The Long Life Puja Fund always contributes to long life pujas offered to Lama Zopa Rinpoche. You can also learn about the many Charitable Projects of FPMT and discover the many ways the various funds and projects are benefiting others.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche teaching at Khachoe Ghakyil Nunnery, Nepal, October 2020. Photo by Ven. Lobsang Sherab.

For many years, Lama Zopa Rinpoche has called on students around the world to recite the Sutra of Golden Light for world peace. “For anyone who desires peace for themselves and for others this is a powerful way to bring peace that doesn’t require you to harm others, doesn’t require you to criticize others, or even to demonstrate against others. Anyone can read this text, Buddhists and even non-Buddhists who desire world peace,” Rinpoche says in “Recite the Golden Light Sutra for World Peace.”

In a letter to a European MP, Rinpoche wrote about the importance of spiritual power to help difficult situations in countries. Rinpoche says that praying, for example, is such a simple thing that can make things better. Rinpoche also recommended reciting the Sutra of Golden Light.

“For instance, the precious teaching of the Buddha called the Golden Light Sutra could be read in Iraq month after month (not just once). That text has the power to bring world peace and also becomes a healing practice for all the sick people in the city where it is read,” Rinpoche wrote.

“By reading this sutra your life only gets better and better, only goes up, never down, right up to enlightenment. Reading it becomes an incredible protection for the country where it is read and gives incredible power to its king or president. It also enables you to defeat a country’s enemy by making them lose power and unable to attack the country and its leader. If you read this text with mindfulness, you will see there is so much there. It can also help against terrorist attacks—this is all through the spiritual power of the Buddha’s holy words. It fulfills the wishes for happiness of everybody who reads it, now and forever. Their problems are taken care of naturally, with the help of so many devas and protectors who are around to help. This is just what I think and I am expressing it to you, that is all.”

You can find links to the sutra text as well as video of Rinpoche offering the sutra as an oral transmission on FPMT.org’s “Sutra of Golden Light” page. This resource page also has more on the benefits of reciting the sutra and links for reporting sutra recitations and stories from students who have seen the benefits of reciting the sutra:
https://fpmt.org/education/prayers-and-practice-materials/sutras/golden-light-sutra/

To see more advice offered by Rinpoche to politicians, visit “Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s Online Advice Book”:
https://www.lamayeshe.com/advice/advice-politicians

Watch the video series Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s Teachings on Thought Transformation during the Time of COVID-19 and find links to videos in transcripts, MP3s, additional practice advice, and more:
https://fpmt.org/fpmt/announcements/resources-for-coronavirus-pandemic/advice-from-lama-zopa-rinpoche-for-coronavirus/

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.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche offering a teaching to monks during puja on Lama Tsongkhapa Day, Kopan Monastery, Nepal, December 2020. Photo by Ven. Lobsang Sherab.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche hand wrote a card with extensive advice for a young student in January 2011. The following advice was extracted from Rinpoche’s card.

Here I want to say something. It’s very, very important to learn to benefit and not harm your parents, but to help them and make them happy. There are three types of karma. With one type you create the karma in this life and see the result in this life. Even helping in a small way is virtuous; it is powerful and therefore you see the result, happiness, in this life. However, it doesn’t necessarily mean only that. In future lives you will experience the results of one good act to your parents, such as praising them, saying nice things. If you harm them or get angry with them, even a small negative action such as criticizing them results in suffering in this life when you are older, not happiness. You can experience suffering in hundreds, thousands, of lifetimes, from that one act of disrespect.

The other type of karma is created in this life and experienced in the next life. Then there is the karma created in this life and experienced after billions, trillions, of eons. Even a small karma doesn’t get lost if it doesn’t meet opposite conditions. The happiness or suffering will be experienced even after eons.

All living beings experience different kinds of lives: success or failure, being educated, becoming a fool or a beggar, being forgetful or wise. Life can change with all kinds of experiences. It doesn’t stay one way all the time. Then it can also change from this life to the next life—being reborn as a hell being, a hungry ghost, a human being, an animal, a sura or asura, having all kinds of lives. These are real facts and the omniscient one, Guru Shakyamuni Buddha, has explained this. Everything can be checked; it’s not blind faith, it’s not just telling people what to believe.

Every single comfort and service you give to your parents is an unbelievably precious cause of success for yourself in this life and future lives. Buddha has shown the correct life that leads from happiness to happiness to enlightenment. Otherwise, life is totally lost and ignorant, like the moths that fly into candle flames and are burnt. Once the suffering or happiness resulting from an action is being experienced, it’s difficult to stop it at that time.

If suffering comes and you don’t know how it happened, the mind freaks out and suffers so much. By knowing about karma, the cause of that suffering, the mind has unbelievable peace. You should understand that negative karma can be purified, that actions done in the past can be purified. If you learn from Buddhism and have wisdom knowing what is right and wrong—the inner science—it will become more and more clear by checking. It’s different from other religions. The more wisdom you have, then no one can cheat you and there is a direction in life for you to follow. Buddha showed how to check and put this into practice for happiness and success. Buddha showed how to develop happiness in life, so that all your wishes get fulfilled and you fulfill others’ needs through Dharma.

Getting angry is one thing that destroys good karma, the cause of happiness, collected from beginningless rebirth. Hundreds or thousands of eons of merit get destroyed by even one second of anger arising toward someone whose mind is at a higher level than yours. If you are not a bodhisattva, getting angry with a bodhisattva for one second destroys hundred of eons of merits. Getting angry with a buddha destroys unbelievably much more. Unbelievable, unbelievable, unbelievable, unbelievable eons of good karma get destroyed. The most powerful one is the guru, thus anger toward the guru is the worst kind. Practicing patience brings so much peace and happiness from life to life.

By practicing patience and not getting angry, all your merits are protected and you don’t create the cause to be born in the lower realms. One second of anger destroys realizations for hundreds or thousands of eons. So you should live without anger and have a peaceful mind. If there’s only anger, it’s better to not communicate. That helps. Instead of saying something with anger, don’t talk. All actions done with delusion are suffering.

I love you, therefore I am giving you this advice.

This advice “The Wisdom of Dharma” was originally published in “Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s Online Advice Book” on the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive website:
https://www.lamayeshe.com/advice/wisdom-dharma

Watch the video series Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s Teachings on Thought Transformation during the Time of COVID-19 and find links to videos in transcripts, MP3s, additional practice advice, and more:
https://fpmt.org/fpmt/announcements/resources-for-coronavirus-pandemic/advice-from-lama-zopa-rinpoche-for-coronavirus/

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.

A young Kopan monk making light offerings on Lama Tsongkhapa Day, Kopan Monastery, Nepal, December 2020. Photo by Ven. Lobsang Sherab.

“Of course by purifying negative karma collected since beginningless rebirth and by collecting extensive merits, this allows you to have realizations on the path to enlightenment and for your mind to change,” Lama Zopa Rinpoche wrote to a student who offered 100,000 Vajrasattva mantras to Rinpoche. “There is always hope the mind can change, even to achieve enlightenment, so you can achieve a higher rebirth, ultimate happiness, liberation from samsara and enlightenment.”

“Vajrasattva practice is so important generally, and especially nowadays in the world, when there is not only global warming, but many other problems. There are so many other dangers—of war and sicknesses, cancer, and so many people whom you know are dying. There are so many sicknesses and other conditions for dying.”

“This Vajrasattva practice and other purification practices are the ultimate answer, so everything in the world—what you see, every situation—tells you to practice Vajrasattva. To purify and do Vajrasattva practice is the ultimate answer, to stop the cause to be reborn in the lower realms and the immediate [result] is to have a higher rebirth, to make preparation for death and then to meet the Dharma, to meet the virtuous friend who reveals the path to enlightenment. Then to achieve ultimate happiness, to be free from samsara and to achieve enlightenment for the numberless sentient beings and to free them from the oceans of samsaric sufferings and bring them to full enlightenment.”

From “Benefits of Vajrasattva Practice,” posted in Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s Online Advice Book:
https://www.lamayeshe.com/advice/benefits-vajrasattva-practice

You can find resources to support your Vajrasattva practice and other purification practices on the new Practices for Purification page:
https://fpmt.org/education/prayers-and-practice-materials/purification/

Watch the video series Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s Teachings on Thought Transformation during the Time of COVID-19 and find links to videos in transcripts, MP3s, additional practice advice, and more:
https://fpmt.org/fpmt/announcements/resources-for-coronavirus-pandemic/advice-from-lama-zopa-rinpoche-for-coronavirus/