Lama Zopa Rinpoche

Recommendations

Info

Chapter 1. Taking Care of the Mind Thank you very much, everybody I’ve met in this life and in past lives. The reason we are gathered here is because we have met in past lives or past times. So, to all of you, my brothers and sisters, thank you very much for coming and I offer you my best wishes. What are we going to talk about? I think the most important thing in the world is to realize how all our happiness and problems come from our mind—all our hour-to-hour happiness and problems, minute-to-minute happiness and problems, second-to-second happiness and problems come from our mind. Sometimes in certain situations in our life we are able to recognize that thinking one way brings peace to others and ourselves whereas thinking another way brings harm. The way we act with others in any situation determines the outcome. Understanding this shows us that we have total freedom in our hands—freedom to stop problems and freedom to bring peace and happiness to others and ourselves. Even when great anger arises, we can be aware there is a choice. Our usually uncontrollable self-cherishing thought arises, bringing self-concern, anger, pride and so forth, but sometimes that can make us aware that there is a choice. We can choose. We always have the choice of bringing either happiness or suffering to another person, but because of our anger, the wish to hurt, we generally choose wrong. This clearly proves that our mind is the creator of all our day-to-day life’s problems and happiness. Seeing how this life’s problems and happiness come from our mind, we can go beyond that and see that all the suffering we have experienced and will experience throughout all our lifetimes comes from the mind, including the heavier suffering of the animals, hungry ghosts and hell beings. Everything we have experienced in the past and will experience in the future comes from the mind. Samsara is Sanskrit for cyclic existence or circling, and nirvana is Sanskrit for the ultimate, blissful state of peace for ourselves, the total cessation of all the oceans of samsaric suffering. Both samsara and nirvana come from our mind. Enlightenment is the peerless happiness, the state of omniscient mind. The Tibetan term, sang-gyä, means exactly this, the total cessation of all obscurations and the completion of all realizations. Enlightenment also comes from our mind. It does not come from anywhere else, from temples or anywhere outside. It comes from our mind. Every day, every minute, we have either happiness or problems. If we can learn to think in a better way our problems will disappear and we’ll have peace and happiness in our life. But when we don’t change the way we think, problems fill our entire life, day and night. Then we have to go to see psychologists and doctors. Seeing all these specialists makes our life very expensive! On top of the food and household expenses we generally incur there are all these extra expensive doctors’ fees, probably thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of dollars! Life is so expensive because we don’t know how to take care of our mind, we don’t know how to take care of our life. 9
Actually, Dharma practice, meditation—there are many different names—is the best psychology for the healthiest mind. And the healthiest mind allows us to have the healthiest body. This is impossible if we don’t care for our mind, treating it like garbage, throwing it in the bin. Failing to take care of our mind always brings unpleasant results, creating many worries, many problems, one after the other. No sooner have we solved one problem than another arises, on and on, our whole life getting worse and worse. Out of control, we receive more and more bills, incur more and more debt, over and over again. Like that, our whole life passes. The key to happiness is the mind. With the mind, we can switch our life to suffering or we can switch it to happiness, just as we change television channels, choosing to watch programs about fighting and war, or peaceful things, like the nature programs people seem to enjoy. Experiencing happiness or suffering depends entirely on what we do with our mind. Taking care of the mind, taking care of life, means meditating. Practicing meditation should be just that—taking care of our mind, taking care of our life, taking care of ourselves. This is what I’d like to talk about. I don’t know Buddhism well but I can say a few words about what I’m a little bit familiar with. The method to transform the mind Leaving aside the various higher levels of happiness we can obtain in this life and the happiness beyond this life, most people don’t know that even this life’s mundane happiness comes entirely from the mind. All they consider is this life, which might seem long now but is, in reality, very, very short. This becomes very apparent at the moment of death. After having had this human body with all its comforts and pleasures—car, house, family and so forth—when the moment of death arrives everything is gone. One minute we have it and the next it’s gone. This is what we will experience as we die because during our life we never meditated; we failed to make use of this most important psychology to make our mind positive and healthy. This is what the Buddha taught in his fundamental teaching on the four noble truths, the main focus of the Hinayana: true suffering, true cause of suffering, true cessation of suffering and its cause and the true path that leads to the cessation of suffering and its cause. Within this fundamental teaching of the Buddha are the teachings on impermanence and death. As long as we remain unaware of impermanence—not so much gross impermanence but mainly subtle impermanence—we will experience problems with our life, relationships and so forth. In the same way that most people do not understand the mind, they also do not understand death. Yet it is vital to understand what happens at death so that when we are actually in the death process we can be happy. Although we are still not free from death, by knowing about it we can make it most beneficial for ourselves and all the other living beings, who also have to experience the suffering of death. 10
Page 2 and 3: SUN OF DEVOTION, STREAM OF BLESSING
Page 4 and 5: The Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive Bring
Page 6 and 7: 6. The Guru Is the Most Powerful Ob
Page 8 and 9: Editor’s Preface This book is the
Page 12 and 13: We still have to experience death b
Page 14 and 15: In a well-cultivated field, whateve
Page 16 and 17: What a pleasant life we human being
Page 18 and 19: enefit the teachings of the Buddha
Page 20 and 21: Among those fifty-one secondary min
Page 22 and 23: means the cessation of all the gros
Page 24 and 25: Padmasambhava’s ways of diagnosin
Page 26 and 27: Practicing Dharma is subduing our m
Page 28 and 29: from life to life, we will be able
Page 30 and 31: In A Guide to the Bodhisattva’s W
Page 32 and 33: said, that allows them to develop i
Page 34 and 35: contained in the Tengyur, a collect
Page 36 and 37: Thus the misconceptions about Buddh
Page 38 and 39: Not understanding this specific emp
Page 40 and 41: Cutter Sutra eventually does. Then
Page 42 and 43: There are sentient beings who are a
Page 44 and 45: vase, the neck is not the vase, the
Page 46 and 47: 4. The freedom of not being born as
Page 48 and 49: sentient beings, not only to the ti
Page 50 and 51: If Milarepa could do that after kil
Page 52 and 53: All of us, believers or nonbeliever
Page 54 and 55: The need for refuge in our life Per
Page 56 and 57: ▶abstaining from telling lies ▶
Page 58 and 59: Otherwise they come into the kitche
Page 60 and 61:
Our life is so important, so precio
Page 62 and 63:
Even though our mind, or the other
Page 64 and 65:
We will realize this as we are abou
Page 66 and 67:
The emptiness of the Z I want to en
Page 68 and 69:
the greatest problem that affluent
Page 70 and 71:
Without a guru, we cannot be free f
Page 72 and 73:
This is mentioned in Pabongka Deche
Page 74 and 75:
particles of dust of the earth. Eve
Page 76 and 77:
human mother. If we were to sacrifi
Page 78 and 79:
Buddhism came from the Buddha, from
Page 80 and 81:
obscurations but also the obscurati
Page 82 and 83:
Chapter 7. A Talk about Dolgyal Rec
Page 84 and 85:
seemed to like us and we were able
Page 86 and 87:
very crowded. That’s how we lived
Page 88 and 89:
him about the bum-pa, the vase. Thi
Page 90 and 91:
A key element of guru devotion prac
Page 92 and 93:
who helped with his education, his
Page 94 and 95:
In short, practicing Dolgyal is har
Page 96 and 97:
Khadro-la and earthquakes Although
Page 98 and 99:
esult of negative karma is rebirth
Page 100 and 101:
Publicly she is like an ordinary pe
Page 102 and 103:
There are other quotations but that
Page 104 and 105:
Once in Nepal I dreamed of a small
Page 106 and 107:
is the kind root guru. Then it star
Page 108 and 109:
It is as the quote says, Before the
Page 110 and 111:
The importance of guru devotion Pad
Page 112 and 113:
So now, this is a real story. At Bu
Page 114 and 115:
them perfectly—and even if he has
Page 116 and 117:
Practicing Dharma is more important
Page 118 and 119:
memorize them but then forgot them
Page 120 and 121:
egin by achieving a long life, wher
Page 122 and 123:
Chapter 10. Seeing the Guru as a Bu
Page 124 and 125:
The monks did that, but of course,
Page 126 and 127:
uddhas. That is also mentioned in t
Page 128 and 129:
person without head. I don’t know
Page 130 and 131:
Those meditators who have achieved
Page 132 and 133:
When I was in Tibet I visited Tsurp
Page 134 and 135:
Why should they be called kon-chog
Page 136 and 137:
that it is his mistake. It is like
Page 138 and 139:
Chapter 11. More Precious than a Wi
Page 140 and 141:
patience, perseverance, meditation
Page 142 and 143:
dust of this earth can be counted,
Page 144 and 145:
we were once crossing a short bridg
Page 146 and 147:
There are so many animals. There ar
Page 148 and 149:
Whether or not we eat animals is in
Page 150 and 151:
Having been born at a time when the
Page 152 and 153:
We must prepare for the next life T
Page 154 and 155:
There is no sentient being we have
Page 156 and 157:
Probably many people think that ren
Page 158 and 159:
Chapter 12. Cutting the Root of Sam
Page 160 and 161:
Because things appear to us not as
Page 162 and 163:
161
Page 164 and 165:
This is all karma. What the Buddha
Page 166 and 167:
numberless suffering sentient being
Page 168 and 169:
By seeing that person as a wish-gra
Page 170 and 171:
light more and some illusory body.
Page 172 and 173:
to achieve enlightenment. The other
Page 174 and 175:
together is the transcendental wisd
Page 176 and 177:
Then you make a promise to generate
Page 178 and 179:
eings who also need the Medicine Bu
Page 180 and 181:
Focus on the deity’s holy body th
Page 182 and 183:
End Notes 1. Or his. Rather than us
Page 184 and 185:
30. Khedrub Sang ye Yeshe (1525-91)
Page 186 and 187:
64. In other teachings Rinpoche has
Page 188 and 189:
97. These are the three ways to und
Page 190 and 191:
Where and when these teachings were
Page 192 and 193:
Gyatso, Tenzin, the Fourteenth Dala
Page 194 and 195:
———. How to Practice Dharma:
Page 196 and 197:
If you, dear reader, would like to
Page 198 and 199:
Other available teachings by Lama Y
Page 200 and 201:
Our further development similarly d
Page 202 and 203:
The Foundation for the Preservation
Page 204 and 205:
Dedication Through the merit create
Page 206 and 207:
About Gordon McDougall Gordon McDou
Page 208 and 209:
Browse more LYWA Ebooks and Audio B
show all

Lama Zopa Rinpoche

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?