Lama Zopa Rinpoche

them perfectly—and even if he has a guru, if he has no guru devotion, if he fails to take care
of that most vital practice, his life will not improve. The luckier of the two, the one who will
achieve enlightenment quicker, is the one who has strong, stable guru devotion.
The other person, the knowledgeable one who fails to take care of his practice, will be
unable to integrate all he knows into the lam-rim, the three principal aspects of the path to
enlightenment, and will be unable to achieve the realizations of the two stages of tantra.
Then, when he tries to do shamatha meditation it goes wrong and he gets lots of lung, wind
disease, and lots of sicknesses. Life becomes like that. He might look very clever, but not
taking good care of his guru devotion practice robs him of any real success in life.
Kadampa Geshe Potowa advised that the guru who leads us should at least emphasize
attaining the happiness of the next life so that the aim of the disciple is not just this life’s
happiness. We need to renounce this life’s happiness but it should not stop there. There are
numberless future lives. More important is to free ourselves from karma and delusion and to
no longer need reincarnation, although I myself have no idea how long that takes!
One time, Lama Yeshe and Geshe Thubten were discussing the definition of Dharma, the
definition of the renunciation of this life. Geshe Thubten said it was that in your heart you
felt that future lives were more important than this life. Here “important” means making
more effort for future lives than this life. Lama said maybe that’s not enough; he added that
you should be free from the self-cherishing thought as well. Something like that.
The texts then go on to say that the happiness of future lives is still samsaric pleasure and so
there is still samsaric suffering, albeit the suffering of change rather than the suffering of
pain. Therefore, it is better that the guru emphasizes that nirvana is more important than
that. Better still is the guru who emphasizes sang-gyä, the state of the complete elimination of
all obscurations and the attainment of all realizations. Achieving enlightenment for the sake
of other sentient beings is better than achieving nirvana, the state of lower peace for oneself
alone. That ultimate level of practice is the most important one.
All happiness comes from Dharma
People who have attained the most precious human body but don’t know Dharma do not
know how to make this life useful. They have no idea of anything except how to create the
cause of suffering day and night. Whenever they move, whenever they think, they create
negative karma. It makes having a good heart difficult. Life is so full of positive things. Even
not practicing Dharma, there are many good things they can do to benefit others and
themselves but, because their mind is very weak, they cannot think of them.
After many lifetimes of praying and practicing morality they have attained this human body,
but for what? What do they have this human body for? It’s so they can again create the cause
of the lower realms, nothing else. Whether they are billionaires or zillionaires or whether
they are beggars, it’s like that. It’s very sad.
An example is an Indian billionaire I was told about. He had a lot of money but didn’t know
what to do with it, so he built a house in Bombay for more than a billion dollars with
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