Lama Zopa Rinpoche

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Practicing Dharma is subduing our mind This samsara we are trapped in comes from our mind, but so does nirvana. The problems we have to face, the happiness we can experience, every day, every hour, every minute, all come from the mind. Therefore, meditation, Dharma practice, the inner science, is so important to help our mind. That is what the Buddha said: Do not commit any nonvirtuous actions, Perform only perfect virtuous actions, Subdue your mind thoroughly— This is the teaching of the Buddha. That is why the practice of Buddhadharma is taking care of our own mind, subduing our own mind. Unless we eliminate the confusion within the mind that is the source of all suffering we will forever remain in the prison of samsara, the prison of suffering. We have been there for beginningless lifetimes and if we don’t do something about it we will never get out. Therefore, practicing Buddhadharma is subduing our mind. Taking care of our mind leads to every possible happiness: all the happiness of our day-to-day life, all our future lives’ happiness, the ultimate happiness of liberation from samsara and, finally, peerless happiness, sang-gyä, the omniscient mind. Practicing Dharma means developing a positive mind, a healthy mind, which leads to a healthy body and a healthy life. Nowadays even psychologists and doctors commonly agree that a healthy body and a healthy lifestyle depend on a healthy mind. Taking care of our mind means not letting ourselves suffer. From beginningless rebirths until now we have suffered, but we no longer let ourselves suffer. Instead, freeing ourselves from confusion, we allow ourselves to have every kind of happiness, right up to enlightenment, the state of the omniscient mind. Meditating means that. Practicing Dharma means that. To have a positive, healthy mind we have to understand how it all depends on taking care of the mind. Even when we tell a friend “Take care of yourself” we should have that meaning in mind. We have great freedom. Everything is in our hands. Our enlightenment, the state of omniscient mind, sang-gyä, is in our hands. Ultimate happiness, liberation from samsara, is in our hands. And our day-to-day life’s happiness is in our hands. Whether we want problems or not is up to how we think. If we think in a positive way, we’ll have happiness; if we think in a negative way, we’ll have problems. It’s like that. It’s all in our hands. What we do with our life is in our hands. We have incredible freedom. Please recognize and enjoy this. Enjoying our life in this way, having a healthy mind and a healthy life, is practicing Dharma. The inner education of patience and compassion I mentioned how the very essence of education is compassion. Education is not just learning new things. I saw a story on TV about a couple who for the last six or seven years have been been studying a small pod of whales. They are still studying them. All day long they take their 25
oat out into the ocean to look for and study the whales. There is also somebody who has been studying spiders, maybe in fireplaces, for years. There are probably organizations that pay people to study things like that. Scientific knowledge is good, but education is not just learning new things. The essence of education is developing compassion for living beings—compassion not only for our family and friends but for all living beings. That especially includes our enemy, the one who dislikes us, who gets angry with us, who harms us. If we can generate compassion for that person, it’s an unbelievable thing. If we can bring peace to that person, then it is easy to bring peace to anybody. This is how we learn to bring peace to the world. Starting with one or two people, we can slowly bring peace to the world. That’s an unbelievable accomplishment, more incredible that climbing Mount Everest a hundred times or…what else? Going to the moon or the sun a hundred times, or a billion times. It’s a much greater accomplishment than any of that. It is really so special if we can generate patience and compassion toward our enemy, not to mention generating compassion toward the numberless other beings. From time to time in the world it happens that there is a person who doesn’t practice patience or compassion toward others. If that person has power and influence he can kill many millions of people. There are different stories about this kind of thing happening, where millions of people, including children, have been killed, burned or gassed by this one powerful person. That person had power and influence but he didn’t have the education that taught him how to practice patience and compassion. Without those qualities, patience and compassion, what happened? It’s like Bin Laden. He was able to think big, but in a negative way, to harm others. He knew how to harm and cheat others in such an unbelievably vast way. Patience and compassion are the two very fundamental qualities of our inner education. Without them, powerful people have brought so much harm to the world, killing millions of people and gaining the worst reputation because of it. If they had practiced patience and compassion, none of that harm—killing and torturing those millions and millions of people—would have happened. Incredible happiness would have come to those millions of people from that harm being stopped. This is the influence that one powerful person can have on the world. There are great holy beings in all the different religions, like Saint Francis or the Buddha in his past lives as a bodhisattva, who have brought many millions of people happiness and peace. Through practicing patience and compassion, the most fundamental, important education, even one person has the power to bring great happiness to the people of the world. Even if we are not able to become like that now, despite the fact that our body will not continue, there is the continuation of our consciousness, constantly moving from life to life. For that reason, the most important practice, the most important education, is developing patience and compassion so that we can become like those holy beings in future lives. Then, 26
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 10 and 11: Chapter 1. Taking Care of the Mind
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 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
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human mother. If we were to sacrifi
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Buddhism came from the Buddha, from
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obscurations but also the obscurati
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Chapter 7. A Talk about Dolgyal Rec
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seemed to like us and we were able
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very crowded. That’s how we lived
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him about the bum-pa, the vase. Thi
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A key element of guru devotion prac
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who helped with his education, his
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In short, practicing Dolgyal is har
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Khadro-la and earthquakes Although
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esult of negative karma is rebirth
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Publicly she is like an ordinary pe
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There are other quotations but that
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Once in Nepal I dreamed of a small
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is the kind root guru. Then it star
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It is as the quote says, Before the
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The importance of guru devotion Pad
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So now, this is a real story. At Bu
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them perfectly—and even if he has
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Practicing Dharma is more important
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memorize them but then forgot them
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egin by achieving a long life, wher
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Chapter 10. Seeing the Guru as a Bu
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The monks did that, but of course,
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uddhas. That is also mentioned in t
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person without head. I don’t know
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Those meditators who have achieved
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When I was in Tibet I visited Tsurp
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Why should they be called kon-chog
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that it is his mistake. It is like
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Chapter 11. More Precious than a Wi
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patience, perseverance, meditation
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dust of this earth can be counted,
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we were once crossing a short bridg
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There are so many animals. There ar
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Whether or not we eat animals is in
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Having been born at a time when the
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We must prepare for the next life T
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There is no sentient being we have
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Probably many people think that ren
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Chapter 12. Cutting the Root of Sam
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Because things appear to us not as
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161
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This is all karma. What the Buddha
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numberless suffering sentient being
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By seeing that person as a wish-gra
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light more and some illusory body.
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to achieve enlightenment. The other
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together is the transcendental wisd
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Then you make a promise to generate
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eings who also need the Medicine Bu
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Focus on the deity’s holy body th
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End Notes 1. Or his. Rather than us
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30. Khedrub Sang ye Yeshe (1525-91)
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64. In other teachings Rinpoche has
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97. These are the three ways to und
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Where and when these teachings were
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Gyatso, Tenzin, the Fourteenth Dala
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———. How to Practice Dharma:
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If you, dear reader, would like to
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Other available teachings by Lama Y
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Our further development similarly d
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The Foundation for the Preservation
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Dedication Through the merit create
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About Gordon McDougall Gordon McDou
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