Lama Zopa Rinpoche

Our life is so important, so precious. We have the responsibility of freeing the numberless
beings from the oceans of samsaric suffering: not only the suffering of pain but also the
suffering of change.
Dharma happiness lasts, it increases. It is something we can complete when we achieve
enlightenment. That is the big difference; that is why it is worthwhile dedicating our life to it.
We have already experienced every samsaric pleasure numberless times. What other people
are experiencing now, including the worldly gods and other humans, we have experienced
numberless times from beginningless rebirths. This includes all the suffering experienced by
other beings. There is no new samsaric happiness left to experience and no new suffering.
As long as we are in samsara, it is always like that. It is only because you and I have neither
an omniscient mind nor even ordinary clairvoyance and are unable to remember past lives
that we cannot see this.
The room before it is named
In the Vajra Cutter Sutra the Buddha explained we should look at causative phenomena as
like a star or a visual aberration. 27 The example often given is that of hairs appearing to float
in front of the eyes or dropping into our food where there are no hairs. It can also happen
that we seem to see an animal running where there is no animal, or we see worms that aren’t
there. These are temporary defects in our vision. Sometimes it seems to happen more to me,
sometimes less. I can’t say why.
The Buddha explained we should look at all causative phenomena in this way, like a
hallucination, but especially any object of our attachment or aversion, such as our own body,
our friends, our possessions and other desirable and undesirable objects.
Defective view means we ordinary people see things that don’t exist and don’t see things
that do exist. There is ultimate reality, emptiness. It exists—there is such a thing—but for
ordinary people like me, it is like it does not exist. On the other hand, while what is true
seems not to exist to us, the hallucination, what is false, seems to exist. Here “false” means
the projection of our hallucinated mind, our ignorance that holds the I, the aggregates and so
forth as truly existing from their own side or existing by themselves.
It is not like that at all. It has never been like that at all from the beginning, even for one
second. It has never been as it appears to us, as we believe. Reality means how things exist.
They exist because they are empty; because they are emptiness only, tong-pa-nyi in Tibetan or
shunyata in Sanskrit. The nyi, the “only” of the term, makes it clear, not just “tong-pa” but tongpa-nyi.
Because things are tong-pa-nyi, because their nature is emptiness, they exist. That is why they
exist. That is why they exist, why you exist, why we exist, why everything exists. That is why
there is birth, existence, cessation, why all actions happen. The objects exist in mere name,
the actions exist in mere name and the effects exist in mere name.
It is this ignorance, this projection of our hallucinated mind, that fails to see this but creates
the real I, the real action and the real object. All the six senses’ objects—forms, sounds,
smells, tastes, tangibles and mental objects—are projected as real; they have the appearance
of being real to our hallucinated mind.
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