Lama Zopa Rinpoche

Our whole life is like a mirage. We have a vision of water where there is none. It is like a
dream, an illusion; it’s as if a magician has used some mantras or some substances and
illusioned the audience. I’m not sure of the English, but the audience is illusioned. What the
audience sees appears as real and they believe it to be real.
For us it is like that all day and all night. Past ignorance has left a negative imprint on our
mind. After the mere imputation, ignorance immediately projects the appearance of a real
object, which makes things appear to us as real. This has come from our mind, just as a film
put into a projector is projected onto the screen. Past ignorance has left negative imprints,
and right after the mere imputation, the next second, our mind projects the hallucination of
a real object existing from its own side. Then, if we fail to analyze it, we don’t know that it
has just come from our mind; we believe it to be real, to be true. We hold it as true. Among
the delusions, that is the king of the delusions.
As those who have studied Madhyamaka philosophy know, there are many lines of logical
reasoning to prove emptiness, but because dependent arising states that things are empty of
inherent existence because they are dependent, it is considered the king of logical reasoning.
Conversely, among all the delusions, the wrong concept that things exist from their own side
is the king of the delusions.
Understanding the real I
From time-to-time in the world, great wars like the First and Second World Wars happen.
With so much destruction and the deaths of millions of people with millions more being
burned and injured, this is the most intense kind of suffering we can experience. As I have
mentioned, such wars can be due to one person with power and influence. Because of that
person’s ignorance, he totally believes in the wrong concept and totally fails to comprehend
that the I is merely labeled by the mind. He wants this I, this real I, to be happy, to have
power. He takes what he likes and destroys what he dislikes in order to attain happiness for
that real I, which is not there, which has never been there at all, from beginningless rebirths.
The I is merely imputed by our mind right now. Then follows the projection, the
hallucination by our mind, by past ignorance that has left a negative imprint on our mind.
The real I is a total projection, a hallucination. But we completely, one hundred percent,
believe it to be true, real. First the imputation; then the appearance; then, in the third
moment, complete belief in that appearance.
Believing in the real I is like believing we have a billion dollars in our hand. Like that
dictator, we take what we like and destroy what we dislike for the happiness of our real I,
which does not exist at all.
This wrong concept cheats us. It has been cheating us completely from beginningless
rebirths up until now. If we don’t study, meditate and realize ultimate reality—emptiness,
tong-pa-nyi, shunyata—we’re completely cheating ourselves. Right now in this life we have all
the chances, all the opportunities. We have great teachers who are always teaching
emptiness, particularly the emptiness taught by the Omniscient One, the kind,
compassionate Shakyamuni Buddha, and the many pandits, Nagarjuna, Lama Tsongkhapa
and so forth. If we are totally distracted by mundane pleasures, which are only suffering, and
fail to take this opportunity, we have completely cheated ourselves.
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