Lama Zopa Rinpoche

And if the aggregates are the real I, then what is the purpose of calling this thing “I”? If
there is already a real I why place the name “I” on the already existing I? If the label “I” is
needed for the already existing real I, then that I would also need to be labeled in the same
way. We would need yet another label and so it would go in an infinite regression, creating
numberless I’s. That is pointless.
So, with the Z, none of the lines separately nor all three lines as a whole are the real Z.
Thinking they are, mistakes like that occur.
Time to stop the tyranny of the real I
In our life, we have this ignorance, this wrong concept, believing in the real I and the real
aggregates, which are in fact totally empty, which have never existed in the past, from
beginningless rebirths. With this false concept we are always so worried and afraid. When
can this real I that our ignorance believes in, which has never existed, ever be happy? When
can it be happy? All the time, day and night, we worry about the happiness of this real I.
All through our life we worry about this—through kindergarten, primary school, high
school, college, university, getting a degree and then a job. We try to earn a good salary, then
we marry and have children. We feel that once we have accomplished all this, with a job, a
partner and children, we’ll be so happy! Yesterday, when I asked a student what he really
wanted in his life, he said he wanted to see grandchildren. I asked if he wanted to see his
grandchildren enlightened. I put it that way.
Because of believing in this real I, when somebody cheats us, lies to us, steals from us or
blames us, we get angry. We get angry for this real I. We sue that person, bringing a court
case against him, spending thousands of pounds or dollars—hundreds of thousands, or
millions, I don’t know—all for this real I to be happy, to harm and defeat its enemy. For the
happiness of the real I we want to put that person into prison.
Perhaps we have to kill that person to make the real I happy. But then his friends get angry
at us and so we have more enemies and have to kill them too. Because of this real I that
doesn’t exist we give much harm to others. This real I creates great confusion, so many
problems in life. We see examples of this in newspapers and on TV all the time. But there is
no real I there at all. It’s all a joke—in reality, it’s not there. We create all this negative karma
for something that is not there at all, a total hallucination.
This ties in with what I said earlier about the tyrant with power and influence who can start
wars and cause the deaths of millions of people. He does this because he has been
completely cheated by this wrong concept. In the same way, we ourselves are completely
cheated too.
It is very important to end this tyranny now. For beginningless rebirths we have been
experiencing the sufferings of the hell beings, the hungry ghosts, the animals, the human
beings, the gods, the demigods and the intermediate stage beings. As human beings we have
the sufferings of rebirth, old age, sickness, death, meeting undesirable objects, not meeting
desirable objects and losing desirable objects that we’ve found. Even if we manage to get
what we want, we are still unable to find satisfaction. Never being able to find satisfaction is
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