Lama Zopa Rinpoche Essential Extracts

Rinpoche explains that Lama Tsongkhapa asked Manjushri “what is the quickest way to actualize realizations on the path to enlightenment?” Manjushri replied that there are four things. First, purify the obscurations. Obscurations can be purified because they are not in the nature of the mind. The mind’s true nature is buddha nature; it is completely empty of existing in the way it appears to us. The more we purify the obscurations, the more realizations come–this is because of the power of the mind. In the West it might seem like if you have a mind then it has to have attachment, it has to have anger and ignorance, it has to have the self-cherishing thought, but the Buddha taught that the mind’s true nature is totally free from attachment, anger and ignorance. The best purification is pleasing the guru. Everything depends completely on correctly devoting to the virtuous friend. Second, collect the cause, which is virtue. There are many practices to help do this, such as mandala offerings, but the main practice is following the guru’s advice and wishes. Third, one-pointedly make requests to the guru to receive blessings of the path in your heart and to understand Dharma. “One-pointedly” means looking at the guru as a buddha, using quotations and reasoning. Through your requests, you will receive blessings like rainfall, nourishing the seed of realizations in your heart. Fourth, meditation. But meditation alone is not enough to achieve enlightenment. If you think like this, this is not understanding how to practice lamrim, how to achieve liberation from samsara how to go to enlightenment. Manjushri said that if you correctly practice with all the support–purifying, collecting merits and one-pointedly requesting the guru–then enlightenment happens. 

Working for a company focused solely on money, even making a billion dollars a day, is nothing compared to the merit we create by helping people practice Dharma and by fulfilling the wishes of our guru, Lama Zopa Rinpoche says. Rinpoche recalls the story of Lama Atisha checking on the realizations of three disciples. He found that the ones who served as his cook and translator had more realizations than the one who focused on study and meditation. Working hard for sentient beings or offering service to the guru is the same as completing many hundred thousand prostrations, mandala offerings, or other preliminaries. Serving and pleasing the guru creates far more merit than making countless offerings and saving the lives of millions of creatures. All of our wishes succeed if we correctly accomplish our guru’s instructions. 

When one is upset or afraid—and also happy—remember bodhichitta so life is not wasted and everything we experience is dedicated to others, Rinpoche advises. When we recite mantras with a bodhichitta motivation, it becomes the cause to achieve enlightenment. Afterward, dedicate the merits for oneself to achieve enlightenment for all sentient beings, so that the merits become unceasing, like a drop of water added to the ocean. Also, we can seal the dedication with emptiness so the merits won’t be subject to being destroyed by anger or heresy. Since beginningless rebirths we have been believing the hallucination that everything we experience, including the I, is real; this ignorance the root of our suffering. Dedicating with emptiness leaves positive imprints on our mind, even if we don’t fully understand the words we are saying at this time. The teaching for this episode was recorded on September 09, 2017, at Light of the Path Retreat, United States. 

When we or others are experiencing sickness and pain, or obstacles of any kind, to recite the Heart Sutra while remembering that these obstacles are empty of existing from their own side is a powerful meditation for pacifying obstacles. The essence of Buddha’s 84,000 teachings is emptiness, which Lama Zopa Rinpoche explains, is set out in the Essence of Wisdom, also know as the Heart Sutra. Rinpoche reminds us that before reciting this sutra, we must remember the sufferings of the beings in the six realms, including ourselves, which we’ve been experiencing from beginningless rebirths. That is the most scary thing. Another most scary thing is that if we don’t realize emptiness, we will have to experience all these sufferings again! As Rinpoche says, compared to this beginningless and endless suffering, the problems of this life are nothing. Therefore, to eliminate the root of samara and put an end to all our suffering forever, we need to listen, reflect, and meditate on the Heart Sutra. The teaching for this episode was recorded on May 27, 2019, at Institut Vajra Yogini, France. 

The Buddha said that we get exactly the same merit from making an offering, no matter how tiny, to a statue or painting of the Buddha as we would from making an offering to the actual Buddha. How can we maximize our offerings to be of most benefit? Rinpoche says that even if we have nothing more than a clean bowl in which to offer water—we can visualize this offering as nectar, since a buddha actually sees nectar, and in this way we collect unbelievable merit. Rinpoche also discusses how to offer a mandala—by precisely visualizing each item in it, we get the merit of having actually offered whatever it is we visualized, not what we actually offered, which may just be a small pile of grain or sand. By doing purification with Vajrasattva and collecting merits with mandala offerings, gradually we will be able to change our mind, which once seemed impossible to change, from selfishness into bodhicitta. The teaching for this episode was recorded on September 15, 2017, at Light of the Path Retreat, United States. 

Rinpoche discusses the meaning of “pores of the guru” as expressed in the section on the guru’s qualities in Lama Chopa. Pores of the guru not only refers to other disciples of our own guru, but also to their family and animals. All of these pores are a higher object of offering than the numberless buddhas, Dharma, and sangha and the numberless statues, stupas, and scriptures. In the large monasteries, there are thousands of sangha, and when we make offerings to them—even tea, while thinking that they are the pores of our guru, for example, of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, we collect unbelievable merit. The teaching for this episode was recorded on April 06, 2018, at Great Stupa Of Universal Compassion, Australia. 

To practice the paramita of patience, we need someone who makes us angry or doesn’t give us what we want. Practicing the paramita of patience enables us to achieve enlightenment. Therefore, the person who makes us angry gives us enlightenment and then we are able to bring numberless sentient beings to enlightenment as well. In this way, we can see the kindness of the person who makes us angry is like a limitless sky. There’s no way to retaliate back, you remain totally positive. We can think similarly when experiencing other heavy negative karmas, such as cancer. By experiencing the cancer, we are finishing the negative karma and won’t have to go to the lower realms and suffer for eons. It becomes purification. Further, we can experience the cancer on behalf of all sentient beings and use it to achieve enlightenment. This makes our cancer most unbelievably positive and beneficial for every sentient being. The teaching for this episode was recorded on May 10, 2018, at Great Stupa Of Universal Compassion, Australia. 

Even the most mundane activities of daily life provide us the opportunity to practice Dharma, Rinpoche says. While we are working, being busy, or even arguing with someone, part of the mind can recognize that what appears to be real is actually a total hallucination. Truly existent I and other people are not there but appear to be real due to our ignorance. To prevent this, we must not cling to things which appear true, we must remember that what appears real is not—like a mirage. Remembering this allows us to practice mindfulness of emptiness in all situations so we do not experience oceans of suffering in each realm without end. The teaching for this episode was recorded on December 12, 2018, at Kopan Monastery, Nepal. 

It is impossible to escape problems while suffering in samsara, but we can utilize any disturbing experience in the path to enlightenment. Rinpoche explains how we can take on any suffering and use it to destroy our ego and self-cherishing thought. This makes it possible to achieve enlightenment for sentient beings and then bring them to enlightenment as well. When we practice lojong (thought transformation), we need problems, even horrible ones like cancer. When suffering, including when you are dying, think over and over again, “By my experiencing this, may all sentient beings be free from sickness, spirit harm, negative karma, and defilements, and achieve enlightenment.” As His Holiness the Dalai Lama often says, dying with bodhicitta is the best way to die. Rinpoche quotes several masters to illustrate how to think and practice when we experience suffering. The teaching for this episode was recorded on September 08, 2019, at Amitabha Buddhist Centre, Singapore. 

The guru is the essence of all buddhas, Rinpoche reminds us. Therefore, everything the guru does is the holy actions of all the buddhas. It is essential to remember these two things, otherwise we can view our guru as an ordinary being when anger, attachment, or heresy arises, and we can destroy our happiness—right up to enlightenment—by believing they are making mistakes. In reality there is no greater kindness than that of the guru manifesting in an ordinary aspect according to our impure karma. This is what frees us from samsara and brings us to enlightenment and enables us to do the same for the numberless sentient beings. We must remember this always. The teaching for this episode was recorded on September 22, 2018, at Amitabha Buddhist Centre, Singapore.