104 Renounce the Thought Seeing Samsara as a Beautiful Park

Lama Zopa Rinpoche begins this teaching, recorded on July 25, 2021, at Kopan Monastery in Nepal, by reminding us that the perfect human rebirth doesn’t last long. This body is like a machine—breathing in and out—and can stop at any time. Why does the body keep working? Karma. How long the breath lasts is also due to karma. It can stop at any time, we have to remember this. Some students have even died while using the bathroom. It can happen at any time, and when you don’t expect it, so while you are still breathing, make your life most beneficial for others by doing everything with bodhichitta.The two basic practices in your life should be the two bodhichittas: absolute bodhichitta and conventional bodhichitta. Bodhichitta is the two wishes; one is the wish to benefit sentient beings, and one is the wish to achieve enlightenment. The real purpose of life is to benefit numberless sentient beings, to free them from suffering and bring them to enlightenment by yourself. Therefore, you need to achieve enlightenment. This is the motivation for listening to the teachings.It is so important to know that samsaric pleasures are actually the suffering of change. Most students meditate on the suffering of pain, but they don’t meditate on how samsaric pleasures are in the nature of suffering, or on pervasive compounding suffering. This third type of suffering, the pervasive compounding suffering, is the most important to meditate on; it is the suffering of samsara. When you are free of this type of suffering, you become free from the other two sufferings, the suffering of pain and the suffering of change.As Rinpoche mentioned yesterday, quoting from Lama Chopa verses 87cd-88ab, you have to renounce the thought of seeing samsara as a beautiful park:"Please bless me to generate a strong wish to be liberatedFrom the endless and terrifying great ocean of samsara." "Having renounced the thought seeing samsara,Which is difficult to bear like being in prison, as a beautiful park," You have to abandon this thought of the hallucinated mind.If there were no negative imprints left on the mental continuum by ignorance, there would be no projection of a real I. Rinpoche explains how the thought focuses on the aggregates—form, feeling, cognition, compositional factors, and consciousness—and that is the phenomenon or base that is merely labeled "I." When that happens, it is extremely fine, so subtle, Rinpoche emphasizes. It is not that the I doesn’t exist. The I exists, but it is like it doesn’t exist. The negative imprints left by ignorance on the continuation of our consciousness decorate the I that just now was merely imputed, projecting true existence, existing from its own side. So we think, “This is real. This is true!” Believing, holding onto that—that is ignorance. As you are creating ignorance, you are creating the root of samsara, the root of all suffering. This is from ignorance holding the I as truly existent.Your hallucinated mind also makes up pleasure. If you check up on samsaric pleasure, you can see it is the basis of all suffering. Your mind labels it as pleasure. In reality, it is a hallucination, made up by the mind according to the different things an individual wants. Traveling, drugs, sex, going into the mountains—these various things are labeled pleasure according to the individual, but in reality there is nothing there at all. You have to recognize the hallucination as a hallucination. If you don’t look at the dream as a dream, you believe it is real. Then all of the problems of anger, ignorance, and attachment, all the delusions, arise.--For links to this teaching's transcript, translations, and practice resources:https://fpmt.org/lama-zopa-rinpoche-news-and-advice/advice-from-lama-zopa-rinpoche/renounce-the-thought-seeing-samsara-as-a-beautiful-park/