Golden Light Sutra in Portland (Audio and Unedited Transcripts)

By Kyabje Lama Zopa Rinpoche
Portland, USA 2007 (Archive #1667)

Lama Zopa Rinpoche gave this commentary and partial oral transmission of the Sutra of Golden Light at Maitripa College, Portland, Oregon, USA, over two days, November 2-3, 2007. Note that the first three audio files contain introductory teachings and the oral transmission commences in Chapter Four.

Rinpoche advises recitation of the Sutra of Golden Light every day. In support of this advice, FPMT has created a webpage dedicated to the Sutra of Golden Light. You will find a complete oral transmission as well as links for downloading the text in various languages, advice on the benefits and a page for reporting your recitations.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche with a young student, Maitripa College, USA, 2010. Photo: Marc Sakamoto.
5. Dedication of Merit

Then depending on the karma immediately gets purified, the negative karma immediately gets purified, and never ever get reborn in the lower realms, and immediately find faith in the Buddha, Dharma, Sangha, and karma, immediately find faith, and then actualize bodhicitta, loving kindness, bodhicitta immediately, like that. And then realize emptiness as well. So everyone become great scholar and highly attained being, together, then like Nagarjuna, like Chandrakirti, and others, like that, like Lama Tsongkhapa, all those great, great, so forth, the great masters in Tibet, then like His Holiness the Dalai Lama, so become like that.

However then that each of them can benefit and offer extensive benefit to sentient beings and the teachings of Buddha and everyone become originator of, source of peace and happiness of all sentient beings particularly in this world, so to dedicate like that.

And then this become, [_?] become the model, and original model. And so then to be able to establish in many different parts of the world, so like that, then next, extensive benefit to sentient beings, opportunity, so many sentient beings opportunity to learn profound, vast Buddhadharma and deep in their heart experience the path, like that.

Then due to all the, all the organizers have a long life and due to all the past, present, and future merits collected by myself and the three time merits collected by others, may the FPMT office here also, then be most beneficial for all sentient beings. Then all the wishes benefited, serve the teaching of Buddha, sentient beings, serving to His Holiness, then fulfilling Lama Yeshe’s holy wishes, whatever intentions he had, so to actualize that, actualize that, so to be most beneficial, preserve Dharma, to spread Dharma for sentient beings. Most beneficial for sentient beings, through that. Then every center, every center, hospice, school, social service, then meditation center, everything be most beneficial, most beneficial to all sentient beings. Able to cause and generate faith to the Buddha, Dharma, Sangha, and karma in the hearts of all sentient beings and to cause to actualize bodhicitta in everyone’s hearts, in particular to spread Lama Tsongkhapa’s complete teaching. The extensive Lama Tsongkhapa in the hearts of all sentient beings and then bring them to enlightenment as quick as possible, so like that, very good. Bring peace and happiness in this world forever, so like that.

Then all the wishes, whatever needs for all this completing, the completion of this works to serve the teachings of Buddha, sentient beings and all their needs to obtain immediately. And also each center whatever project they have, then immediately be actualized, whatever their needs to be received immediately, they receive a qualified resident teacher, translator, or all their needs, and find whatever.

And may Lama Ösel Rinpoche have a stable life, and then like lotus blossomed that be dynamic teacher in the world in the past life Lama Yeshe, then to enlighten the world, to bring light of Dharma in the world and enlighten the world, to illuminate the world and then so like that, like His Holiness the Dalai Lama, like Lama Tsongkhapa, so forth, like those great masters, like that, like Nagarjuna and so forth.

And all the directors of the center, all the members of each center who are working there, and then members of the Board, then everybody have a long life, the students and everybody have a long life and to be healthy, all their wishes be succeed immediately in the holy Dharma, may all the benefactors and those who rely upon my prayers be, including all those, same. And then most important, may we be able to actualize the stainless teachings of Lama Tsongkhapa, unified sutra and tantra in this very lifetime, in this very lifetime within all of our hearts without delay even a second.

And due to all the three time merits collected by oneself and by others, oneself, oneself and the sentient beings who are connected to oneself, family members and so forth, then just merely being in this universe, world, country, place, house, just by this, may the cause of all the sentient beings living in this universe, world, country, place, house. You see, their negative karma need to get purified, able to effect any negative karma, immediately get purified, may they never ever get reborn in the lower realms. May all their physical, mental sufferings be pacified immediately, and find faith to Buddha, Dharma, Sangha, and karma, and actualize bodhicitta. May all they achieve enlightenment as quick as possible.

May the war, famine, disease, torture, poverty, sicknesses, dangers of fire and water, earthquakes, tsunamis, all this wherever is happening, you know in Burma all those, fear and all those torture, killings, so much pain, and so forth, wherever these things happen, may they be stopped immediately right now.

May nobody in this world experience all this undesirable things forever. May the general teachings of Lama Tsongkhapa teachings may it be spread in all the directions and flourish forever in this world and all the directions, by completely actualizing in one’s heart, one’s own family members, within all of our hearts, in the hearts of all the students, all the supporters, so many people in different parts of the world who sacrifice their lives bearing hardships, doing service for other sentient beings and teachings of the Buddha through this organization. So in all their hearts to be actualized this without delay even a second and those for whom I promise to pray, whose names were given to me, in all their hearts same.

So I think just wanted to make, so we have to bring Buddhist philosophy in our daily life, we have to bring Buddhist philosophy in our daily life, not leave as a sort of a just talk or to expound, just an idea, not like that, but we have to bring it in our daily life, our daily life and Buddhist philosophy.

So it’s a practice, it’s not something to just only to explain to somebody, it’s a practice, Buddhist philosophy is a practice, practice to live the life in, to live the life into that, that’s the purpose why Buddha explain, that’s the main purpose Buddha explained, only to liberate the sentient beings from suffering. Every single word Buddha said is to liberate, to tame our mind, to liberate from suffering, to liberate from suffering of samsara. So every single word is for to tame the mind; 84,000 teachings of Buddha to tame the mind; every single word is to tame the mind. So this, if you bring Buddhist philosophy in our daily life, then you can solve your problems. If you don’t bring the philosophy in your daily life, you can’t solve problems, cannot solve daily life problems, even that.

So often His Holiness says, Buddhists doesn’t believe in creator, you know, outside. So however, you are the creator, you are the creator of your happiness and you are the creator of your suffering. So your mind, what the Buddha said, you are the guide to yourself, you are the enemy to yourself [Tibetan]. You are the guide to yourself, but also you are the enemy to yourself. So depending on what you do with your mind, depending on what you do with your mind, so when you allow your mind become negative, which engage in negative action, negative karma, result suffering, then you become the enemy to yourself.

When you get angry, you are the enemy to yourself. When you practice patience, you are the guide to yourself, you are the guide to yourself. When you practice compassion to others, you are the guide to yourself. When you practice bodhicitta, you are the guide to yourself. When you have self-cherishing thought, when you motivate attitude of daily life self-cherishing thought, anger, all these things, that’s you become the enemy to yourself. That we have to understand, we have to remember that. That time, you become enemy to yourself, you’re destroying your merits. Little merit, little merit you collected from past with so much effort gets destroyed, burnt out, burned out with anger, by anger burn out.

So in the Bodhicaryavatara [Tibetan], so the, “Having made charity and having made offering to the buddhas, those gone to bliss, buddhas, the [_?]  merits collected for one thousand eons get destroyed in one second by anger.” So very dangerous, so anger is outside, the fire doesn’t burn house, but it cannot burn the merits; outside the fire cannot burn, can burn house, but it cannot burn the merits. But your anger can burn merits, cause of your happiness, cause of your happiness can burn. So then difficult to achieve liberation and enlightenment, even good rebirth next life, even happiness this life came from merits, so without merit you can’t have success even this life, like that.

So as I mentioned, so as I mentioned before here, just I mention two points, and then complete. So whatever happiness, suffering, other people back they [ _?] you or insult you, whatever is a result of your past karma, first of all we have to remember that. The very first thing, the very first thing should remember that. Then that is committed with the, that negative karma is collected with the, committed with motivation self-cherishing thought. So the Wheel of Sharp Weapons, the negative karma collected is a result of the negative karma motivated by the self-cherishing thought, it turn on you this life, now, this moment, today, so that’s what it is.

So the first thing remember karma, came from your mind, came from your mind, otherwise it make it simple, it’s from your own mind. Right now, how you see people, how the people appear to you, your view of the people and how they act, how they appear to you, how you see, I’m mean what you see, how things appear to you, what you see, came from your mind, as I mentioned already before. So that’s the first thing and that solves the problem, that stops the problem, that calms down the mind. There’s nobody to blame to except oneself, except you know, one’s own self-cherishing thought, not blame to your bodhicitta, your compassion, but your self-cherishing thought, so like that.

Then second, first this, second, then you look at it positive. So lo-jong, thought transformation, which means look at that situation negative, which is kind of negative and so look at it positive, so you put positive, by thinking of the benefits of the problem, then you put a positive label on that. By thinking of the benefits of the problem, then becomes positive, then it appears to you positive. If you think of the benefits of the problem, so how you see positive is by thinking of the benefits of the problem that benefits to your mind, to purify your negative karma and to train your mind in the path. Collect extensive merits and wisdom, able to develop and train your mind in the bodhicitta, bodhicitta then the cause you to achieve enlightenment, it cause you to achieve enlightenment, cause to achieve enlightenment, and able to enlighten numberless sentient beings.

It also saying that the situation whatever it is, the something disturbing, look at it also by using to meditate, to look at it empty, ultimate nature of that, emptiness. That makes you to liberate, it makes you to liberate and cut the root of samsara, to liberate from samsara. It helps with that, cease the, then through the development of wisdom, then cease even subtle defilements with bodhicitta, support bodhicitta and achieve enlightenment. So like that.

So however, before the person is labeled president and you don’t see that person as president. There is no, you don’t see president, because there’s no appearance of president, and because that, because you haven’t labeled it “president” and believe in that. So you don’t have appearance of president, you don’t see president, there’s a president, you see as president, you don’t see that.

So when you haven’t initiated from your mind is labeled "this is president," if it’s not done, then all the rest doesn’t happen, it’s very clear. So you see president only with this appearance of president, then that happens only if you label president and believe in that. If you don’t believe, I don’t think there’s the appearance; but if you believe in the appearance, you have appearance after you label.

So similar the one example that I normally give, how to say? So this time I changed the syllable, usually I use A, but here I’m going to use a W, today I want to use the syllable W.

So before you are introduced by your teacher “this is W,” before you are not educated this is W, before you are not educated, before you are educated, “this is W.” That time you see the design on the blackboard or paper, you know like this, W, you see a line but you don’t have, but you don’t see W. Let’s say this is W. That’s because you don’t have the appearance that it’s a W, and you don’t believe that because your mind hasn’t labeled W on that. You see the design which is the base, which is the base, and then because you are educated by somebody that this is W. Then your mind, by following that, by listening to that, mind which sees that this design, then your mind made up the label W and believe in that. So then next, there’s appearance, there’s appearance and so then you see W.

So therefore, you can see here the appearance of W came from your mind. So if you don’t label, believe that, there’s no appearance that this is W. So what I’m saying is whom you get angry, attached to, the view is your mind, came from your mind. Something that you created, mind projected—ignorance, anger, attachment. Something that your mind created, believed, interpreted, so that negative label, then you see projection, then you get angry to that, you get angry, if you get angry to what you created, you get angry what you project, what you created, you get angry to that. So that should be understood. Similar, jealous mind, all those things. There’s nothing from the object’s side, there’s nothing from there, it’s what your mind created, so your jealous of that, attached. So by using this, by using the example the W, the appearance of W came from your mind, is view of your mind.

But now the appearance of W, when it appeared back as I mentioned before the I, it appeared not merely labeled by mind, wrong view. It’s merely labeled by mind, mere imputation, the W is mere imputation by the mind. But you just think W, but appeared there on the design, this design appeared there from, appearing from there, so that’s the gag-cha, object to be refuted.

So a real W from there is on the design, so that’s hallucination. So if you look for that W, real W appearing from there, see your ignorance projected there, that’s hallucination, decorated there on the design, your ignorance, real W appearing from there, existing from there. So you can’t find that real W on this line, you can’t find on that line, you can’t find on this line, you can’t find on that line, you can’t find, if you look for can’t find. But when you don’t examine, it looks like there’s a real W from there. So real enemy, real friend, real enemy, so same, not come from there.

So that one is total false, total false hallucination. So therefore, so it doesn’t make sense angry to that, your hallucination, so you get angry, so now the second one, you made up real one, then you get angry to that, it doesn’t, so it totally doesn’t, completely, totally doesn’t make sense. So it’s totally silly, completely silly. So I’m using that W to understand that.

So first to remember karma, immediately my karma. Second, second by thinking of the benefits look at it as positive, so the suffering, so the suffering is transformed into happiness by looking at the advantage, benefit of that, what you receive, so like that. So this way, so then this way, in the thought transformation teachings it says, so in this way you are in the pure land, this body is in the pure land, whatever the size body.

Anyway so everything is beauty, so there’s no obstacles, all the obstacles become, all the obstacles become supportive, all the obstacles become supportive. So there’s no, you don’t find obstacles, so like that. Everything becomes cause of enlightenment, developing your mind in the path to liberation and enlightenment, and the cause, when it become cause to enlightenment, then it becomes cause of happiness, it becomes cause of happiness of all the sentient beings, so like that.

So that’s it.

[Rinpoche chants in Tibetan]

So good-night. Or good morning. I forgot.