Sometimes people who are working at centers only think of the problems. Problems, problems, problems. Maybe it makes them feel sick. Their heart becomes very dry, very uninterested. [However,] if you know how to think, it’s really unbelievable. The highest merit is collected and there is the greatest purification by working for the center. Otherwise, you might think, “Oh, maybe I’ll go and work in the hospital, there’s much more merit from doing that.” You see, when you don’t think of Dharma, when you completely forget that the Dharma is the only way to really benefit sentient beings, to liberate them from suffering, then you start thinking things like, “Oh, maybe I’ll go and help in a children’s camp, that’s more beneficial.” People think like that.

This is a recent letter that I wrote that I thought would be helpful for others:

Thank you very, very much for working for the center, arranging facilities and so forth. The Dharma center is to benefit sentient beings, to free them from the oceans of samsaric suffering – all the sufferings – and bring them to enlightenment. So you working for the center means that. You are working for every single animal, even the ants you see on the road and the birds that fly in the sky. You are working for every one of them, from the tiniest insect that you can see only through a machine to the largest ones in the oceans like the whales. There are so many animals living in the depths of the oceans. There are big ones that eat so many small ones and many small ones that eat the big ones. You are working for every single cow and sheep, for all the animals, for them to achieve liberation from samsara and full enlightenment, as well as for every single hell being, every single hungry ghost, every single human being – not only in that state, not only in that country, but every single human being in the universe, in all the universes – and every single sura and asura being. You are working for everybody, EVERYBODY, to bring them to full enlightenment.

People come to the center to meditate on bodhicitta and to achieve enlightenment for sentient beings. You can’t imagine the benefit to everybody who comes to the center to do this, working to achieve enlightenment for sentient beings. So the work can be hard, but can you see the benefit? Can you imagine the benefit? Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow! The benefit to every living being! Can you imagine the benefit of working for the center?

For example, you work for the people coming to the center with the motivation of bodhicitta and they practice Dharma to benefit sentient beings. Can you imagine? Even by that? Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow.

With much love and prayer from crazy Lama Zopa. Getting crazier every second, ha ha!