In reality, we cannot survive and live our life without harming others. There’s no way to live life without others receiving harm, without their being killed, without others suffering. There’s no way we can survive even one day without others being harmed. This is how life is in samsara. That’s why we need to be liberated. The ultimate answer is to be liberated and get out of samsara.

As I normally say, whenever work is done in a field to grow one grain of rice, so many beings are killed and receive harm. Somebody creates negative karma through harming them. This one grain of rice came from another grain of rice. So many sentient beings suffered for that—they died, were killed. It goes on and on like that, back to the very beginning of the continuum of rice, to when it first appeared in this world.

There’s no way to eat rice without some serious, careful, meaningful thinking, or at least without something benefiting the numberless sentient beings who died for each of these grains of rice. The hardest, most difficult, most painful thing is to eat this only thinking about our own happiness, and completely ignoring all those numberless sentient beings who died, suffered and were killed, creating the negative karma for all this rice.

We can see now that it is an emergency to practice Dharma, and that Dharma becomes the most important thing in life, more than anything else. The answer is to achieve liberation from samsara for our sake and for the sake of sentient beings, for them to not suffer or be killed. The greatest purpose and benefit is to achieve enlightenment for sentient beings. In everyday life, this is the most important thing to achieve: enlightenment in order to liberate numberless sentient beings from oceans of samsaric suffering and bring them to enlightenment—wow!

We have met all these teachings this time. That shows how we are the most fortunate beings in the world. But this incredible opportunity, this wish-fulfilling, perfect human rebirth, where we have met all this Dharma, sutra and tantra, can stop any time. Therefore, really to learn, practice, and actualize the path is more important than anything else in life; it is the most important thing.