Collective karma is still a product of the mind

At the beginning of the course I guess all of you heard about the importance of motivation, how to make your actions become the cause of happiness. This is not only when you meditate, not only when you study Dharma, but even when you are doing everyday actions like eating, walking, sitting, sleeping, doing your job and so forth. How to stop any activity of body, speech and mind become the cause of suffering and instead become the cause of happiness. That is the big thing, to become the unmistaken cause of happiness.

The causes of happiness and suffering are totally different from what common people in the world think—the worldly people educated in schools and universities, except where Buddhism is taught, whether it’s intellectually taught or taught with experience. What most people in the world think is that the causes of happiness and suffering are totally different. I want to say this before I say what the Buddha explained. Their concept of where suffering comes from—what kind of mind suffering comes from—is totally different from reality.

First of all, both suffering and happiness come from the mind. Our happiness and our suffering come from our mind. Something that is global comes from the people living on this earth, human beings and the animals and so forth. Something good affects them and something bad affects them, like global warming and so forth. It affects not only human beings but also animals, such as the polar bears that live on the ice. Their environment is getting smaller and smaller. So, I think there’s a great effect on the animals as well, not just the people. This comes from the collective karma of the animals and the people. What the many animals and many human beings experience altogether comes from their collective karma, from their mind, from that mental factor that is the intention.

In the mind there are the principal consciousnesses and the mental factors. There are many different types of mental factor but this one, intention, is one of the five mental factors that always accompanies any principal consciousness. Karma is that mental factor, intention. So, of the body and mind, everything comes from the mind. The five omnipresent mental factors are: contact, discernment, feeling, attention and intention. Intention is one of these five.

With collective karma, if something good is happening globally, that is our collective karma; it comes from our minds, from our intention. If there is something negative happening, like global warming or whatever, that is also from our collective karma. When there is a war in a country and many millions of people suffer, that is the collective negative karma of that country. Happiness and suffering come from the mind. Each individual being’s happiness and suffering come from that individual’s mind.

How Buddhism is unique

This is the explanation according to the Dharma, as explained by the Omniscient One, whose holy mind is totally free from all the mistakes of the mind, all the gross and subtle defilements. There is not even one negative imprint of subtle delusion, ignorance; the Buddha’s holy mind is totally free. Because of that, there are no obstacles at all to directly seeing all the past phenomena, directly seeing all the present phenomena and directly seeing all the future phenomena. 

Generally speaking, for example, here in Kathmandu there’s somebody who has more understanding than the rest of the people here and similarly in Nepal there is somebody who has more understanding than anybody else in Nepal. In the United States it’s the same, there is somebody who has more understanding than anybody else in the United States. In the same way, there is somebody who has more understanding than anybody else in the whole world, than the common people in the world. There is somebody who has the greatest understanding. There is somebody who has greater loving kindness than common people, who has greater compassion for living beings than the majority of the people in the United States.

This is simply showing the evolution without going through the entire path of developing the realizations. There is somebody who has developed compassion for the numberless human beings, the numberless gods and demigods, the numberless hell beings, hungry ghosts and animals, the numberless sentient beings who have defilements, who are suffering, who are under the control of karma and delusion. Because their life is completely under the control of karma and delusion they themselves don’t have a single freedom at all. There is not even one second free from that. Not only each day, each hour, each minute, but even each second they are totally under the control of karma and delusion, totally under the control of past karma. That’s pervasive compounding suffering.

There is somebody who has generated compassion for all the sentient beings who are under the control of karma and delusion and who are experiencing suffering. They have compassion even for those sentient beings who are free from the cause of suffering and karma and delusion but still have subtle defilements; they have compassion for the arhats and arya bodhisattvas who are free from disturbing-thought obscurations and who have achieved the eighth, ninth or tenth bhumi. They also have compassion even for those on the three pure grounds, who still have subtle defilements. Usually there are people like that, who have compassion in varying degrees, starting with somebody who has compassion for everybody in a small village, then everybody in a city, then in a country and then in this whole world.

Then, there is somebody who has completed the understanding, whose mind is completely free, having less and less ignorance until even the subtle defilements are eliminated. There is nothing left to develop, the training in understanding is completed and the training in compassion for all sentient beings is completed. They have also completed the development of perfect power to benefit all sentient beings without the slightest mistake, exactly as it fits their karma, their level of mind or intelligence. 

This is the Omniscient One, who directly sees all past phenomena and at the same time directly sees all present phenomena as well as directly seeing all future phenomena. The Omniscient One explained that all suffering and happiness come from the mind, that the suffering and happiness of each individual suffering sentient being come from their own mind. If we analyze our own life, we can see that this is so exactly. It is not just belief, not just faith. We can understand it by analyzing our own life, our way of thinking—we can see which way of thinking brings suffering and which way of thinking brings happiness to ourselves and to others. We can identify this. It is not just that somebody said something and we believe it, we have faith in it, but we can’t ask any questions. It is not like it is something which is illogical or that God has said but we can’t question it because if we did there wouldn’t be a correct answer. It’s not like that here.

Of course, as His Holiness says, not everybody can understand Buddhism. Not everybody has the karma to understand Buddhism and to have faith through analysis. We study the teachings and through analysis we are able to recognize, to understand our life, our mind, past, present and future. By understanding what’s happening now we can understand the past and we can judge what will happen in the future, what it’s going to be like. By studying and analyzing more and more we will see the proof, the reality. This is what His Holiness means when he says that not everybody has the karma to learn Buddhism. First, they need the opportunity to hear Buddhism and not everybody has that opportunity, and then after that they need to understand and to develop faith from that understanding, from that wisdom. Not everybody has that karma.

But this does not mean that because that person or that animal or insect doesn’t have the karma now that they will never have the karma in the future. It’s not talking about that, because all sentient beings can achieve enlightenment. Every sentient being can achieve enlightenment because every sentient being has the nature of the buddha, the potential to become a buddha.

As Holiness says, there are people who don’t have the karma, the merit, the fortune to hear and understand Buddhism but there are people or sentient beings who can generate faith in God. They believe there is an external creator, one that created the world and all life. There are people who can generate faith in that, who can believe in that and such a doctrine is helpful for them. For example, in Christianity there are the ten commandments. I don’t know whether it is exactly the same or not, but the general idea is to not harm others, to not kill, tell lies and so forth. If a person follows that, by believing that this is what God said, of course it reduces harming others  and also themselves. Not giving harm to others is not giving harm to ourselves, and giving harm to others is the cause of receiving harm ourselves in the future. Therefore, reducing harm to others means reducing receiving harm so it helps us. Anyway, believing in God and his commandments means reducing harm to others which is a protection; it protects us that much from receiving harm from others.

By practicing morality, abstaining from those negative karmas of harming others, we get a higher rebirth. We don’t get reborn in the lower realms, the realms of the hell beings, the hungry ghosts or the animals. This is not something specific to Buddhism; it is not a specific quality of Buddhist practice. It is also there in Christianity and some other religions. By practicing morality, abstaining from harming others, we get a higher, better rebirth in our next life.

I think you have gone through the three types of suffering, right? We need more than this; we need to be free from the whole of samsara forever, from the suffering of pain and the suffering of change, the temporary samsaric pleasures which by analyzing we find are only suffering. They appear as pleasure in the view of the hallucinated mind and they are regarded as pleasure but with wisdom we can see they are only suffering. Because of attachment and maybe ignorance as well, we label “pleasure” onto the suffering feeling because the suffering has temporarily become less. It is not that it has completely gone, that it no longer exists—the suffering is still there but it is less. When it was too much it was the suffering of pain, but when it is less it is called “pleasure.” We need to be free forever not only from those but also from the very foundation of those two sufferings, pervasive compounding suffering.

My talk is going all over like this, like water spilling on the ground, going all over the place. Maybe if it is of benefit to somebody, it’s OK.

The differing viewS of emptiness of the four schools

Last night, at the end, we talked about how everything comes from our mind—what we see, what we hear, what we taste, what we smell, the objects of mind, body, the tangible objects—how they appear, how we believe them to exist, all comes from our mind. I used the example of the letter A. I hope you have been meditating on that. This is extremely important, extremely, extremely important. This understanding of reality is a special thing about Buddhist philosophy.

In the rest of the world, things are believed to come from the outside, to exist from their own side, to be inherently existing and therefore completely self-sufficient. There are many wrong views, such as permanence and existing alone and existing with its own freedom and so forth. In Hindu philosophy there’s a belief in the “protected.” The very foundation of Buddhism, however, is that everything comes from the mind. That is very important.

Any problem we have, any happiness we experience, by analyzing we can see it has come from our mind. The I that exists is what is merely imputed by the mind; it exists in mere name. Anything that exists in mere name comes from the mind; it is merely imputed by the mind. It is labeled by the mind, imputed by the mind, so it comes from the mind. Therefore, there is no question about the false I. That is definitely a mental publication. Ignorance has printed this false I, ignorance has published this false I.

As I mentioned last night, after somebody teaches us the A we believe in it and then the way the A appears to us is not according to reality. It appears totally the opposite of reality, which is merely imputed by mind and is totally empty from its own side. That’s what exists but it appears to us as totally the opposite, as existing from its own side. If you examine it in a subtle way, this is the very subtle object to be refuted.

There are four schools of Buddhist philosophers: Vaibhashika, Sautrantika, Cittamatra or Mind Only, and Madhyamaka, which has two divisions, Svatantrika and Prasangika. According to the Prasangika school, the extremely subtle object to be refuted is the A that appears to us. When the A appears to us we hold on to the way it appears, how we apprehend that, and we believe that the A is not merely labeled by the mind. This very subtle object that is not merely labeled by the mind but is slightly more than that, this is the false A, the object to be refuted, according to the Prasangika school.

I should make it short. The base of the A appears to the non-defective mind. Then, our mind labels it “A” and sees it as completely existing from its own side. That is the false A, the object to be refuted according the Svatantrika Madhyamika school. That is grosser than the object to be refuted posited by the Prasangika school, the subtle object to be refuted. We can also say the subtle hallucination.

Even grosser is the Cittamatra school’s object to be refuted or false A. The Cittamatra school posits that phenomena exist. They believe in the seven or even eight consciousnesses, including the “mind basis of all.” This is a principal or main consciousness that is the base of all, which means the base of both the whole of samsara and liberation. Liberation is not only liberation from samsara but it can also refer to great liberation, liberation from the subtle defilements. With the seventh consciousness, the mind basis of all, anything that exists is left on this consciousness, planted as an imprint. The mind that has the function of knowing objects, that perceives objects and the object of perception left on this seventh consciousness manifest at the same moment—one is the mind perceiving the object and the other is the object.

The example often given is the mind that perceives the color blue. One manifests as the object, the blue color itself, and one is the mind that knows this. Both manifest at the same time. Therefore, according to the Mind Only School, Cittamatra, when the A appears to us, we have this very gross hallucination, this object to be refuted, this false A. It is much grosser than the one before, the A that exists without the imprint of the substance, what is left on the seventh consciousness. It exists without depending on that. This hallucination is very gross. There can also be self-sufficiency without depending on the parts, without depending on the base, the continuity of that and then existing as self-sufficient, depending on the continuity of the base.

When this extremely gross one appears, it appears as permanent while it is totally impermanent, under the control of karma, under the control of cause and conditions. It doesn’t last. Anyway, to put it very simply, it decays, even within a day, even within an hour, even within a minute, even within a second, then there are split seconds, it doesn’t last even within a second. It degenerates, even within a second or a split second. What exists in this minute doesn’t exist in the next minute. What exists in this second doesn’t exist in the next second. What exists in this split second doesn’t exist in the next split second. Although it is impermanent like that it appears as permanent. We see it as permanent, without depending on cause and conditions, with its own freedom.

Of course, there is karma, there’s a cause. The A exists because of karma. That’s the very first answer. There are many conditions such as somebody writing it on a blackboard or with a pen or whatever. While it depends on cause and conditions, it appears to exist without depending on cause and conditions, existing with its own freedom and without depending on parts; it appears to exist alone. It has to depend on parts—the first line, the second line and the third line—but when the A appears to us it looks like it doesn’t depend on any parts, like it’s something truly existent, existing from its own side. This most unbelievably gross hallucination of a false A is there.

In the same way, we should analyze the I, the self. The way the I appears to us, there are so many hallucinations. There’s a false I that is the object to be refuted, the very subtle one, according to the Prasangika Madhyamaka school’s view and according to the Svatantrika school. Then there are the views of the Cittamatra school, the Sautrantika school and the Vaibhashika school, all the points of view that posit how the false I appears. There are so many piles of hallucinations we have when the I appears to us and when we hold onto that; there are so many wrong beliefs about the I. It’s not just one! There are extremely gross wrong views and less gross, and then the Prasangika school’s view, the extremely subtle wrong view of the object to be refuted, the false I.

This meditation on the correct view is an extremely important meditation. Each school has its own point of view of the correct view and they all help our understanding. They are all stages we climb one by one. The first stage helps us to climb to the second stage, the second stage helps us to climb to the third stage and the third stage helps us to the fourth one. It’s all to help us understand the last one, the Prasangika Madhyamika school’s view, the extremely subtle hallucination, the object to be refuted. Only then can we see the real truth, the unmistaken truth, emptiness according to the Prasangika school’s right view.

Without emptiness there is no way to cut the root of samsara

Without realizing that final correct view there is no way to cut ignorance, the root of samsara, the root of all the sufferings we have ever experienced from beginningless rebirths—the oceans of suffering of the hell realms, the oceans of suffering of the hungry ghosts, the oceans of suffering of the animals, the oceans of suffering of the human beings, the oceans of suffering of gods and demigods. This is the very root of all these suffering that we have been experiencing from beginningless rebirths, all the suffering that we are experiencing now and all the suffering that we will experience in the future. The main reason we have to suffer is because of karma and delusion, karma motivated by delusion. The root of all the delusions—all the delusions to do with anger, all the delusions to do with attachment and all the delusions to do with ignorance—the root of all three poisonous minds is ignorance of the ultimate nature of the I.

Why do we have to suffer? Why do we have to die? We could suddenly be in a car accident, our whole life could totally change and we could go from being well to having our body in pieces. Our life could change in many ways; we could suddenly become paralyzed or incapable of looking after ourselves. Normally we don’t have to worry about how we make a living, our food, the place we live, our job and so forth. Even if we don’t work we still have a place to live and food to eat so we don’t have to worry. Then suddenly something happens one day, an earthquake or some heavy sickness or something, and we have nothing. Everything’s gone; we become a beggar. Our entire life is totally changed. I’ve heard this many times from people, how their limbs which were beautiful suddenly become changed, with the hands twisted this way, the legs crooked, the body changed. I’m just giving you an idea.

There was nobody who came overnight to make their hands, legs and body like this. It’s not like that. Something happens and many people say, “What have I done? I haven’t done anything bad in my life. Why do I have to suffer like this?” The person feels this has happened without any cause. I have met many people like this, even students.

The very root reason is this ignorance. It’s because we haven’t eliminated it by realizing emptiness, by developing wisdom. We haven’t removed the negative imprint of this ignorance. From this root, there are the poisonous minds—attachment, anger and ignorance—and the negative karmas collected in the past. That is the particular cause of these sicknesses but the cause of everything, the root, is ignorance.

We don’t see this because we haven’t thought well about karma, how everything comes from our own mind. That is the very basic philosophy, the very basic evolution of suffering and happiness, but we don’t think that it comes from our mind and, of course, we don’t see that it involves the root, the ignorance, where all that evolution comes from.

When a problem comes it’s so heavy and so unbearable and we naturally think that we don’t deserve it. Of course, there is no question about other people who don’t know the Dharma, who don’t know the lamrim teachings about karma and reincarnation. Even those of us who have heard many sutra and tantra teachings—the condensed and extensive Buddhadharma and on top of that the most secret and higher tantra teaching—even though we have received them so many times, when a problem comes, we completely forget that it comes from our mind, that it comes from karma, from the root, this ignorance.

There’s also self-cherishing, the self-cherishing thought. This is what these problems come from, but we never relate them to that. We never think they come from ignorance, the concept of true existence. Because of that we think we haven’t done anything wrong. It’s because we haven’t thought deeply about karma, about how many of each day’s activities—eating, walking, sitting, sleeping, doing our job, without counting meditation, doing prayers and so forth—become virtue and how many become nonvirtue. For somebody who has realizations of impermanence death, of renunciation of this life, of renunciation of future lives, and of course, who has realization of bodhicitta, that is quite different.

For somebody who does not have a realization of emptiness but has a stable realization of impermanence and death, then whatever activity they do in that twenty-four hours becomes Dharma. Whatever they do—eating, walking, sitting, sleeping, doing their job—becomes Dharma, becomes the cause of happiness of future lives. Everything is done with renunciation, the very healthy mind that is free from attachment to this life. That is the first level of healthy mind. The second level of healthy mind brings even greater peace and happiness. That is the mind free from attachment to future lives’ samsara, to samsaric happiness, samsaric perfections. The mind does not have attachment, clinging, grasping to all that.

Of course, for even greater peace and happiness, on the basis of loving kindness and compassion toward all sentient beings, we generate the realization of bodhicitta. We attain incredible, unimaginable peace and happiness when we develop the mind that works for sentient beings, taking full responsibility on ourselves to liberate them from the oceans of samsaric suffering and bring them to enlightenment: the numberless hell beings, the numberless hungry ghosts, the numberless animals, the numberless human beings, the numberless gods and demigods and intermediate stage beings—the numberless sentient beings from each realm.

An arhat achieves liberation, the blissful state of peace for oneself, the total cessation of suffering because it is the total cessation of karma and delusion, including the negative imprints of delusion, the seeds of delusion. An arhat is free from suffering forever. The happiness, the bliss that such a meditator attains is unimaginable. Like when people who are playing soccer score a goal, they throw their arms about and express the most incredible emotion at having scored. However, I never see them smiling. Their faces are very intense and yet they never smile! The emotion is so strong just scoring a goal in football so imagine somebody who has just achieved liberation. This is not just for one lifetime but for eons. The happiness is unimaginable. They are totally free forever from the cycle of death and rebirth, totally free from the oceans of suffering of the hell beings, the hungry ghosts, the animals and the human beings. Compare this to the footballer who is very happy, even though they just get a few dollars and maybe a reputation.

For a bodhisattva, no matter how difficult it is to help other sentient beings, no matter how complicated it is, their mind has unbelievably great joy, much greater joy, much greater happiness than the person who achieves liberation. The bodhisattva has totally renounced the I, the thought of cherishing the I, the thought of seeking happiness for themselves. They only have the pure, holy thought of cherishing the numberless other sentient beings and seeking happiness only for them. Can you imagine such an incredible great holy being? Their mind is totally pure, unstained by the self-cherishing thought. It doesn’t arise for even one second. No matter how difficult it is to work for sentient beings, no matter how complicated it is, no matter how many problems, there is such joy and happiness—far more than that of an arhat, who is achieving liberation from samsara.

Even to protect one sentient being from engaging in heavy negative karma and experiencing a lot of suffering in the lower realms for an unimaginable length of time, the bodhisattva takes on that suffering of rebirth in the lower realms themselves. In its place, they give that person all their happiness and freedom. They want to be born in the hell realm themselves for the sake of that person. To suffer like that brings greater joy and happiness than achieving liberation for themselves—the total cessation of the oceans of samsaric suffering and its cause, and the attainment of the blissful state of peace forever.

The bodhisattvas who desire very strongly to be born in hell even for sake of one sentient being’s happiness are unbelievably happy. They realize how every sentient being is the most precious, the kindest and dearest being in their life; they have received all their present happiness from that sentient being and will receive all their future life happiness including ultimate happiness, liberation and enlightenment from them. This is all received from the kindness of that sentient being. The bodhisattva sees this, so there is unbelievable joy and happiness when they are able to offer any benefit, any help, to that sentient being.

I’m sorry. My talk went all over the place. I’ll come back to the point quickly.

Understanding emptiness brings peace

Only Buddhism has the method to be liberated from the oceans of samsaric suffering and its cause, karma and delusion. Why? Because of emptiness. Not only are the five paths to achieve liberation explained only in Buddhism, but also emptiness. The very root is the wisdom realizing emptiness that cuts the root of all the suffering, this ignorance. Emptiness is a very special quality of Buddhism, and is not explained in other religions.

As I mentioned before, other religions like Christianity explain how we can achieve a good rebirth by living in morality, abstaining from certain harms to other sentient beings. There are many different religions like Hinduism that explain this. But only Buddhism explains the five paths to achieve liberation, with all the details about each path, and then the very root, emptiness. And of course, bodhicitta—the altruistic mind wishing to achieve full enlightenment to liberate numberless sentient beings from the oceans of samsaric suffering and bring them to full enlightenment—is not in the other religions, it’s only in Buddhism.

I am talking about the foundation here, not about Buddhist tantra and those other things, the tantra taught by the Buddha, the Secret Mantra Vajrayana. I’m just talking about the foundation.

My plan was to meditate on the special verse on emptiness from the seventh Dalai Lama, but I think maybe since I started talking this way I may as well finish it quickly.

This gives you an idea how everything comes from our own mind, including this perfect human rebirth, as well as what I mentioned before, the way things appear and how we hold onto and believe in that appearance. What exists comes from our mind and what doesn’t exist—all the false objects—also comes from our mind.

First the mind thinks of the aggregates, the base to be labeled “I.” The mind makes up the label “I” and that is the merely-imputed I. That happens in the first second. Then, in the next second, what appears back to us, rather than an I that is merely imputed by the mind, that exists in mere name, is an I that is totally contradictory to reality. It is totally the opposite of reality. That is what the Prasangika school says is the object to be refuted, the gag cha, the very subtle I that does not appear as merely imputed by the mind but is something slightly more than that.

Why has that happened? Why is there this hallucination? Why does I appear back as a hallucination, not according to the reality, not merely imputed by mind? A good example is the I that appears when we get angry, when somebody scolds us or puts us down or spanks us. If at that time we were to think, “Oh, they are angry at this merely-labeled I. They’re insulting this merely-labeled I. They’re spanking this merely-labeled I,” we would never get angry. For sure we would never get angry, I can guarantee that. That is reality and if we were to think like that we would never get angry. So, we are making a big mistake in life, an unbelievably huge mistake in life by not thinking like this. We need to practice mindfulness—how the I is merely imputed by the mind, how our actions are merely imputed by the mind, how the objects are merely imputed by the mind. Practicing mindfulness like this becomes a meditation on emptiness. It also becomes a meditation on patience.

Then, what others do around us that would normally make us angry or irritated no longer disturbs our mind. Our mind remains at peace. We see no reason to become angry so there’s incredible peace and happiness in our life. Our life becomes like watching very interesting scenery go by, or like watching a wonderful movie, twenty-four hours a day every day. There’s deep inner peace with this mindfulness. Whatever we are doing—not only meditating or studying Dharma but even eating, walking, sitting, sleeping, doing our job—no matter how busy our life is, we can do all these other activities but part of our mind remains in meditation, in mindfulness.

Without it, delusions can so easily arise—anger, uncontrolled desire and so forth—driving us crazy and driving other people crazy. And when we don’t get what we want, what the selfish mind wants, we drink, we take refuge in alcohol. Instead of taking refuge in the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha, we take refuge in alcohol or drugs. We take refuge in buddha grass! I don’t know whether everybody knows about buddha grass, but anyway, we take refuge in these things, and then that makes matters even worse.

With this meditation there are no ups and downs; we have great peace in our heart, great stability in our life. We can watch the wonderful scenery, the great movie of our life. No matter how busy we are in our life, part of our mind is always in this mindfulness meditation, this one type of meditation, how everything is imputed by the mind. This becomes an unbelievable protection from those delusions like jealousy that rain down like a hailstorm, constantly torturing us, constantly making us suffer. We are free from these wrong concepts and so we cease to harm ourselves and others. Eating, walking, sitting, sleeping, doing our job—whatever we are doing becomes Dharma, everything becomes Dharma, everything becomes the most powerful Dharma. Everything becomes the antidote to samsara, to these aggregates continuously circling from life to life and having to experience all the sufferings of the hells, the human beings and so forth. This is the antidote to all the delusions and especially the root, ignorance.

Maybe I’ll stop here. I started something, I started one bag, one package, so I think I’ll stop there. Anyway, by developing and directly realizing this we’re able to cease all these delusions, this ignorance, the seed of ignorance, and that’s how we achieve total liberation. This type of practice of mindfulness is one type of meditation. What I’m saying is how important it is, how powerful it is.

Maybe I’ll stop here.

Dedications

[Rinpoche and students chant mandala offering]

Due to all the past, present and future merits collected by me, the three times’ merits collected by others, may bodhicitta be actualized within my own heart and in the hearts of my own family members.

You must pray for your parents. You probably haven’t yet reached the meditation on the kindness of the parents. They are not only your parents of this life but also from beginningless rebirths. Like that, every sentient being has been your own parents, so there’s unbelievable kindness to meditate on. You are repaying their kindness by what you have been doing this time, coming here to do the meditation course—not just any kind of meditation but lamrim, the stages of the path to enlightenment—and learning how to go about attaining enlightenment, how to be free from the oceans of suffering of samsara and its cause, karma and delusion, and how to help others.

You have been learning to become free from samsara yourself by realizing emptiness, and then to generate compassion for the numberless sentient beings who are suffering like you, and then to free them from suffering and its cause, and to do all that by yourself alone. To bring them to enlightenment you need to be enlightened. You need to have the state of omniscience, the complete mind of compassion for all sentient beings and perfect power to be able to do perfect work for sentient beings without any mistakes.

Because you need to achieve enlightenment you need to generate the bodhicitta motivation from the very beginning and then to meditate on bodhicitta itself, so the mind can train in it. These are the basic things here. Along with the preliminary practices, there are many practices to purify the mind of all the negative karma, the defilements that are obstacles to realizations, and to collect extensive merit, such as dedication and rejoicing in order to stabilize the practice and increase the merits and things like that. This is the best way to repay the kindness of your parents and, not only that, to repay the kindness of all the sentient beings. There is the extensive kindness of all sentient beings having been our mother and there are the four limitless kindnesses. This is the best way to repay them.

Why is it the best way to repay them? Because if you learn Dharma then you know how to help others, you can educate other sentient beings, you can give them Dharma wisdom, so they will engage in the correct cause of happiness and abandon the cause of suffering. In this way you can cause them to achieve happiness, even temporal happiness. Then, of course, there’s ultimate happiness, liberation and enlightenment. The more you learn Dharma, the more you can help sentient beings, the more you can educate them. Only then will they have the opportunity to practice the path to liberation and enlightenment. It’s only possible then, otherwise it’s not possible. That is why repaying the kindness of all sentient beings, including this life’s parents, means studying and practicing Dharma and attaining realizations.

By achieving enlightenment you understand everything and there’s not the slightest mistake when you help others. You are able to do perfect work for sentient beings. Coming to the Kopan meditation course here and doing not just any kind of meditation but lamrim meditation, meditation on the stages of the path to enlightenment, is extremely worthwhile.

Due to all the past, present and future merits collected by me, the three times’ merits collected by others, may bodhicitta be actualized in my heart, in the hearts of my own family members and in the hearts of all the sentient beings. Sentient beings means not only people and animals, and not only this world. This is one universe where there are four major or great continents and eight small continents and then there are the lower realms of this universe and the realms of the gods and demigods on Mount Meru. There are numberless universes like this, so when we say “sentient beings” it means even the sentient beings who are in other universes, everybody in the six realms.

May bodhicitta to be generated in everyone’s hearts, and in those whose hearts bodhicitta has already been generated, may it be increased.

[Rinpoche chants the dedication prayers]

The second one. Due to all the three times’ merits collected by me, the three times’ merits collected by others, may bodhicitta be actualized especially in the hearts of the leaders of the world, especially the leaders of mainland China and any other countries. People suffer so much under leaders who have bad motivations, who don’t have a good heart, because of a lack of compassion and loving kindness, a lack of bodhicitta, because of the self-cherishing thought. People suffer so much; there are so many problems. Not only the leaders themselves suffer but also the other people suffer so much. Therefore, it is very important to pray for bodhicitta to be generated in the hearts of all the leaders, especially the leaders of mainland China, and all those other countries that have so much suffering daily.

[Rinpoche chants the dedication prayers]

Then thirdly, due to all the three times’ merits collected by me, the three times’ merits collected by all sentient beings and buddhas, may bodhicitta be actualized in the hearts of everybody who follows different religions. May bodhicitta be actualized in all their hearts. Only in this way can the world have perfect peace and happiness. May everybody live their life only benefiting each other and not harming each other, and may what everybody does only become the cause of enlightenment, the cause of happiness for other sentient beings.

Please pray like this.

[Rinpoche chants the dedication prayers]

I think we might dedicate for His Holiness’ long life and all those things at the end, probably after Vajrasattva. So, I’ll just leave it there.

Due to the past, present and future merits collected by me, the three times’ merits collected by others, that which exists but does not exist from its own side, that which is totally empty, may the I who exists but does not exist from its own side, who is totally empty, achieve Guru Shakyamuni Buddha’s enlightenment, which exists but does not exist from its own side, which is totally empty, and lead all the sentient beings, who exist but who do not exist from their own side, who are totally empty, to Guru Shakyamuni Buddha’s enlightenment, which exists but doesn’t exist from its own side, which is totally empty, by myself alone, who exists but who does not exist from its own side, who is totally empty.

[Chanting of prayer For Lama Tsongkhapa’s Teachings to Spread in the Hearts of All Sentient Beings]

Good night.