There Is Nothing More Sublime Than Practicing the Higher Training of Morality - Teaching #112

Lama Zopa Rinpoche continues offering teachings specifically intended for ordained Sangha, but everyone is welcome to benefit from Rinpoche's advice. He begins this video teaching, recorded on August 19, 2021, at Kopan Monastery in Nepal, by reminding us that we have received this perfect human rebirth with the freedom to practice Dharma qualified by the eight freedoms and ten richnesses. This rebirth is extremely rare and precious. Even having the first freedom of not being born in hell is most precious.It is important to understand your own samsaric suffering. If you don't, you can’t generate compassion for all sentient beings. You must view being in samsara as being in the center of a fire. You have to feel all of your suffering as unbearable, not as pleasure. From that, great compassion for every sentient being comes. From that, bodhichitta arises—the thought to free all beings from oceans of samsaric suffering and bring them to enlightenment. For that, we need omniscience and enlightenment for ourselves. No one achieves enlightenment without saying goodbye to samsara.This life is amazing, but it can stop at any time. Right now there are numberless beings dying in the mother’s womb, as babies, as children, in middle age, in old age; one's breathing can stop at any time. It is like a bubble in water or lightning in the sky.Rinpoche then discusses the power of holy objects and the benefits of building statues, stupas, and temples. Often building statues and temples doesn’t make sense to Westerners. They think it is too expensive and a waste of money, Rinpoche explains, because they don’t understand the benefits.Rinpoche quotes from and gives commentary on Sutra Requested by King Prasenajit.Referring to the teachings of Pandita Nagkyi Rinchen, Rinpoche says that even the creatures killed under the feet of people building a temple will not fall into the lower realms. According to the White Lotus Sutra, even looking at a drawing of a buddha when you are angry causes you to gradually see ten million buddhas. His Holiness the Dalai Lama said that the real stupa is the realizations of the path to enlightenment within you. You need to dedicate yourself to actualizing the lamrim. No matter how much practice, prostrations, and mantras you do, the main path is listening, reflecting, and meditating on the lamrim.You cannot receive the blessings of the buddhas without a guru. The guru is the channel through which the ten-direction buddhas guide you and speak to you. You should serve the guru with the mindfulness that the guru is the channel for all the buddhas. The guru is not just someone who gives you a Dharma education. That is a very ordinary view. Without strong guru devotion, heresy and anger arise in relation to the guru, and you create the heaviest negative karma among the negative karmas. Because the essence is pleasing the guru, you need to concentrate on that in everyday life. By pleasing the guru, negative karmas get burned in one second!Some people spend their whole lives meditating without an object because they don’t have a correct guru. After some time, your mind becomes dull. In this world it is very difficult to meet a perfect guru. For those that do not have the merit to meet a perfect guru and receive perfect teachings, and who have so much suffering and are going on the wrong path, you can develop compassion for them.You also cannot achieve enlightenment without bodhichitta. As much as possible, do everything with bodhichitta. Even if you don’t have a realization of bodhichitta, but have a bodhichitta motivation, everything you do becomes a cause for enlightenment. By making requests to your guru with firm devotion, you develop realizations.In order to achieve enlightenment in a brief lifetime, you need to practice highest yoga tantra because otherwise you lose the opportunity. Then, to be...