Understanding the Suffering of Samsara

Thank you very much for the organization of this rare, extensive exhibition of our human body, especially the exhibition that shows how smoking is so bad, how it’s an impure substance, how cigarettes shorten your life. That helps for a healthy body and mind, a clean place and atmosphere.

This helped me to think how [the human body is] precious. We need to actualize the spiritual path that removes the cause of taking such a body, whose nature is suffering and has a basis of suffering. We need to achieve the spiritual holy body, which has no suffering. It only benefits and does no harm to numberless living beings. It inspired me to learn the spiritual path to be free forever and cease suffering!

Thank you,
Lama Zopa

My most dear, most kind, most precious, wish-fulfilling one,
Thank you very much your kind email.

Sometime ago a student wrote that her brother was always in trouble with the local mafia, he was being asked to give money to them and even the house got taken away. Everything had been taken away from him, so the student was always very worried, if not about herself, then about her relatives, because there were so many problems.

When she asked what pujas and prayers she could do to prevent them be killed etc., I told her that this is not the first time we have experienced this. We have experienced oceans of suffering in each realm from beginningless rebirths, again and again, not only as a human being. If we don’t practice Dharma in this life, if we don’t look after and take care of the mind, then it doesn't allow the mind to become Dharma, and especially if we don't generate bodhicitta, then again we have to suffer without end in samsara.

This present suffering is nothing, and the problems of her relatives are nothing compared to all that. This is the essence of what I told her and what I want to also pass on to you. The point is that it is so important to practice Dharma, to actualize the path, to realize emptiness.

We need to achieve the five Mahayana paths—the Mahayana path of merit, the path of preparation, the right-seeing path, the path of meditation and the path of no more learning. The second path, the path of preparation, has four stages: heat, tip, patience and sublime Dharma.

Until we achieve the third stage [of the path of preparation], patience, we can be reborn in the lower realms, but after we achieve patience we get confidence, and we won’t be reborn in the lower realms. Not only do we realize emptiness but we directly perceive emptiness, so that ceases the delusion and karma; we become free from delusion and karma, and free from the oceans of samsara’s sufferings forever. So [in order to attain] the blissful state of peace, forever, even if we don’t achieve enlightenment in this life, the most important thing in our whole life is to practice Dharma.

My idea, and what I have been talking about for the last few years, is for people to please do the morning motivation, The Method to Transform a Suffering Life into Happiness (Including Enlightenment). You must do this practice. This is how to bring your life into Dharma, transforming the life from kaka into gold, so it not only becomes Dharma but [you are creating] the cause of happiness by practicing bodhicitta. Then everything becomes the cause of enlightenment, whatever you do.

Then if there is time, if you are able to give time—I know you have children, so it's difficult to have much time—even if it is late at night or early morning, if you can, read lamrim. Do the practice, Method to Transform, then read lamrim, even if it’s just a little, even just a few pages, it doesn’t matter.

It’s most worthwhile to read the lamrim, then it is easier to understand, so if you can read a lamrim text from the beginning to the end, do that one time. If you can, read Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand. That is main one, but it doesn't mean you can't read other lamrim texts. You can read others, like A Guide to the Bodhisattva Way of Life.

Another thing is to pray to Tara if you can. There is one Tara prayer, The Crying Child’s Tormented Calling, which I just translated, and also if you can, recite Praise to the Twenty-One Taras. [You can find links to these prayers in the FPMT Catalogue.] If you can, do this for all the success, including achieving enlightenment for sentient beings.

With much love and prayers,

Lama Zopa

P.S. I will pray for you. Take it easy, being in samsara is like this, but still, this is nothing, the problems can be hundreds and thousands of times more. You are still so lucky in the world; so many people have many more problems than you do.

Thank you very much. If you have some things from time to time to tell me, then you can write. I hope your children are OK. Thank you very much.

It's important to use the situation to remind yourself how fortunate you are to still have a human body and a perfect human rebirth which is most difficult to find, and that you have met the Buddhadharma and the virtuous friend.

Remind yourself how it's most fortunate to still be a human being and not to waste it, and to practice the holy Dharma to purify and collect merit and actualize the path.

Use these kinds of situations to be inspired. The 270 people who died in the airplane accident, the sixteen Sherpas who died on Mount Everest and so forth—use all these situations to remind yourself to practice Dharma and to generate compassion for those sentient beings and for all the suffering sentient beings.

This isn't the first time [they have suffered and died like this.] They have experienced the suffering of pain, the suffering of change and pervasive compounded suffering numberless times.

Then it's helpful and becomes a meditation of the path of the lower, middle and higher capable beings. Think of the suffering nature of samsara that has been experienced numberless times. This makes it useful when you hear that information and news.

These dogs are not dead, but completely asleep. Someone needs to wake them up. Just like that we are in samsara, continually suffering.

We need to wake up through Dharma practice—by meditating on emptiness and bodhicitta, and realizing the "I" is empty. All our actions, Buddha, Dharma, Sangha, samsara and enlightenment—everything is empty from its own side.

Thank you very much, my situation is slowly getting better. I have been lazy in practicing Dharma, so this is my punishment.

Tell Peter that the suffering of samsara is related to karma and is temporary; the nature of the mind is not mixed with that. It is temporarily obscured, but it can be cleaned away. If it is mixed with the ultimate nature of the mind, then there is no way to be free, but that isn't the case and that is why everyone can be free, and can achieve enlightenment. By learning, practicing and realizing the path, through that every living being can actualize enlightenment ...not just free from the suffering.

To see things as suffering is a realization. It shows you have renunciation from past lives. Seeing sense pleasures as suffering is a realization. For example, we can see that dependence on drugs causes a lifestyle full of negative karma: killing, stealing, and so much negative karma, basically coming from desire. We are controlled by desire, and then engage in hundreds of different problems and never get satisfaction. This is not like Dharma practice, where happiness increases.

Samsaric suffering has still not ended. Why? Because our mind labels that suffering as pleasure and believes that. And then, again, we are born in samsara. As long as we cling to that, then there is an obstacle to our ultimate happiness. We never achieve freedom from samsaric suffering because of that clinging.

If you just rest, play, and don’t bear hardships, then you don’t prepare yourself for the next day, week, month, or years, without mentioning liberation and enlightenment. Even in life, you must work in order to retire. So, too, in the Dharma path. The best is to be able to liberate others. How can you do this? You must complete the path. So, you should read and research the Dharma. Even if you don’t understand much at the beginning, it is extremely worthwhile to research the Dharma. To understand Dharma needs a lot of merit, that is why Buddhists are so few in number. But it is incredibly beneficial to do this. Infinite qualities come from the omniscient mind. So, you must study and research the Dharma.