Lama Zopa Rinpoche - Bodhicitta is the real meaning of life (1/2)

[u/theOmnipotentKiller]

Homage to Samantabhadra all goodness, inspire us to achieve your unexcelled state

Following excerpt is from Lama Zopa Rinpoche's text Bodhicitta. This excerpt points out how empty the promises of self-cherishing intention are.

There is no samsaric happiness that we have never experienced. In fact, we have experienced every samsaric pleasure countless times. The reason we seem to be encountering new pleasures or new problems is simply because we cannot remember our past lives. When we can realize that we have already undergone whatever pleasure or problem we are currently experiencing innumerable times before, we will see that striving for samsaric perfection is fruitless; we are always doomed to dissatisfaction. Therefore we must determine to break the never-ending cycle of suffering.

However, even if we could overcome suffering completely, the real meaning of life would still elude us. It is not enough to practice the Dharma solely for our own happiness. Even animals work toward their own happiness, day and night. A cow finds grass and is happy; a horse finds water and drinks it, thinking, “May I be happy.” If they are happy, it is good; if they are suffering, it is bad. If that’s our attitude, are we any better than the animals and insects?

Living in a beautiful house, eating delicious food, is that any better than the animal living in the forest eating grass? Of course, the level of enjoyment might be much greater, but is it any more meaningful? A life filled with riches — the most magnificent house, the most wonderful clothes, the most delicious food — is as worthless as the poorest life if it is lived just for selfish pleasure. We have this particular body and we call ourselves “human,” but are we any different from the animals? Each of us is really just an animal with a human body.

Even among animals some show compassion. I heard about a cat that lived very happily with its mouse neighbor. The mouse was there right in front of the cat, but they lived very peacefully together. Animals can help each other. So in that way they are better than we humans who only work for our own happiness.

So much money and effort — by ourselves and our parents — have gone into having this life we now have. We have worked so hard to learn the alphabet, to learn the subjects at primary and high school, to gain our degree at university. We have put so much time and effort into finding the right, well-paid job and we are still working incredibly hard to get what we want. We work so many hours a week to pay for our house to give us comfort and shelter, for our clothes and food, and for our enjoyments; we spend so much money on medicine, health care, and insurance. When we get sick it costs so much to have an operation or some expensive treatment.

We spend so much energy trying to stay healthy, going to the gym, listening to the advice people give us about health, knowing what food is yin and what food is yang, spending hours jogging in the mountains. We think that living our life in this way, taking such good care of ourselves and seeking out the best enjoyments, is what gives it meaning. Unless we can see that living our life for others is really what gives life meaning, what else can we think?

In fact, this busy life of chasing health and enjoyment is a very empty life. There is no meaning at all, no purpose in living like this. All our effort totally fails to give meaning to our life. All the knowledge we have collected is just like data in a computer. We could become the richest person in the world, somebody who is featured all the time on television and in magazines. We could be a household name, known to every person young and old, with the biggest reputation in the world. However, our life is completely empty.

We each lead a selfish life, not recognizing that all happiness comes from others. We see others as a means to our happiness rather than seeing that by serving them we attain true happiness. Everything in our life that bring us enjoyment has been received from other sentient beings; nothing we have ever owned exists without their effort. The clothes we wear, the food we eat, the house we live in all come from the kindness of so many sentient beings. Countless beings have died or experienced great pain to give us these things. Many have created negative karma to ensure we have what we want. But while we are enjoying all these things, we don’t give a single thought to benefit others. Our only concern is our own happiness, always wondering what will make me happy.

Here’s an analogy: We buy a house after many, many years of incredibly hard work, saving every penny we can, enduring great physical hardship, day and night. Then we let somebody stay in our house and we feed them, thinking they can help out by working for us. However, instead of helping us, they steal our money, our possessions, and so forth. When we realize this we are furious, wanting to find them and scream at them. Thinking of how they used us, sleeping in our big bed under our warm, soft blanket, never giving even one thought to all the hard work we had done to bring this all about, we go crazy with anger. If we could find them, and if we had a bomb, they would no longer exist!

If this seems an extreme example, this is really how we are with all other sentient beings all the time: taking the results of their hard work and never thinking once of the suffering they have had to go through to give us our pleasure.

May our minds turn away from sensory objects