Lama Zopa Rinpoche gave this teaching to students attending the three-month Vajrasattva retreat at Kopan Monastery in Nepal on April 27, 2022. Here’s a summary of Rinpoche’s teaching.

If you want to know the truth of the world, the truth of yourself, and if you want to be free from the oceans of samsaric suffering, then you have to know the root cause of suffering, Lama Zopa Rinpoche explains. You need to meet the correct teachings and that depends on merit. And you have to have faith and make correction prayers and dedications. Otherwise, it’s difficult. You could meet Buddhism but fall into eternalism or nihilism.

Rinpoche offers the retreatants a brief history of how the first month-long Kopan Course began (14:37 in the video). There have been fifty-two courses since this first course in 1971.

Generating bodhicitta when listening to the teachings is unbelievable. So we listen to the teachings for all sentient beings—not only to free them from samsara and bring them to nirvana—but for ultimate happiness, the total cessation of obscurations and the completion of realizations.

Rinpoche leads the group in offering coffee and cake, including the Clouds of Offering Mantra (48:08 in the video).

Rinpoche continues the teaching, saying that it is so important to understand what the I is. All problems go away when we understand this, Rinpoche assures us. But when we believe in the hallucinated appearance of the I, so many problems arise. Abandoning nonvirtue is the source of happiness for us.

Rinpoche explains the four parts of completing the action of killing (1:17:12 in the video), discusses the purification practice utilizing the four powers (1:43:19 in the video), and offers some stories of those who have committed the heavy negative karma of killing and how they purified these mistakes.

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We invite you to go deeper into the topics presented here, plus many others, by watching Rinpoche’s video. Find links to more resources, including the transcript:

https://fpmt.org/lama-zopa-rinpoche-news-and-advice/advice-from-lama-zopa-rinpoche/abandoning-nonvirtue-is-a-source-of-happiness-for-you