Everything comes from the mind, #LamaZopaRinpoche reminds us in this second teaching from the fifty-third lamrim meditation course at Kopan Monastery, given on December 8, 2022. Samsara, nirvana, suffering, enlightenment, all appearances we have, anything we hold as good or bad - all of this comes from the mind. Rinpoche uses the letter Z as an example. This letter appears and we hold on to that appearance. In fact, everything is like this. Nothing exists from its own side, not even an atom. Everything comes from the mind, is merely imputed by the mind, and later due to the false hallucination, appears as totally existing.

Do everything for sentient beings, Rinpoche advises, with a bodhicitta motivation. We have to cultivate the thought to naturally wish to lead every sentient being we meet to enlightenment, like how a mother feels for her child who fell in a fire. Even one second of her child being in a fire is unbearable to her. This is how it should feel toward sentient beings is samsara.

Rinpoche shared the following quotation from Lama Tsongkhapa's Three Principal Aspects of the Path to Enlightenment:

Without the wisdom realizing ultimate reality,

Even though you have generated renunciation and the mind of enlightenment,

You cannot cut the root cause of circling.

Therefore, attempt the method to realize dependent arising.

To eliminate ignorance, we have to realize the Prasangika school’s view of emptiness. The four schools happened in Buddha’s time in India, but the Prasangika view - this is the one we have to realize.

Rinpoche offers the oral transmission of the Heart Sutra starting at 2:14:33 in the video.