We bear unbelievable hardships for this body that we cherish more than anything. We keep it clean, spend lots of money on clothes and food for it, spend time exercising, doing hard work for money, and so much worry and fears taking care of the body. This is the same for billionaires and poor people, there is so much discontentment and dissatisfaction, we try to get everything we can from the world, we try to find happiness but we experience continual physical and mental problems, relationship, and business problems. In spite of all these hardships we bear for the body, one day we will die, Lama Zopa Rinpoche explains in this teaching given on December 17 from Kopan Monastery during the fifty-third lamrim meditation course. All of these efforts and hardships we undertake for our body, if done with attachment to this life, becomes negative karma. It is so difficult to think of future lives, we can’t bear it. We don’t think of impermanence-death in everyday life. Every day we think we are going to live many years. Even on the same morning that we die, we may think this. We cheat ourselves bearing hardships for this body, which we only have for this one life.

Rather than using this body to obtain things that have no meaning, we can use it and bear all hardships to practice Dharma, for the happiness of future lives. If we postpone our Dharma practice, we have no way of knowing how long we are going to live. Some people think they will practice Dharma only when they are old. But there’s no guarantee we will ever become old.

Rinpoche explains the benefits of receiving lungs (oral transmissions) and the motivation for receiving them. Rinpoche then offers those in attendance the oral transmissions of “Calling the Guru from Afar,” and the Dorje Khadro fire puja (at 1:30:52 in the video).