When the subject of karma is missing, there’s no understanding that harming others means harming oneself.

-Lama Zopa Rinpoche

Lama Zopa Rinpoche considers how Western psychology lacks an understanding of karma and discusses how it is not enough for a patient to attain superficial happiness if the deeper cause of suffering remains untreated. These teachings were given during a lamrim course led by Rinpoche at Maitreya Instituut, Emst, The Netherlands, in August 1990. You can also read along with the transcript on our website.

We have this negative karma collected on our mental continuum, and we have to do something to clean it, to purify it. If we do nothing, it piles up like mountains and we will experience life’s problems again and again, again and again, because the negative karma is still there.

-Lama Zopa Rinpoche

Lama Zopa Rinpoche urges us to face the facts: our problems arise from our own karma. We must recognize it and then do something about it. It is not enough to feel regret, we must apply the treatment, the method that will serve as an antidote to this poisonous karma piling up in our mind stream. Rinpoche gave these teachings on karma during a lamrim course at Maitreya Instituut, The Netherlands, in August 1990. You can follow along with the transcript on our website.

Ultimate happiness, liberation from samsara, enlightenment, everything, all this happiness – the creator is your mind, not somebody outside. This gives you incredible freedom.

-Lama Zopa Rinpoche

Lama Zopa Rinpoche encourages us to make the best use of our lives by realizing how the mind is the creator of all our happiness and suffering. Through the practice of thought transformation, we can find freedom. These teachings were given by Rinpoche at the Thirty-third Kopan Meditation Course, held at Kopan Monastery, Nepal, in 2000. You can follow along with the transcript on our website.