Making Life Meaningful By Kyabje Lama Zopa Rinpoche at Various locations, 1999 (Archive # 1055, Last Updated Sep 11, 2011)

• Making Life Meaningful • Chapter One: The Purpose of Life • Chapter Two: How to Make Each Moment of Our Lives Meaningful • Chapter Three: A Daily Practice to Stop All Suffering • Appendix 1: Practicing Guru Devotion with the Nine Attitudes • Appendix 2: More Thought Training Meditations • Appendix 3: The Confession of Downfalls to the Thirty-Five Buddhas • Foreign Translations (MLM)

Making Life Meaningful

It is extremely important for us to know how best to lead our daily lives. This depends upon our knowing whatis a spiritual action and what is not, the difference between what is Dharma and what is not Dharma. Thebenefits of having this knowledge are incredible, infinite. In this book, Lama Zopa Rinpoche gives us theanswer to the perennial question of how to integrate Dharma with our daily lives - not only Dharma, but thebest Dharma, bodhicitta: the determination to attain enlightenment for the sake of all sentient beings. Itcontains a public talk explaining the purpose of life in general and the practice of guru devotion, a wide arrayof techniques for transforming ordinary actions into causes for enlightenment and advice on establishing adaily practice. By putting these precious teachings into practice, beginners and advanced students alike willtruly be able to make the lives highly meaningful. Chapter One of this book is also available as an audiorecording and unedited transcript.

In this book, Lama Zopa Rinpoche explains how we can practice Dharma, the true cause of happiness,twenty-four hours a day. For most of us, it is extremely important to know how to do this. Our busy lives donot allow us the luxury of many hours’ formal study and practice each day. We have to work, eat, sleep, fulfill

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family and societal obligations, entertain ourselves and so forth—activities that are not normally considered tobe spiritual pursuits. Who has time to meditate?

However, as Rinpoche points out again and again, Dharma is not just what you do but the way that you do it.Motivation is key. It’s our mental attitude, not so much the action itself, that determines whether what we do ispositive, the cause of happiness, or negative, the cause of suffering. Therefore, if we know how to use ourmind properly, everything we do can become a Dharma action, good karma, meritorious, positive. In theseteachings, then, Rinpoche clarifies how we should use our minds so that we can make everything we do thetrue cause of happiness.

But that’s not all. There are different degrees of happiness, the highest being that ofenlightenment—buddhahood itself. That is what we must strive for, but not for ourselves alone. We must aimfor the enlightenment of all sentient beings; we must endeavor to bring the highest degree of happiness toevery single living being. To work with compassion for the enlightenment of all sentient beings is the purposeof our lives, and to direct everything we do towards this goal is how we can make our lives as meaningful asthey can possibly be.

Such motivation is called bodhicitta, and in this book, Lama Zopa Rinpoche describes how we can motivateour every action with bodhicitta, the true cause of ultimate happiness for all sentient beings. To live bybodhicitta is to live a truly meaningful life. Thank you, Rinpoche, for your never-ending kindness in being aperfect example of bodhicitta in action and for constantly teaching us the importance of this. May you livelong for the benefit of all sentient beings.

The first talk, “The Purpose of Life,” was given in New York City, August 1999, during a three-day series ofteachings by His Holiness the Dalai Lama. The other teachings in this book form the essence of a proposedfull-length book that will explain in more detail how to make our daily lives meaningful and will contain detailsof specific practices that Rinpoche recommends we do. These include making light offerings, liberatinganimals and offering water to Dzambhala and the pretas, current versions of which may be obtained from theFPMT Store.

We have not included a glossary of terms in this book as we provide one online at www.LamaYeshe.com andin many of our other free books. I would like to thank Su Hung and Wendy Cook for their help with the NewYork talk, many other people, including Vens. Yeshe Khadro, Ailsa Cameron and Connie Miller and LindaGatter for their help with the other material, Wendy Cook and Jennifer Barlow for their editorial suggestionsand Ven. Mindrol for reviewing the manuscript and providing the latest FPMT versions of the variouspractices mentioned.

— Nicholas Ribush, Editor

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