Lama Zopa Rinpoche

somewhere between fifty and sixty stories. There were quite a few swimming pools and a
rooftop helipad. He needed six hundred people to take care of the house for him.
After the house was completed he had a feng shui expert come to check out the house. The
expert said that the house was very harmful; it was not good for him. So then the whole
family moved out, leaving the house empty.
If we were billionaires we could help a lot of poor people even just in India, without talking
about other countries. There are many poor people who are suffering, who are homeless,
without food, and there are many ways in which we could help bring them happiness. We
could build houses for them or we could give them food. This man had an unbelievable
amount of money and all he could think of doing was to build something for his family.
That’s so poor, so sad.
If we were like that man and were to suddenly die in our sleep from a heart attack or
something, what then? Many people die. They go to bed alive and the next morning they
cannot get up because they’ve become a corpse. This happens to millions of people in the
world every day. If we were to suddenly die like that, what is the connection between this life
and the next? We collected all that wealth but only our mind continues into the next life. We
cherished our body more than we cherished the buddhas and bodhisattvas, more than we
cherished all the sentient beings, but even that has to be left.
It is very difficult to feel confident that our next rebirth will be in the upper realms. It
depends on whether we have created virtue or nonvirtue, and the nonvirtue we collect every
day is very strong—it is perfect—whereas whatever virtue we might collect is very weak.
Even if we do manage to create some virtue, we destroy it by getting angry and having ill
will. Whenever we fail to practice patience and compassion, anger arises and blows away our
merit. Since whatever little virtue we have created is not dedicated for enlightenment, our
merit is completely destroyed by anger and the result is rebirth in the lower realms, which is
utterly unimaginable.
When we look at the sentient beings in this world, including ourselves, our entire life is spent
working for attachment, and not attachment to a good rebirth and the samsaric pleasure of
the next life but attachment to this life, attachment only to this life. Except for those who
are practicing Dharma, everybody in the world—billionaires, zillionaires, beggars—is
working for attachment to this life, the eight worldly dharmas. We have become servants to
money, servants to work, servants to attachment to this life.
Furthermore, we also get angry, so we are servants to anger too. And ignorance is there all
the time, especially the ignorance that holds the I and the aggregates as truly existent, the
ignorance that is the root of samsara. Day and night, all the time, we are completely servants
to that as well. This is our life.
Happiness comes from Dharma; our job comes from Dharma; money comes from Dharma.
That is the main cause, good karma, the positive mind, the positive actions of body, speech
and mind. This is something that normally only people who know Dharma would
understand. Worldly people do not know this; they do not know that everything positive, all
happiness, comes from Dharma.
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