Lama Zopa Rinpoche

Which will come first, tomorrow or the next life?
In A Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life, Shantideva said,
If when I have a chance to live a wholesome life
My actions are not wholesome,
Then what shall I be able to do
When confused by the misery of the lower realms? 102
If we don’t practice Dharma now, when death suddenly comes and we have gone to the
lower realms, what can we do at that time? In their previous lives, even hungry ghosts or
animals such as spiders or ants might have been billionaires in a rich country. From living in
a house worth many billions of dollars they become crickets. Can you imagine it? This can
happen.
If we were to be born in hell with the most unbelievable suffering, what could we do at that
time? Nothing. Every hope would be gone, finished. Because we did not practice when we
had the chance it would be too late. Our life and death would be over and our rebirth in the
lower realms already begun.
A tiny fire spark from hell is sixty times hotter than all the fire of the human world put
together. That is how hot it is. Compared to that, all the fire of our world is like an air
conditioner, like snowflakes dropping from the sky. It’s nothing. This is also mentioned in A
Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life.
One time I was walking up from His Holiness’s temple in McLeod Ganj, Dharamsala, to
Tushita Retreat Centre when I saw many monkeys on the road. I thought that they have no
freedom at all. They are totally under the control of karma and delusion; they have not the
slightest freedom. For them, rebirth as a monkey has already happened and there is nothing
they—or we—can do about it; nothing can be done to immediately change it. It has already
happened and they have to finish their karma. They are dro-wa, transmigratory beings, under
the control of karma and delusion.
This is true of whatever animal we look at. It has happened. Tigers are completely under the
control of karma and delusion and there is no freedom at all for them. The tiger rebirth has
already happened because the causes of that rebirth were not purified before, and that is
because the being that is now a tiger did not meet the Dharma before. To a tiger its life is the
most precious thing, but karma forces it to eat other living beings—deer, zebra and other
pitiful animals—that also only want happiness and do not want any suffering whatsoever.
We have been in this situation numberless times. We have been born as a tiger in the past
numberless times and have been forced to eat numberless sentient beings. In the past we
have eaten every sentient being. There is no beginning to our life in samsara; our rebirths are
infinite. Being reborn as a tiger and eating those pitiful animals numberless times is just one
type of rebirth we have had. We have been reborn as countless different types of sentient
beings and have eaten every other living being numberless times.
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