Lama Zopa Rinpoche

from life to life, we will be able to give happiness to billions and billions of beings—not only
to people, but even to animals—to all other living beings.
News programs on TV usually only mention people, rarely animals. When bombs destroy a
place can you imagine how many animals are killed? There must be countless animals and
insects in the ground, fields and forests that are killed, but they’re not mentioned. It’s as if
they don’t count.
We must train in this important, innermost education, the education of mind, now, in this
life while we have all the possibilities to transform our mind.
Our family is our mind training
Even people with no belief in any religion or philosophy need harmony in their relationships
with others, with their family, spouse and children. Maintaining a long-lasting relationship
relies on harmony and that comes from practicing patience and compassion. No relationship
can last without patience. If we follow anger rather than patience, our relationship with our
spouse, family or friends will inevitably deteriorate and finally perish. At first the other
person might try to be tolerant of us but that won’t last and soon she will no longer be
bothered. She might try to physically stay with us but her mind will drift away and there will
no longer be any harmony. Soon, even physically, she will be gone.
We all need help, so to maintain comfortable relationships even non-believers need to
practice patience and compassion—with their husbands, wives, parents and children. That’s
the way to make relationships harmonious and long lasting.
Even if only one person within a relationship practices patience and compassion, it helps
greatly to maintain harmony and keep the relationship together long-term. Practicing
patience, not getting angry, not harming the other person with our body, speech and mind,
that is peace; that is the peace we’re giving to the other person.
Our family is our mind training. We train our mind with our wife or husband, with our
children, with our parents. The most important thing in following any spiritual path is
mental development and in one way our family is there for our mental development. The
question is whether we recognize this or not. Our family is there to help us develop our
patience and compassion; they are there to train us in this. When we have trained with them
we can then move on to our neighbors and the people around us. In that way we are able to
generate more and more patience and have less and less anger. Then, after some years, even
if anger arises it is weak and doesn’t last long, just remaining for a short while before
evaporating. We slowly train our mind to have less anger and more patience toward more
and more people and then toward all sentient beings. That absence of harm means peace for
everybody. That’s how mental development works. That’s how we can develop our mind.
Besides being the foundation of a harmonious relationship, generating a good heart and
patience brings additional benefits to our family members and all other sentient beings.
Refraining from harm, we lead not only those around us into peace and happiness but all the
beings of this world.
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