Lama Zopa Rinpoche

I heard that the parents of one of the older FPMT students, Tubten Pende, a former
Nalanda monk, were talking in their kitchen and, while they were talking, Pende’s father
turned his head a little to look somewhere and just then, while he was looking away, still
talking, his wife suddenly died, collapsed on the floor.
I heard about another student who was walking along a road one day, talking, talking,
talking, talking, talking, when she suddenly collapsed and died.
We cannot guarantee we will live much longer at all. Death can happen at any time. Even
now, being born in the upper realms as human beings, it is as if we are prisoners who have
been allowed outside for a short time—an hour or something—and very soon we will have
to return home to the lower realms. An hour’s respite and then we have to go back inside
again to live in the prison we came from. Our permanent residence is the lower realms. That
is where we came from.
Our life is getting shorter, day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute, second by second.
We have a certain number of breaths from now until death, so the number of remaining
breaths is constantly decreasing. With every in-breath we take, every out-breath we make,
our life becomes that much shorter. In reality, we are constantly dying.
When we die, our body stops but our mind continues. There is always the continuation of
consciousness, migrating between the various realms. There are only two ways our
consciousness can go at death: with nonvirtue, to the lower realms, or with virtue, to the
upper realms.
Taking refuge and protecting our karma is what saves us from rebirth in the lower realms.
This is the foundation of all realizations, the basis of all happiness up to enlightenment. For
that reason we take refuge in the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha.
Believer or nonbeliever, we must still lead an ethical life
The very essence is that we all want happiness and we don’t want suffering. Therefore,
whatever we do, whether or not we believe in karma, reincarnation and so forth, we must
still practice an ethical life. No matter what feelings we have about karma, not thinking there
is a need for ethics will naturally lead to unethical conduct and that will lead to suffering and
could even end up with us in prison. This has nothing to do with our philosophies about
karma or future lives but with our conduct in this life. Of course, if we really like being in
prison—if that’s what we enjoy the most—then that’s OK!
As I have mentioned, even nonbelievers need to practice patience and compassion. Similarly,
nonbelievers also need to practice ethics, not harming others. That is the very basic practice.
Even in this life, without considering the results that will happen in future lives, if we harm
others we will have to face terrible consequences, such as getting a bad name, being treated
badly by others, being prosecuted and jailed and many other negative things. We see this all
the time with people who have so much wealth—billionaires and zillionaires whose lies are
exposed and end up in prison, despite their great wealth.
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