Lama Zopa Rinpoche
Imprints are very, very important. If we always think negative things in our life, our mind gets used to those negative things, and negative imprints are left on our mind all the time.
What is advertised in the West by businesses in order to make money develops attachment, self-cherishing thought, and so forth. They are advertising objects of attachment. In the West, what is advertised is all the objects to which we’re most attached. They try to advertise in the best way and that’s what people buy.
However, watching that and thinking of that leave negative imprints on the mind. And so much negative imprint affects this life, and then life to life. The negative imprints that are left affect this life, then life to life for eons and eons. That is the wrong effect not the right effect.
But if you leave positive or good imprints, they also have effects from life to life. They enable you to actualize the path, to have realization, bringing you higher and higher realizations, and you can then bring greater and greater, deeper and deeper, benefit to sentient beings…
So, it means you have to be very careful about imprints. Whether you put negative or positive imprints is very important. The mind creates the world. The mind creates the happy world and the mind creates the suffering world. It all depends on what you do with your mind.
So, imprints are so important. I’m saying that listening to holy Dharma, to Buddha’s teachings, even if you don’t understand, purifies your mind. Reading newspapers, Time magazine, and all those things doesn’t have that effect of purifying negative karma. It is possible that you develop more delusions— more anger, attachment, self-cherishing thought—by reading those things. So, it is different from reading Dharma books or holy teachings. The effect is totally different; what it leaves in the mind is totally different.
Even if you don’t understand, listening patiently to the Dharma purifies the defilements so much. That’s why the pandit Vasubandhu, after he wrote Abhidharmakosha, recited it loudly every day so that the pigeon on his roof could hear it. When the pigeon died, Vasubhandu, with his clairvoyance, checked where it was born. Though he had been a pigeon before, he had been born as a human being to a family way down in the valley.
What made it possible for him to be a human being was hearing every day the Abhidharmakosha, a teaching of Buddha. Even though the pigeon did not understand, it had the power to purify his mind, his negative karma and defilements. That’s why he was born a human being—just by hearing the words. You have to understand this. That’s different from reading newspapers and magazines. So, it is like that with Buddha’s teachings.
One day Vasubandhu went to ask the family to give him the child. They offered the child to Vasubandhu. He was given the name Loden (later known as Lopön Loden); he then became a monk and wrote four commentaries to Abhidharmakosha, the text he had heard when he was a pigeon. He was expert in that text, but as he hadn’t heard much Madhyamaka, he had some difficulties to learn the subject of Madhyamaka. Kirti Tsenshab Rinpoche, my dear guru, from whom I received many teachings, said that.
You have to know how important positive imprints are in making preparation in the mind for enlightenment, for omniscience. They are so important. This mind, which is formless, colorless, shapeless, but able to perceive objects, can create hell, can create samsara, can create nirvana, can create enlightenment. This mind has that potential, negative and positive.
