From Manuel to Lobsang Zopa
Master Lobsang Zopa was always a person with a hunger for knowledge who delved into meditation, psychology, science and spirituality, but a setback in life led him to wonder what he was going to do with the time he had left to live and To find out, he entered a Buddhist monastery, where he spent 15 years until he was ordained as a monk by the Dalai Lama, and they asked him to teach and since then he has offered retreats in Spain, Brazil, France and Mexico. He just published Silence your mind. Turn on your heart (Planet), a synthesis of everything he has learned, ancient wisdom explained simply to live more fully: “There is knowledge that has enormous transforming power to take us to the gates of true happiness and make sense of life.” our existence”.
Tell me the story of Manuel.
From a humble family I left the Alpujarra to study in Granada.
Did something significant happen?
At the age of eight I met a girl and I said: “I am going to marry her”, and she is the mother of my children. I graduated as a technical architect, set up a company, got married.
What did you want?
I only had one obsession: earning money, and that’s what I did until I separated and my company collapsed… Stability disappeared, but that’s life, anything can happen at any time and we don’t have the tools to manage it.
got over it?
I had spent years meditating and studying Gurdjieff, Ouspenski, Krishnamurti, Rumi, Taoism, Shintoism, it was a parallel life of self-knowledge.
Y?
I dedicated myself to directing works, a worker was killed, that hit me, the meaning of life was escaping me and I decided to dedicate myself exclusively to looking for it. I went to the Nalanda Buddhist monastery in France for 15 years, where I studied the fundamental texts on how our mind works and looked within.
What have you discovered?
Who I am. There is a label that is Lobsang Zopa, but if you remove it along with all the others, the essence remains.
What questions need to be asked?
Who we are and how our mind works, but if you don’t find a qualified teacher who understands the mind well, you will never discover it, you have to put yourself.
¿What is the starting point?
Focus on one and see how your life is. In the ten years that I have been doing retreats I have seen a lot of suffering.
It seems consubstantial to life.
Happiness is in the mind, it is a set of qualities: stability and peace of mind, joy, humor, generosity, patience, ethics… qualities that we all have, we must develop them.
great job
The more you look for happiness outside of yourself, the more you will get away from it. You have to develop attention and awareness.
Is the tool meditation?
Yes. In Tibetan it is called rubber and it means familiarizing yourself with the states of the mind, knowing what kind of thoughts you have, are they healthy or are they critical of yourself or others.
There are zillions of ways to meditate.
Don’t meditate just to find calm. Meditate, from peace, to find the purpose that makes you get up daily with the best of spirits.
There are days and days.
Shortly before Claudio Naranjo died, his
His son asked him: “Do you think that people know that they are going to die?” “Yes, they know it,” he replied, “but they don’t feel it. If they felt it, they would become better people.”
Does our mind deceive us?
Yes, the key is to change the direction of the gaze. In my town I spent a lot of time contemplating the beauty of nature that produced joy and silence inside me, and I think this happens to all of us.
Probably.
Over the years our gaze strays outside, but the state of peace continues within us. Look within to be able to sprout from authenticity.
There are uncomfortable questions.
But necessary if we want to fill our lives with meaning. It is worth reviewing how we act, what we have done so far and how we relate to others.
We do what we can.
We can do more, to develop wisdom you have to open your heart, understand that everything is cause and effect.
Pure physics.
Applicable to our mind, being aware that we can think things that lead us to say and do things that can cause us suffering or happiness. We must regain control of what we say to ourselves.
Constant self-observation.
Buddha said: with your thoughts you create the world, think and act with a mind that is not healthy and suffering will follow you as the cart follows the ox; think and act with a healthy mind and happiness will follow you like your own shadow.
We need patience.
Patience is not enduring, it is a state of mind: the mind remains stable when the world is making you suffer.
Hard.
Do not forget that you are a work in progress, do not judge yourself harshly and do your best to cultivate positive actions, that is the way to create your own future. Letting go of the ballast of egocentrism is liberating.
And smiling is a gift to oneself.
Tnich Nhat Hanh said that a smile affirms our determination to live in peace and joy. The origin of an authentic smile is an awake mind.
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