From morning to night we do everything with the self-cherishing mind. Inside the house, outside the house, getting dressed, walking around, talking to people, working, eating, seeing things, shopping, going to bed—we do everything with self-cherishing.
Even though everything we do is motivated by the wish to obtain temporal happiness and avoid temporal problems, in fact, everything we do creates the cause of greater, continual suffering in the future. For countless previous lifetimes we’ve been carrying on like this, perpetuating the cycle of suffering, living fulltime with the thought of the eight worldly dharmas.
Unless we can break this cycle we will continue like this, doing the same thing on and on endlessly, because we’re using entirely the wrong methods to deal with our immediate worldly problems. We’re forever creating the causes for much greater suffering for ourselves. Really, we are crazy; completely crazy.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche