Kopan Course No. 43 (2010)

By Kyabje Lama Zopa Rinpoche
Kopan Monastery, Nepal (Archive #1854)

These teachings were given by Kyabje Lama Thubten Zopa Rinpoche at the 43rd Kopan Meditation Course, held at Kopan Monastery, Nepal, in Dec 2010. The transcripts are lightly edited by Gordon McDougall.

You may download the entire contents of these teachings in a pdf file.

Lecture Six: December 9, 2010

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THE SEVEN-LIMB PRACTICE
Basically, I’m just going to mention the essence. In everyday practice, we have the seven-limb practice, the seven-limb practice. These are seven very important parts, like the parts of a car that makes it functional to bring people to the place where they need to be, or seven very important parts of the airplane to bring people to the place where they wish to be.

There are seven very important practices which create enlightenment, the fully awakened state. [Rinpoche laughs] So that you achieve enlightenment and then you can be spaced out, you can be relaxed. Not like that.

Of course, that’s the best realization, that’s the highest. However, the reason is to benefit sentient beings, to liberate numberless sentient beings from the oceans of samsaric suffering and bring them to full enlightenment: numberless hell beings to bring them in full enlightenment, numberless hungry ghosts to bring them to full enlightenment, numberless suras and asuras to bring them to full enlightenment as well as numberless hungry ghosts, animals to bring them in full enlightenment. That’s the main goal, that’s the main objective, the goal of life, of every single practice or every single meditation, of life, that’s the main goal of the life. To benefit others is the ultimate goal.

SEVEN-LIMB: PROSTRATION
The first limb is prostration. Prostrations are the antidote to pride, delusional pride, destroying that. It is said that in a text where there’s more than hundreds initiations, that we should show respect and put our palms together in prostration to anybody. It could be Sangha or somebody who is not pure or even evil, but we should be humble, prostrating with our palms together, like His Holiness the Dalai Lama does, respecting everybody, rich and poor, educated and uneducated. Even if we see somebody doing an evil activity we must respect that person. That’s what this initiation text says.

A good example is Alak Rinpoche, the attendant of Kyabje Kirti Tsenshab Rinpoche, from whom I’ve received so many initiations and teachings. Alak Rinpoche was his attendant for so many years. He came from his home in Amdo to Lhasa not by walking but by doing prostrations on the road. It took two years from his home to Lhasa to see the Shakyamuni Buddha statue blessed by Buddha himself in Jokang at Lhasa. To see that, he came all the way from his home by doing prostrations on the road. He had another person with him and a donkey.

Because I was talking to Kirti Tsenshab Rinpoche [who said] even somebody you have heard a story about how bad he is, when you see that person you should respect him. Then I remembered also Kirti Tsenshab Rinpoche’s attendant, Alak Rinpoche, since he came from in Tibet, for so many years he was the main attendant to serve Rinpoche so well until Rinpoche passed away.

So he came from home to Lhasa to see the Shakyamuni Buddha statue blessed by Buddha himself. Because the Buddha’s mother misses the Buddha very much each year when the Buddha went to the Realm of the Three-three, the deva realm, to do Vinaya practice, the abiding summer retreat, Yarne, for three months. At that time his mother missed him so much. So the Buddha asked an artist who was not ordinary being but a transformation, to make a statue of Buddha. He made a statue of the Buddha for the Buddha’s mother so she didn’t have to worry, she didn’t miss him so much.

After the statue was complete the Buddha put his hand on the statue’s head and said that this statue will particularly benefit so many sentient beings in India for this many number of years, then it will go to Mongolia and it will benefit so many sentient beings for this many number of years, then it will go to China and it will benefit so many sentient beings for this many number of years. Then it will go to Tibet, the Snow Land, and it will benefit so many sentient beings for this many number of years. Even the number of years was mentioned. Then after the Snow Land, it will go to under the ocean for the nagas. So probably again something happens in this world, finally something happens, also in Tibet at the end then I think that statue probably goes under the ocean.

Many Tibetan people go from their homes, they go from Kham doing prostrations, taking many months and years. Like this, Alak Rinpoche went to Lhasa doing prostrations all the way from his home in Amdo. It took two years, going by doing prostrations every day, no matter how bad the road was. It was unbelievably cold, unbelievable, unbelievable cold. There was one place he had to climb up, after you stand up, if you don’t lay down immediately, if you don’t become active, then I think the unbelievable cold, the snow and ice or whatever, will stop you functioning, so you have to go quickly. You have to stand up and lay down, like this, you have to do that.

It was so unbelievably cold, but they don’t carry blankets or things; the donkey carries their blankets or things that they need. They slept outside, and one time Alak said it was so cold they had to sleep against the donkey’s belly to keep warm. The donkey, [Rinpoche laughs] the donkey, probably on the snow or ice, I’m not sure, the donkey had his head do like this. [Rinpoche demonstrates.] Then the ear came off! [Rinpoche laughs] Anyway, at certain times the Chinese military trucks passed by and they sort of felt compassion for Alak and his friend and asked him to come into the truck, so they were dropped at certain places.

After they arrived at Lhasa, his friend took the donkey around. There are many, many historical statues and temples. Not just the Jokhang has so many statues. The donkey was taken around one time to purify negative karma and to achieve enlightenment. Then they sent it back home. Anyway, that’s just a story that came. The most unbelievable purification is done by coming to Lhasa by doing prostrating, enduring all through the hardships.

Just before passing away Rinpoche advised Alak to do the preliminary practices, and then practice this one particular Secret Chenrezig practice. A great Indian yogi, from where the lineage of this initiation of this Secret Chenrezig passed through, achieved full enlightenment, so he said it will happen to you exactly if you do these all the practices.

After Rinpoche passed away, he has been doing this in Varanasi, getting up at three o’clock in the morning, every day and doing many, many prostrations, and other preliminary practices. Now he’s going to Tibet to Amdo, to where the monastery is, to complete the preliminary practices and the three-year retreat, the long retreat of the Secret Chenrezig.

These are already predicted by Rinpoche that it will happen on an exact day what this great yogi who achieved Secret Chenrezig saw. So it’s very fortunate, he’s a very very fortunate person.

Anyway, prostrations are the antidote to pride, and they purify the negative karma collected with the body, with the speech, with the mind from beginningless rebirth, that gets purified. Then to achieve the buddha’s vajra holy body, vajra holy speech, vajra holy mind to be able to do perfect work towards sentient beings.

SEVEN-LIMB: OFFERING
Then the next limb is offering. Offering practice is the antidote to miserliness and attachment. By doing that, the result is when we become enlightened, enjoyments, offerings like limitless sky just spontaneously happen. That result is from that.

Not only that, from every single practice of offering, what we achieve is the best business. Other business in the world, gold goes up and down, the dollar goes up and down, all those things, property goes up and down—nothing is stable, all these things.

As regards karma, as regards to making offering to the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha, the merit is always same. We collect most inconceivable, most inconceivable merit. I might be taking time but I just want to let you know that because I didn’t get to mention that during the teachings.

If we offer one grain of rice or one tiny flower, not even to an actual living buddha we meet, but even to a statue or a picture of a buddha, no matter how small it is, no matter how big it is, if we offer one grain of rice or one tiny flower, the benefit we get, the profit we get is this. This is mentioned in the Pile of Flowers Sutra, (Tib: Me-tog Tsek-pai Do) the benefit we get when we offer one single grain of rice or one tiny flower to a statue of a buddha or picture of a buddha, we achieve happiness from beginningless rebirths, the happiness we have already experienced from beginningless rebirths up to now, that much happiness, or that much happiness we will achieve from now on. That much happiness, we will achieve from this tiny offering, offering this one tiny flower or one grain of rice to a statue of a buddha or a picture of a buddha or a stupa or a scripture, it’s the same.

That is, of course, temporary happiness, that is temporal happiness. Besides that, then we achieve ultimate happiness, liberation from the oceans of samsaric suffering and its causes. We achieve that, ultimate happiness, everlasting happiness. The total cessation of the oceans of samsaric suffering and its causes, we achieve that from this offering one grain of rice, one tiny offering to a statue or a stupa or a scripture of a buddha. Then, not only that, the benefits don’t stop there. After that, we achieve full enlightenment, peerless happiness, the state of omniscience.

The benefit doesn’t stop there. Of course, after that, then the main object is to benefit sentient beings, so we’re able to liberate numberless sentient beings from each realm from the oceans of samsaric suffering and bring them to full enlightenment. We’re able to bring the numberless sentient beings from each realm to full enlightenment.

At that time, when every sentient being is brought to enlightenment, when we have brought every sentient being to enlightenment, at that time, then the benefit of offering that one grain of rice or one tiny flower to a statue of a buddha, a stupa or a scripture, only at that time will it be completed.

This is very, very important, very, very important. This is the subject of karma, the benefits of offering even one tiny grain of rice or one tiny flower to a statue, stupa or scripture.

The benefit we get from that is unimaginable, all the temporary happiness while we’re in samsara, then ultimate happiness, then liberation and full enlightenment, then we’re able to bring numberless sentient beings to full enlightenment; we’re able to cause to other sentient beings happiness this life, happiness in future lives and then liberation from samsara and full enlightenment. That’s the benefit of offering one grain of rice or one tiny flower to a statue, stupa or scripture.

It’s the same benefit we get of having actually made offering to the Buddha we met and made offering to. We get exactly the same benefit making offerings to statues, stupas and scriptures.

And it’s always same. There’s no decreasing, there’s no up and going, like in business. There’s no such thing like that. Always, every day, every season, it’s the same. It’s like that day and night, there’s no difference. The inconceivable benefits we get are always the same, every second the same.

So making the practice of offering is the most unimaginable cause of happiness. Anyway, that’s the second practice, so I’ll just stop there.

SEVEN-LIMB: CONFESSION
The second practice is offering. Then the next one is confession, the practice of confession. That is antidote to the delusions, negative karma. That purifies the negative karmas collected with the body, speech and mind, and the result is we achieve dharmakaya, the cessation of the defilements collected with the body, speech and mind.

SEVEN-LIMB: REJOICING
Then the next practice is rejoicing. The practice of rejoicing is the antidote to the jealousy. If we don’t practice rejoicing, if we live our life with delusions such as jealousy, it brings obstacles. Jealousy is the obstacle, and when we have jealousy, it interferes with the success of others’ happiness and then that becomes the cause of the obstacle for our own success and for achieving our own happiness. Whether temporary happiness or ultimate happiness, enlightenment, it becomes an obstacle interfering with others’ success or happiness, their wishes to be fulfilled and that becomes the cause of the obstacle for our success, for our happiness, temporary or ultimate enlightenment, so like that.

Therefore, so it’s very, very important, if we want to have always success in our life, we need to practice rejoicing. We must abandon the jealousy; that’s to be abandoned. Then we’ll have great success in our life. Not only success in this life but success in the future lives, success in all the future lives. All our wishes for happiness will be actualized.

So, rejoicing is the antidote to jealousy and the ultimate result we achieve is a buddha’s holy body. How much we look at [a buddha’s holy body] we never get bored, we always want to look, we never get bored.

SEVEN-LIMB: ENTREATING
Then next practice is entreating, requesting the buddhas and the gurus to have a stable life, requesting them to have a stable life. If we do that practice, then to the buddhas who are nirmanakaya aspect, to the gurus, the ultimate guru, and the guru who appears to the all-obscuring mind, in the ordinary aspect who appears to the ordinary mind, we request to have a stable life.

By doing that, we create long life for ourselves, that’s result of that. Even if we don’t look for our own long life, by doing that it causes long life. It is just a karmic result. That’s what happens to us, the benefit of that.

What this practice purifies is the negative karma of disturbing the guru’s holy mind, causing unhappiness or disturbing the guru’s holy mind. Even those negative karmas collected in this life, collected in past lives, they get purified by doing this limb of the seven-limb practice, requesting the buddhas and gurus to have a long and stable life. It is the antidote, the practice to purify those negative karmas collected in connection with the guru. It’s because that negative karma is the heaviest negative karma among all other negative karmas. After we have made the Dharma connection, if we give it up, when it doesn’t fit our own self-cherishing thought, one’s own negative thoughts, delusion, attachment or self-cherishing thought, then we gives it up. When we find it interesting we follow the self-cherishing though, when we find something difficult for the self-cherishing thought, then we give it up.

Creating negativity in connection with the guru, with that very heavy negative karma, it’s extremely difficult to achieve enlightenment in this life. Even if we killed our father and mother, caused harm to the Buddha and killed an arhat and caused disunity among the Sangha, the uninterrupted heavy negative karmas that make us be reborn immediately in the lowest hot hell without a break, in the inexhaustible hell realm and experience heaviest suffering of samsara for the longest times, even if we collected those five heavy negative karmas, we can still achieve enlightenment in this life. But with those other negative karmas collected with the guru, such as those I mentioned, it’s extremely difficult to achieve enlightenment as mentioned in the Kalachakra or those root tantras.

Therefore, that’s why we normally do this seven-limb practice with the practice of requesting long life in the daily life at the beginning before we do actual the practice, before meditating on lam-rim or something like the Tara tantra practice.

You can see how that is most important practice concerning purification. So from that, the ultimate result we achieve is the realization of immortality, undying, the vajra holy body. We achieve that as the ultimate result from requesting to have a stable life.

We have this practice every day. Now this is expanded. This long life puja is an expansion of that, and this guru yoga, the Lama Chöpa guru yoga puja, this prayer composed by a great lama, Panchen Losang Chökyi Gyaltsen, a great lama from Tibet, the first of the Panchen Lama’s incarnations.

H checked many great Indian yogis who achieved enlightenment, who completed the path using the guru yoga practice, such as Marpa, Milarepa, Tilopa and Naropa, to see what made them to achieve enlightenment. He checked so many great Indian yogis, then from Tibet, from the four different traditions, the great lamas who achieved enlightenment, Sakya, Kagyü, Nyingma and Gelug. Based on all the guru yogis, he put together this Guru Puja, Lama Chöpa, including lam-rim and the thought transformation as well. It is a most powerful, well-packed, all these practices put together.

This is what makes us achieve enlightenment in a brief lifetime, even a brief lifetime of these degenerate times. So many meditators, those who practice tantra, achieved enlightenment in one brief lifetime of degenerate times by practicing like this. What made them achieve enlightenment, this is the prayer what we’re doing, Lama Chöpa.

The benefits of the practice are most precious, secret, most inconceivable. Doing just this particular Lama Chöpa, we also do lam-rim and the thought transformation, all the things. This is an unbelievably deep practice, helping us achieve enlightenment quickest.

And then the next one is what we’ll do today, this activity that is called the “long life puja.”

SEVEN-LIMB: REQUESTING
Then next of the seven-limb practices is requesting to turn the wheel of Dharma, requesting the teachings. This is the antidote to ignorance, our ignorance and the very heavy negative karma of abandoning the holy Dharma. That is something unbelievably heavy, heavier than having destroyed all the statues, temples, stupas, scriptures, everything in the world, having destroyed them completely. The negative karma of abandoning the holy Dharma is heavier than that.

This is something that happens very easily. Sometimes when we study Dharma, philosophy or something, we don’t understand and we think, “Oh, this is useless. This is not for me.” We give up, we kind of you renounce it. From our heart, we give up the object of devotion. “What’s the use of this for me?” While it is Buddha’s teaching, then you think like that. This can arise very easily. This is a very heavy negative karma. While it is the teaching of Buddha, we give it up; we give up the object of devotion, renouncing it from the heart. When we do that with any Buddhist meditation practice, when we renounce studying philosophical teachings, that’s avoiding the holy Dharma.

Sometimes we burn texts because there are letters or many pages missing, or there are Dharma texts difficult to keep, so we put them in the fire because there’s no place we can keep them, such as some place higher, in a cave or on a rock or stupa or something like that. What I’m saying, especially in the West this happens. I think here at Kopan we have a stupa where we can put Dharma, but in the West that doesn’t happen. So we just burn Dharma because it’s difficult to keep, or throw it in the garbage. That creates negative karma; we obscure our mind, making it more difficult to have realizations, to understand Dharma. It’s disrespect to them; it’s disrespect to the holy objects, the statues, stupas, scriptures, all these, then it obscures our mind. It more it difficult to understand Dharma, to have realizations.

However, with faith so as to not create negative karma, we and others can burn Dharma texts and that does not become avoiding Dharma. It doesn’t become avoiding Dharma because we do it with faith.

So the antidote to avoiding the holy Dharma is this practice of requesting the teachings. And then the ultimate result is we’re able to turn the wheel of Dharma, the 84,000 teachings, or we achieve the perfect holy speech of a buddha. This is the ultimate result of requesting the holy beings to turn Dharma wheel. Then in this life or future lives, we’re able to teach Dharma to sentient beings.

SEVEN-LIMB: DEDICATION
And then the last practice is dedication. Dedication is the antidote to heresy. Heresy is another very heavy negative karma, heresy to the guru, heresy to the Buddha’s teachings, heresy to the Triple Gem, like that. This is the antidote to the heresy. The ultimate result of dedication is that we achieve all the qualities of the Buddha.

This is just for new people, not those who know, to get some idea what is involved in practice or what is important about it, to get some idea. It’s not just a custom, a Tibetan custom or a Nepalese custom. It’s not just about that, but it’s something very connected with reality. What we’re doing is something very, very important.

It’s not because I’m a buddha or something, a buddha or bodhisattva, it’s not that; it’s because of the Dharma connection. Because there’s a Dharma connection that has been received, and from that, because it’s a dependent arising. We get all these unbelievable merits and purification, and then the heaviest negative karma collected in connection to the guru get purified. Without those, then realizations cannot happen and it’s impossible for life to become better.

Sorry. Sorry I mumbled again. [Rinpoche laughs] Thank you so much.

[Dedications]

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