Lama Zopa Rinpoche

There are other quotations but that is enough. As I have already mentioned, for arya
bodhisattvas—“arya” meaning exalted bodhisattvas who have a direct perception of
emptiness—the Buddha manifests in the sambhogakaya aspect. Ordinary bodhisattvas who
have achieved the great stage of the path of merit can see countless buddhas in their
nirmanakaya aspect. Of the five Mahayana paths, the first one, the path of merit has three
stages, small, medium and great, and it is when the bodhisattva reaches the great stage of the
path of merit that he is able to see numberless buddhas in nirmanakaya aspect.
For us ordinary beings, whose minds are obscured, the Buddha manifests as an ordinary
being, in a human form, like His Holiness, or he manifests as a king or as a beggar to allow
us sentient beings to collect merit. He can manifest as a child, a crazy person, a butcher, a
prostitute or a judge. He can manifest in all kinds of forms.
An abbot of a monastery in Tibet who had clairvoyance recently passed away. He seemed to
have been a very important lama. I was able to help somebody he knew well in Switzerland,
a monk who was at Buxa, who wanted to build a large covered Padmasambhava statue that
would cost a hundred thousand dollars.
Once, this lama went into a market in Kathmandu and, seeing a butcher there—just an
ordinary butcher living his life selling meat—the lama made a throne for him and had him sit
on it. So, even in the marketplace we never know who is a buddha and who isn’t. We have to
know that. We have to be careful to not harm others, to not get angry and to practice
patience, otherwise we might create the cause to suffer for hundreds of thousands or
millions of years. When this clairvoyant lama saw the butcher he made a throne.
There is also the story of a teacher, a monk, in Tibet who buried his money in the ground
outside his room. From time to time he would go to where it was buried and look at it. Then
one day he died and his disciples needed money to make an offering. They couldn’t find any
money in his room so they went outside to where they had seen their teacher often go.
When they saw a small mound of earth they dug it up and discovered the money, but there
was a scorpion holding tightly onto the entire big bundle of money.
A young monk took the scorpion to his teacher’s guru, Chösang Rinpoche, and asked him
what to do. The guru told him he must take it and give it to a butcher behind the Potala.
When the disciple did this, the butcher placed the animal on the chopping block and
chopped it in half, eating one half and throwing the other half in the air. When the young
monk told the teacher’s guru what had happened, he said, “Oh, now that is very good!” This
was because the butcher was the deity, the enlightened being, Red Yamantaka, and throwing
half the body into the air meant his consciousness had been transferred to a pure land.
His Holiness Serkong Tsenshab Rinpoche told me many times that although he had not seen
this happen he had heard this story. Rinpoche was the incarnation of Marpa’s son, Darma
Dodé. One day Marpa told Darma Dodé not to leave the house but he went anyway to look
at some scenery, fell off his horse, knocked his head on a stone and died. Anyway, Serkong
Tsenshab Rinpoche was his incarnation. This great holy being is among my kind teachers.
Any small break he had—even while he was eating—he would give teachings and answer
questions. He was so kind. He told me this story many times. He passed away in Ladakh and
his incarnation was born in Spiti in 1984.
101