Lama Zopa Rinpoche
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55OTzl52A
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Chapter 9. The Importance of Guru Devotion<br />
In the Buddha’s time artists could not draw the Buddha by looking at him because he was so<br />
glorious, so they painted him by looking at his reflection in water. There is a standing<br />
Buddha statue I have seen all covered with wrinkles, especially on the robe, that is a copy of<br />
his reflection in water.<br />
When I was in Mongolia I wanted to see the Buddha statue that was made during his time.<br />
When the Buddha descended from Tushita, the Land of Joy, to Sankasya in India, this<br />
Buddha statue walked seven steps without touching the ground and greeted the Buddha by<br />
sort of bowing three times. Then the Buddha predicted which countries this statue would go<br />
to in order to benefit them: first India, then China, and then different countries.<br />
There is a story that the Mongolians or Russians stole it from China. The stolen statue was<br />
supposed to be sandalwood, but the one I saw in Mongolia seemed to be made of bronze.<br />
The abbot of Ganden Monastery in Ulaanbaatar also thought the same, that it was bronze.<br />
Somehow, when I saw the picture of the statue, I didn’t think it was made in the Buddha’s<br />
time. It seemed more like how statues are made in other places like Japan and it looked more<br />
contemporary. So I kind of lost hope that this was the real statue from the Buddha’s time,<br />
but I went because Kyabje Kirti Tsenshab <strong>Rinpoche</strong> wanted to go there to meditate and<br />
pray.<br />
It seems the statue was still in China, but the temple was never open. So I asked a student,<br />
Dr. Chiu Nan Lai, if she could find out about it and then see if I could meet it in the future,<br />
maybe secretly or something.<br />
In Mongolia I was told how the abbots, monks and other people went to see an old lama<br />
who had passed away before the Russian invasion but his subtle mind was still there; he was<br />
still meditating. He predicted he would continue to meditate and told them to bury him<br />
under the ground because the Russian Communists were coming and then open the grave<br />
after they had left and return him to the monastery.<br />
After the Russians left Mongolia they dug him up. I think they were careless and cut his nose<br />
so they put something there in its place but his body was preserved despite being in the<br />
ground the whole time of the Russian invasion, some seventy years.<br />
Just as he had predicted, they took him out of the ground and placed him back in the<br />
monastery, still meditating. When they do protector practices such as Palden Lhamo, sweat<br />
comes from his face, so he is still in meditation, continuing to meditate in that way to benefit<br />
the world. That he’s not just a skeleton and his body is still intact clearly shows the capacity<br />
of the mind, how it can develop by practicing tantra. We have to know more about the<br />
different levels of mind: the gross mind, the subtle mind and the extremely subtle mind.<br />
If the Buddha statue had been there, I would have gone to see it, but I was not able to get a<br />
visa. But I think that particular Buddha statue was made in Beijing. That’s the real story.<br />
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