Lama Zopa Rinpoche

mistaken. Tibetan Buddhism originated from the Buddha himself and from those who were
like second Buddhas—Nagarjuna and all the great pandits from Nalanda and the many
enlightened Tibetan lamas, such as Lama Tsongkhapa. Because what you are learning comes
from this great lineage, the Dolgyal problem is also yours.
Seeing the guru as a buddha
A sutra says,
From your side as the disciple, think that the guru who reveals the Dharma to you is a buddha, always
abiding in front of you, blessing your heart. By thinking this way, the buddha constantly blesses your mind,
liberating you from all wrong conceptions and mistaken ways of thinking.
It is very important to remember these words whenever we do the guru devotion meditation.
Think that the virtuous friend who reveals the Dharma is a buddha. From our side as a
disciple, we should think of him as a buddha. Then the buddha is always abiding in front of
us in the form of the one who reveals the Dharma to us, as the guru. Even if we have only
received an oral transmission of OM MANI PADME HUM or one verse of teaching, still
the connection has been made. We are the disciple; he or she is the guru.
Any time we think “buddha,” the buddha is always there in front of us, blessing our mind,
our heart. This is not our physical beating heart but where the mind is. Scientists often talk
about the brain. That is quite natural, isn’t it? Don’t you sometimes feel that thinking
happens in the brain? When you think of some problem or something, don’t you feel it’s in
the brain rather than anywhere else?
On the other hand, emotions such as compassion, patience and anger don’t seem to come
from the brain but from the heart. When strong negative emotions come, that is where we
feel them. So my question is, why do we feel them there? Why not in the brain, when
scientists talk about the brain as being everything? I think many of you have investigated and
rejected the scientific notion that the brain is everything. There are even instances where a
person has been able to remain alive without a brain.
In Phagri, where I lived for three years, Kyabje Zong Rinpoche—who gave me many
initiations and teachings—saw a person without a head, with only a neck. To feed him the
family spooned the tsampa in through his neck. He managed to communicate. When he
wanted to be out in the sun or when he was hungry he talked with his fingers, like rubbing
his stomach for hunger. He had no head but he lived. This sounds unbelievable but you
should know that my guru, Kyabje Zong Rinpoche, actually saw this in Phagri. There is no
reason why my guru would lie to me.
He also told me that he had heard about a chicken that lived without a head for two or three
years. Perhaps he saw it on TV. The person who fed the chicken took it all around the world
to make money but then after three years it died because he forgot to give it food or
something. It means that even without a brain there is still a basis for the mind to function in
the body; it is still possible to be a living being.
Later, I saw something similar in a text by a great lama from Amdo, who had many
collections of sutra and tantra teachings. He said in the teachings that in Amdo he saw a
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