Lama Zopa Rinpoche

Those meditators who have achieved the eighth, ninth or tenth bodhisattva bhumi can
manifest billions, zillions, trillions of mandalas. They can do prostrations in the pure land of
the buddhas. They can do so much, while we are unable to manifest even one. We have
mountains of obscurations and negative karma, which high-level bodhisattvas do not.
Lama Tsongkhapa said doing prostrations is another way of collecting extensive merit. He
said we should visualize many bodies, as if we have numberless bodies covering the whole
ground, and then, with those millions of bodies, prostrate to the merit field.
Visualizing two bodies prostrating gains us the same merit as if two bodies were actually
prostrating; visualizing ten bodies prostrating gains us the same merit as ten bodies doing it.
If we are able to visualize the whole earth full of our bodies, filling the four directions and
the intermediate ones, all prostrating, we get the same merit as that many of our bodies
prostrating. This creates unbelievable merit.
Lama Tsongkhapa explains things like this so concisely, giving just the essence. Just using
one or two words he explains the contradictions in the arguments of many famous
contemporary and previous meditators. Then he spends more pages on practices such as the
preliminary practices.
Just as visualizing countless bodies prostrating brings great merit, so too does thinking that,
while offering something as small as a cup of water to the guru, we are offering it to the
numberless buddhas; we get the benefit of actually offering water to numberless buddhas.
We can think how every atom of our guru’s holy body contains numberless buddhas and we
are offering to all of them. Whatever we are doing—offering service, offering robes, cleaning
or washing—if we think we are doing it for the numberless buddhas, we get that amount of
merit. Even if we do not consciously think that, we still get much merit.
For example, when attending our guru’s teachings we can think that this is Tara giving the
teaching, this is Guru Shakyamuni Buddha giving the teaching, this is Manjushri giving the
teaching, this is our deity giving the teaching, this is the numberless buddhas giving us the
teaching. Similarly, whenever our guru gives us advice, whatever it is, we should think that
this advice is coming from all the numberless buddhas. This is Tara giving us advice, this is
Maitreya Buddha giving us advice, this is Guru Shakyamuni Buddha giving us advice, this is
Mahakala giving us advice, this is all the thousand buddhas of the fortunate eon giving us
advice. All the merit field, all the dakas and dakinis, all the arhats, including the sixteen who
are buddhas, the Dharma protectors—everyone is giving us advice. The guru’s advice is
everybody giving us advice.
In that way, we never feel abandoned; we are always connected with all the numberless
buddhas, up to the Dharma protectors of the merit field. In the same way, the merits are
unbelievable when we make offerings to the guru’s disciples, the guru’s “pores.”
This is an example you can keep in mind. When I make offerings to people who have
received teachings from His Holiness, even lay people, even Westerners, but especially in the
monasteries such as Sera, Ganden, Drepung or Kopan, first of all I try to generate bodhicitta
motivation, thinking, “To achieve enlightenment to free the numberless sentient beings from
the oceans of samsaric suffering and bring them to full enlightenment I am going to make
129