Lama Zopa Rinpoche

sentient beings, not only to the tiger mother in Nepal, 23 but to numberless other sentient
beings, practicing charity, morality, patience, enthusiastic perseverance, concentration and
wisdom—the six perfections and the ten perfections. Then he achieved the purification of
all obscurations and completion all realizations and became a buddha. He did this for us.
And then, for us, the Buddha revealed the 84,000 teachings, the Hinayana and the
Mahayana, and, of the Mahayana, the Mahayana sutra and the Mahayana tantra, the different
levels of teachings that are needed as our mind develops more and more. He left the
teachings for all sentient beings, and that includes us.
That means we must learn and practice as much as we possibly can in order to not harm
others and ourselves but to benefit ourselves and others, other sentient beings who are
numberless, who want happiness and who do not want suffering, like ourselves.
The way to do that is not by following the ways of the worldly beings but through following
what the Omniscient One taught. He has shown us the path, what is right and what is wrong
in life. That is the real education, the whole thing condensed into compassion and wisdom.
The way the lam-rim is set up serves the mind in this way, so we definitely need to study and
practice the lam-rim.
The next richness is that, not only has the Buddha descended and revealed the teachings, but
that the complete teachings still exist. We don’t live in a time after the teachings have
finished. We are here now, just before the end of the teachings, like the sun just before it
sets. Because of that, we have this incredible opportunity to learn and practice Dharma and
to actualize realizations.
Finally, from our side, we follow the teachings with an open mind; gurus such as His
Holiness the Dalai Lama, having great compassion, reveal the Dharma to us; and we have
benefactors who support our study and practice. This gives us such an unbelievable,
incredible opportunity to enjoy the Dharma, to learn and practice the Dharma.
The perfect human rebirth is so rare and so fragile
These eight freedoms and ten richnesses we have give us the opportunity to develop our
mind from where we are now, taking us step by step on the path all the way to
enlightenment. The first step is to develop guru devotion, the root of the whole path to
enlightenment, which leads to the other practices that comprise the graduated path of the lower
capable being.
By not creating negative karma and by purifying that which has already been created, we
purify the causes of the lower realms. Then, by practicing morality on the basis of taking
refuge and protecting our karma, we are reborn in the upper realms as a human or god.
Then we can meet the Dharma again, practice it and actualize the path. By actualizing the
practice of the graduated path of the middle capable being we are able to be free from the oceans of
samsaric suffering and achieve nirvana, the blissful state of peace for ourselves.
We can even practice the Mahayana, where we can become free from even lower nirvana,
peace, and achieve the full state of the omniscient mind for sentient beings. This is the
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