Lama Zopa Rinpoche

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