Lama Zopa Rinpoche

This precious human life is more precious than a wish-granting jewel
Phagpa Pawo 99 was a very famous, learned Hindu yogi, a sadhu who became Buddhist after
going to Mount Kailash and then became a great, learned Buddhist pandit. He said,
Because of ignorance you fail to collect even a fraction of the treasury of merit and after this life enter the
house of unceasing suffering. You are like a businessman who travels to the land of wish-granting jewels but
comes home empty-handed.
Due to ignorance we do not collect even a tiny amount of merit and then, when we pass into
the next life, we “enter the house of unceasing suffering.” Because we have not met the
Dharma we create nonvirtue, which brings the result of suffering, instead of experiencing
happiness, which is the result of virtue. Entering the house of unceasing suffering means
being reborn into the suffering of the lower realms in general and the suffering of the hell
realms in particular. This is the general meaning.
He continues that this is like a businessman who goes to a land of wish-granting jewels,
where he could pick up as many wish-granting jewels as he wanted, but he is not aware of
this and as a result returns home empty-handed. If we are ignorant of the Dharma, if we fail
to practice the Dharma, it is exactly like that. We do not know the Buddha’s teachings exist
in the world or we have a closed mind toward them, so we neither learn nor practice. That is
just like arriving in the land of wish-granting jewels, not being aware they are there and
returning home empty-handed.
In his Letter to a Disciple, Chandragomin said,
With this perfect human rebirth that you have received you can be free from the oceans of samsaric suffering
and furthermore you can plant the seeds of virtue for supreme enlightenment. Because of this exalted quality,
this human body is much more valuable than a wish-granting jewel. Knowing this, who would dare not
make use of this precious human body?
We have not only a human rebirth but a perfect human rebirth. Without this great quality we
would have to suffer not just once but numberless times in each of the realms of samsara:
the hell realm, the hungry ghost realm, the animal realm, the human realm and the god
realm. With a perfect human rebirth we can free ourselves from the oceans of suffering
rebirths and also plant the seeds of virtue of supreme enlightenment, the total purification of
all obscurations and the total actualization of all realizations.
Because our human rebirth has this precious extra quality that allows us to do all that, it is
like a wish-granting jewel that allows us to obtain whatever material comforts of this life we
want but is unable to purify the causes of the lower realms or create the causes for a higher
rebirth. Therefore this human body is so special; it is much more precious than a wishgranting
jewel, and not just one wish-granting jewel but the whole sky filled with wishgranting
jewels. Even if we were to have all that it would be nothing special; it could not
bring us all the benefits that a perfect human rebirth can. Therefore, Chandragomin asked,
knowing this to be so, who would dare use this perfect human body for meaningless things?
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