Lama Zopa Rinpoche

together is the transcendental wisdom of great bliss non-dual with emptiness. Like an atomic
bomb, that is the quickest way to cease even the subtle obscurations, the obscurations to
knowledge. That allows you to achieve enlightenment in a brief lifetime of the degenerate
age without needing to prolong your life for hundreds or thousands of years, as you do with
the lower tantras.
There is a method where you visualize your body in pure form as, for example, Heruka
father-mother or Vajradhara father-mother. Visualizing the father-mother embracing while
holding your vajra and bell helps you to develop this experience. It’s like an atomic bomb to
speed you quickly to achieve enlightenment. That is why you see many statues and thangkas
of male and female deities embracing.
This practice is only for those who have very high intelligence, who have the highest merit,
who need such a practice in order to cease the dualistic mind and dualistic views and attain
enlightenment as quickly as possible. It doesn’t suit everybody, so you are very fortunate to
have met tantra at this time.
The last samaya of Akshobhya is the samaya of the guru, which means correctly following
the virtuous friend, the guru, the vajra master, who is the root of all realizations, the root of
the path to enlightenment. 113
Next is the samaya of Ratnasambhava, which involves practicing the four kinds of charity six
times a day: miscellaneous charity, the giving of Dharma, the giving of fearlessness and the
charity of giving loving kindness.
An example of miscellaneous charity is when, in Mahayana practice, you eat food and make
charity of it to all the sentient beings—the worms and so forth—that are living in your body.
Nagarjuna explained this in the Mahayana eating yoga practice. 114 Whenever you eat food
and think like that, it becomes miscellaneous charity.
You can also relate this to what you do in your daily life, such as feeding your pets. Eating
meat is very common in Tibet. There are some lamas who don’t eat meat but the majority
do. Kyabje Serkong Tsenshab Rinpoche told me that when eating he would throw some
meat from his plate to the small dogs that were in his room, and this became the practice of
miscellaneous charity from the six-session guru yoga. If you are feeding birds or other
animals, even ants, or giving food or other things to people, you can also make this the
practice of miscellaneous charity. There are many different ways you can do it.
Next is the charity of giving Dharma. If you recite mantras or texts such as the Vajra-Cutter
Sutra, the Golden Light Sutra or the Heart Sutra, either by heart or by reading, aloud you can
think that you are giving Dharma to all the numberless hell beings, hungry ghosts, animals,
human beings, gods and demigods. Think that you have received the recitation from the
Buddha, have realized the meaning and are now reciting it for all sentient beings and they are
realizing it too.
In Aptos, when we go round the stupa, partly for exercise but also for purification and to
collect merit, I explain to the other monks and nuns that whenever we recite prayers by
reading from texts or an iPad, we should visualize that we are giving teachings like this.
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