Lama Zopa Rinpoche

materials, which means money, or by teaching or taking teachings. They then swore, “May
you, Most Secret Hayagriva, understand.”
They had to say that to make it clear to the Tibetan public, to Tibetan society. This didn’t
come from Dharamsala; it didn’t come from His Holiness. This was from the public’s side;
they wanted them to do that. Then, after that, those who still practiced Dolgyal were not to
return.
I was not there at that time but Lama Lhundrup, the abbot of Kopan Monastery, was
worried. I went there later. I swore in the front of the Hayagriva thangka at Sera Je, with the
abbot, the um-dze—the puja leader—and the gekyö who came a little bit later. They were very
happy that I made this promise, but I had stopped practicing a long, long time ago.
As I mentioned, I became a monk at Domo Geshe Rinpoche’s monastery in Phagri, where
the Dolgyal practice was regarded as very important. They practiced it from the past great
yogi and so that is why I didn’t know before. That is how it happened.
We followed Dolgyal for many years, even receiving a kind of life initiation, relying on
Dolgyal, from Kyabje Trijang Rinpoche, Lama Yeshe’s and my root guru. I received my first
lam-rim teaching, Liberation in the Palm of your Hand, from Kyabje Trijang Rinpoche in
Sarnath. We followed Dolgyal for many years but I had stopped long before I went to Sera
Je that time.
After I stopped nothing negative happened. The night I stopped I dreamed of the oracle
from Ganden Shartse giving me scarf. It was not new but a little bit old, rolled up, and he
left it on my table. He said, “Thank you,” and then disappeared. That was a good sign.
Nothing threatening happened; there were no bad dreams or strange events; the ending was
good. Maybe it’s because I’m not really a lama who benefits the world but just an ordinary
person that Dolgyal let me go!
I’d like to tell you a story so you can get the idea, so you can understand. There was a great
lama in Tibet, Trehor Kyörpon Rinpoche, who went to Dalhousie, where he later passed
away. He achieved many realizations: guru devotion, renunciation, bodhicitta, emptiness, and
also the two stages of tantra, the gross and subtle generation stages and the various stages of
completion stage, the isolation of the body, the isolation of the speech, the isolation of the
mind, which is clear light, and the union of clear light and illusory body. He achieved the
completion stage union of clear light and illusory body a long time ago, so of course he
would have achieved all the rest. He was a great lama.
He organized his Dalhousie group by checking whether those who came to him could follow
an ascetic life or not. Those who could were allowed to stay to receive his guidance but
those who were unable to renounce this life had to leave. He checked up like this. There
were many geshes learned in philosophy there.
When Rinpoche was still in Tibet, Dolgyal entered into an oracle monk and came and asked
Rinpoche to accept him. He was a high lama with many disciples, so if he accepted Dolgyal
many people would trust Dolgyal and do the practice. Trehor Kyörpon Rinpoche asked
Dolgyal a question about impermanence, which Dolgyal answered correctly. Then he asked
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