Front Matter and Introduction - Daily Purification: A Short Vajrasattva Practice
Publisher's Acknowledgment
We are extremely grateful to
Lama Zopa Rinpoche for his eternal and unsurpassed love, compassion, wisdom and
guidance; to all our benefactors-large and small, regular and occasional; and of
course, to the great Lama Yeshe, who started it all and whose kindness exceeds
that of the buddhas of the past, present and future.
May whoever sees, touches, reads, remembers, or talks or thinks about this book never be reborn in unfortunate circumstances, receive only rebirths in situations conducive to the perfect practice of Dharma, meet a perfectly qualified spiritual guide, quickly develop bodhicitta and immediately attain enlightenment for the sake of all sentient beings.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche
Short
Vajrasattva Meditation
Purification with the Four Opponent
Powers
Edited by Nicholas Ribush
Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive • Boston
First published in 2001
12,000
copies for free distribution
Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive
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Box 356
Weston, MA 02493 USA
© Lama Zopa Rinpoche 2001
Please
do not reproduce any part of this booklet by any means whatsoever without our
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ISBN 1-891868-09-8
Cover photo artist and photographer
unknown
Designed by Mark Gatter
Printed in Canada on recycled,
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Editor's Introduction
In Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand, Pabongka Rinpoche explains how the great Atisha would purify any negativity, no matter how small, immediately. Even in public or when riding his horse, as soon as he noticed a breach of his ethics, he would stop what he was doing, drop to one knee and then and there, purify it with the four opponent powers-the powers of dependence, regret, remedy and restraint.
Of course, compared to us, Atisha may not have had that much to purify. Still, he would say, "I never break my pratimoksha vows; I rarely break my bodhisattva vows; but my tantric vows-I transgress those like falling rain."
Atisha practiced purification in this way because of his deep realization of the psycho-mechanics of negative karma, especially its four fundamentals: negative karma is certain to bring suffering; it multiplies exponentially; if eradicated, it cannot bring its suffering result; and once created, it never simply disappears.
Through the study and practice of Dharma, we should try to attain Atisha's level of understanding. In the meantime, we should try to practice as he did.
Therefore, out of his great compassion, Lama Zopa Rinpoche has composed this short Vajrasattva practice and requested that it be published in a format that is easy for people to carry around and have available at all times. Thus, we can be like the great Atisha-whenever we notice we have broken a vow or created any other kind of negative karma, we can whip out our little Vajrasattva book and purify that negativity with the four opponent powers without a second's delay.
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