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Lama Zopa Rinpoche with Nick Ribush, director of Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive, reading praise he wrote for Rinpoche, Light of the Path retreat, North Carolina, US, August 2016. Photo courtesy of LYWA.
At the conclusion of the Light of the Path retreat with Lama Zopa Rinpoche, Nick Ribush composed and delivered a praise of Rinpoche that also requested for him to live a long life. Nick is a long-time student of Lama Zopa Rinpoche and serves as the director of the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive, which published the praise in its August E-letter. We share the praise here:
WE LOVE YOU, RINPOCHE
Rinpoche, we love you.
Out of your unfathomable, unbearable great compassion
You have manifested out of the infinite vastness of the dharmakaya
To guide those fortunate beings who have that rarest of rare karmas to meet you.
You appear in an ordinary body but are, in reality, all the buddhas of the past, present and future.
Yet you are kinder than all tathagatas together.
Please, please live long.
Rinpoche, we love you.
Because of your impeccable guidance in our previous lives,
We have been able to crawl out of the lower realms for this brief, lightning flash
Of a perfect human rebirth, where you can again teach us
How to extract its essence and make it meaningful in the three ways
By revealing the precious teachings on the nature of the mind.
Please, please live long.
Rinpoche, we love you.
If it were not for your teachings we would soon again
Find ourselves in the hell, hungry ghost or animal realms.
Even though death is definite and the time of death uncertain,
You refuse to let us go back down by explaining the inconceivable suffering experienced there
And teaching us mantras that preclude lower rebirth.
You are a perfect refuge.
You give us protection and are an immaculate example of how to follow karma
And at least find rebirth as a happy transmigratory being.
Please, please live long.
Rinpoche, we love you.
Your brilliant explanations of all samsaric suffering
Allow us to deeply feel the horrors of cyclic existence and develop renunciation.
Your profound explanations of the four noble truths,
The twelve links and the emptiness of all phenomena
Allow us to clearly see reality, shake off the chains of conditioned existence
And escape this prison of torture and death forever.
Please, please live long.
Rinpoche, we love you.
Bodhicitta is the secret of the mind.
You elucidate its importance over and over again, until perhaps we finally get it.
You describe in great detail the kindness of each and every sentient being
And how intolerable is the suffering they constantly undergo.
They all have been our mother and the happiness of each is far more important than our own.
Thus you show us how to develop the mind that strives day and night for their enlightenment,
Please, please live long.
Rinpoche, we love you.
That mother sentient beings have to suffer for even one second more is
So unacceptable that we ourselves must attain buddhahood right now.
Fortunately, by some miracle we have found you, Vajradhara, the peerless vajra master,
And the incomparable Mahayana tantra. In this degenerate age
You give us initiations, vows and commentaries
So that in this brief lifetime, we can become buddhas ourselves.
Please, please live long.
Rinpoche, we love you.
Never stop leading us through the stages of the path to enlightenment.
Never abandon us to the dreaded sufferings of samsara.
Never leave us in the perfect peace of nirvana.
Always keep us close until we too enter your enlightened realm.
Please, please live long.
Please, please live long.
Please, please live long.
Colophon: Written in haste from the bottom of the barrel by the ignorant Nicholas Ribush for the concluding Guru Puja at the Light of the Path retreat, Black Mountain, North Carolina, August 2016, at the request of Mer Stafford.
Many resources and materials have been developed from the Light of the Path teachings, which you can find online:
- Recorded video, audio and transcripts of the Light of the Path 2016 teachings will be posted on FPMT.org as they become available.
- All teachings from the 2009, 2010 and 2014 are available on the FPMT Online Learning Center.
- Together with many additional resources, the Living in the Path online program has been created from the Light of the Path retreat teachings. Organized into structured modules, you will find this program on the FPMT Online Learning Center.
More information, photos and updates about FPMT spiritual director Lama Zopa Rinpoche can be found on Rinpoche’s webpage on FPMT.org. If you’d like to receive news of Lama Zopa Rinpoche and FPMT via email, sign up to FPMT News.