We recently shared news about Wisdom Publications’ release of The Swift Path: A Meditation Manual on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment  by Panchen Losang Yeshe and translated by Szegee Toh into English. This book is the third title in the Wisdom Culture Series published by Wisdom Publications in association with FPMT.

This book contains a wonderful foreword by Lama Zopa Rinpoche, and we are sharing it here in its entirety. We hope this foreword will inspire you to read this extraordinary meditation manual in its entirety. 

Foreword to The Swift Path: A Meditation Manual on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment

By Lama Zopa Rinpoche

Lama Zopa Rinpoche at Kopan Monastery, Nepal, May 2022. Photo by Ven. Lobsang Sherab.

What is the importance of this text, the Swift Path by Paṇchen Losang Yeshe? To talk straight, millions and millions of people have depression. Why is that? I believe that the fundamental reason is because they lack an understanding of the meaning of life. In most cases, they haven’t met the Dharma, the path to enlightenment, so they don’t know the happiness that comes from practicing it. There are also people who have met the graduated path to enlightenment, the lamrim, but because they do not really practice it, the lamrim remains on paper; it does not go into their heart. And when, due to past karma, a problem involving an attachment to the happiness of this life arises, say their wife leaves them for someone else, they cannot bear it. They may even have an intellectual understanding of the lamrim, but without having really practiced it in their heart, they cannot renounce their attachment to their wife when she leaves them, or they become consumed by distress when someone important to them dies. It feels like they are the only person in the world experiencing that kind of suffering; with attachment, it can feel like that. In this state, they are vulnerable because of their past karma, their past harmful actions, and some people may even kill themselves in their extreme state. 

Suicides even happened among the residents of the refugee camp in Buxa Duar, India, where, after escaping from Tibet, I lived for eight years and studied a little bit of philosophy. During that time, there was a monk who was a puja leader. After an influential person who had helped Tibet passed away, the Tibetans in general and the monks in particular were very upset. It was perhaps after that that he took his own life at a place on the way to Pasangkar, where I went many times along with some other monks to get injections for tuberculosis. On a mountain where there had been a landslide, the puja leader hanged himself. His body was found hanging from a high branch with a rope around his neck. 

Likewise, when America was fighting in Iraq, every minute of the soldiers’ lives was uncertain. They saw many acts of violence. Because of this, when the soldiers who survived returned home to see their families, their minds were totally disturbed. They couldn’t see any meaning in life. I met one of these American soldiers at my retreat cave in Lawudo, Nepal. He was a very intelligent, highly trained soldier who found out about Lawudo on the internet, and he happened to be in Lawudo while I was there. I called him to come to my cave so that I could ask him some questions. He was someone who didn’t talk much, but he told me that the American government introduced the returned soldiers to mindfulness, which comes from Buddhism, because it makes the mind peaceful. I think the idea behind it was that by not thinking about the past and future, and by keeping the mind still, people feel a little bit better. 

When people don’t know the meaning of life, and don’t know the happiness that comes from practicing the Dharma, they then experience unbelievable problems and unhappiness; they become chronically depressed, unable to recover. I heard once about a man in England who had been sick with depression for twenty-five years. He had been to see many doctors, but nothing helped. However, one day, when he was working in a vegetable garden, he tried to think that he was doing it for others. By this intention to use his life to benefit others, to work for others, to serve others, he was able to change his mind, and only then did his depression go away. Like “An apple a day keeps the doctor away,” “A thought to benefit others a day keeps depression away.” 

What sort of Dharma should you practice? Phabongkha Dechen Nyingpo’s Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand says: 

The Dharma you practice should be the sublime Mahayana, which leads fortunate capable beings to buddhahood. It should be the tradition of the two great charioteers, Nagarjuna and Asanga. It should be the profound instruction drawing out the essence of the thought of the glorious, unequaled Lama Atisha and the great Lama Tsongkhapa, the Dharma king of the three realms. It should set out all the vital points of the essence of the 84,000 teachings, without anything missing, as stages of practice for one person to achieve enlightenment. 

Therefore, you should first make sure that the Dharma that you are going to study and practice is the main path traveled by all the buddhas of the three times—past, present, and future. The very heart of the 84,000 teachings taught by the Buddha, when condensed, is the holy Dharma that is the lamrim, the graduated path, which includes both the profound and vast stages. The five great treatises (on Prajnaparamita, Madhyamaka, Abhidharma, Pramaṇa, and Vinaya) that form the core curriculum of Gelug monasteries are elaborations of this holy Dharma. If you follow this path, like the buddhas of the three times, you will also be able to achieve buddhahood, the total cessation of obscurations and the completion of realizations. 

If, instead, you follow a path that the holy beings of the past did not practice, you risk reaching a very strange place. You might experience the sufferings of the lower realms and the general sufferings of saṃsara for eons, with no chance for enlightenment. Therefore, before you rush to devour the Dharma that you intend to practice, like a dog rushes to food, you should thoroughly examine it. For, as Jamgon Sakya Paṇḍita said: 

However much this life goes wrong, 
there is neither harm nor benefit to your next life. 
But if you meet a wrong Dharma, 
all your future lives will go wrong. 

If something else in your life goes wrong, even if you die and your consciousness is separated from your body, your consciousness will not necessarily go to the lower realms, where you would suffer for eons and eons; you might still go to a pure land or take a higher rebirth. But if you meet and practice a wrong Dharma and follow a wrong path, this could destroy your future lives for eons upon eons because of the negative imprints and habits it creates. You would not meet the Dharma and would not meet a virtuous friend for many lifetimes; you would instead experience great suffering. Do not be like many who, in my experience, practice whatever sounds good and makes them happy right now, never examining the nature of the teachings they are going to practice and where those teachings will lead them. 

The instructions that you follow should be complete, with nothing missing, and unmistaken, and you should also be able to endure hardships to practice them. Otherwise, your effort will be mostly useless, in that you will not gain realizations, such as renunciation of the attachment to this life, and you will be unable to achieve enlightenment. As Milarepa said: 

Without meditating on the meaning of the instructions of the oral lineage,
even if you cling to a retreat place, you will only torture yourself.

Milarepa was a lay person who achieved enlightenment in his lifetime during these degenerate times. After his father died, his aunt and uncle mistreated his family, causing his mother to advise Milarepa to learn black magic. He did so, and later, when the aunt and uncle were hosting a wedding at their house, Milarepa caused rocks from the mountain to crash down upon the house, utterly destroying it. The wedding guests upstairs and the animals downstairs were all killed. 

Seeing what he had done, Milarepa felt great sadness and went to see his black magic teacher, who suggested that if he wanted to practice the Dharma, he should go to Lama Marpa. Upon finding him, Milarepa offered his body, speech, and mind. However, Marpa did not give him teachings for many years. Instead, he advised Milarepa to build a nine-story tower by himself (without any help from coolies!). After he built the tower, Marpa had him take it down and put all the stones back where he had found them, and this whole process was repeated two more times. After the third time, Marpa’s wife insisted that Marpa now give teachings to Milarepa. From Marpa’s side, he wanted Milarepa to bear hardships for even longer so that Milarepa would become enlightened much faster. But because his wife pushed him so much, Marpa, himself an enlightened being, manifested the maṇḍala of the deity and gave Milarepa initiation and teachings. Marpa then sent Milarepa to the mountains to do retreat. Bearing much hardship, Milarepa followed his guru’s instructions exactly, while subsisting on only nettles—without even any chili or salt! As a result, Milarepa became enlightened in that very life. 

Just as the source of a river is traced back to a snow mountain, the source of the Dharma that you practice should trace back to Guru Shakyamuni Buddha, the founder of unmistaken teachings. Without an authentic source for the Dharma, even if you practice for a thousand years, you will not generate even one valid realization. It would be like wishing for butter by churning water. Thus the Dharma that you practice should have all three of these qualities: it should have been taught by the Buddha, the Omniscient One; it should have been examined well with quotations and logic and verified by the arya paṇḍitas of India; and it should have been actualized by yogis. 

Many people in this world think that they are Buddhists when they don’t even have refuge in the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. The definition of a Buddhist is someone who has taken refuge from their heart by totally relying on the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha, but these people don’t even recite a refuge prayer before they meditate. They don’t even have a statue of the Buddha in their house. When they meditate on emptiness, their meditation falls into either eternalism or nihilism, as it’s not the emptiness of the Middle Way. With nihilism, they think that nothing exists: there is no I, there is no action, there is no object, there is no saṃsara, there is no nirvaṇa. 

One time when I was in Taiwan, I met a young man whose guru accepted only one disciple, who was him. He was trying hard to meditate, but his meditation on emptiness was contemplating that nothing exists. To tease him, I asked him, “Why do you go to the bathroom if nothing exists?” If nothing exists it means that there is no person who needs to urinate or defecate, no food or drink that was consumed, no urine or feces to expel, and no toilet in which to expel them. In the same way, there is no Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. There is no Buddha to guide you to liberation from saṃsara. There is no Dharma to practice. There is no Sangha to help you practice. It all becomes very funny. You don’t exist and nor do your parents, brothers and sisters, husband, or wife. None of them exists. 

In a sutra, the Buddha instructed Arya Katyayana, saying: 

Katyayana, why do most people in this world strongly cling to existence or nonexistence—that is, to eternalism or nihilism? Clinging like that, they are not free from birth, old age, sickness, death, depression, lamenting, suffering, mental unhappiness, and fighting. 

In short, they cannot completely abandon the root of the oceans of suffering of saṃsara, the ignorance that holds the I and the aggregates to be truly existent. They then cannot be liberated from saṃsara. For eons upon eons, they must experience countless sufferings in the lower realms. 

Therefore, if you contemplate extensively, you will see that having an opportunity to listen to, reflect on, and meditate on the complete and unmistaken teachings, which are like refined gold, of Guru Shakyamuni Buddha, Nagarjuna, Candrakirti, and Lama Tsongkhapa is unbelievably fortunate. It is more precious than the whole sky filled with wish-granting jewels. For this reason, for your whole life—however many years, months, weeks, days, minutes, and seconds you have left to live—you should generate great happiness and rejoice in your good fortune. You are like a blind man who has found in the garbage a wish-granting jewel. If you do not meet the teachings of the graduated path to enlightenment, the heart of the whole entire Buddhadharma, which is like an ocean, you will never achieve liberation from saṃsara, and you will never achieve enlightenment. As it says in Phabongkha Dechen Nyingpo’s Opening the Door to the Excellent Path: 

This is because with renunciation, every action you do with your body, speech, or mind becomes a cause of liberation; with bodhicitta, every action you do becomes a cause of enlightenment; and with right view, every action you do becomes a remedy to saṃsara. If your actions of body, speech, and mind are not conjoined with these three principal aspects of the path to enlightenment, even if you meditate on the cakras, winds, and drops; on mahamudra, the great seal; on dzokchen, the great completion; or on the generation and completion stages of tantra, they all become a cause of saṃsara. None of them becomes the slightest cause of liberation and enlightenment. 

Kadampa Geshe Phuchungwa said to Kadampa Geshe Chen Ngawa, “Which would you choose? To be expert in the five great knowledges, achieve stable concentration, have the five clairvoyances, and achieve the eight siddhis? Or, on the other hand, to have a stable understanding of Lama Atisha’s instructions, such that no one can change your mind, even though you have not exactly actualized them in your heart?” 

Kadampa Geshe Chen Ngawa answered, “Master, leaving aside generating the lamrim realizations in my heart, I would choose just facing toward the lamrim, wondering what it is. I have been expert in the five great knowledges, been able to concentrate for eons without distraction, had the five clairvoyances, and achieved the eight siddhis numberless times in the past, but I have not yet passed beyond saṃsāra. If I find definite understanding of Lama Atisha’s graduated path to enlightenment, I will definitely turn away from saṃsara.” 

Phabongkha Dechen Nyingpo’s Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand says:

When you examine it, you will find there is no holy Dharma that is more sublime than this graduated path to enlightenment. Even the profound qualities of Secret Mantra Vajrayāna depend on the graduated path to enlightenment. Without generating the three principal aspects of the path to enlightenment in your mind, you cannot achieve enlightenment in one life by practicing the tantric path. I myself have indeed heard of many supposedly profound pure visions, Dharma treasures, and so forth from the past, but although there appear to be many wonderful collections of tantric activities and so forth, there do not seem to be any that are a way to bring forth experience of the three principal aspects of the path or that are an instruction that in essence has special qualities. 

What is called the lamrim is not made up by Lama Tsongkhapa, Lama Atisha, and so forth. It has been transmitted from the fully enlightened Buddha alone. If you understand that, whether it has the name lamrim in the title or not, you will see that all the teachings of the Buddha are the lamrim. 

And in relation to Tsongkhapa’s Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment, Phabongkha Dechen Nyingpo explained: 

Lama Tsongkhapa composed the requesting prayer [to the lineage gurus of the lamrim] Opening the Door to the Supreme Path at the base of a lion-like rockface at Radreng to the north [of Lhasa]. Whenever he invoked and made requests to an image of Lama Atisha with the holy head tilted to the side, he had a vision of all the gurus of the lamrim lineage discussing Dharma with each other. In particular, for a month Lama Tsongkhapa had visions of Lama Atisha and [the Kadampa geshés] Dromtönpa, Potowa, and Sharawa. In the end, the other three absorbed into Lama Atisha, who put his hand on Lama Tsongkhapa’s crown and said, “Work for the teachings of the Buddha, and I will help you.” That means Atisha was the one who persuaded Lama Tsongkhapa to write his Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment. Lama Tsongkhapa then composed the Great Treatise up to and including the section on calm abiding. Later, having been persuaded by Manjushri he composed the section on great insight. Therefore, leaving aside other considerations, know that in dependence on those who persuaded Lama Tsongkhapa to write it, the Great Treatise is a treasury of blessings. 

The meaning of the lamrim was elaborated on by Guru Shakyamuni Buddha, the paṇḍitas of India, and the great enlightened beings of Tibet, including Lama Tsongkhapa. Because the basis of the lamrim tradition is Lama Atisha’s Lamp for the Path to Enlightenment, in Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand Phabongkha Dechen Nyingpo set out the elaborate life story of Lama Atisha. After that, he continued by explaining that this teaching, the graduated path to enlightenment, has four great qualities and three special qualities, making it much more special than other teachings. The explanation that follows comes from Phabongkha Rinpoche. 

The first great quality is that it allows you to realize that all the teachings of the Buddha are without contradiction. If taken literally, the Lesser Vehicle, the Great Vehicle, the Vinaya, and the Secret Mantra Vehicle may appear to contradict each other, but because they are all in reality only methods for one person to achieve enlightenment, they are without contradiction. It is like a sick person who goes to the doctor with a high fever. The doctor may give one set of advice initially, but later, when the symptoms change, may advise just the opposite. Although the two sets of advice do indeed appear to be contradictory, both are necessary for the one sick person to recover. Like this, all the subjects of the graduated path are practices for one person to achieve enlightenment. 

The second great quality of the lamrim is that it allows every single teaching of the Buddha to appear as an instruction for practice. If you do not meet something like this graduated path to enlightenment, then some of the teachings of the Buddha and the commentaries on them will appear as practical while others will not. Moreover, regarding the gurus who revealed the instructions for practice in this world, there is none higher than Shakyamuni Buddha, and the highest instructions for practice are the supreme teachings of the Buddha. As Maitreya’s Sublime Continuum says: 

Therefore, in the world, there is no one wiser than the Buddha.
Only the Omniscient One knows every single sublime reality just as it is; others do not.
Therefore, do not mess with whatever sūtras were laid out by the Sage himself, 
because that would destroy the Buddha’s teachings and harm the holy Dharma. 

So, if not all of the teachings of the Buddha and their commentaries appear to you as instructions for practice, it is because you have not understood the meaning of the graduated path to enlightenment. But by understanding the meaning of the graduated path, you will know that all the great scriptures, the Buddha’s teachings and the commentaries, are included in the lamrim, and that they are to be integrated into your practice. 

The third great quality of the lamrim is that it allows you to easily discern the view of the Buddha. The Buddha’s teachings and their commentaries are sublime instructions for practice. Their subject matter is the ultimate view of the Buddha. However, without depending on the guru’s instructions, such as those on the graduated path to enlightenment, you will not find the ultimate view of the Buddha by depending on those great scriptures. Even if you are able to find it, it will take a long time and you will undergo extremely great hardships to do so. By depending on this lamrim, without any hardship you will easily find the view of the Buddha that is taught in those great scriptures. 

If you ask what that view of the Buddha is, Dakpo Jampal Lhundrup (1845– 1919) said it should be taken in general to be the paths of beings of the three capabilities and, in particular, the three principal aspects of the path to enlightenment. That is definite. Lama Tsongkhapa clearly explained the view of the Prasangika Madhyamaka school as the ultimate view of the Buddha. In Three Principal Aspects of the Path, he said: 

As long as these two understandings are seen as separate— 
of appearance, unbetraying dependent relation, 
and emptiness, the absence of all positions— 
then you have not realized the Buddha’s intent. 

This directly says that if you do not realize the right view, the Prasangika Madhyamaka view, you will not realize the view of the Buddha. It implies that if you do realize it, you will find the view of the Buddha. For example, the great scriptures are like an ocean. The view of the Buddha, such as the three principal aspects of the path to enlightenment, is like a jewel in that ocean. The lamrim is like a ship. The guru who reveals it is like a captain. Even though there are jewels in the ocean, if you enter it without depending on a ship, besides not obtaining any jewels, there is the danger that you will lose your life. Similarly, without depending on the lamrim, even if you study the great scriptures, it will be difficult for you to find the view of the Buddha. But if, by depending on a guru who is like a skilled captain, you board the ship of the lamrim, you will easily find the jewel that is the ultimate view of the Buddha in the great ocean of the extensive scriptures. 

The fourth great quality of the lamrim is that it allows you to naturally cease the great vice of abandoning the Dharma. If you do not find definite understanding of the previous three great qualities, you will discriminate among the teachings of the Buddha, seeing some as higher and some as lower, some as philosophy and some as practices, and so forth, and then have greater or lesser devotion to them. By maintaining such discrimination, you continuously create the very heavy karma of abandoning the holy Dharma, for which the karmic obscurations are extremely heavy. In the Sutra Gathering All Fragments, the Buddha said: 

Manjushri, the karmic obscurations of abandoning the holy Dharma easily happen. Manjushri discriminating some of the teachings taught by the Buddha as good and some as bad is abandoning the holy Dharma. Whoever abandons the holy Dharma criticizes the Tathagata. They talk badly about the Sangha. If you say, “This [teaching] is right” and “This is not right,” you abandon the holy Dharma. If you say, “This is taught for bodhisattvas” and “This is taught for hearers,” you abandon the holy Dharma. If you say, “This is taught for solitary realizers,” you abandon the holy Dharma. If you say, “This is not a training for bodhisattvas,” you abandon the holy Dharma. 

As the King of Meditative Stabilizations Sutra says: 

The negative karma of abandoning 
the holy Dharma is far greater 
than that of destroying all the holy objects
of offering in this Jambudvipa. 
The negative karma of abandoning 
the holy Dharma is far greater 
than that of killing as many arhats 
as there are sand grains in the Ganges. 

By understanding the lamrim, you naturally stop committing the great vice of abandoning the holy Dharma. 

This lamrim also has three special qualities. First, it is complete with nothing missing. The lamrim obviously cannot include all the words of the teachings of the Buddha and their commentaries, so when it says that nothing is missing, this means that all the vital points of the meaning are condensed and presented within it, leaving nothing out. That is why Lama Tsongkhapa explained in his Song of Spiritual Experience: 

Each time you explain or listen to the lamrim, 
the condensed essence of all the scriptures, 
you collect the benefits of explaining and listening to the holy Dharma.
So, since it condenses the extensive teachings, contemplate its meaning. 

The second special quality is that it is easy to practice. Each of us has experienced the various sufferings in this saṃsara, and each of us can achieve the everlasting happiness of liberation from saṃsara and of enlightenment. The creator of all these is the mind. And there is nothing better for subduing that mind than the lamrim. Since it was mainly taught as a method for subduing the mind, it is easy to put into practice. 

Finally, the lamrim is more special than other traditions. Since the lamrim is adorned with the instructions of Guru Vidyakokila, learned in the tradition of Nagarjuna, and the instructions of Guru Serlingpa (Suvarṇadvipa), learned in the tradition of Asanga, it is a particularly precious tradition. As Lama Tsongkhapa also said in his Song of Spiritual Experience: 

That which is well transmitted respectively from Nagarjuna and Asanga—
crown ornaments of the learned ones of the world, 
banners of renown resplendent among beings—
is the graduated path to enlightenment. 

Not even Maitreya’s Ornament for Clear Realizations or the king of tantras, the glorious Guhyasamaja, has these three special qualities. The entire subject matter of sūtra and tantra is not contained in either of these two, nor do they mainly explain the steps for subduing the mind. 

Therefore, while you have this fortunate opportunity to study, reflect, and meditate on such a graduated path to enlightenment, which is extremely special in terms of its four great qualities and three special qualities, do not remain satisfied with a misguided and partial instruction for practice. It is extremely important that you engage with great effort in studying, reflecting, and meditating on this path. In short, no matter how busy you are, reading the lamrim regularly, even just a few pages a day, brings the mind directly into the graduated path to enlightenment and the three principal aspects of the path to enlightenment. Just imagine the benefit of doing that! 

I am very pleased that this translation of the meditation instructions of Paṇchen Losang Yeshe is now available to English-speaking students of the Dharma. I have often recommended this text, including to my student Diana, who sponsored the excellent and careful translation here by Szegee. I rejoice in the merit of everyone involved in its creation and publication. 

Thank you very much! 

Lama Zopa Rinpoche
Kopan Monastery, Nepal

You can order the Swift Path from Wisdom Publications: https://wisdomexperience.org/product/the-swift-path/