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Lama Zopa Rinpoche during a visit to the Dickey Tsering Children’s Home in Kathmandu, Nepal, November 2021. Photo by Ven. Lobsang Sherab.
The Six Perfections: The Practice of the Bodhisattvas (2020) by Lama Zopa Rinpoche has been recently released in a paperback edition. In the book, Rinpoche walks us through the six perfections, which are a key Mahayana Buddhist teaching. Here’s an excerpt from Rinpoche’s teaching on the perfection of charity:
Keeping our mind pure—free from pride, miserliness, and so forth—is very difficult for ordinary people like us. If we could give simply, without all these disturbing thoughts clouding our giving, our generosity would be perfect and attaining another perfect human rebirth would be easy. But this is a struggle for most of us. That is why we must always check our motivation and be diligent in observing our karma.
The villagers of Solu Khumbu, where I was born, have a very good custom to protect themselves and others. Because they are incredibly poor, theft is always a problem. Things are often stolen: cooking pots, money—even potatoes. In many villages the people bury pots of their precious potatoes outside to keep them safe, but thieves can generally guess where the pots are buried, and they dig them up. Also, sometimes people borrow things and don’t return them, no matter how much the owner complains and shouts.
In such cases of theft, the villagers often go to a monastery and ask the lama there to say prayers and dedicate the merit of the prayer to the thief, totally offering them that thing. Whether or not this becomes a virtuous act does not depend on the lama but on the mind of the victim. If the person can renounce the stolen object completely and offer it to the thief with compassion, then it is virtuous. The owner needs the object, but the thief also needs it, and so by renouncing it and offering it to the thief with compassion, the dedication becomes a virtuous action.
If somebody stole a hundred dollars from us and we cannot do the practice of dedication—if we cannot take the loss upon ourselves and offer the victory to that sentient being; if we still cling to that hundred dollars—how can we perfect the practice of charity? Even without considering how kind that sentient being has been, how precious they are, we should rejoice that they needed something and now they have it. Like us, they want happiness and do not want suffering—in that way they are completely equal to us—so why can’t they have that hundred dollars? If we were to find a hundred dollars, how happy we would be. If we were to find a thousand dollars or a million dollars, we would be so surprised and excited. We would clap our hands with joy. So why can’t we do the same thing for this sentient being who has come across a hundred dollars?
Cover of Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s book The Six Perfections
Learn more about The Six Perfections: The Practice of the Bodhisattvas, including order information, on Wisdom Publication’s website:
https://wisdomexperience.org/product/the-six-perfections/
The Six Perfections is also available as an e-book from the Foundation Store.
Watch the video series Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s Teachings on Thought Transformation and find links to videos in translation, transcripts, MP3s, additional practice advice, and more.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche is the spiritual director of the Foundation for the Preservation of Mahayana Tradition (FPMT), a Tibetan Buddhist organization dedicated to the transmission of the Mahayana Buddhist tradition and values worldwide through teaching, meditation and community service.