Be careful what you wish for ... your guru may have something else in mind ....

Kopan Monastery, end of November 2006. Everybody has gathered at the entrance to welcome our holy guru, Lama Zopa Rinpoche. In the middle of the trumpets blowing and with incense burning, Rinpoche advances amongst the ecstatic crowd, protected by a parasol and blessing whoever presents khatas to him. Suddenly Rinpoche sees me, stops, and says, “Oh, you are here! Since a long time I haven’t seen you! Are you still working with the Red Cross? You know, I was speaking of you with somebody a short time ago. Your practice of the tsa-tsas helped a lot of people to do it as well.”

Then Rinpoche continued his distribution of smiles and nice words to everybody before disappearing into the main Gompa.

Of course I felt overjoyed with Rinpoche’s words, but I didn’t understand why Rinpoche had said what he said to me. Suddenly I remembered how all this started. At the end of the 1991 Kopan November course, I went to see Rinpoche with a very solid state of mind: I wanted to have Rinpoche’s blessing to do 100,000 prostrations in Bodhgaya right after the course. As usual, Rinpoche found his mo box, threw the famous dice, and the answer came:

“Yes, good idea, but before you should do 200,000 Migme Tsewai Guru Yoga.”

“Thank you, Rinpoche, but what about the prostrations?”

The dice answered, “Good, but first recite 400,000 Samayavajra mantras!”

“Thank you, Rinpoche, but what about the prostrations?”

Again the dice. “Good, but first do 400,000 Vajrayogini tsa-tsas!”

Suddenly, I had a problem to digest, but I continued reciting the same mantra: “What about the prostrations?”

Rinpoche looked at me strangely, and threw the dice again. “Good, but first do 200,000 water bowls!”

I was stunned, but not enough to prevent me from murmuring, “Rinpoche, what about the prostrations?”

Rinpoche answered, “Anyway, you do what you want!”

Finally I got Rinpoche’s blessing to do the prostrations. What a relief! I then went down to Bodhgaya, bought a prostration board and proudly started to do prostrations in front of the holy stupa. On the second day, I broke my back. I could hardly walk, so I stopped the prostrations, rented a meditation hut at Root Institute, and did the Migme Tsewai for two months. I began to understand that the best practice is to listen to my holy guru and not stick stubbornly to my own ideas! With this realization, I decided to make the tsa-tsas as soon as possible. After exploring all the possibilities, it came out that the best place would be to do them at Nalanda Monastery in France….

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