By Jonathan Landaw

As I write this, Lama Zopa Rinpoche is in Wisconsin attending teachings by Geshe Sopa, and those of us here in northern California are left with our various memories of his recent stay with us and his teachings at Land of Medicine Buddha and Vajrapani Institute. Such visits by Lama Zopa often leave me with mixed emotions. Foremost among them is a feeling I can only describe as wonderment. Although more than 25 years have passed since I first encountered Rinpoche, I remain in awe of his uniqueness, his unflagging energy and his boundless compassion. It almost seems as if the longer I know him, the more difficult it becomes for me to comprehend just who he might be. As time passes, instead of getting used to him, I find his qualities to be more and more extraordinary. Considering that even 25 years ago he seemed decidedly other-worldly to me, I guess I must now say that his “otherness” is nothing less than galactic in scope. I don’t mean to imply that he appears to be out of touch with or removed from this world – his unbearably intense compassion nullifies any such remoteness – but rather that he seems to be operating on such a refined level that I often find myself wondering if he might not have come to us from another world system entirely.

But such wonderment at his clarity and uniqueness is only one of my reactions. In the wake of his latest visit I also feel – and it pains me to admit it – no small amount of frustration, and even disappointment. Not towards Rinpoche, but myself. Comparisons are odious, as the saying goes, and none more so than those in which one’s own grossness is thrown into particularly sharp relief by the brilliance of the Guru’s purity. For example, while Rinpoche seems never to be in need of a break to rest up from his tireless deeds on behalf of others, eight hours of sleep a night are not enough to keep me from getting exhausted by the pitifully small number of things I manage to accomplish in any one day. (I even fell asleep at the computer while writing this column, though that might have been in anticipatory sympathy with those of my readers who will fall asleep while reading it.)

There are numerous other odious comparisons I could draw between Rinpoche and myself, but there is no need to belabor the obvious. Instead, I would like to take a somewhat more optimistic tack by looking at the Guru’s brilliance not as a blinding glare in which one’s own faults are sharply revealed, but rather as a source of hope and inspiration. In this connection I would like to look at Rinpoche in just one of his many guises: a present day Kadampa geshe. As most of you know, these Tibetan followers of the 11th-century Indian master Atisha were skillful practitioners of lo-jong: the teachings on Mahayana thought transformation. These lo-jong teachings are full of the most practical advice for overcoming “the demon of self-cherishing,” as Rinpoche often calls it, and cultivating in its place the compassionate bodhichitta motivation.

Lama Zopa has often indicated that when we first attempt to generate such a compassionate motive, regarding others as more precious than ourselves, the type of bodhichitta we develop is necessarily “fabricated” in the sense of being artificial. This is not to say that it is in any way false, but rather that it is not yet an attitude that arises naturally and spontaneously within us. Instead, it has to be cultivated in a step-by-step fashion, in reliance upon certain lines of reasoning and so forth. In other words, because we are so used to self-cherishing, selfless regard for others’ welfare does not arise in the mind as Athena arose from the brow of Zeus, fully formed and all of a sudden, but has to be coaxed into existence. However, the promise of spiritual development is that, with diligent practice, such positive, selfless attitudes will eventually arise naturally as an integral aspect of our very being. The proof and inspiration that this is definitely possible is the gift of such “virtuous friends” – the original meaning of “geshe” – as Lama Zopa Rinpoche. As a testimony to the transformative power of such inspiration, I would like to relate the following true story.

About eight years ago, while I was still living in Boulder Creek not far from Vajrapani Institute, I bought a small trailer (or caravan, as my British friends call it) which I later used as an office and which now serves as a storage shed behind our house. While I was in the yard of the woman who was selling the trailer, I noticed a wooden box she had placed in front of it, evidently to make entering and exiting it easier. Dampness had caused this box to rot and, upon lifting it up to get rid of it, I discovered that it was the home of two black widow spiders. They seemed somewhat perplexed that their shelter had been so rudely snatched away from them, and I was more than a little perplexed myself. Having heard many stories, since my impressionable youth, about how poisonous these creatures were, I didn’t want to get too close to them. I knew I couldn’t let them stay where they were, but I didn’t see how I could pick them up without injuring them or endangering myself, or where I could move them to without endangering the neighbors.

I must have been standing there for quite a while pondering what to do, because the woman walked over to me and asked what the matter was. “I’m not sure what to do about them,” I answered, pointing to the two newly homeless ones. “Oh, I can take care of that,” she replied cheerfully, and with two quick stomps she squished them flat. She then said something else, but I could barely hear her. It was as if her sudden, totally unexpected action had not only obliterated the spiders, but had also struck me in the solar plexus, knocking the breath out of me.

For a while I was too numb even to think anything. Then it occurred to me: although I had previously taken the life of numerous small animals, the notion of killing these spiders never even crossed my mind. The way this woman had thought to take care of the situation was no different from the way I once would have handled it: if there is a problem with a bug, simply squash the bug! But now not even the slightest hint of such a thought arose in my mind; it wasn’t even an option to be considered and then rejected. Of the 84,000 delusions the scriptures refer to, the one entitled “Spiders don’t count; squash them at will” had been completely and irrevocably eliminated from my mind. At the graveside of these two flattened black widows, I was able to rejoice in the legacy bequeathed by the compassionate Gurus. With more than a little help from my (virtuous) friends, the score was now: one down, only 83,999 delusions to go. What a relief!