The Buddha Book: Buddhas, blessings, prayers, and rituals to grant you love, wisdom, and healing
Inspired by the teachings of Lama Zopa Rinpoche, The Buddha Book introduces the reader to the most important and well-known Buddhist deities. In this beautifully illustrated volume each Buddha is presented with their major characteristics, along with the prayers, meditations, visualizations, and special rituals and blessings associated with each.Included in this edition are the Historical Buddha, Shakyamuni; the Five Dhyani Buddhas; the Purification Buddha; the Healing Buddhas; the Compassionate Buddhas; the Longevity Buddhas; the Mother Goddess; the Wealth Buddhas; and the Buddha of the Future.
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Lillian Too
The Buddha Book
Buddhas, blessings, prayers and rituals to grant you love, wisdom, and healing Inspired by the teachings of Lama Kyabje Zopa Rinpoche
I dedicate whatever merit arises from this book to the long life of most precious guru, Lama Kyabje Zopa Rinpoche, to whom I prostrate, make offerings and go for refuge. May all his holy wishes be fulfilled immediately. May His Dharma inspired projects in India, Mongolia, Australia, United States, Asia and Europe to benefit sentient beings actualize and meet with success, including the building of the world’s largest Buddha statue of Maitreya Buddha in India.
Spiritual means the mind, and spiritual people are those who seek its nature. Through this they come to understand the effects of their behavior, the actions of their body, speech, and mind. Morality is the wisdom that understands the nature of the mind.
When you know the nature of your own mind, depression is spontaneously dispelled. Whatever pain, pleasure, or other feeling you experience, it is all an expression of your mind. When you discover that true satisfaction comes only from the mind, you realize you can extend this experience without limit, and then it is possible to discover everlasting happiness … so it is actually very simple.
LAMA YESHE
Table of Contents
Introduction: Meeting a Living Buddha
Chapter 1: Meeting the Founder-Buddha, Shakyamuni
Chapter 2: Five Tantric Buddhas for Spiritual Transformation
Chapter 3: Purifying Negativity: Vajrasattva and the thirty-five Confession Buddhas
Chapter 4: Meeting the Medicine Buddha
Chapter 5: Meeting the Compassion Buddha, Avalokiteshvara
Chapter 6: The Trinity of Longevity Buddhas: White Tara, Amitayus, and Namgyalma
Chapter 7: Meeting Green Tara, Mother Goddess
Chapter 8: Meeting the Wealth Buddhas
Life is …
like a flickering flame: a phenomenon that cannot last long. Like an illusion: appearing real but not there— being empty.
Phenomena are
like dewdrops or water bubbles that can perish any time.
Being transitory in nature
like a dream they appear real from their own side, yet they are empty from their own side.
Like a dream—
exactly like that. Total hallucination Like lightning, transitory in nature. When there is lightning a flash of light appears and then it is gone.
Same:
When death comes all appearance of this life go, like friends who were here then pass away and are gone.
Buddha said:
If we cling, if we grasp there is suffering. Things cannot last; they are impermanent by nature. Holding the view of permanence only leads to suffering. It creates the cause to reincarnate in samsara again.
Attachment ties us to
samsara … again.
From Lama Kyabje Zopa Rinpoche’s teaching on Impermanence, given at Losang Drakpa Buddhist Meditation Center, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on February 2 2002.
My Personal Journey into Bliss
My journey began in the holy city of Bodhgaya, in India. Several years ago, in February 1997, I had the great good fortune to meet one of the most amazing beings of our time, someone whom I unexpectedly recognized. This strange sensation of déjà vu hit me at the moment when his palms pressed against the sides of my head as I bowed instinctively and presented him with the symbolic offering of a silk scarf. This gesture and ritual are very much a part of the Tibetan Buddhist tradition each time one meets a recognized high lama (guru).
The sensation of “remembering” happened at some uncanny, experiential level. One moment I was curiously anticipating meeting a holy man, and the next this almost blissful sense of recognition came over me. I felt drawn to him as if he were someone I had known and loved for a very long time. The feeling was momentary – like a television channel flickering for an instant – before switching back to the mundane world where I was being introduced to Lama Kyabje Zopa Rinpoche.
In this life, that was our first meeting. He was smiling in no special way; he did not pick me out for special attention. I was one in a long line of people waiting to offer a kata, the traditional silk scarf. But as Rinpoche’s disciples and followers knelt and prostrated all around me in reverence to him, I recall thinking, “What took him so long to find me?”
REMEMBERING A PAST LIFE
Since then I have embraced Lama Kyabje Zopa Rinpoche as my spiritual guide and teacher. It was a meeting I should have anticipated, but when you really do not know anything about lamas and past lives, this is not something you could realize.
There had been many signs, but I was blind to them. Most telling had been my dreams, of which the most significant was one of two white tigers, which I later discovered were in fact snow lions. These heralded the appearance of the guru into my life, although I was unaware of this. Then there had been the continuous mental images that came to me – images of some distant time, up in the Himalayan mountain range and on the stone-cold floor of a monastery. Later I would understand them to be flashes of memory, but when they first came into my consciousness they meant nothing to me. It was only when I saw pictures and actually went to the Solu Khumbu region in the Himalayas that I recognized the place. Those revelations blew my mind, but even then I bent over backward not to “reach” out. I kept dismissing the coincidences as fancy imagination on my part – until I met Rinpoche, and felt the momentous impact of that up-close moment.
