Thubten Zopa - Ultimate Healing: The Power of Compassion

ULTIMATE HEALING

Wisdom Publications
199 Elm Street
Somerville, MA 02144 USA

2001 Lama Thubten Zopa Rinpoche

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No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system or technologies now known or later developed, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Thubten Zopa, Rinpoche, 1946

Ultimate healing : the power of compassion / Lama Zopa Rimpoche ; edited by Ailsa Cameron ; foreword by Lillian Too.

p. cm.

ISBN 0-86171-195-5 (alk. paper)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Spiritual lifeBka-gdams-pa (Sect) 2. HealingReligious aspectsBuddhism. 3. MeditationBuddhism. 4. Compassion (Buddhism)
I. Cameron, Ailsa. II. Title.
BQ7670.6.T5 2001

ISBN 0-86171-195-5

13 12 11 10 09
8 7 6 5

Cover design by tljejb. Interior design by: Gopa & Ted2, Inc.
Typeface: Sabon 10.5/14
Cover image: The Eight Medicine Buddhas
Painted by Peter Iseli 1997. 17.5 x 11.5 feet. Photo John Bigelow Taylor

Wisdom Publications books are printed on acid-free paper and meet the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources.

Printed in the United States of America

This book was produced with environmental mindfulness. We have elected to print this title on 30% PCW recycled paper. As a result, we have saved the following resources: 13 trees, 9 million BTUs of energy, 1,079 lbs. of greenhouse gases, 4,881 gallons of water, and 569 lbs. of solid waste. For more information, please visit our website, www.wisdompubs.org. This paper is also FSC certified. For more information, please visit www.fscus.org

Contents

25 Dedication

Publishers Acknowledgment

The Publisher gratefully acknowledges the kind generosity of Richard Gere and the Gere Foundation in contributing toward the printing of this book.

T HIS, TRULY, is an awesome book. From its pages emanate such soothing wisdom, so much healing lightmanifesting the presence, the words, and the teachings of one of the worlds foremost high lamas. Here is a book that focuses the heart on the spiritual cure for those in pain; a book that directs the attention of the mind to the special wisdom of cures that cause permanent healing to take place; a book for the sick, the unhappy, and the injured.

Yet Ultimate Healing is more than a book of prayer to alleviate our physical ills. The teachings and practices contained herein lead the mind toward a more profound understanding of life and death and of impermanence and suffering. Such an understanding allows us to begin to see illness and disease in a broader perspective. Within this perspective, the concepts of karma, reincarnation, and the quality of rebirth take on new meanings that have the power to comfort, and ultimately to heal us.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche is a spiritual teacher whose compassion, kindness, and incredible humility is legend to his thousands of students and disciples around the world. He was recognized at the age of four as the reincarnation of a a sage and meditator who lived in the Lawudo region of the Nepalese Himalayas.

I had the greatest good fortune to meet Rinpoche in India in February 1997, a meeting that forever changed the way I look at life. I brought to that meeting the negative baggage of a lifetimes worth of posturing and self-cherishing. I smoked like a chimney theneasily puffing two packs of cigarettes a day. I had been smoking for thirty years! In India, I was politely requested not to smoke in the presence of such a high lama, and so I recall slinking to the back of the building to light a desperate cigarette every few hours. I felt very silly, but as everyone who has ever been addicted to smoking will explain, it is not by choice that we smokers behave like addicts. After a lifetime of cigarettes it is not easy to give up.

And heres the wonderful thing: After returning from India I never touched another cigarette, and I have not smoked since then. I remember it was several months before I realized my quitting had something to do with meeting Rinpoche. His blessings had helped me succeed in quitting when every effort I had ever made to stop had failed. Yet when I attempted to thank him, Rinpoche would not even acknowledge he had anything to do with it. He simply ignored all references to itthat is the extent of Rinpoches humility.

The practices compiled here are especially vital for those suffering from life-threatening illnesses. The practice of the Medicine Buddha is particularly powerful in that it can bring seemingly miraculous healing in our life and in the lives of those afflicted with chronic ailments and sicknesses. Lama Zopa Rinpoches kindness is infinite in transmitting this knowledge and these teachings to the world.

So be prepared for cures, but also make an effort to penetrate the veil of ignorance and disappointment that prevent the mind from accepting when cures do not take place. Cut through karmic ignorance by meditating on these teachings, performing the visualizations, and reciting the mantras. Rinpoche shows us how, by understanding the true nature of existence, we are able to view every suffering as containing the seeds for happiness. Herein lies the superior wisdom of this wonderful book.

May anyone who reads the words of my teacher have happiness forever. May their sufferings be softened and alleviated, and may all their ailments, sickness, and disease be instantly cured.

Lillian Too

July 2001

L AMA ZOPA RINPOCHE, spiritual director of the Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition (FPMT), had been helping people with health problems for more than twenty years when he decided to hold his first healing course in August 1991 at Tara Institute, the FPMT center in Melbourne, Australia. As well as traditional Tibetan herbal medicine, Lama Zopa had prescribed meditations, mantras, and various other Tibetan Buddhist healing practices to thousands of people. Feeling that there were more and more people in need of help and that Tibetan Buddhism had so much to offer them, especially those with incurable diseases, Rinpoche organized a one-week healing course.

Advertised as Methods and Meditations to Help Heal Mind and Body, the course made no promises of miracle cures. Lama Zopa insisted that only those with a life-threatening disease could attend the course, and in the end just six people were accepted for the course: four with cancer, one who was HIV+, and one with multiple sclerosis. In addition, the course was attended by six people selected to organize the course or to run future healing courses.