Virtue and Reality previously published by the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive Becoming Your Own Therapist, by Lama Yeshe Advice for Monks and Nuns, by Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche Make Your Mind an Ocean, by Lama Yeshe Teachings from the Vajrasattva Retreat, by Lama Zopa Rinpoche Daily Purifi cation: A Short Vajrasattva Practice, by Lama Zopa Rinpoche The Essence of Tibetan Buddhism, by Lama Yeshe Making Life Meaningful, by Lama Zopa Rinpoche Teachings from the Mani Retreat, by Lama Zopa Rinpoche The Direct and Unmistaken Method, by Lama Zopa Rinpoche The Yoga of Offering Food, by Lama Zopa Rinpoche The Peaceful Stillness of the Silent Mind, by Lama Yeshe Teachings from Tibet, by various great lamas The Joy of Compassion, by Lama Zopa Rinpoche The Kindness of Others, by Geshe Jampa Tegchok Ego, Attachment and Liberation, by Lama Yeshe How Things Exist, by Lama Zopa Rinpoche Universal Love, by Lama Yeshe The Heart of the Path, by Lama Zopa Rinpoche (forthcoming) For initiates only: A Chat about Heruka, by Lama Zopa Rinpoche A Chat about Yamantaka, by Lama Zopa Rinpoche In association with TDL Publications, Los Angeles: Mirror of Wisdom, by Geshe Tsultim Gyeltsen Illuminating the Path to Enlightenment, by His Holiness the Dalai Lama Lama Yeshe DVDs The Three Principal Aspects of the Path Introduction to Tantra Offering Tsok to Heruka Vajrasattva Anxiety in the Nuclear Age May whoever sees, touches, reads, remembers, or talks or thinks about these books never be reborn in unfortunate circumstances, receive only rebirths in situations conducive to the perfect practice of Dharma, meet only perfectly qualified spiritual guides, quickly develop bodhicitta and immediately attain enlightenment for.... the sake of all sentient beings. Lama Zopa Rinpoche Virtue and Reality Method and Wisdom in the Practice of Dharma Edited by Nicholas Ribush Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive • Boston www.LamaYeshe.com A non-profit charitable organization for the benefit of all sentient beings and an affiliate of the Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition www.fpmt.org First published 1998 5,000 copies for free distribution Second printing 2000, 10,000 copies Third printing 2004, 10,000 copies Fourth printing 2008, 10,000 copies Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive PO Box 356, Weston, MA 02493, USA © Lama Thubten Zopa Rinpoche 2008 Please do not reproduce any part of this book by any means whatsoever without our permission Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Thubten Zopa, Rinpoche, 1945– Virtue & reality : method and wisdom in the practice of dharma / Thubten Zopa Rinpoche ; edited by Nicholas Ribush. p. cm. Summary: “Based on a four-day meditation course, this book presents a fully realized lama’s teachings on the two wings of enlightenment—method and wisdom—the two accumulations that lead to the form and wisdom bodies of a buddha, and his explanation of Lama Tsongkhapa’s ‘Three Principal Aspects of the Path’”—Provided by publisher. isbn 978-1-891868-02-3 (alk. paper) 1. Spiritual life—Buddhism. 2. Buddhism—China—Tibet—Doctrines. I. Ribush, Nicholas. II. Title. bq7805.t4845 2008 294.3'444—dc22 2008033741 isbn 1-891868-02-0 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 Cover photograph Roger Kunsang • Cover line art by Robert Beer Interior photos of Rinpoche at Yucca Valley, Ca, 1977, by Carol Royce- Wilder • Designed by Gopa&Ted2 Inc. Printed in the USA with environmental mindfulness on 30% PCW recycled paper. As a result we have saved the following resources: 32 trees, 641 lbs. of solid waste, 4,992 gallons of water, 1,203 lbs. of greenhouse gases and 10 million BTUs of energy. This paper is also FSC certifi ed. For more information please visit www.fscus.org. Please contact the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive for more copies of this and our other free books ...Contents ... Editor’s Introduction 11 1. Fulfi lling Life’s Purpose 13 2. Living with Bodhicitta 25 3. Patience and the Compassionate Heart 51 4. Meditation on Emptiness 61 5. Practicing the Good Heart 91 6. Dedication 105 ...Publisher’s Acknowledgments ... e are extremely grateful to our friends and sup- W Lama Yeshe porters who have made it possible for the Wisdom Archive to both exist and function: to Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche, whose kindness is impossible to repay; to Peter and Nicole Kedge and Venerable Ailsa Cameron for their initial work on the Archive; to Venerable Roger Kunsang, Lama Zopa’s tireless assistant, for his kindness and consideration; and to our sustaining supporters: Barry and Connie Hershey, Joan Halsall, Roger and Claire Ash-Wheeler, Claire Atkins, Thubten Yeshe, Tony Steel, Richard Gere, Doren & Mary Harper, Tom & Suzanne Castles, Lily Chang Wu and Hawk Furman. We are also deeply grateful to all those who have become mem- bers of the Archive over the past few years. Details of our member- ship program may be found at the back of this book, and if you are not a member, please do consider joining up. Due to the kindness of those who have, we now have three editors working on our vast col- lection of teachings for the benefi t of all. We have posted our list of individual and corporate members on our Web site, . In particular, we thank our anonymous benefactor, whose dedi- cation reads: “Many people are involved with this book: the teacher, 8 ... virtue and reality ... those who worked to get the book published, those who see, read and study it and many more. May the merit created by all these peo- ple become the cause for ending all sentient beings’ suffering and bringing all beings to enlightenment.” We also thank Annelies van der Heijden, Annette Citters and the Lotus Foundation, Brigitte Auloy and Pam and Karuna Cayton for their contributions to this reprint. Furthermore, we would like to express our appreciation for the kindness and compassion of all those other generous benefactors who have contributed funds to our work since we began publish- ing free books. Thankfully, you are too numerous to mention indi- vidually in this book, but we value highly each and every donation made to spreading the Dharma for the sake of the kind mother sen- tient beings and now pay tribute to you all on our Web site. Thank you so much. Finally, I would like to thank the many other kind people who have asked that their donations be kept anonymous; my wife, Wendy Cook, for her constant help and support; our dedicated offi ce staff, Jennifer Barlow and Ven. Tenzin Desal; Ven. Thubten Labdron (Trisha Donnelly) for her help with archiving and edit- ing; Ven. Bob Alcorn for his incredible work on our Lama Yeshe DVDs; David Zinn for his digital imaging expertise; Veronica Kac- zmarowski, Evelyn Williames, FPMT Australia and Mandala Books (Brisbane) for much appreciated assistance with our distribution in Australia; Dennis Heslop, Philip Bradley, Mike Gilmore and our other friends at Wisdom Books (London) for their great help with our distribution in Europe; our volunteer transcribers; and Greg ... publisher’s acknowledgments ... 9 Sneddon, Dr. Su Hung and Anne Pottage in Australia and Jonathan Steyn in London for their help with our audio work. If you, dear reader, would like to join this noble group of open- hearted altruists by contributing to the production of more books by Lama Yeshe or Lama Zopa Rinpoche or to any other aspect of the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive’s work, please contact us to fi nd out how. —Dr. Nicholas Ribush Through the merit of having contributed to the spread of the Buddha’s teachings for the sake of all sentient beings, may our benefactors and their families and friends have long and healthy lives, all happiness, and may all their Dharma wishes be instantly fulfi lled. ..... ...Editor’s Introduction ... The entire Dharma, the teachings of the Buddha, can be divided into two categories—extensive method and profound wisdom. The method lineage passed from Shakyamuni Buddha to Maitreya and down through the great Indian pundits such as Asanga, Vasubandhu, Haribhadra and Suvarnadvipi to the great Atisha, who brought them to Tibet. Similarly, the wisdom lineage passed from the Buddha to Manjushri and again down to Atisha through pundits such as Nagarjuna and Chandrakirti. In Tibet, Atisha arranged the Buddha’s teachings into a graded sequence that became known as the steps of the path to enlighten- ment (lam-rim), the essence of which is method and wisdom. Explic- itly, this path has three principal aspects—renunciation, bodhicitta and right view. The Kadampa tradition, founded by Atisha, became the basis of the Gelug school of Tibetan Buddhism, which itself was founded in the fi fteenth century by the enlightened scholar and yogi, Lama Je Tsongkhapa. This tradition lives today in the minds and teachings of great masters such as His Holiness the Dalai Lama and other wonderful teachers in the Gelug tradition, of whom Lama Thubten Zopa Rinpoche, the author of this book, is one of the best known. He is the spiritual director of the Foundation for the 12 ... virtue and reality ... Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition (FPMT) and the guide, ref- uge and protector of thousands of students all over the world. In the context of the teachings presented here, method is the lov- ing, compassionate bodhicitta and wisdom is the realization of ulti- mate reality, the right view of emptiness. It would be hard to fi nd a simpler, clearer, more practical explanation of these two fundamen- tal paths than the one Lama Zopa offers us here. Through practicing method, we attain the holy body of a buddha; through developing wisdom we attain the enlightened mind. Based on a four-day course given at an American FPMT center, Tilopa Center, Decatur, Illinois, in August, 1997, the teachings pre- sented here detail methods for developing compassion and wisdom in our everyday lives.