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If twenty-four hours a day, everything you do is motivated by bodhicitta, you accumulate infinite merit. Moreover, every single action becomes a cause for not only your own enlightenment but also the happiness of every other sentient being. This is the way to make your life both as meaningful and as rich as possible.
Compiled from various teachings by Lama Zopa Rinpoche, including material for a full-length book version of this booklet and Teachings from the Vajrasattva Retreat. “The Bodhisattva’s Confession of Moral Downfalls: The Sutra of the Three Heaps”(Tib. Dung-shag), translated by Lama Zopa Rinpoche, is from Essential Buddhist Prayers: An FPMT Prayer Book. The part about prostrations in general comes from Rinpoche’s 1990 Bodhgaya teachings and was originally edited by Ven. Ailsa Cameron and revised for this booklet by Nicholas Ribush.
Geshe Rabten & Geshe Ngawang Dhargyey, Brian Beresford (tr.).
Advice From a Spiritual Friend. Boston: Wisdom Publications, 1996 edition.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche, Daily Purification: A Short Vajrasattva Practice. Boston: Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive, 2001. Constance Miller (ed.), Essential Buddhist Prayers: An FPMT Prayer Book, Vol. 1. Taos: FPMT Education Department, revised edition, 2001.
Geshe Jampa Gyatso, Everlasting Rain of Nectar. Boston: Wisdom Publications, 1996. Dedication
Because of the infinite merit of this practice, may whatever suffering sentient beings experience ripen on me, right now. May whatever happiness and virtue I have accumulated—any realizations of the path up to the highest enlightenment—ripen on each hell being, each preta, each animal, each human, each asura, each sura and each intermediate state being.
I rejoice at the infinite merit accumulated by this dedication. May the precious, sublime mind of enlightenment, source of my own and all other sentient beings’ happiness and success, that has not yet arisen in my mind, arise without a moment’s delay, and may that which has already arisen increase forever without degeneration.
Because of the merit of the three times accumulated by myself, buddhas, bodhisattvas and all other sentient beings, which are empty from their own side, may the I, which is empty from its own side, attain enlightenment, which is empty from its own side, and lead all sentient beings, who are empty from their own side, to that enlightenment, which is empty from its own side, by myself alone, who is empty from its own side.
Whatever white virtue I have thus created, I dedicate to be able to uphold the holy Dharma of scripture and insight And to fulfill without exception, the prayers and deeds Of the buddhas and the bodhisattvas of the three times. Through the power of this merit May I never be parted in any future life from the four spheres of the Mahayana, And reach the end of my journey along the paths of Renunciation, bodhicitta, right view and the two stages.
For other and more extensive dedications with commentary, see Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s Teachings from the Vajrasattva Retreat. Boston: Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive, 2000. Also refer to Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s A Daily Meditation Practice. Boston: Wisdom Publications, 1997.