In this issue:
When I look back on my life, I see so much ignorance, so many foolish things that I have done. Yet I was born with a deep longing to find God. This did not stop me from doing many foolish things, but it helped me avoid some spiritual dead-ends. In that way, I am very fortunate.
I know that I am the beneficiary of the merit of people whose karma I inherited. I did not make that merit: I inherited it. Without that merit, would I have been able to find the Buddha's Way? I do not know the answer to this question, but I have seen many people come in contact with Buddhist teaching and practice, and turn away from them. I think that I have been very fortunate indeed in being able to find and enter the Buddha's Path.
As a young man, just at the right moment in my life, I found a Sangha and a master in whom I could take refuge truly. Indeed, I do not think that it is in any way an exaggeration to say that my master saved my spiritual life. What can be more fortunate than that?
My master was not a magician. She saved my spiritual life by extending her faith and certainty in meditation, the Precepts, and in the Refuge of the Eternal, yet I had to make my own efforts to follow her teaching. That effort is still required. It is an effort that a human being is capable of making. I had the great good fortune to born as a human being.
For over fifty years I have been able to train with others and learn from them. Every being with whom we come in contact can teach us something. I am an old man now, and in many ways I just seem to be beginning to learn this.—Is it not fortunate that we can continue to learn throughout our life?
There is a true Refuge to which we can turn when all other refuges dissolve away. This is the Refuge of our own Buddha Nature. All the Buddhas and Ancestors found this Refuge; all the Buddhas and Ancestors are within this Refuge. To find this Refuge, to cherish It above all else, to return to It again and again in pure meditation: is this not the greatest good fortune of all?