7. The Greatness of the Dharma, Given to increase One’s Respect for the Instruction
- the greatness of allowing you to realize that all teachings are without contradiction
- the greatness of allowing all the scriptures to present themselves to you as instructions
- the greatness of allowing you to easily discover the true thinking of the Victorious One
- the greatness of allowing you to save yourself from the worst misdeeds
8. The Greatness of Allowing you to realize that all the teachings are without contradiction.
“Realizing that all the teachings are without contradiction” means that one person should understand them as practices in order to be enlightened.
“To be without contradiction” means “to be harmonious.” The Mahayana, Hinyana, Vinaya, and tantras, etc. seem to contradict each other from a literal point of view; but they are all nothing but the main practice to take us to enlightenment or a branch of its attainment.
9. The Greatness of allowing all the scriptures to present themselves to you as intructions.
An analogy: Suppose a person who has no store of rice, wheat, beans, and so on, happens to find a handful of rice, say. He will not know what to do with it and will undoubtedly just throw it away. So if you have not grasped the full structure of the path and you see some scriptural text, because you don’t know where that scripture applies, you will not know how to put it into practice. If you happen to have just one pound each of rice, wheat, and beans, and you acquire another handful of rice, you can add that rice to what you have already. If you have a complete grasp of the framework of lamrim meditation topics, you will readily apply any scripture at all to a particular [lamrim heading].
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