Lesson 16 from A Comprehensive Commentary on the Words of My Perfect Teacher opens the teaching on the ten particular advantages, working through the first five — the five individual advantages.
Beginning with the advantage of support (human birth), the lesson establishes that all thousand Buddhas of the Good Kalpa attain enlightenment in human form, never as gods or Indras, because human birth carries an extraordinary capacity no other realm possesses. A god's pleasures are effortless and inexhaustible, yet gods rarely generate renunciation; animals, however prized — million-dollar mastiffs, zoo pandas — cannot recite a single mantra or shelter themselves from cold. The advantage of place reflects on practitioners who secretly heard teachings in mountain caves during the Cultural Revolution's persecutions, turning at night while sentries kept watch at the entrance. The advantage of intention warns against the catastrophic reversal of a practitioner who abandons all vows — for whom even the Buddha's appearance would be futile. A sharp interlude addresses a fraudulent teacher selling "ngondro exemption certificates" for six hundred yuan, which the lesson firmly condemns as unprecedented in any lineage.
The five advantages close with Rongton Choje's deathbed instruction, often cited by H.H. Jigme Phuntsok Rinpoche: hear and contemplate by day, meditate at night.
