Lesson 19 from A Comprehensive Commentary on the Words of My Perfect Teacher opens the teaching on the five circumstantial advantages, beginning with a detailed meditation on the rarity of a Buddha appearing in the world.
Drawing on the Treasury of Abhidharma's cosmology of great and medium kalpas, the lesson maps the entire sweep of past, present, and future bright and dark kalpas: over eleven thousand dark kalpas — in which no Buddha appears and the very name of the Three Jewels is unknown — against only six or seven bright ones. We presently inhabit the ninth medium kalpa of the Good Kalpa, when Buddha Shakyamuni's teachings still exist, an alignment of conditions so rare as to dwarf all ordinary good fortune. The lesson then turns to the Vajrayana, arguing that even within bright kalpas, tantric teaching arises only in three — making our encounter with texts such as The Words of My Perfect Teacher doubly precious.
The lesson closes by urging practitioners to let these reflections truly penetrate the mind, so that the conviction does not fade but remains unshaken for decades.
