Lesson 18 from A Comprehensive Commentary on the Words of My Perfect Teacher completes the teaching on all five individual advantages, deepening the examination of the advantage of possessing the sense faculties, the advantage of intention, and the advantage of faith.
On sense faculties, the lesson surveys each of the five in turn — blindness, deafness, paralysis, and disorders of taste and smell — showing concretely how each blocks access to the Dharma, and using the Terri Schiavo case as a sobering illustration of the vegetative state. On the advantage of intention, the lesson warns that even a diligent practitioner can rapidly become a person with a conflicting lifestyle if separated from the sangha and unprotected by prayer. The remedy is to remain inseparably within a pure Buddhist community. The lesson closes on faith — the most important of the five advantages — drawing on H.H. Jigme Phuntsok Rinpoche's instruction that wisdom, compassion, and faith are inseparable, and cannot be replaced by scholarship alone. Mipham Rinpoche's verse and a passage from the Flower Garland Sutra confirm: without faith, even the sharpest intellect cannot penetrate the meaning of enlightenment.
