The greatest obstacles to the fulfilment of our wish to experience pure happiness are death and ignorance. Death destroys our opportunity to take the essence of our precious human life, and ignorance destroys our opportunity to develop a pure experience of Dharma. To overcome these obstacles, we need to increase our lifespan and our wisdom, and the principal method for doing this is the yoga of Buddha Amitayus, which is also a special method for increasing the positive power of our mind, or merit.