Advice for New Students

My very dear one,
Before I saw your letter, I was very happy to see you on the road. You appeared to me as a sincere person with an open heart; somebody who is very good to start on the path to enlightenment, somebody who is sincerely looking for it, trying to achieve liberation and enlightenment, and somebody who is very worthwhile to help. This is how I thought of you when I saw you coming up the road. If Dharma is explained to you, you will really follow up; you will do it.

Of course some people have many doubts. They fear losing themselves—the old self, what they believed—and they hold onto that. They fear becoming a new person, having a new experience, and they are unable to analyze which kind of life has a better effect and has the greatest benefit for oneself and others. They are unable to check and analyze that, because they have no wisdom. Fear arises after ignorance.

Therefore, I must tell you that I was very happy to meet you on the road. There must be some karma. Even that meeting on the road came from past karma. It’s quite inspiring to read about what you did in your life before—not in your past life, but in this life. It shows you are very sincere.

Resisting religion on the grounds of blind faith is good. Maybe this happened because you have the good karma to meet Buddhism. If you believed easily in religion, then you would have been involved with other religions, but that might block accepting and learning about Buddhism with an open heart.

Living with a strong sense or awareness of ethics—as long as what is called ethics is good karma—brings the result of happiness to you and sentient beings. There will be no harm to you and other sentient beings, so that’s very good, extremely important. That means there is a possibility that you can become a monk later. I think you may have the possibility and the conditions to become a Buddhist monk. Here I am talking about being a Buddhist monk seeking liberation and enlightenment—dedicating your life for that, especially enlightenment for sentient beings who are numberless.

It is important that you help other sentient beings, for example, the numberless hell beings, hungry ghosts, animals, human beings, suras and gods, to be free from suffering and achieve happiness—not temporary happiness, but ultimate happiness, liberation from the ocean of samsara’s suffering and its causes, and especially great liberation, enlightenment. All the numberless sentient beings in these realms need your help. Therefore your life is not yours, but for numberless hell beings, hungry ghosts, animals, human beings, suras and gods. Also, your life is for the buddhas and bodhisattvas.

You were already involved in helping people, rescuing people in Israel. That is amazing. So, being homeless for meditation and prayers is good. If there is nothing to be attached to, your life and mind becomes simple. Otherwise, being attached to things is like being in prison, so life has no freedom. And also having no possessions and living a simple life is amazing. Those are very good causes to become a monk. I’m not saying to become a monk now, but there is a possibility later. These are very good reasons that help you to be a good monk, a pure monk. There are much less distractions in life, so realizations can come.

You went to Madagascar. Since I met the very first Western student, Princess Zina, from that time when I stayed with her, I heard about Madagascar so many times from her friends, French artists and a French doctor. They were always talking about the places they had been to.

Doing the course in the past has given you some help familiarizing yourself with meditation. However just that is not enough, because it doesn’t explain the whole path to enlightenment. There is so much to study about the five paths—the path of merit, the path of preparation, the right-seeing path, the path of meditation and (the unification of) no more learning. Especially on the Mahayana path, there is so much to attain, so there are less and less obscurations, and greater and greater qualities.

There are five paths and ten bhumis. When we achieve the eighth or ninth bhumi, for us it is like becoming a buddha and we have extensive means to benefit sentient beings. It is unbelievable what we can do. We can manifest all kinds of forms like bridges—anything that is beneficial for sentient beings. We can manifest as rocks, trees or water. It is just most amazing—we can manifest in a zillion, trillion ways. It is inconceivable. Then of course, there is no question about Buddha, who is totally free from subtle defilements and hallucinations and has complete compassion, wisdom, power and understanding. Buddha will definitely guide us; he is always thinking of us in every second. There is not one second that Buddha doesn’t think of us. That means Buddha is working for us continuously in various forms.

This is a very important quotation to keep, from the Sutra of the Meeting of Father and Son. Thinking this way will help you a great deal—to wake the mind up, to discover and live life.

I work for sentient beings in the costume of Brahma and Indra,
And sometimes even as Mara (an evil being).
But worldly people cannot realize this.
I also appear as a woman or as an animal.

I show attachment, even though I am not attached.
I show fear, even though I have no fear.
I show ignorance, even though I don’t have ignorance.
I show craziness, even though I am not crazy.
I show blindness, even though I am not blind.
In various forms, I subdue sentient beings.

All the suffering of samsara comes from the mind. Happiness, liberation and enlightenment come from the mind. Suffering comes from the unsubdued mind. Liberation and enlightenment come from the subdued mind, therefore, subduing the mind is essential. So what Buddha said is just an example, manifesting numberless forms naturally without effort—as impure forms to sentient beings who have an impure mind, and as pure forms to sentient beings with a pure mind.

In Buddhism, especially in Mahayana Buddhism, guru devotion is the root of the path to enlightenment. The Buddha’s 84,000 teachings have three levels. There are the Hinayana (Lesser Vehicle) teachings for the lower capable being. For those with greater intelligence and capacity, Buddha revealed the Mahayana Paramitayana teachings. Then for those with higher intelligence, merit or capacity, Buddha taught Mahayana Secret Mantra—Vajrayana.

In Hinayana, we don’t look at the guru as a buddha, but we respect the guru as if he is a buddha and we obey the guru, the abbot who grants ordination and gives teachings. In Mahayana Paramityana, we look at the guru as a buddha, having no mistakes but only qualities. In tantra, on that basis—seeing the guru as a buddha—we look at the guru in the pure form of a buddha, we look at the essence as a buddha.

Obedience is most important, otherwise we cannot achieve realizations; we cannot achieve enlightenment.

So now, the answer to your question. Your past karma has ripened for you to meet Buddhism now, so you can advance your understanding and practice with faith, which comes from understanding. Here, of course—definitely, as you have described yourself—you are ready to receive the guru.

Yes, you can learn about emptiness more and more; you can meditate and gain experience. That subject is only in Buddhism. Only Buddhism shows that the truth of the I, the aggregates, mind and everything is emptiness. Only Buddhism shows that. Even though Christianity and so forth have many good things, this is an extremely important subject. By realizing this, we can eliminate the root of the oceans of samsaric suffering, the root of karma and all delusions, which is ignorance. Only then will we be free from delusions, karma and oceans of samsara suffering. That is how we achieve liberation, free forever from the suffering of samsara and its causes.

Practicing Dharma to achieve liberation is one time, while the works of this life—samsaric happiness—have no end. Understanding emptiness is an extremely important subject. With this realization we can liberate others; we can really help others to be free from the ocean of samsaric suffering and its causes. How? By introducing the four noble truths—by introducing suffering, then looking for its causes, then seeing if the causes can be ceased, then cessation of suffering and the path to achieve that.

This path is the direct perception of emptiness. When we achieve this realization, it becomes a very important wisdom eye. That is how we can help sentient beings and liberate them from the ocean of samsara’s suffering and its causes. If we don’t have this realization, we can’t liberate others. To achieve enlightenment, we need the ultimate wisdom directly perceiving emptiness. This ceases directly not only the gross, but also the subtle defilements. Then we are able to liberate others from the ocean of samsaric suffering and bring them to enlightenment, with the support of bodhicitta, the method which collects limitless skies of merit in every second. That is how we are able to achieve enlightenment.

In Hindu philosophy, there is the soul, atman, a permanent I. In Buddhism and in reality, that doesn’t exist. There is no such thing. The I is impermanent; it exists dependent on causes and conditions. There are four schools of Buddhist philosophy, each with a different view and different explanation of the self. However, none of them accept a soul or permanent I. That is something to be realized through analysis.

I will meet you if you are here after the Vipassana course. There is a possibility to meet.

With much love and prayer

Lama Zopa

P.S. If you attend His Holiness’ teachings, the very first thing you must do is take His Holiness the Dalai Lama as your guru. He is the embodiment of Avalokiteshvara, the Compassion Buddha. If you don’t take His Holiness as your guru, this will be the biggest mistake in your life. This is most important.

There doesn’t have to be only one guru. For example, Lama Atisha, the great holy being from India, who was invited to Tibet to make Buddhism pure, had 157 gurus. I guess the reason was that he received different teachings from different gurus. He had two root gurus. One was Lama Serlingpa, from whom he received complete teachings on bodhicitta. Lama Atisha left India and travelled by boat for 12 months and arrived in Sumatra, Indonesia, where Lama Serlingpa lived. Atisha stayed there for 12 years and actualized bodhicitta by devoting to Lama Serlingpa as guru. This is the attitude of life that benefits all sentient beings. The other guru was Dharmarakshita.

This doesn’t mean we should take anybody who is teaching as our guru. Here we have to be most careful. As His Holiness the Dalai Lama mentioned, we can learn without recognizing the person as guru. Later, when we develop so much devotion—when we think we can follow the guru—then we can devote and take that person as guru. This is my general advice.

Sometimes a person can be our guru if we have a strong feeling, which means we have a karmic connection from a past life, so we feel close. Still, we can analyse this. It shows our past life connection. When that person gives us teachings, it becomes effective for our mind and easy to have realizations. So usually it means we should try to devote to that person as our guru. That is it at the moment.

My very dear Julie,
Thank you so much for dedicating for my projects after doing Vajrasattva and Avalokiteshvara.

Practices:

• 300,000:  Refuge
• 90,000:  Tong-len, taking and giving, using different prayers and with meditation. There are three different prayers—from Nagarjuna, Lama Chöpa and Sakyasri. Take sentient beings suffering, the oceans of suffering including the subtle imprints, then give away your three times’ merits and all your happiness up to enlightenment—temporary happiness, liberation and enlightenment. Give your own body, enjoyments and wealth.  [See Rinpoche's advice on how to do tong-len.]
• 60,000:  Guru Yoga on the basis of Lama Tsongkhapa Guru Yoga, counting migtsema with meditation.
• 20,000:  Vajrasattva
• 500,000:  Tsa-tsas – the Thirty-five Buddhas; three types of deity (rigs sum gon po; Manjushri, Chenrezig and Vajrapani on one tsa-tsa).

Making tsa-tsas is a very unbelievably powerful way to purify negative karma and accumulate merit. Buddha said, “How many atoms it has, that many times you are born as a wheel-turning king in the human realm. How many atoms it has, that many times you achieve shamatha, the meditation of the formless realms. How many atoms it has, that many times you achieve the arya paths—this means the bodhisattva arya path where you don’t experience birth, death, sickness or old age; you have a spiritual body. Or the Hinayana arya being who has direct perception of emptiness. Then, how many atoms it has, you can have the merit to achieve enlightenment.” This is just a short list of the benefits of making tsa-tsas. So, there are unbelievable merits from making statues.

Don’t worry, don’t rush. Do as much as you can. You can do some in retreat and some during the day. Do more when you have time. Just practice in the life. Don’t worry so much. I think why it came for you like this might be something particularly related to your karma. [See Rinpoche's advice on what to do with tsa-tsas.]

• 400,000:  Dorje Khadro
• 500,000:  Water bowls

At the Kopan nunnery they do water bowls every year with the nuns and students from around the world. They do this together, so they finish many bowls. You don’t have to do all the bowls at once, just come when you can. Then, even if you offer less and others offer more, you offer all together.

In Tibet, there was a lama who lived like that with many students; they performed the offerings together and then offered them all together at one time. This way you quickly finish. Then sometimes you can do it by yourself. You can do it at the house or in a place where there is water. Of course you may need a large table or plank, then put the bowls on that—don’t put the bowls on the road, otherwise when people walk past they might hit the bowls and spill the water. Ha ha. I’m just joking!

• Four:  Nyung Näs
• Four:  Arya Sanghata Sutra
• 500,000:  Prostrations with Thirty-five Buddhas

I hope you don’t have to go to hospital after all these practices! (It’s a joke.) Don’t worry, this is your life practice. You are unbelievably lucky. Most sentient beings and most people in this world are not Buddhist and it’s very hard to collect merits unless they have a good heart and compassion.

Effortful lamrim experience:

• Five months:  Guru devotion by following the outlines in Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand
• Four months:  Lower path
• Two months:  Middle path
• One month:  Bodhicitta
• Three months:  Emptiness

The two months on emptiness is for effortful experience, but emptiness is something you have to meditate on every day using the Heart Sutra, the Four Analyses or even one verse or one stanza on emptiness.

After the effortful experience, try to get the effortless experience no matter how many months or years it takes. Go back through starting from guru devotion, then the lower path, the middle path and the higher path.

After generating bodhicitta put more emphasis on tantra, generation and completion stage.

At least every day, for realization of the path, for enlightenment and to enlighten all sentient beings, the minimum practice is to recite a lamrim prayer and do direct meditation on the lamrim. Also, recite your own deity’s graduated path (the prayer is at the end of the long sadhana of the deity.) You must at least do these two as a minimum practice.

Your deity: Yamantaka, Kalachakra, Most Secret Hayagriva. You can choose which one you have more feeling for and closer to, but it is good to take initiations for all three deities.

With much love and prayers...

Practices

• 500,000:  Refuge.
• 50,000:  Tong-len with meditation and prayers. There are three different prayers.
• 50,000:  Mandala offering.
• 200,000: Guru Yoga, based on Lama Tsongkhapa Guru Yoga and counting migtsemas with meditation.
• 10,000: Water bowls.

One of the main practices for extensive purification, that is most powerful for collecting extensive merits and achieving realizations quickly, is to aim for 300 nyung näs in this life.

The Highest Yoga Tantra deity that came out best for your practice is Chenrezig Gyalwa Gyatso.

Maybe you can attempt shi-nä sometime in the near future.

Effortful lamrim

• Two months: Guru Devotion. If you have never read lamrim, first read it from beginning to end. For you, it came out as the main lamrim, Happy Path, then you can also read Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand, the Essence of Refined Gold, Manjushri’s Own Words and in the near future Lama Tsongkhapa’s Middle-Length Lamrim.
• Two months: Lower Path
• One month: Middle Path
• Five months: Bodhicitta
• Five months: Emptiness

This is for effortful experience once you have read the complete lamrim from beginning to end. Then try for the effortless experience of whichever realization you haven’t achieved. For example, train your mind in guru devotion, to have a stable realization seeing the guru 100 per cent as Buddha—not just for a few hours or days or weeks, but stable. Then train the mind in renunciation of this life and the next life, and bodhicitta. Every day do some emptiness meditation, even just for a few minutes, either by reading the Heart Sutra or any other teachings or stanzas, or by using the Four Analyses.

The conclusion is: life is very short and this is about one time that you have got a human rebirth, which is unbelievable, most unbelievably precious, so therefore you should train the mind to have some development and realization in the path. So this way either you have four realizations, or three, if not three then two, or at least one, or at least close to the realization then it is so easy to have realization in future lives.

To lead sentient beings from suffering, who have been suffering from beginningless rebirth and need to be free—for that you need to achieve enlightenment quickly so you can free sentient beings from the oceans of samsaric suffering and bring them to enlightenment quickly. For that, you need to achieve enlightenment quickly, so you need to practice the tantric path and the Highest Yoga Tantra deity, Gyalwa Gyatso. So, you can receive the initiation and do the retreat. Also, there is the great nearing retreat, the three-year retreat, that you can do in the future.

The minimum commitment for you is to read the lamrim prayer.

My most dear one,
I am very happy to receive your long letter explaining your life story. That is important, thank you; it gives me a clear idea and understanding.

I checked and your special deity came out as Yamantaka. This is who you have a connection with, for your quickest enlightenment, also the deity Kurukulla. Practice in order to control sentient beings so you can bring them to the Dharma (to enlightenment) and in order to benefit sentient beings and the teachings of Buddha. The most important thing is to have total control over the gross mind and especially the subtle mind.

I am not sure if you have received a great initiation in Highest Yoga Tantra before. If you have, you can take the initiation for Kurukulla. If you haven't, you need to take the Yamantaka initiation first and after that take Kurukulla initiation. After you have received these initiations, read and study the commentary and do the practice.

It would be very good to plan to do 300 nyung näs in your life. This would be most powerful for purification, to collect extensive merits, especially to generate great compassion for others and to generate bodhicitta. This is how all your wishes are fulfilled, all the way up to enlightenment, in the quickest way. It is a dynamic practice! Within it take the eight Mahayana vows, for purifying and restoring. These are most powerful if taken with the mind of bodhicitta, and with each vow that you take, you collect limitless skies of merits. This is most beneficial for all sentient beings in this world and this country, the USA. It is also most powerful for purifying the negative karma collected during beginningless rebirths. This is also how you create the cause for achieving enlightenment.

Within the practice there are lots of prostrations by reciting the Thirty-five Buddhas’ names and by prostrating to Chenrezig. You receive merit as if you had prostrated to numberless buddhas. Also, there is the Chenrezig sadhana and mantra recitation. Wow—unbelievable merit, skies of merit and purification are achieved by doing this practice.

You can also meditate on the lamrim along with practicing the nyung näs. The lamrim is the actual essence of all the practices, in order to achieve enlightenment for numberless sentient beings. Use the outline from the Lamrim Chenmo by Lama Tsongkhapa as a base on which to meditate, and the commentary to the Lamrim Chenmo by Geshe Sopa, also the Middle lamrim, and Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand. In Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand there is more explanation on the preliminary practices, so it is very useful.

This is what came out best for you to do, in regards to lamrim meditation: 

• Ten months on guru devotion
• Three months on the lower capable being’s path
• Two months on the middle capable being’s path
• Ten months on bodhicitta
• Three months on emptiness

When you have finished these, start again from the beginning, and circle like this until you have stable realizations. It means that for this number of months that is the main subject on which to focus. You can also do other lamrim meditations, but mainly focus on this subject for this length of time. Start now if you have read the whole lamrim before, and if you haven’t read the whole lamrim, then start by reading the lamrim once from the beginning to the end.

Please also read Geshe Sopa’s commentary on the Lamrim Chenmo.

This is what makes your life most successful and it is the real practice in order to achieve the path to enlightenment. If you do not practice this, your precious life is lost. If you don’t meditate on the lamrim, which is the real practice, you are not on the road going to enlightenment, step by step, which is the only way. First, there is renunciation of this life, then renunciation of the next life, then bodhicitta, then emptiness.

Basing it all on bodhicitta and emptiness, the best is to have the realizations, then to practice tantra after that. If you have the realizations of the lamrim, or at least some understanding or feeling of it, then on that basis you can practice tantra. If you do it this way, then tantric practice comes out correctly, otherwise it doesn't.

Practice the lamrim every day, based on the Lama Chopa (Guru Puja). After you finish the lamrim prayer at the end, stop and meditate on the lamrim, in whatever section you are up to, without dissolving the merit field. Stop just before the merit field absorbs into you and practice the lamrim meditation. After this lamrim meditation, dissolve the merit field into yourself.

Do two lamrim sessions a day, depending on your time. The second session can be in the evening, morning or afternoon. If you have time, do three or four sessions a day; it depends on your time, whether you need to work and so forth. So, you decide. If you are doing more than one session, don’t dissolve the merit field until the very end.

With big love and prayers,

Lama Zopa

P.S. Please try to make all your activities become Dharma, as much as possible. This is the cause of enlightenment and the real purpose of your life. With billion and zillions of thanks. If you live life in this way it benefits you and especially others—numberless sentient beings.

To have success in your life, it also comes out very good if you can recite the Padmasambhava prayer every day, for 1) quick success and 2) controlling appearances. Also, it is important to do the Four Mandala Offering Puja to Tara.

For spirits, chant the mantra OM MANI PADME HUM (Compassion Buddha mantra), then any other mantras, like Maitreya Buddha mantra and the five powerful mantras of purification (you can get these from the FPMT Education Department). These are:

• Stainless Lotus Pinnacle mantra
• Namgyalma mantra
• Mitukpa mantra
• Kunrig mantra
• Stainless Pinnacle Deity mantra

Also recite the Medicine Buddha mantra. If you know other mantras, chant them too. Then, also explain Dharma to the spirits, such as reciting prayers—prayers about emptiness (the Heart Sutra), bodhicitta prayers, lamrim prayers and prayers on the tantric stages of the path. This is to plant the seed of Dharma in their minds. Thanks!

Just one more thing in regards to your lamrim meditations: in the Lamrim Chenmo, the subject of shunyata (emptiness) is a huge subject, so it can be shortened. If you follow the outline of Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand, that gives the essential understanding of emptiness. 

My dear one,
Thank you very much for your kind letter. I accept your request to be your guru – so, we will try our best.

When you go back to Holland, it's very good that you want to offer service. You could inquire at a center in Emst, and offer some service there. Otherwise, you can look for some service to offer the in the city.

If you are still working in Africa for money (as you mentioned), then instead of thinking that you are working for money, and for one’s own happiness, it is very important to think that you are working for the happiness of others. That way, whatever you do becomes service to others. This way it becomes not only Dharma, but the purest Dharma, virtue, because it is unstained by the self-cherishing thought, also it becomes the cause for enlightenment, which means also the cause to enlighten all sentient beings.

Have the same attitude with everything you do, such as washing, sleeping, eating. Do them with the thought of benefiting sentient beings, which means freeing sentient beings from suffering and bringing them to full enlightenment. Therefore, you need to achieve enlightenment. Think whatever action you do, you do it with the motivation to benefit others.

In your heart, think of the happiness of other sentient beings. I am extremely sorry that it took me so long to reply, and I'm not even sure when I got your letter, it could have been a long time ago.

With much love and prayer...

My very dear one,
You must have created past karma to meet the Buddhadharma and it has ripened. I checked, and according to my observations, you have the best karma with the Buddhist path. There are three levels of Buddhism: the lower vehicle path, the Paramitayana path, and the Mahayana Tantra path. These different levels are all for one thing, one goal—to achieve enlightenment. Whether it is difficult or not, and how long it takes, is up to you, up to your own mind. It depends on how much you understand Buddhism and how correctly and skillfully you practice. Even though you can achieve realizations in a short time, it is always a good idea, a good skill, to cheat the mind by thinking: “I am going to practice, even if takes me eons and many hundreds of lifetimes.”

I am sending you some Dharma books for you to study and share with others. It would also be very good if you could try to get these other books to read:

• Wisdom Energy
• Golden Light Sutra—recite a little whenever you can
• A Guide to the Bodhisattva Way of Life

With much love and prayers ...