Advice on Practices for Life

Lamrim Study and Practice

• Study The Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment, Lamrim Chenmo, by Lama Tsongkhapa. Also study the Middling Length Lamrim, which has more reasonings and debate cutting the wrong views, and Songs of Spiritual Experience, by Lama Tsongkhapa. 
• Also study Essence of Refined Gold by the Third Dalai Lama, with a commentary by His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama.
• Of course Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand by Pabongka Rinpoche. Your main text is this one. Please read this text four times and mark respectfully the passages you want further clarity on and ask qualified teachers like Geshe Dorji Damdul.
• Do effortful practice of guru devotion, following the lamrim outline—the graduated path of the three capable beings—and after that do effortless meditation.

Practices

• 10,000: Refuge.
• Lama Tsongkhapa Guru Yoga: recite 200,000 migtsema mantras.
• Every year try to do two, three or four nyung näs, the fasting practice of Avalokiteshvara.
• Recite OM MANI PADME HUM, the mantra of Avalokitesvara, the Compassion Buddha, as much as possible. Also recite the Medicine Buddha mantra and do the short sadhana. Both are essential and very powerful in these degenerate times, also at the time of death.

Highest Yoga Tantra Practice

Your deity is Yamantaka, also called Vajrabhairava. This deity is a Maha-anuttara Yoga Tantra wrathful aspect of Manjushri. However, you must study lamrim first.

My most dear, most kind, precious wish-fulfilling one,
Please find below my advice for your life practice. Your deity is Most Secret Hayagriva. Also, do the following:

• 100,000 refuge
• 10,000 four immeasurable thoughts
• 110,000 Vajrasattva mantras
• 300 nyung näs. This is your main preliminary practice. 

So many people have done 100 nyung näs; it’s very common. You should do 300. Reciting the six-syllable mantra, OM MANI PADME HUM, purifies negative karma and collects extensive merit. You can count the drops of the Pacific Ocean, the drops of rainfall and snowfall and the dust of the earth, but the merit of reciting one mantra is far more than that. It’s unbelievable. With a bodhicitta motivation there are skies of merit, and in particular, you then generate compassion to all sentient beings.

Lamrim Chenmo should be your main lamrim text. Study it four times. For effortful experience of the lamrim meditations:

• Guru devotion: five months          
• Path of the lower capable being:  five months
• Path of the middle path being: two months
• Bodhicitta: four months
• Emptiness:  four months

Do this five times, then start effortless experience.

Do [effortful] meditation on guru devotion, no matter how many months or years it takes, until you get a stable realization that all the gurus are buddha and all the buddhas are the guru. If that happens for one or two days then disappears, it is the blessing of the guru, not the actual realization.

With that, then do more meditation on the path of the lower capable being, from perfect human rebirth up to karma. You don’t have to do the entire list of meditations in one day; you can do them gradually, step by step. Normally, it takes time, many months or years. Continue doing this until you have the effortless realization.

Putting effort like that is very important. This life’s happiness is not important, and you have to switch. Now you think that this life’s happiness is important, not future lives. Regarding the happiness of this life and the happiness of future lives, this life’s happiness is not important but the future lives’ happiness is very important. When the mind is totally clear about this, then our attachment, anger and so many problems—hundreds, thousands of problems—get stopped. The less you’re concerned about the happiness of this life and the more you’re concerned about the next life, the more your actions become Dharma. Your actions become only Dharma if you totally renounce attachment to this life.

The rest of the day, do everything—eat, walk, sleep and so forth—as much as possible with bodhicitta, for the happiness of sentient beings, to free them from the oceans of samsaric suffering.

Read the Diamond Cutter Sutra, then the Golden Light Sutra, and then the Diamond Cutter Sutra. Like that, go on until you die.

You are most unbelievably lucky to be able to do this, because you create skies of merit, good luck, by reading the Diamond Cutter Sutra. Even with the intention and without reading it, you get merit equal to numberless sentient beings having made charity of their body in the morning, afternoon and evening. You are unbelievably lucky. In one day the merit is just unbelievable and is preparation for quickly realizing emptiness. With the direct perception of emptiness, you cease delusions and karma, become free from true suffering and achieve nirvana, the blissful state of peace. With bodhicitta, you can achieve full enlightenment, and then you are able to free the numberless sentient beings from gross and subtle obscurations and bring them to the peerless happiness of full enlightenment, buddhahood.

Reciting the Golden Light Sutra brings so much peace in the world and your country and gives power to the leader of your country so that other countries can’t attack. It also brings prosperity to the country where you are and brings healing to all the sick people. It benefits all sentient beings, freeing them from the oceans of samsaric suffering and bringing them to enlightenment. It causes you to never ever be reborn in the lower realms and to achieve enlightenment quickly.

Thank you very much.

With much love and prayers...

My most dear, most kind, most precious, wish-fulfilling one,
Thank you very much for your kind letter. I am very sorry it took so long to reply. Regarding your request, I'm not qualified to be guru, but we can try. I accept, you try and I try.

Please study and read Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand, also read Essence of Refined Gold. First read through Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand three times, from beginning to end.

If you are close to a center it is very good if you can study there and take teachings, and if you have questions after studying the lamrim you can ask the teacher there.

You are most welcome to enlightenment and most welcome to free numberless sentient beings from the oceans of samsaric sufferings and bring them to full enlightenment. Thank you very much for your wish to do practice.

Please do every practice for all sentient beings—for every ant in all the universes; for every single fish in the Pacific Ocean; for even the very tiniest insect that you can't see with your eye, but only with a machine and for the biggest the size of a mountain; even for every mosquito, every worm, every chicken, every goat, cat and dog; and for every small fly that when you walk on the grass, those who fly away. Like this, do it for every sentient being. Thank you very much, most welcome.

Please find attached my advice for your life practice and additional material to support it. Please continue to make your life most meaningful with the thought of bodhicitta day and night and in every action you do.

With much love and prayers...

Practices

• Prostrations by reciting the Thirty-Five Buddhas’ names: 300,000
• Four immeasurable thoughts: 20,000
• Tsa-tsas
  • Deities: Lama Tsongkhapa and Mitukpa
  • Number of tsa-tsas: 20,000, divided between the two deities.

FOR EFFORTFUL LAM-RIM EXPERIENCE

• Guru devotion: five months.
  Practice correct devotion to the virtuous friend with thought and action by following the outline. Once you know the commentary and basic explanation, then use Essential Nectar or the outline from Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand as a guide book. For one week focus mainly on the advantages, then for one week focus on the disadvantages, then follow the basic outline. Go through the time in this way.The main thing is to spend time meditating that the guru is a buddha. Vajradhara said the guru is a buddha, the guru is the doer of all the Buddha’s actions, even nowadays. The guru does the work of all the buddhas and bodhisattvas, even nowadays. This is something definite, in one’s own view. Then meditate on the rest of the topics in guru devotion, so maybe spend two weeks on that one (the guru is a buddha) then go back again through the outline and in this way train the mind.

• The graduated path of the lower capable being: two months, from precious human rebirth up to karma. When you finish, go back again during those two months.
• The graduated path of the intermediate capable being: two months
• The graduated path of the highest capable being:
  • Bodhicitta: three months
  • Emptiness: one month

Repeat this cycle four times doing it from the start, guru devotion. Then afterwards do effortless meditation.

Your main deity

This is to free all the numberless sentient beings from the oceans of samsaric sufferings and for them to achieve enlightenment in the quickest way. For that you need to achieve enlightenment quickly, so you need to practice Highest Yoga Tantra. The deity for you is Vajrakila. If you can, take this initiation from His Holiness the Dalai Lama or His Holiness Sakya Trizen when they give it in the world, wherever, if you can go. But there is no rush, first start with lamrim and the other practices.

My most dear, most precious, most kind one,
Thank you very much for asking for life practices. Probably at Kopan last time you gave me a letter requesting practices for outside. It could be yours. I’m so sorry it didn’t get done earlier.

• Refuge: 10,000
• Generating four immeasurable thoughts: 90,000
• Water bowl offerings: 100,000
• Mandala offerings: 30,000

You can choose one lamrim text, for example, Lama Tsongkhapa’s Great Lamrim, Pabongka Rinpoche’s Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand, Manjushri’s Own Words or The Essence of Refined Gold. You can choose any lamrim text in English and study it from beginning to end three or four times, but not just reading fast like a puja, no. By thinking, using it for meditation.

Practice effortful meditation, following the lamrim outline twice through. The first time, spend fifteen months on emptiness, but the second time you can do five or ten months on emptiness. Then do effortless meditation.

Your deity is Heruka Five Deities or Kalachakra. Whichever you have stronger faith for and feel closer to, decide on that and meditate.

Thank you very much for spending your life practicing lamrim.

Put effort into doing nyung näs. It is for two days and is a very intensive, very powerful, quick way to generate compassion. It is a quick way to get enlightened and a quick way to be born in the pure land. If you can, do at least four nyung näs each year, but more is better. Try to do that.

With much love and prayers...

My most dear, most kind, most precious, wish-fulfilling one,
I am very sorry for the long delay in replying to your email. Please do the Daily Meditation each morning; that is what you should do first thing. You must begin the morning with that. [See The Method to Transform a Suffering Life into Happiness (Including Enlightenment) which has now replaced the Daily Meditation.]

Your preliminary practices are:

• Refuge: 5,000
• Dorje Khadro: 10,000

You should read the Golden Light Sutra. It is not necessary to finish it every day, but you should read it for your whole life depending on your time and how much you want to read. Read it with bodhicitta, wishing to free the sentient beings from the oceans of samsaric suffering as quickly as possible and bring them to full enlightenment. For that you need to achieve enlightenment as quickly as possible. If you read the Golden Light Sutra with that motivation, it is unbelievable, unbelievable purification. You collect skies of extensive merits, and it brings all the success, including enlightenment. Also, read the sutra for peace in your country and in the world.

You should also study one lamrim text. There is the Great, Middle and Short lamrim by Lama Tsongkhapa. The short one is called Hymns of Experience and there is a commentary to that by the Third Dalai Lama called The Essence of Refined Gold. Then there is Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand by the great enlightened being Pabongka Rinpoche and Sacred Words of Manjushri [Tib: jampal zhel lung] by the Fifth Dalai Lama. There are different lamrim texts available in English and of course in Tibetan there are many more. Choose one lamrim text and read it from beginning to end. If there are things you don’t understand, you can write them down in a book and discuss with any geshes that come to teach or Western students who have studied well.

Practice effortful meditation on the lamrim outline starting with guru devotion, correctly devoting to the virtuous friend with thought and action. Meditate on the lamrim outline five times, then do effortful meditation.

Your deity is Secret Vajrapani. I haven’t done the retreat yet, so I can’t give the initiation but there are other lamas who can do it. Kyabje Chöden Rinpoche did the retreat at Sera Monastery because we requested the initiation at Land of Medicine Buddha. Once you have the initiation you can do the practice and read the commentary.

After having generated bodhicitta you can do more on tantra, the generation stage, and just a little bit of meditation on the completion stage to plant a seed.

Also do nyung näs as much as you can. Complete any number of nyung näs each year. Doing a nyung nä well one time purifies the negative karma collected from beginningless rebirth and collects extensive merits. When you do nyung nä with bodhicitta you collect more than the sky of merits with each OM MANI PADME HUM mantra, besides the nyung nä itself, and especially if you generate compassion to all sentient beings, then it is a quick way to be reborn in a pure land. Once you are born in Amitabha Buddha’s pure land there is no way to be reborn in the lower realms and if you are born in Vajrayogini’s pure land you will definitely become enlightened there.

Thank you very much. Please enjoy your life, making it meaningful by practicing Dharma. Not only meditating with bodhicitta but especially walking, sitting, sleeping and working with bodhicitta as much as possible.

With much love and prayers...

• Refuge: 300,000
• Mandala offerings: 400,000
• Burning Offering to Dorje Khadro: 30,000
• Water bowl offerings: 500,000
• Diamond Cutter Sutra: Recite one complete Diamond Cutter Sutra every day. If possible, do this for your whole lifetime, if not do it for three years. This is very good. It didn’t come out for you to do much preliminary practice, but to recite this sutra is very good—it’s the most powerful way to purify and collect extensive merits. Particularly, it’s a quick way to realize emptiness and that is the way to be free from samsara quickly and to achieve enlightenment quickly. That is the way to liberate sentient beings and bring them to enlightenment.
• Tong-len: 2,000, generating bodhicitta using Nagarjuna’s prayer, the verse from Lama Chöpa or Shakya Shri Bhadra’s prayer. Any of these three can be used—sometimes this one, sometimes that one, with meditation.

For effortful experience of lamrim, do:

• Guru devotion: five months
• The graduated path of the lower capable being: three months
• The graduated path of the intermediate capable being: eleven months
• The graduated path of the highest capable being:
  • Bodhicitta: one month
  • Emptiness: 11 months

Then generate the effortless experience of guru devotion and the lower path, etc. Do a little emptiness meditation every day using the Heart Sutra, the four analyses, a verse, stanza or different teachings on emptiness.

This is for effortful experience. After that, for effortless experience, if the guru devotion realization didn’t happen, continue to meditate step-by-step until you get the realization. Do this for the lower path, middle path and higher path.

You should do some meditation on emptiness every day, either using the Heart Sutra, the four point analysis, or even just one verse or stanza with meditation.

After you have actualized bodhicitta, spend more time on tantra, the generation stage and completion stage. After realizing bodhicitta, put more time on tantra.;