Becoming a Nun in the Future

My very dear Belinda,
I am very, very happy to receive your letter about your practice and your life. I am very happy that you are a librarian at your study group, and that you attended the Kopan course and enjoyed your time with good Dharma friends there. It’s good that you live in a calm, small place in Mexico and that you did a retreat with Ven. Lhundrup Damcho.

I am sorry that your father died, but the Dharma has helped you and your Dharma practice is growing. Even though great change has happened in your family, your mind is calm and wise because you practice Dharma.

I am very happy that you have the intention of doing the preliminary practices. Your preliminary practices:

• Prostrations with the practice of the Thirty-five Buddhas: 200,000
• Tsa-tsas: 50,000, divided amongst Tara, Heruka and Lama Tsongkhapa
• Dorje Khadro burning offering: 50,000
• Generating the four immeasurable thoughts (loving kindness, great compassion, joy and equanimity): 50,000

With this practice [the four immeasurable thoughts], you collect numberless merit because there are numberless sentient beings towards whom you generate each of the immeasurable thoughts. It is said in the King of Concentration Sutra that compared to offering umbrellas, banners, garlands of lights and so forth to the merit field, which has 10 million times 100 billion buddhas, the meditation on loving kindness for a little while generates more merit than that many worlds, buddhas and offerings. Each time you generate loving kindness, you collect that much merit. This is most unbelievable.

It came out best if you can become a nun in the future. After you have read one complete lamrim, then you can think about ordination. Not this year or the year after, but in 2012 if you can manage it.

Read the Golden Light Sutra a little bit each day if you can; even a few lines if you are very busy. If you can, read one or two pages. This can benefit the world and sentient beings and bring you to enlightenment. Your life only goes up.

You should meditate:

• Five months on the general graduated path of the lower capable being
• Two months on the general graduated path of the middle capable being
• Five months on the graduated path of the higher capable being
• Five months on emptiness

If you have studied the whole lamrim well, just meditate one time like this. While you are doing this, you should also do one meditation on guru devotion every day, by following the outlines in Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand. Once you have read the commentary, the other text for daily meditation is The Essential Nectar. There is no particular outline in this text and it is neither very short nor long, but very inspiring. When you have time, meditate for a little longer. If there is no time, you can do a shorter session; whatever you feel is better.

Meditate on guru devotion as much as possible every day by following the outlines until you see the guru as all buddhas, discovering this from the bottom of your heart. This should be something that is very stable; that goes on for weeks, months and years, not just for a few hours or days. For example, meditate for one week each on the eight benefits of correctly devoting [to the guru] and the eight shortcomings of not correctly devoting. Then there are the four major outlines that prove to your mind that guru is Buddha. Do this for one month, then spend two weeks on the kindness of the guru. Repeat this process until you get realizations.

For the general graduated path of the lower capable being, meditate on the perfect human rebirth up to the topic of karma. It doesn’t mean you meditate on everything in one day. Do whatever you can, and then continue the next day and so forth for five months. Then repeat the process. Do the same for the general graduated path of the middle capable being and the graduated path of the higher capable being.

After that, like the process of meditating on guru devotion, go back to the meditation on the perfect human rebirth, its usefulness and how difficult it is to find again. Try to achieve each realization up to karma.

You have to decide how to do your meditations. Depending on your work and your time, sometimes you can meditate longer, sometimes shorter, depending on your life on that particular day. You can also do meditation while you are walking, not necessarily always sitting. You can also do it outside your room.

Your main deity to achieve enlightenment quickly, to enlighten all sentient beings quickly—all the numberless hell beings, hungry ghosts, animals, humans, asuras and gods—is Cittamani Tara and Secret Chenrezig Gyalwa Gyatso. You can choose the one you have a stronger feeling towards. Get the initiation, read the commentary and do the nearing retreat. In order to receive Cittamani Tara initiation, you need another Highest Yoga Tantra initiation such as Guhyasamaja, Yamantaka or Heruka as a preliminary. This is because Cittamani Tara has the body mandala.

Thank you for your sincere practice and for benefiting the world and all sentient beings. That is the best benefit to your parents.

With much love and prayer...