Beneficial Practices
A student requested advice on what practices are the most beneficial for him to engage in, to develop his mind over the coming years so he can swiftly benefit other sentient beings.
Practices:
- 40,000: Generating the Four Immeasurables with prayers
- 400,000: Water bowls
- 300,000: Dorje Khadro
- 100,000: Lama Tsongkhapa Guru Yoga, counting migtsemas with meditation
- 30,000: Prostrations by reciting the Thirty-five Buddhas' names
- Eight nyung näs every year
- Read the Golden Light Sutra seven times
- Read the Arya Sanghata Sutra nine times
- 600,000: OM MANI PADME HUM, to develop compassion to all sentient beings and to achieve enlightenment quickest and the quickest way to enlighten all sentient beings.
Your deity:
- Hevajra
For effortful lamrim experience:
- Four months: guru devotion
- Three months: lower path
- One month: middle path
- Seven months: bodhicitta
- Two months: emptiness
This is for effortful experience, then for the effortless experience. No matter how many years or months it takes, put effort into realizing guru devotion, the lower path, the middle path and the higher path. Go like that.
Two months' meditation 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.
This way, if you don’t have guru devotion realization, do one meditation on that, then one meditation on the lower path going through to the higher path, and one meditation on emptiness every day. Shamatha is left—in the future you can try this; it seems good, but leave it for the moment. This way, before death you have one realization, two realizations, three realizations and so on. This is the skillful way to practice and there can be great progress in the next life.
After generating bodhicitta, put more emphasis on tantra, the 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 prayer [this prayer is at the end of the long sadhana of the deity.] You must at least do these two as a minimum practice.