Breast Cancer

My very dear one,
I am very sorry for the long delay in replying to your email.

According to my observation, if you can, recite the Vajra Cutter Sutra twice. 

Most important for your purification, and this might help the cancer as well, is for you to do 200,000 prostrations by reciting the names of the Thirty-Five Buddhas. [Find links to the Confession of a Bodhisattva's Downfalls to the Thirty-five Buddhas in the FPMT Catalogue.]

Also recite Vajrasattva mantra 500,000 times. If you can, do this with prostrations. That is best, otherwise count some mantras with prostrations, as many as you can, and then rest, sitting down and counting.

You can do these at the same time, so do one session of Thirty-five Buddhas a day and one session of Vajrasattva.

The main lamrim for you to study is the middle-length lamrim. Read this from beginning to end, reading it slowly and mindfully four times. Anything you don’t understand you can write down in a notebook and later discuss with the geshes or students who have studied the lamrim extremely well, or you can ask me and if I know I will answer, but it could take time. Then do effortless meditation on the lamrim.

Dorje Khadro fire puja: 300,000.

You need to sponsor a controlling fire puja at Samtenling Monastery, the Gelugpa monastery near Boudha Stupa in Kathmandu. You can ask the manager at Kopan Monastery to help arrange this. You need to first discuss the expenses for this puja. This is for your sicknesses.

Long-life tsa tsas: 115. I can ask the Sangha to make those here at my house in USA, unless you have another way to get them done.

You should recite the Padmasambhava prayer, The Prayer to Guru Rinpoche that Spontaneously Fulfills All Wishes (Sampa Lhundrupma).

This is my advice for your practice. Please try this and as much as you can, please live your life with bodhicitta in everything that you do.

With much love and prayers ...

My most dear, most precious, most kind, wish-fulfilling one,
After you recited the Vajra Cutter Sutra 100,000 times, then you got this cancer. That is positive, unbelievably positive. It means the heavy negative karma from your past life, which causes rebirth in the hells, is experienced now, so eons of negative karma are finished.

All that reading of the Vajra Cutter Sutra manifested as this sickness in this life, so then in your future lives you will have so much unbelievable happiness—not just for one life, but for many lives, on and on. It also creates the causes of enlightenment, so you don’t have to be born in hell.

So it is incredible, unbelievable achievement; it is so positive. If you don’t have the experience of cancer now, then you would have to be born in hell and experience suffering for eons.

With much love and prayers ...

My very dear one,
I am very sorry for the delay. I checked regarding your health, and this is what came out.

Take this Tibetan medicine:

• Gur chung: take three pills each day for three days.
• Moon crystal: take three pills each day for five days.

Vajra Cutter Sutra: recite this four times. Please read the sutra mindfully in order to leave as much imprint on the mind as possible, to eliminate the root of samsara, ignorance. This is a way to be free from the oceans of samsaric suffering of the six realms. Also you can read it [with the motivation] for all sentient beings to be free from the oceans of samsaric suffering, as you are just one and they are numberless. So read the sutra four times and then read it from time to time. Keep reading it as much as you can, not just for this disease, cancer, but to be free from the oceans of samsaric suffering and to achieve enlightenment for numberless sentient beings; not just for your enlightenment but for numberless sentient beings’ happiness and enlightenment.

Recite the Buddha’s name, La ma tön pa chom dän dä …. Recite this and visualize nectar coming out from the Buddha and purifying all the obstacles and negative karma collected from beginningless rebirth, as well as all disease, spirit harm and sickness. Think that you and all sentient beings are totally purified.

Please try like this and please continue to live your life with bodhicitta as much as possible. Also, please read my advice on tonglen practice.

I am sending you the new morning direct meditation. [See A Method to Transform a Suffering Life into Happiness (Including Enlightenment)] I am very sorry I missed meeting you when you came to visit Tushita.

With much love and prayers ...

My most dear, most precious, most kind wish-fulfilling one,

Thank you for your email. Please read and study and keep the five powers. This is a very, very important practice, for you and for everyone. I wrote this for one student who was close to passing in Hong Kong. [See the FPMT booklet Practicing the Five Powers Near the Time of Death] It was written mainly for the student’s preparation, but actually I wrote it to help anybody who is going to die. This booklet is how to prepare for that. It is a very good thing to know, not only for people who are close to dying or who have cancer, but just generally for everyone. It gives instructions on how to prepare and how to make the death positive instead of being scared of it.

I checked and there are some things you should do. It is good to try to do these quite quickly:

• Liberate three animals that are going to be killed, so you are saving them from the danger of death. This is for your long life. Not only liberate them but also do the practice I put together.
• Long Life Sutra: to be read 4,000 times. It comes out for Tsawa Khangtsen at Sera Je Monastery to do this.
• White Tara long-life meditation (the short one): Recite the mantra 60,000 times and do the long-life meditation. Try to start this as soon as possible.
• Amitayus Long Life Sutra: to be printed 5,000 times. This means printing it in English or Tibetan and then it can be given to people or put inside a stupa, etc.

Meditation on tonglen came out as most beneficial.

It also comes out very good for you to:

• Recite and do the practice of Vajra Armor
• Recite the mantra of Most Secret Hayagriva
• Take the initiation of Black Garuda and then do the practice
• Take Vajrakilaya powder every day, whatever you can get between two fingers. You should, take it several times in the morning, afternoon and evening.
• She nyin dü dog puja: to be done by Osel Labrang. This puja should be done quickly. The offering that is made during the puja is for the torma, offering to monks, etc.

How to think about the cancer: This disease, how heavy or light, very much depends on the mind, whether your way of thinking is positive or negative. As it is mentioned in Lama Chöpa [LC96]:

Even if the environment and beings are filled with the fruits of negative karma,
And unwished for sufferings pour down like rain,
I seek your blessings to take these miserable conditions as a path
By seeing them as causes to exhaust the results of my negative karma.

That means utilizing the cancer, instead of thinking “bad, bad, bad,” and making it scary. Instead think it’s extremely positive and think of the cancer as most precious. You have to utilize cancer on the path to enlightenment—that means to achieve full enlightenment, the cessation of all obscurations and the completion of all the realizations, the omniscient mind. That means the cancer is used to free the numberless sentient beings, numberless hell beings, numberless hungry ghosts, numberless animals, numberless human beings, numberless suras, numberless asuras and numberless intermediate state beings from the oceans of samsaric suffering and bring them to the omniscient mind, full enlightenment.

So the cancer is used for that. The cancer is used to develop bodhicitta and emptiness, and the result is to benefit sentient beings. With that method you can achieve enlightenment and the result, ultimate happiness, the peerless happiness.

When you do tonglen, you use cancer on the path to enlightenment by taking other sentient beings’ sufferings—all the sufferings and delusions and obscurations of all sentient beings, all their karma. You take all this on your ego, the self-cherishing thought, also on the ignorance, the root of samsara, where the oceans of suffering come from; the ignorance holding the I as real, as truly existent. So you take it all, as well as the resultant suffering, all the unfavorable conditions, the place (the environment) and the cause of the karma; you take it and destroy these two concepts, self-cherishing and ignorance.

By destroying the self-cherishing thought, you generate bodhicitta. The purpose of destroying the self-cherishing thought is to actualize bodhicitta and by destroying ignorance you actualize emptiness. When you take the suffering of numberless sentient beings in each realm into your heart and also all the obscurations and delusions, all the negative karma, it becomes unbelievable purification for you, for your obscurations and negative karma collected from beginningless rebirths, and the cause of your cancer is purified by the way. It is so powerful; it is unbelievable, unbelievable, unbelievable, great, great, great purification. You collect skies of merit, more than skies of merit. So this is how your cancer benefits. In this way the cancer becomes a quick way to achieve enlightenment and a quick way to enlighten numberless sentient beings from each realm and bring them to full enlightenment.

When doing the practice of giving all your past, present and future merits to numberless sentient beings in each of the seven realms, you collect skies of numberless merits. Like that you collect numberless merits and then when you give the resultant good karma, all the merits, all the temporary happiness in samsara to the numberless sentient beings in each realm, you collect so many times numberless merits.

Then you give nirvana to each of the numberless sentient beings in each realm and again you collect so many times numberless merits. Then you give your full enlightenment to the numberless sentient beings in each realm, and you collect so many numberless merits.

Then you give your body—not this body, but you think this body becomes a wish-fulfilling jewel—to the numberless sentient beings in each realm and again you collect so many numberless merits.

After that you give all your belongings, the surrounding people, parents, anybody who is helping you, your friends, to the numberless sentient beings in each realm, and you collect so many times numberless merits, unbelievable, unbelievable, unbelievable merits, wow, wow, wow. This becomes a quick way to actualize bodhicitta and a quick way to be free from samsara and a quick way to achieve enlightenment.

Geshe Lama Konchog, who was one of the geshe teachers at Kopan, who brought a lot of benefit, fell down so heavily one day. It was during the rainy season; he fell on the cement floor, but he immediately felt unbelievably happy, because he thought that all my life obstacles were received on him. So he felt very happy, unbelievably happy.

Practitioners become happiest if something like this happens. We ordinary people feel it is so terrible when that happens, but practitioners see it as positive.

My teacher, Geshe Jampa Wangdu, was a great meditator who achieved guru devotion, renunciation, bodhicitta, right view and tantric stages. When he went for the His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s teachings, a thief came to his hut. The only thing that the thief found was his watch, which was on the table, so he took the watch. When Geshe Jampa Wangdu came back and found out the watch was stolen, he was so happy that the thief took his watch.

For practitioners, if they get cancer, their mind is so happy, most unbelievable happy. They know they can experience the cancer of all the sentient beings, and not only that, even the suffering of sentient beings, to free all the sentient beings from all the sufferings. With this cancer they are able to free sentient beings from cancer and this brings them unbelievable happiness. They are most happy, most happy. It is the happiest thing.

Here are some things for you to think. [Having cancer is the] happiest thing. It makes your life most meaningful, most beneficial for the numberless hell beings, numberless hungry ghosts, numberless animals, numberless human beings, numberless suras, numberless asuras and numberless intermediate state beings, for everyone, no one is left out. In this way your life is most beneficial for all sentient beings, so this means for you also. Your cancer is like a jewel, more precious than a wish-granting jewel. This is the real wish-granting jewel. You should think like this—that it is the most positive thing, fulfilling all your wishes.

Another example is Asanga, who did retreat for a total of twelve years, trying to achieve Maitreya Buddha. He did some years of retreat but nothing happened. He didn’t see Maitreya Buddha so he gave up and left the retreat, then as he left he saw someone cutting a rock with a thread, rubbing the thread on the rock and in this way slowly cutting it, little by little. Asanga was inspired that even a thread could cut a rock, so he went back into retreat and did another three years’ retreat.

Again he left the retreat because nothing was happening and as he left he saw a bird flying in and out of a hole in the rock to its nest. As the bird flew into the nest its wing touched the rock and slowly over time it had worn out the rock, so Asanga got inspired and thought, “Why then can’t I achieve Maitreya Buddha?” Then he decided to go back into retreat to achieve Maitreya Buddha.

After some years, again he gave up and left the retreat. As he left, he saw a drop of water coming from the ceiling of a cave and it had made a hole in the ground, just by the drops slowly falling over so many years. Again he got inspired and went back into retreat.

So for twelve years Asanga was in retreat but he didn’t see Maitreya Buddha, and again he gave up and left. When he went outside he saw a wounded dog on the road. The lower part of the dog was covered in maggots and the upper part of the dog was very aggressive, so with unbelievable, most unbelievable compassion, Asanga bent down and went to pick up the maggots with his tongue, so as not to hurt the maggots. First he cut flesh from his shin so that he could then spread the maggots on the flesh. As he bent down with his tongue out, he kept stretching down but he still hadn’t touched the dog, so he opened his eyes and instead of the dog he saw Maitreya Buddha. Then he suddenly grabbed Maitreya Buddha and said, “Why didn’t you come before, when I was doing retreat?” Maitreya Buddha said, “I was always with you in the cave, but you didn’t see me, in fact you kept spitting on me.” Then Maitreya Buddha showed Asanga where the spit was on his robes.

This tells me that normally when we are doing retreat, the deity is always inside the room, always with us, but we don’t see it because our mind is so obscured, foggy, just as we can’t see any cars on the road when it’s very foggy. Our mind becomes like that. Just because we don’t see the deity, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. It is totally wrong to think that.

Maitreya Buddha asked Asanga, “What do you want?” Asanga replied that he wanted teachings, so Maitreya Buddha took Asanga to Tushita—not the Tushita god realm, but Tushita pure land, which is above the god realm. This is just like a city and a monastery, so the monastery is some distance from the city, and like that, Tushita pure land is above the Tushita god realm.

Fifty years (in human life) passed, but in Tushita pure land it was just one morning, and Maitreya Buddha gave teachings on the five scriptures (Abhisamayalamkara, Mahayanasutralankara, Madhyantavibhaga, Dharmadharmatavibhaga and Uttaratantra Shastra.) Then Asanga returned to the human realm and wrote the five commentaries and so on. Since that time the teachings have prevailed in the world and so many numberless sentient beings have achieved the path, becoming arhats, bodhisattvas and buddhas, right up to now, and sentient beings are still actualizing the path by integrating [those teachings] into the lamrim.

All those benefits, the incredible, incredible benefits, all the skies of benefits to numberless sentient beings—wow, wow, wow—all that came from Maitreya Buddha’s teachings and that came from Asanga’s compassion. So you can see from one person’s compassion what happened—numberless sentient beings achieved enlightenment and are still achieving enlightenment. Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow. That should be related to you, so you should understand the benefits that you get. By generating compassion to that sentient being, that is the way to achieve enlightenment. From Maitreya generating compassion for that wounded dog, then numberless sentient beings have achieved enlightenment.

In the same way, when his negative karma was not purified Asanga didn’t see Maitreya Buddha, even though Maitreya Buddha was always in the cave with him, but when he saw the wounded dog and generated compassion, his negative karma was purified and then he saw Maitreya Buddha.

So please think about these benefits and experience the suffering for others.

With much love and prayers ...

These pujas should be done:

• Mamo trü kang puja: to be done by Drati khangtsen [a monastic house at Sera Monastery, south India.]
• Namgyal tse chog [long-life ritual of Namgyal]: - to be done by Tsawa khangtsen [a monastic house at Sera Monastery, south India.]

You should also do Chenrezig practice. Visualize nectar coming from Guru Chenrezig. I am sure you have received teachings from His Holiness the Dalai Lama, so visualize His Holiness in the aspect of Chenrezig. With love and kindness toward you and all sentient beings, he sends nectar beams to you. This completely purifies all your disease, spirit harm, negative karma and obscurations collected from beginningless rebirths, and then it purifies all the sentient beings.

First mainly focus on yourself and then on sentient beings. Before you stop, mainly focus on purifying sentient beings. 

If you have received Great Chenrezig initiation, you can become Chenrezig and all sentient beings become Chenrezig.

If you can recite ten malas with that visualization, that would be very, very good.

Please try this.

With much love and prayers ...

My most dear, most kind, most precious, wish-fulfilling one,
Thank you for your email and sorry for the delay in replying. What comes out very good for you is if I make mantra water and send that to you. This comes out very good. You can drink the mantra water each day with a visualization.

If you can, start doing Amitayus Long Life practice now. You must do this. Try to recite the mantra 150,000 times—half can be the short mantra and half the long mantra. Try to do this practice with the meditation and visualization if you can.

This is very important not only for your long life. Also think of the long life of your family members; the long life of His Holiness the Dalai Lama; the long life of all the holy beings who benefit the Sangha and preserve the Dharma; and all sentient beings who serve the Sangha and the teachings of the Buddha; also the long life of all people who do good things.

Also think, may the evil beings meet Dharma and create the cause of happiness, virtue, and abandon the cause of suffering, non-virtue. In this way may they have a long life, meet the Dharma and actualize the path, bodhicitta, and achieve enlightenment.

So, do not only recite the mantra for yourself but recite it as I mentioned.

Please try this. I am also making prayers for you.

With much love and prayers ...