Completing the Preliminaries

My most dear, most kind, most precious wish-fulfilling one,
Thank you for your email. I checked and it seems you have obstacles to your life, so I suggest having a White Tara painted for you on the Tibetan 8th. It has to be done all in one day and consecrated.

Do White Heruka long-life meditation if you can. If you do not have the initiation, you will need that first before doing the practice. Even if death happens, it is very good, according to my observation.

That’s most amazing, most amazing, most amazing, what you have informed me about your retreats and practice. Fantastic! So you can just rely on Vajrayogini. This year it seems there is a life obstacle, but as I said, even if death happens that’s very good.

Yes, if you can continue reciting the Arya Sanghata Sutra, that is excellent. If you can, do one more three-month Vajrayogini retreat, with lamrim, bodhicitta, renunciation and right view.

Also do these practices:

• Four immeasurable thoughts: 200,000 times. This is a preliminary practice.
• Water bowl offerings: 50,000.
• Samayavajra: 400,000.
• Mandala offering: 50,000.

Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand is the main lamrim text for you to study. Please study it four times from beginning to end and do effortful lamrim meditation, following the lamrim outline twice. Then do effortless meditation.

Numberless thanks for your practice. This makes your life so meaningful. Wow, wow, wow. It is really great, and I am sure you are doing it for the benefit of all sentient beings. I am sure.

With much love and prayers ...

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

Thank you very much for your kind letter. This is what came out in the observation, to do again:

• Lama Tsongkhapa Guru Yoga: 100,000
• Dorje Khadro: 50,000

For your deity, there are Guhyasamaja, Gyalwa Gyatso and Vajrakilaya. You can decide which one you have the strongest feeling for or feel closer to. Sometimes there can be not only one deity; it’s possible to have two or three.

So you can take the initiation and commentary, and the one you have the stronger feeling for, if there is one, then that is where you do the most meditation. You can recite the mantra even now for the imprint; you can do that.

It’s very good, most important, that you continue the teachings on the lamrim and also do tonglen. If we do tonglen well, even just one time, taking and giving, then we become closer to enlightenment and we collect so many times skies of merit by taking and giving, so it is very good.

We have received not only a precious human body but a perfect human body, which is most rare, but it can be ended at any time. By this time next year maybe we’re not there and not here, or next month or next week or tomorrow or tonight or even today. The whole body, our breathing, everything, is like a machine, and it can be stopped anytime. Like a water bubble, like lightning, like water dew on the plant—thus it is said in the teachings of the Buddha.

With much love and prayers ...

My most dear, most kind, most precious, wish-fulfilling one,
Thank you very much your kind letter.

Thank you for all the practices: 100,000 refuge practices—amazing; 100,000 water bowl offerings—amazing; reading a little of the Golden Light Sutra every day—so amazing; and also being director—amazing, amazing, amazing!

Where you put effort in your life, that’s so good, then you will have no regrets when death happens. You will have so much enjoyment and happiness, and you can go from happiness to happiness to enlightenment.

With much love and prayers ...

My most dear, most precious, most kind, most wish-fulfilling one,
You asked about the practices you have left to do and suggested sponsoring a monastery to do the practices instead of doing them yourself.

Regarding sponsoring the recitations of the sutra by a monastery, it’s best if you can do the recitations yourself. This is such a quick way to realize emptiness and to quickly become free from samsara forever. Not only that, if you do the recitations with bodhicitta then it is a cause to achieve enlightenment quickly, to realize emptiness quickly, to be free from samsara quickly, and then to be able to free all sentient beings from the oceans of samsaric sufferings and for them to achieve enlightenment quickly. So you need to think of all that—it’s not just for yourself; it is to never ever be reborn in the lower realms and there is unbelievable, unbelievable benefit for yourself and others.

There is a lot for you to do, so you can have 50,000, 60,000, 70,000 or 90,000 sutra recitations done by a monastery. You can sponsor the monks to do some of the recitation—you can decide the amount—but the rest you need to do yourself. You can finish those that are not done by the monastery later—over time or do some every day. When you sponsor the monastery, you need to make offerings to all the monks who are doing it for you. You can discuss the cost with the monastery. The monastery that came out best for this is Ganden Jangtse [in Mundgod, south India].

Regarding the sutra recitation and other practices you have to do, it can be good when you are doing this to read my advice to make sure you have all the details of how to do the practices well.

You can’t reuse the water which has been offered in water bowls. Regarding a place to do the water bowl offerings, many centers now offer an annual water bowl retreat, for example, I think Institut Vajra Yogini and Kopan Nunnery do it. You can count everyone’s offerings, so not just your own. You count the amount the group does, so it is very easy to complete a lot of water bowls in a short amount of time.

When and where you do retreat is up to you. It depends on your time, your finances, the places, your visas, etc.

Are you doing the daily motivation, The Method to Transform a Suffering Life into Happiness (Including Enlightenment)? If not please start doing this, as it is very important.

Thank you for starting your commitments again, this is very important.

Please, you must be aware that death can come at any time—this year, this month, tomorrow or even today. Death can come at any time, and the only thing that can help is Dharma. When you practice Dharma, the mind becomes positive, virtuous, unstained by attachment to this life, unstained by future lives’ samsara, unstained by the self-cherishing thought and unstained by ignorance holding the I, the aggregates and so forth as truly existent, while they are not.

Please make your life most meaningful with the thought of bodhicitta day and night and in every action you do.

With much love and prayers ...

My most dear one,
Thank you very, very much for your kind letter. I want to thank you a billion, zillion trillion times for your practice, for what you did:

• 300,000 tsa tsas—wow!
• 400,000 Dorje Khadro fire pujas—amazing!
• 500,000 prostrations while reciting the Thirty-five Buddhas’ names—wow, amazing!
• 200,000 Lama Tsongkhapa Guru Yogas—wow!
• 200,000 mandala offerings—amazing!
• Four nyung näs—amazing!
• Vajrasattva, Yamantaka and Secret Chenrezig retreats—amazing!

That you are so obedient and have kept your mind in these practices is truly amazing. While the world has fallen into greater and greater turmoil, with more earthquakes, wars, problems and disease, you have managed to keep your mind in the Dharma, continued to practice, and been able to complete all these practices and accomplish these unbelievable numbers.

I wish everybody in the world could be like you. As you know, in the world, many beings have received a precious human body, which comes from a very pure cause—the practice of pure morality in the past—but still haven’t met the Dharma, haven’t met Buddhism. Therefore they are still living in complete ignorance—not simply the ignorance of holding the I and all other phenomena as truly existent, which they’re not, but the ignorance of not knowing Dharma, karma: what is to be practiced, which benefits oneself and others, and what is to be abandoned, which harms oneself and others.

Can you imagine this? Their actions create only negative karma because their motivation is ignorance, anger and attachment, mostly attachment to this life. Therefore their lives are totally wasted. Not only that, but they do not for a moment use their precious human body, which has the unbelievable potential to achieve any of the four levels of happiness,¹ to create the cause of any happiness whatsoever.

And not only do they not use their most precious human body to bring about one of these levels of happiness but instead they use it to create the cause for rebirth in the hell, hungry ghost or animal realms. If you look at the world from your perspective it must seem as if everybody else is living like this and not purifying even one negative karma; that even the creation of one positive karma is extremely rare.

So you are the one luckiest, most fortunate people on earth. You have given yourself the great freedom of temporary happiness, liberation from samara and, best of all, full enlightenment, which will allow you to liberate numberless sentient beings from the oceans of samsaric suffering.

By doing each of these practices you have brought yourself closer to liberation and full enlightenment. Each practice, each session, each Vajrasattva mantra, each prostration with recitation of the Thirty-five Buddhas’ names, each tsa-tsa that you made and so forth is incredible. It’s the best way to repay the kindness of all sentient beings, including that of your parents.

With respect to what you can do now, you should study Geshe Sopa’s lamrim commentaries² and I would like to offer you the first three volumes, which I’m sending you in the mail. This is my offering to you; please study them well in order to gain realizations. Plan to gain realizations, especially bodhicitta, in this life, but before that to realize first, renunciation of this life, then renunciation of future lives, and finally renunciation from samsara.

Do one meditation on guru devotion every day, following the outline in Liberation in the Palm of your Hand. Continue with that for as many months or years as necessary until you see the one guru as all the buddhas and one buddha as all your gurus. You must realize this from the bottom of your heart and it has to last for not just a few days, but for weeks, months and years, however long it takes for you to gain a stable realization.

The other meditation to do each day is that on the perfect human rebirth. Try to achieve the various realizations within the perfect human rebirth one by one, no matter how long it takes, however many weeks, months or years it takes for you to gain a stable realization.

When you have realized the perfect human rebirth, you feel that this life is most precious, like a wish-granting jewel. If you have a wish-granting jewel you receive whatever material object you pray for; when you realize the perfect human rebirth you understand that it is much more precious than numberless wish-granting jewels, even more precious than the whole sky filled with numberless wish granting- jewels, and naturally feel like that all day and night.

This is the feeling you need to generate through analytical meditation; when it arises, focus on it single-pointedly with fixed meditation. Feeling deeply that this perfect human rebirth is incredibly precious, you hold that feeling; it’s wish-fulfilling, unbelievable—through it you can achieve any happiness: that of this and future lives, liberation from samsara and enlightenment. This perfect human rebirth can bring you any happiness whatsoever but a wish-granting jewel cannot even prevent rebirth in the lower realms let alone help you achieve the ultimate happinesses of liberation or enlightenment. So you should have the strong feeling of how unbelievably, unbelievably precious this life is and this feeling should arise naturally for not just a few days but for weeks, months and years.

The next meditation is on the great usefulness of the perfect human rebirth. When you realize this you can never engage in meaningless activities for even a minute or a second. Should any of your actions not become Dharma you have a feeling of incredible loss; you feel it’s an incredible loss to waste even a minute of this life. Keep meditating on this until you achieve a stable realization of this topic that lasts for weeks, months and years, no matter how long it takes.

Next meditate on how difficult it will be to find a perfect human rebirth again. When you realize this you can’t waste even an hour, a minute or a second of this life. If minutes or seconds of this life pass without your practicing Dharma you feel as if you’ve lost a big sack of gold, as if you’ve just thrown away millions of dollars. Meditate until this feeling arises naturally and remains stable for weeks, months and years.

The next main lamrim topic is impermanence and death. Remember that you can die this week, even today. Every time you leave your house think that you might die before you get back. If you’re inside, think that you might die before you get the chance to leave. Death can arrive any minute, any hour. Practice this until the realization of the imminence of death arises naturally and remains stable for weeks, months and years, not just for a day or two. In this way try to realize impermanence and death. Along with this, try not to be attached to your family, possessions or even your body. These realizations should accompany each other.

Also do the full nine-round death meditation, thinking that death is certain, its time uncertain and that nothing but Dharma can help. Therefore, you have to practice Dharma right now and practice only Dharma. But practicing Dharma doesn’t mean only sitting in meditation. If it did you wouldn’t be able to practice Dharma when going out, working, eating or going to the toilet. You can practice Dharma no matter what you’re doing; it’s a big mistake to think otherwise.

The next topic is refuge. Recollect the qualities of Buddha, Dharma and Sangha and totally rely on them. In your mind, rely on nothing else. Take refuge only in Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. After reflecting on their qualities they should become the most important object of refuge in your life and always remain in your heart. That feeling should arise naturally and remain stable for weeks, months and years.

Then try to realize karma. Even small positive karmas should be created and small negative karmas avoided. Meditate on the four outlines of karma.³ Remember, you definitely have to experience the result of any karma you create—any karma created never gets lost and has to be experienced. Understanding this, you abandon even the smallest negative karmas and practice even the smallest positive ones. This is very important.

So this is just a very rough overview of the path of the lower capable being. The main thing you should do is meditate on every part of the lamrim in order to gain stable realizations. When you reach the end, go through it again.

Finally, I checked and there seems to be some obstacle for your life this year so you need to have one thousand long-life tsa-tsas made. I would like to sponsor these for you, so I have asked one of the nuns staying at my house to make these tsa-tsas and dedicate them to you.

You should also do the Amitayus sadhana and recite the mantra twenty-one times a day. It would be best for you to do this for at least the next six months but twelve months would be better.

Still, the most important thing of all is for you to meditate on the lamrim and try to experience the realizations. I also attach my advice for your daily practice—it contains some helpful resources and information on how to meditate on the lamrim that you should find useful.

In the meantime, continue doing one hundred prostrations while reciting the names of the Thirty-five Buddhas every day—more if you can, but at least this many. Also do some mandala offerings every day.

So for the moment that’s all the news from my side, but if you have things to say, you are most welcome to write to me any time.

With much love and prayers,

Lama Zopa

Notes

¹ The four levels of happiness are the temporal happinesses of this and future lives and the ultimate happinesses of liberation from samsara and full enlightenment. [Return to text]

² Steps on the Path to Enlightenment, Wisdom Publications. There are now five volumes in total. [Return to text]

³ Karma is definite; karma is expandable; you can’t experience the results of karma you have not created; karma created is never lost. [Return to text]

My very dear one,
Thank you very much for your kind letter. It is unbelievable that you have done your preliminary practices, so I rejoice! Actually, I am jealous, because I didn’t finish my preliminary practices as you have.

My idea regarding your daily practice is first thing in the morning generate your motivation. Generate the bodhicitta attitude, meditate on death and impermanence, rejoice that you are still alive and have the opportunity to practice Dharma, make the determination never to be separated from the bodhicitta mind from now on, make the determination never to allow yourself to be under the control of the self-cherishing thought, then meditate on the all the harm received from the self-cherishing thought and all the benefits of cherishing others.

On different days, meditate more on the harm of the self-cherishing thought, and then on other days meditate more on the benefits of cherishing others. At other times meditate more on the kindness of sentient beings, how precious they are. Then do the practice of tong-len, giving and taking, while also reciting OM MANI PADME HUM as you practice tong-len.

Think that there is nothing more beneficial than to dedicate my life for sentient beings. Think that like myself all sentient beings want to achieve happiness and do not want suffering, therefore I must bring all sentient beings to enlightenment, I must free them from all sufferings and their causes, therefore I must achieve enlightenment as quickly as possible, and whatever virtuous actions I do (such as prostrations, reciting mantras, etc.) I am only doing them for the benefit of sentient beings. May all these actions only become causes for sentient beings to achieve enlightenment as quickly as possible.

It would be very good for you still to do 100 prostrations in the morning to the Thirty-five Buddhas (if you can); this is very good. Then sit down and do your guru yoga. Guru Puja is the best, quickest path to achieve enlightenment, this was what enabled Milarepa to achieve enlightenment in one lifetime, and this is the quickest way for you to achieve enlightenment. This is the way countless others have achieved enlightenment in one brief lifetime. If that is difficult for you to do, then practice Lama Tsongkhapa Guru Yoga, and on that basis recite a lamrim prayer, mainly meditating on the lamrim. When it comes to the section of the lamrim (either in Lama Tsongkhapa Guru Yoga or Guru Puja), then whatever section of the lamrim that you are up to, spend longer meditating on that part, so as to continuously deepen your understanding of the lamrim, every day.

Depending on your life situation you can do a session of lamrim meditation during the day. Then in the evening you can do one set of prostrations to the Thirty-five Buddhas. Then sit down and recite 21 or 50 Vajrasattva mantras, purifying any negative karma that you have created that day. Living your life this way would be a very powerful way to purify negative karma and collect vast amounts of merit. Then, at the end of the day, dedicate in the best way, extensively and correctly, all the merits that you have created.

In this way you are taking the essence of this life, as Lama Tsongkhapa explained, by abiding in lamrim all day. Depending on which section of the lamrim that you are up to in your morning meditation, abide in it all day, so that all your actions become virtue, they all become Dharma. If it is guru devotion meditation, then for the whole day have your mind abiding in guru devotion, continuously, then you are collecting merits always, by remembering the kindness of the guru, having devotion toward the guru, and your mind is always kept in virtue. It is very important that everything you do is offered to the guru, whatever you eat you offer to the guru, when you wash and dress, you offer those things to the guru, so all your actions become service to the guru and you collect the most extensive merit in this way, very easily, and it is the quickest way to be enlightened.

In this way meditate and spend the day on each section of the lamrim, as you work through them. The next day do the same with death and impermanence and so on, right through the entire lamrim. Then when you have finished start again. Continue this way until you have stable realizations in the lamrim.

I am including some previous advice below that I have given in regards to meditating on the lamrim:

Each preliminary practice should be based on the practice of guru yoga, in accordance with the particular version of guru yoga that one does. The long versions include Six-Session Guru Yoga practice, Guru Puja practice, Lama Tsongkhapa Guru Yoga, as well as the guru yogas of various other deities, such as Tara Guru Yoga. One practices guru yoga to receive the blessings of the guru so that the blessings become causes of the realizations on the path to enlightenment for others. During the guru yoga practice, you can focus on guru yoga meditation at different points of the practice, either after visualizing the merit field or during the direct meditation on lamrim at the stanza regarding guru devotion. You should elaborate the meditation on guru yoga at one of those points in the practice for the purposes of developing guru devotion and realizing the guru as Buddha. This is done by meditating on the guru as Buddha with the help of textual citations and logic, as well as by means of your own personal experience that supports the mind that sees the guru as Buddha.

Read Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand for detailed information and background understanding on lamrim meditations. Then, every day, use The Essential Nectar by Geshe Rabten for daily guided meditation instructions on how to practice lamrim meditations. The other way to practice the daily meditations is to follow the Lamrim Chenmo guideline or the guideline at the back of Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand. It is best if one can memorize this outline. Many Tibetan meditators, those who really meditated, memorized the outline. This is the basis on which to meditate. Meditate daily for two hours, one hour, half an hour, 15 minutes, whatever you can do, whatever your situation is. You can do four sessions a day, three, two, or one. The length of time is up to the individual. The most important thing is continuity, as this really helps. If one day you meditate a lot and then take a break or holiday from lamrim, it won't develop the mind continuously. Whatever the length of time you can spend meditating on the lamrim is good. Just don't stop meditating.

The meditation focus can rotate as suggested above, i.e. three months on guru devotion, then three months on the lower path, etc. Do this all the way up to emptiness, then start again with guru devotion. Continue these cycles until the realization of each stage is achieved. For guru devotion, continuously practice the daily meditations until you have a stable realization, when one can see all the buddhas spontaneously. Then meditate on the lower graduated path, from the precious human rebirth up to karma, but mainly on impermanence and death. This is the most important meditation since it helps one gain all the other realizations. After this realization, where you don’t have even the slightest interest in the happiness of this life, no clinging, only looking to the happiness of future lives, liberation or happiness of others, and having true renunciation, which could take weeks, months, years, then meditate on the middle path. When you have this feeling arising spontaneously, with renunciation of the whole of samsara, then dedicate your life to realizing bodhicitta, where you don’t have even the slightest thought of seeking happiness for oneself, only for others. You should have this day and night with the thought to achieve enlightenment. Also, meditate on emptiness, using any correct text, like the Heart Sutra or Mahamudra, a little each day. Meanwhile, continue to train the mind in the other lamrim steps. After some time, you can try to achieve shiné by focusing on the meditation object suggested above.

Reciting a lamrim prayer every day is the fundamental practice of everyday life that renders each day of your life most meaningful. When you recite a lamrim prayer mindfully from beginning to end, your recitation becomes a direct meditation on the entire path to enlightenment. This practice leaves imprints, or seeds, of the realizations of the whole path to enlightenment on your mental continuum. This means that you come closer to enlightenment, which, in turn, means that you come closer to enlightening all sentient beings. This is the main goal of your life, the purpose of living. By practicing the direct meditation on the lamrim, this is what happens in your life every day. There are various different lamrim prayers: The Three Principle Aspects of the Path, The Foundation of All Good Qualities, and Hymns of Spiritual Experience are all by Lama Tsongkhapa. There is also Pabongka Dechen Nyingpo's long version of Calling the Guru from Afar. You can also meditate on any other prayers that contain the essence of the whole path to enlightenment. If the practice of tantra is also mentioned at the end of the prayer, that too is good. According to the number of times you do the direct meditation of the lamrim prayer each day, you will receive that many advantages each time, each day. If you have received a highest yoga tantra initiation, then it is also good to recite the prayer of the graduated path of tantra. Again, if you recite it mindfully, it plants the seed of the whole path to enlightenment.

There are two different glance meditations: one is the direct meditation on the lamrim, which is the foundation of the common path; the other is the direct meditation on the tantric path, which is the extraordinary path. This helps one to prepare for all the realizations of the path, in this life or definitely in a future life. When you meditate on the lamrim, you can bring in the teachings and the information you have learned from reading other authentic Buddhist texts to add to your meditation and make it more effective. By reading and studying various teachings on guru devotion, you can add what you learned to the outlines of your meditation on guru devotion. You can do the same with many other teachings, such as the teachings on the nature of samsara, bodhicitta, emptiness, and so on. By adding material you have learned from other teachings, you can make your meditation more effective.

It is your guru's instructions that enable you to make your practice most productive to gain quick realizations. During the break time, during your life between your sitting meditations—not breaks from your Dharma practice—while you're standing, walking, or sleeping, you should try to live your life with the experience that you generated in your morning meditation. Live your life with the mind that has been transformed in the lamrim—whether it was transformed by meditation on guru devotion, impermanence and death, how this life's human body is highly meaningful, the suffering nature of samsara, bodhicitta, or emptiness—whatever was the main focus of that meditation. In this way, not only do you make your life highly meaningful during the sessions, but your life also becomes most productive and highly meaningful even during the break times. This is because with that positive attitude, with the experience of the lamrim, all your actions, first and foremost, do not become negative karma. This helps you always to be mindful to practice Dharma, to avoid engaging in negative karma, and thus, negative karma doesn't occur. By helping you to not create negative karma, then all your actions become causes of liberation and enlightenment, and therefore, the remedy to samsara.

This instruction about practicing in the break times is extremely important—it means that your meditation sessions help your life during the break times and that your break times become meaningful and fruitful. Lama Tsongkhapa, in the Foundation of All Good Qualities, was referring specifically to this practice when he talked about taking the essence of the precious human body all day and all night. This is also recommended and explained as the meaning by His Holiness the Dalai Lama: to live one's life in the experience that is generated in one's morning meditation session. Thus, your working life also becomes meditation, becomes unified with Dharma and with your meditations on the lamrim, especially the lamrim. In this way, you can keep your mind peaceful and stable always, your mind is no longer up and down; you have peace and satisfaction and fulfillment in your life. You can benefit others better and benefit them more with your positive Dharma mind, which is always a peaceful mind.

With much love and prayers ...