Confession to the Guru
Impatient and Upset at the Teachings
A student confessed becoming impatient and upset while attending one of Rinpoche’s teachings. Rinpoche advised how to purify any negative karma collected.
My most dear, most precious, most kind, wish-fulfilling one,
Thank you very much your kind letter. I am sure you expressed your difficulties and I am sure there are many people unable to express that. So whatever happened, by expressing it to the guru, that itself becomes purification. It is not hidden, so that purifies and the negative karma becomes lighter.
What happened? Was it because you wanted the teachings to finish very fast? What happened? What was it? Can you explain to me? I would really appreciate that, then I can explain more.
However, if you read Practicing Guru Devotion with the Nine Attitudes that will help. Also, do the practice of Samayavajra one day and then the next day do Vajrasattva practice, so alternate like that. If you are able to do Lama Chöpa, then in the confession section you can do Vajrasattva one day and Samayavajra the next day. But if you don’t do Lama Chöpa then just do these practices, a different each one each day.
Vajrasattva not only purifies the negative karma collected in respect to the guru but also general negative karma, and what is collected that day gets purified even by reciting the long mantra 21 times and the short mantra, OM VAJRASATTVA HUM, 28 times. Then whatever negative karma is collected that day gets purified, and not only that, past negative karmas are also purified. The other great advantage is that the negative karma doesn’t become double the next day. If you don’t purify that day before finishing the day it becomes double the next day, then triple the third day and it increases like that.
Without Vajrasattva, by multiplying day-by-day, even a small negative karma becomes like the size of a mountain at the time of death. It becomes unbelievably heavy negative karma and the result is that you have to be reborn in the lower realms—this is the ripened aspect result—and you have to suffer there for eons and eons and eons. For eons you aren’t even born in a place where you can hear human voices; it’s such unbelievable, unbelievable, most unbelievable suffering.
It is said in the teachings: For foolish ones even if the negative karma is small it becomes heavy, but for learned ones even if the negative karma is heavy they can make it small.
“Learned ones” means they know Vajrasattva. So this brings the realization that we have incredible freedom in our life, in our hands, and even if heavy negative karma is collected we can purify it so we don’t experience the result or the resultant suffering is small.
With much love and prayers ...
Degeneration of Guru Devotion
A student wrote to Rinpoche confessing that he had let his practice of guru devotion lapse.
My very dear one,
How are you? Thank you very much for your kind letter, which I received a long time ago.
I’m very happy with what you have discovered, the mistakes and degeneration. We achieve enlightenment through discovering our mistakes and through that there is progression, thus we can cease the obscurations and complete the realizations. Then we can free the numberless sentient beings from the oceans of samsaric suffering and bring them to peerless happiness, the state of omniscience. Therefore, I thank you for discovering this. It is very good.
Your life can be like the sun shining in this world, beneficial for sentient beings. Otherwise your life will be like nighttime, with no sun, no stars, gloomy, and you will be surrounded by tigers and dangerous animals that attack you. Like that, there will be no way to escape.
Thank you very much. Please continue your life like the sun shining at the dawn time, thus your life will develop and become more and more beneficial for sentient beings, with bodhicitta and guru devotion, seeing one guru as all the buddhas from your heart. Of course it doesn’t mean that I’m a buddha. It means you have the realization that one guru is all the buddhas and one buddha is all the gurus, however many gurus you have. Thank you very much.
With much love and prayers,
Regretting Anger Toward Rinpoche
A student wrote to confess that he had become angry when Rinpoche cancelled a visit to the Kopan meditation course.
My very dear one,
I received your letter and checked, and if you can, do tsog offerings 4,000 times. I don’t know how much you know about tsog, but it is very powerful. Those who have received Highest Yoga Tantra Yoga initiation can do tsog offerings, and those who haven’t received Highest Yoga Tantra initiation can also do it.
Tsog offering is a very, very, extremely powerful way of purifying past negative karma and broken samaya vows and maybe restoring [the vows] and hooking the realizations. If you have received a Highest Yoga Tantra initiation but you haven’t done the retreat, then you can’t do the self-initiation.
Tsog offering is a most powerful way to purify not only degenerate vows—when the pratimoksha, bodhisattva and tantric vows have been broken. It is most powerful to purify that. Self-initiation is most powerful but if you haven’t done the retreat, then you are not able to do that, so the common thing is tsog offering. It is very powerful for purification and to hook the realizations quickly.
You can do Lama Chöpa tsog, like what we normally do, so on the basis of Lama Chöpa do 4,000 tsog offerings. If you can do it alone that is best. If not, then it can be done in a group, you can discuss with Geshe-la and do it in a group. Perhaps you can call those people who are doing the practice, then buy the tsog and count the number of participants that day. If you do it that way, then perhaps you have to make some money offering to the participants. Tsog practice is mainly a Highest Yoga Tantra practice.
When you have finished, let me know. Being able to feel regret is a very good quality. By reading you are able to recognize and remember, and you are inspired to purify and do all those are good things. So feel happy, it’s an accomplishment.
Thank you very much.
With much love and prayers...
Confession of Anger
After reading Rinpoche’s book, The Heart of the Path, a student wrote to confess a moment of anger toward Rinpoche that had arisen during a retreat 10 years ago. She said that one night at about 1.30 am she was very tired and cold, and felt angry with Rinpoche for keeping her up late and causing her discomfort. Although she recited Vajrasattva mantra immediately and did purification practices for the next ten years, she continued to feel disturbed by that moment of anger toward Rinpoche. She wrote, “Reading your words in The Heart of the Path I understood that what I had not done was to confess and express my regret about that anger to you personally. On reading this I felt a huge surge of relief, hope and confidence that by following your advice to do this, I may finally manage to purify that dreadful moment or at least lessen the severity of the karmic results.” Rinpoche gave the following advice.
You should do at least 10,000 prostrations to the Thirty-five Buddhas if you can. If not, do as many as you can manage, and then do the remaining prostrations by putting the palms together and visualizing many bodies doing prostrations by reciting the Thirty-five Buddha’s names. The last buddha’s name purifies particularly the negative karma created with the gurus, so recite that not just once but five times. I did mention about this buddha’s name in the past and some students recite that name three times when they do the prayer, but you can recite it five times.
It’s best, excellent what you did, even purifying right away by reciting Vajrasattva mantra. First recognizing the mistake immediately, then purifying with Vajrasattva is excellent, not taking much time. Then finally you did confession to me, so that’s an excellent thing to do.
Confessing Negative Thoughts
A student wrote to confess that he had negative, harmful thoughts when hearing Rinpoche speak, which he strongly regretted. He also asked for practice advice.
My very dear one,
Thank you for your kind letter and confession.
Regarding your question about practice, please recite the Vajra Cutter Sutra 120 times. If you can, let me know when you finish that. The Vajra Cutter Sutra is the Buddha’s unbelievably powerful teaching, to collect most unbelievable, unbelievable, unbelievable merit—so much merit that it may not even fit in the sky, if it could materialize in form.
Every time we read the sutra, it leaves an imprint on the mind to quickly realize the hallucinations and the hallucinated mind that we have. That hallucinated mind is why we have been suffering from beginningless rebirths up to now, experiencing oceans of samsaric suffering—oceans of hell beings’ sufferings, oceans of hungry ghosts’ sufferings, oceans of animals’ sufferings, oceans of human beings’ sufferings, oceans of suras’ sufferings, oceans of asuras’ sufferings and oceans of intermediate state beings’ sufferings.
If we don’t recognize the hallucinated mind and its hallucinations; if we don’t realize that we are hallucinating and if we can’t see ultimate reality—emptiness, shunyata—then we can never eliminate the root of samsaric suffering, ignorance. We can never eliminate that, and also in the future there will be endless suffering, so we will be reborn and suffer in each realm and die endlessly, without end.
If we don’t realize that, we will never become free, even for one second, from being under the control of delusion and karma, and the resultant suffering of samsara. We will never achieve liberation from samsara, the blissful state of peace, and not only that, we will never achieve the peerless happiness, omniscient mind, to be able to do perfect works for sentient beings and to free them from the oceans of samsaric suffering and bring them to peerless happiness, the state of omniscient mind, full enlightenment.
So reading the Vajra Cutter Sutra is one of the most important things. Each time you read it, this leaves positive imprints, so please read it mindfully.
Also, please read the lamrim, for example, Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand, the Lamrim Chenmo or the Middle Lamrim, by Lama Tsongkhapa. Each time you read the lamrim, this leaves the imprint to generate realizations on the graduated path to enlightenment—the graduated path of the lower capable being, the graduated path of the middle capable being and the graduated path of the higher capable being. So in addition to reciting the Vajra Cutter Sutra, please read the lamrim, the graduated path to enlightenment. Read whichever book you find, but choose one that has the complete path.
I am also attaching my general daily advice, specifically on lamrim. The main point is try to have realizations on the lamrim. Keep going until you have stable realizations, no matter how long it takes.
Please make your life most meaningful with the thought of bodhicitta, day and night.
With much love and prayers...
Confessing Mistakes
After reading The Heart of the Path, a student confessed that he had previously questioned Rinpoche’s qualifications to be his guru, he had felt critical of some teachings and he hadn’t followed Rinpoche’s advice.
My most dear one,
Yes, you’re a very intelligent person, so you are able to read many books. So, reading the guru devotion book, The Heart of the Path, gave you a very inspiring education.
Dr. Nick, an Australian doctor, did the Third Kopan Course and got his mother and friends to do the Fourth Course. In Nepal he was busy with books and with the meditations for The Wish-Fulfilling Golden Sun. Up to now he has been busy. He was asked to start Wisdom Publications; he started it and now Tim has been running it for many years.
Nick has been running Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive for many years. He said that for him this is the best book.
Any mistakes you have done, anything, can be purified. Thank you very much. Reading many books brings wisdom, making your life worthwhile. Let me know if there’s anything I can help you with. Thank you very much.
With much love and prayer...