Use This Precious Opportunity to Practice Dharma

My very dear one,
Regarding your question about practices, as a daily practice you can do Lama Tsongkhapa Guru Yoga and within that do your lamrim meditations, receiving blessings from the guru.

In the morning, perform prostrations to the Thirty-five Buddhas by reciting the Thirty-five Buddhas’ names, prostrating toward your altar, statues, stupas, and scriptures of the Buddha.

Before going to bed, recite 28 short Vajrasattva mantras or 21 long Vajrasattva mantras. Vajrasattva practice is very important to stop the day’s negative karma from doubling, and tripling the day after. After three days the negative karma is multiplied by eight, the fourth day by sixteen, and so on, getting heavier and heavier. Doing Vajrasattva practice purifies the day’s negative karma, as well as past lives’ negative karma. So, you can see how important this practice is, how urgent it is to purify negative karma—it should feel so urgent that you can’t wait even one second before purifying it.

We need to purify obstacles and delusions so as to achieve realizations on the path to enlightenment, and so that we can do perfect work for sentient beings, not just for their temporary happiness but for the ultimate happiness of liberation from samsara, so they never experience the sufferings of samsara again. Ultimately, we need to bring them to full enlightenment. This means eliminating even the subtle mistakes of the mind and achieving all the realizations completely. In this way, we also purify all of the problems in this life, such as relationship and health problems, which all come from negative karma. Also, disasters of the elements (from fire, wind, earth, and water) come from negative karma. All this negative karma is purified so that you don’t have to experience catastrophes or health problems, such as cancer. If you do experience them you only suffer a fraction of what you would have experienced otherwise.

The answer to being free from all these sufferings lies in how one does purification practice. It all depends on how strongly, continuously, and perfectly one does purification practice.

The other important issue in becoming free from these sufferings is to not commit the same negative karmas again that cause obstacles to realizations, suffering in future lives, and rebirth in the lower realms, as well as problems and obstacles in this life. By not committing the same negative karma, one receives temporary happiness in this life as well as in future lives. Therefore, we need to abstain from committing negative actions as much as possible; one easy way to do this is to abstain from the ten non-virtuous actions.

An easy way to abstain from the ten non-virtuous actions is to take the five lay vows, or whatever number one can, from a qualified lama. When you take the vows you enter a guru-disciple relationship, so that means you then need to regard the person giving the vows as one of your gurus. So, it is very important from whom you take the vows because that person becomes your guru, to whom you should have devotion and from whom you obtain advice. If there is no opportunity to take the vows from Sangha, then you can also take the vows from an elder lay student, a good practitioner who preserves and lives their life in the vows.

Keeping the vows and abstaining from the ten non-virtuous actions is a fundamental practice that is important to emphasize if one wants realizations on the path to enlightenment, to have happiness in this and future lives, liberation from samsara, and to achieve full enlightenment and be able to enlighten all sentient beings.

The person from whom you take the vows for the first time should hold the lineage but, if this is not possible, then you can take the vows from a holy object such as a picture or statue of Buddha, or, if you have no altar, you can visualize Buddha. Think that all the buddhas of the ten directions are in front of you and then you take the vows from them.

Generally, you need the lineage, so that means receiving the vows from someone who is holding the lineage. However, because death can happen at any time and living in the vows is an easy way to make your life most productive, you can take the vows from the visualized Buddha, taking whatever number of lay vows you are able to keep. In this way, by keeping the vows, you create merit so that you can have a good rebirth in your next life. Taking the vows from a visualized Buddha is only necessary if you live in a very remote place, like a desert, where there are no people holding the lineage or good practitioners. This is only applicable for lay vows; it does not work for higher ordination, for that you must have the lineage. For the five lay vows and eight Mahayana precepts, it is best if you receive the lineage, but if that is not possible then you can take them as I have explained.

Another very important thing is what to do when you are in a break from your sitting meditation. Whatever actions you do when you are not sitting in meditation should all be performed according to the lamrim, with your mind in the lamrim. You can connect your actions with whatever lamrim meditation you have practiced in the morning. Perform all your actions out of that positive thought, such as impermanence, compassion, bodhicitta, guru devotion, renunciation, right view, etc.

Whatever meditation you did in the morning or during that month, perform all the activities in your break out of that meditation, or according to that way of thinking. The bottom line is to perform all one’s actions with bodhicitta. That is the best, most meaningful way to think during your break time. This makes your life most beneficial. As much as possible, with awareness, keep your attitude and thoughts in bodhicitta, the thought of benefiting others, trying to perform all activities with that mind, including doing your job, throughout the day.

This way, even in your break time, whatever you do becomes the cause of happiness. Otherwise, your most precious life is used to create the cause of suffering. One’s whole life becomes like that, which is so sad, the saddest thing. You have all the opportunities to achieve enlightenment, the highest success, the most beneficial thing for all sentient beings, and instead it is just wasted.

If you are not born as a human being but as a spider, mosquito, fish in the ocean, gopher, snake, etc., you have buddha nature, but because you don’t have a human body, you can’t do anything. Even if you live for billions of years, you only create the cause of suffering, with non-virtuous thoughts such as ignorance, attachment, and anger. The only motivation you have is to kill and chase other animals.

For instance, you might be born as a shark and eat so many other sentient beings every day. Or if you are born as a tiger or leopard, you will chase, frighten, and kill so many other animals. Then, your whole family of tigers will come and eat the animal. Every day, tigers cause so much fear to others. Their whole life is like this. They do not create any good karma and only create negative karma. We have been born as tigers so many times, from beginningless rebirths, it is unimaginable! We have collected so many negative karmas because we have frightened and killed so many others so many times.

So, you can see how important it is that you have received this perfect, rare, precious human rebirth. Every day, every hour, every minute, it is most critical to use this precious opportunity to practice Dharma, to actualize the path with your mind living in the lamrim, with guru devotion, renunciation, bodhicitta, and right view. Try to live your life on the basis of the three principles of the path.

If you are not familiar with the lamrim, then first read through the entire lamrim, maybe read a lamrim text like Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand two or three times from beginning to end, to become familiar with it and to understand how to do the meditations. You can read different lamrim texts and do different meditations at different times.

Of all the practices, the main thing is meditation on the lamrim, to have the lamrim realizations; tantric practice is secondary.

With much love and prayers...