Deciding Whether to Have Surgery

Rinpoche said instead of the operation, each week you should do the incense offering ritual called nolsang by Guru Rinpoche. You can also dedicate this to prevent the effects of global warming, particular the sea rising, flooding of cities and so forth.

Mamo-trü-kang puja: to be done five times by Gyume monks at Dharamsala.

Each month on the Tibetan fifteenth, do Medicine Buddha puja and pray whole-heartedly.

My very dear Tobias,
Thank you very much for your kind email. I am sorry it took time to reply. I checked regarding your question and for the operation to go well, you need to do:

• Medicine Buddha puja: twice. Do this yourself; it can also be done with others.
• Mamo trü-kang puja: five times. This puja needs to be done by the Kopan geshes and Lama Gyupas. I checked many monasteries about doing this puja, as it’s quite difficult and it was only the Kopan geshes and Lama Gyupas combined who came out best to do it. You can send an email to Kopan to arrange it and to find out the cost.

If you do these things beforehand, then it comes out that the operation will be very good.

My suggestion is for you to do a Vajrapani/Hayagriva/Garuda retreat if you can, with the practice and sadhana. Do this for one to two months, or at least for one month. If you can, take the eight Mahayana precepts every day during the retreat, with the motivation to liberate numberless sentient beings from the oceans of samsaric suffering and bring them to enlightenment, so take the precepts for that purpose. Also take the precepts with the motivation that you need to achieve enlightenment in order to be able to benefit all sentient beings. You need to collect merit and purify, so for that purpose you are taking the eight Mahayana precepts.

Also, take the eight Mahayana precepts especially to benefit this world, to pacify all the sufferings and all the problems, and to bring perfect peace and happiness to others; also for the long life of His Holiness the Dalai Lama and for all holy beings who benefit other beings; and for the success of all the FPMT projects— especially the Maitreya statue project—to be most beneficial for sentient beings; to cause all sentient beings to be free from the oceans of samsaric sufferings and bring them to enlightenment as quickly as possible.

Vajrapani/Hayagriva/Garuda (this is one deity): chant the mantra, and do every session with strong bodhicitta motivation, meditating on impermanence and death. In each session, recite different lamrim prayers as your motivation, for example: The Three Principal Aspects of the Path, or Calling the Guru from Afar (short or long), or use the motivation from The Wish-fulfilling Golden Sun. This motivation covers the whole entire lamrim, also tantra, so it is a very good one.

So like this, use different lamrim prayers as your motivation, and do the sessions with strong bodhicitta. Then do the practice of Vajrapani/Hayagriva /Garuda and chant the mantra. If you can, recite the mantra 1,500,000 times [ie 15 x 100,000].

If you are working, you can still do retreat, for example, do a session in the morning and the evening, but it will take longer. If you have not receive the jenang, then maybe you can ask Geshe-la if he has it, but I think you may have received this jenang.

If you do this retreat, maybe you won't need the operation at all. If you do the retreat well, maybe go to the doctor again for a checkup, just to see if you need the operation or not.

With much love and prayers...

Rinpoche checked for the eye operation and it is very good to have it. Before the operation, make four lu:

• The one facing north should be green color
• The one facing south: yellow color
• Facing east: white
• Facing west: red

Then, with a good motivation, send them in the four directions. Send each one in the direction it is facing. There is no prayer to do; you are just offering yourself in the four directions.

Dear Mary,
I checked for you regarding your condition, and the operation now comes out very good to do. Although it comes out very good to do it, before the operation it is good if you take a Highest Yoga Tantra initiation and do retreat, so you can do self-initiation. If you can’t do self-initiation, then do Lama Chöpa and tsog a few times within the retreat.

Previous advice from Rinpoche six months earlier:

I checked for you regarding your operation, and it is better for now not to have the operation. You need to recite Vajra Armor mantra. The minimum is half a mala a day, but it would be better if you could recite one mala a day. Every half mala blow on a bottle of water to bless it. Visualize the deity in front of you, surrounded by all the buddhas and bodhisattvas, who are sending light to the Vajra Armor deity’s heart. From the heart of the deity, light comes and enters you and you feel very blessed. All the karma of disease is purified for yourself and for all sentient beings. Then, all harm from spirits, etc, is purified. Focus on the area where the tumors are and feel this as extremely powerful purification.  

It does not come out good to do the operation. I will send blessed mantra water to you; this seems the best. It will take a little time for me to bless the water, as it needs thousands of mantras. You should also bless water yourself  and drink it after blessing it with Black Manjrushri mantra and practice. 

How to bless the water:

• Place a container of water in front of a picture of Black Manjrushri. Beams of nectar are emitted from Black Manjrushri’s heart and bless the water in the container, so that it will purify you. Visualize this very strongly and visualize that it purifies the four things (spirit harm, negative karma, disease and defilements).
• Recite the mantra as much as you can (at least a few malas each day). For the last 21 mantras that you recite, visualize that you receive all the qualities: omniscient mind, compassion, and all the rest of the qualities. After each mala blow on the water. Then sip the water several times a day.

Also, bless the same water with the Vajra Armor mantra in the same way. Each time you drink the water, think that it purifies the four things and brings you to liberation and enlightenment. Think that your negative karma and delusions, which are the source of the sickness, are completely purified. After drinking the water each time, strongly generate faith that everything is purified.

Drink the water early in the morning before sunrise, before midday, around 3pm, after sunset and before going to bed. At least drink this amount, but you can also drink more.

I checked again regarding the operation and it still doesn’t look good. If you organize for Boudha stupa to be whitewashed, and offer a new umbrella and decorations for the stupa, then the operation comes out as very good.

I do this offering twice a month and one of my assistants at Kopan organizes it, so if you contact my assistant at Kopan, you can organize it with him. It would be better to do it soon.