Focus for Practice
Advice given to a nun who had already done some practices, but asked for more clarity on how to focus her practice.
- 30,000: Refuge
- 1,000,000: Tong-len
- 100,000: Vajrasattva
- 50,000: Prostrations with Thirty-five Buddhas
- 100,000: Tsa-tsa – three long-life deities
- 500,000: Mandala offerings
Read the lamrim once from beginning to end. For you, what comes out is Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand. After having read the lamrim, attempt to gain effortful experience of lamrim:
- Three months: Guru devotion
- One month: Lower path
- Five Months: Middle path
- Ten Months: Bodhicitta
- Five Months: Emptiness
This is for effortful experience once you have read the complete lamrim from beginning to end. Then try for the effortless experience of whichever realization you haven’t achieved. For example, train your mind in guru devotion—to have a stable realization seeing the guru 100 per cent as Buddha, not just for a few hours or days, but stable. Then train the mind in renunciation of this life and the next life, and in bodhicitta. Do some emptiness meditation every day, even just for a few minutes, either by reading the Heart Sutra or any other teachings or stanzas, or by using the Four Analyses.
The conclusion is that life is very short and this is about one time that you have a human rebirth, which is unbelievably, most unbelievably precious, so therefore you should train the mind to have some development and realization in the path. So this way either you have four realizations, or three; if not three then two, or at least one, or at least close to the realization. Then it is so easy to have realization in future lives.
You are unbelievably, unbelievably, most unbelievably lucky to be doing one million tong-len. Your life is rich in merit even with just one tong-len, receiving the suffering of sentient beings and giving all your happiness and merit, body and possessions, to others. Just one tong-len brings skies of merit; therefore you are lucky doing so many. Incredibly lucky.
This is really good for quick purification and it is a quick way of collecting extensive merits and achieving enlightenment. It is a quick way to liberate sentient beings from the oceans of samsaric suffering and bring them to enlightenment.
It is very common for many people recite many millions of OM MANI PADME HUM and other mantras. So, this will be for everything. If you are sick this is the best healing and doing this is also very good for others; it helps heal other sentient beings. This is the best psychology in the West to make the mind happy, no matter what problem there is, mental or physical. This is the best psychology and the best way to make the mind happy.
Deity: In my observation, your deity is Most Secret Hayagriva.
The practices that you have been doing so far are very good.