Food Allergies

Student: My problem is I cannot eat. If I eat any food, my whole body starts itching and it becomes a raging itchiness, then burning inside, like molten lava, that spreads from my head to my toes. The infection (or yeast, larvae, or parasites) seems to spread and I have some from under my feet to the top of my head. To summarize, I have been in India and Asia for the past 20 years, but I am now in Canada, desperately ill with a very mysterious disease that no doctor is able to diagnose. It is some form of yeast or parasite infection that has spread through my body. It is so painful that I cannot sleep or do anything but scream in pain. For the past three months, I have tried to fight this infection with various natural methods—antifungals, garlic, iodine, and diets. Nothing works any more and I cannot take pharmaceutical medicines because I have no diagnosis. My only solution has been to eat as little as possible, but I become very very weak, and the infection is spreading aggressively.

Rinpoche's Response

Dear Stephen,
I was able to check regarding your health and this is my advice:

1. Wear Most Secret Hayagriva protection. I can mail it to you if you email me your postal address.

2. Do the meditation and practice of Most Secret Hayagriva. Do you have the initiation for Most Secret Hayagriva? I can send the practice if you need it.

3. Have the Chetrul puja done.

4. Liberating from Spirit Harm puja (Lu Dang Sadakgi Dondrol). Have this puja performed. Are there lamas or geshes living near you? If you tell me who they are, I can check if it would be beneficial for them to do the puja for you.

5. I will do the chag sum puja for you.

6. Bless water using Most Secret Hayagriva. If you have the initiation, you visualize yourself as the deity, chant the mantra, and red light comes from your (the deity’s) heart and goes into the water and blesses the water. If you haven’t had the initiation, visualize the deity above the water and recite the mantra. While reciting the mantra, red light comes from the heart of the deity, flows into the water and blesses the water. The red light should be visualized as red nectar or light and energy flowing down into the water. You should blow on the water after each mala if you have had the initiation. If you haven’t had the initiation then don’t blow on the water, just do the visualization of nectar flowing from the heart of the deity above the water.

After you have recited several malas of the mantra, generate strong faith that the water has been blessed and every atom of the water has great power to completely purify all the four things (spirit harm, negative karma, disease, and defilements) and especially this disease that you are experiencing.

After sipping the water, which you can do several times a day, then concentrate on feeling that all negative karma has been purified and the disease is completely purified. Try to concentrate on that and believe strongly in that.

I am also making prayers for you, and also the Sangha in my house.

This is how to bless the water:

Have a container of water and put a picture of the deity in front of it. Depending on whether you have had the initiation or not, do the visualization of yourself as the deity or the deity above the water. Beams of nectar emit from the deity’s heart and bless the water in the container so that it can purify you. Visualize very strongly 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). With the last 21 mantras that you recite, visualize that you receive all the qualities of omniscient mind, compassion and all the rest of the qualities.

After each mala, blow on the water if you have had the initiation. Otherwise, just visualize nectar coming from the deity into the water. Then sip the water several times a day.

My very dear one,
Thank you for your email.

It comes out very beneficial if you can have these pujas done for you: "gago puja", "Liberating from Harm naga and landlord puja" and "Gyag Nyan Lhasang incense puja" (twice). The latter is a very extensive torma offering for local protectors in Tibet.

Then, regarding practices, please find attached the practices that come out most beneficial for your quickest enlightenment.

It also came out very, very beneficial for you to recite 10,000 Mitukpa mantras, to recite them in a retreat, and to do a fire puja at the end.

The food allergies and receiving harm from food are the result of killing in past lives. It is very good if you can use this sickness by taking on all sentient beings’ sufferings and giving sentient beings all happiness. Use your sickness with tong-len, as much as you can.

Generally, in regards to your practice, if you can, meditate every day on guru devotion until you have stable realizations for months and years, which come from the bottom of your heart, and you feel one hundred percent without any doubt that the guru is the same as all the buddhas, and a buddha is the same as all the gurus, that Guru and Buddha have different names but are one. Until it feels extremely strong and stable, continue the meditation every day by following the outlines.

For one week focus mainly on the eight benefits of guru devotion, then the following week focus mainly on the eight shortcomings. The four basic outlines of guru devotion are set up totally opposite to a Western perspective in the lamrim. The first one is that the guru is Vajradhara. It seems difficult for Westerners to start with this reasoning, so you can start in reverse order, with the outline that nothing is definite in one’s view, and end with the guru being Vajradhara. Spend two weeks on the four outlines. Then meditate a little bit on the guru’s kindness, remembering the kindness, seeing the guru's qualities, how precious he or she is; this is called "guspea". This is the thought that realizes the guru’s kindness and qualities. It does not just mean respect; it is having a respectful mind realizing the qualities and kindness. Practice meditation for one week on the kindness of the guru, then go back again and continue like this until you have stable guru devotion that lasts. If it doesn't last then you need to again go back and spend more time meditating on guru devotion.

As well as daily meditation on guru devotion, you also need to cover one other lamrim topic each day. For one year focus mainly on the graduated path of the lower capable being. After that, spend six months mainly focusing on the graduated path of the middle capable being. This means the general suffering of samsara, the twelve links, the shortcomings of desire, and the suffering of human beings and devas.

Depending on your progress, you could continue for another six months. The main thing is to have the stable realization of the renunciation of samsara, seeing samsara in the nature of suffering, so that you don't find any attraction to it even for one second; it is like being in a septic tank, or in a hole with poisonous snakes. This is how being in samsara should feel, so that one really fears samsara. It is not like after death we go somewhere else, separate from samsara. When one’s consciousness separates from one's body, it's not that one is out of samsara. Still, one’s consciousness goes on in samsara, so we need to fear samsara a billion times more than we fear dying. We really need to understand how we are suffering in samsara, that we will not find happiness in samsara at all. The main thing is to really feel this, understanding the nature of pervasive compounded suffering.

The desire realm, deva realm, and form and formless realms are still samsara. To be reborn in those realms should feel like being in a septic tank, like sitting on a thorn bush naked, without any clothes. Being in samsara is a million billion times more harmful. The point is to see what we label as pleasure, what we strive for in samsara, is in the nature of suffering. We cannot stand it at all for even one second, it is unbearable, and so the thought to be free arises from the bottom of one's heart, in a steady mind.

From that there is the realization that all sentient beings are also suffering in samsara and will have to suffer again and again, so it is unbearable. If you compare to how you feel, and then think how many sentient beings there are, that you are just one and others are numberless, then you generate strong compassion to help them.

For one year mainly focus on bodhicitta. You also need to do a little meditation on emptiness every day, using different techniques. You can use different talks I have given to get ideas on how to meditate on emptiness.

It is best if you can do Guru Puja every day. If sometimes you are too busy, then you can do Lama Tsongkhapa Guru Yoga. If you do Lama Tsongkhapa Guru Yoga, then it is very important to add a lamrim prayer and to read that slowly. This then becomes a direct meditation on the whole path to enlightenment, and in this way you plant the seed of the whole path to enlightenment. It leaves an imprint of all the realizations every day. This is very, very important.

You can also add the lamrim prayer within six-session guru yoga.

It is also incredible to recite your deity’s lamrim prayer. This is found at the end of the long sadhana of your deity. This leaves imprints to achieve all the tantric realizations and plants seeds of the whole tantric path every day, so that you can have all the tantric realizations very easily. I think the prayer for the Hayagriva tantra path has been translated; I am not sure about Hevajra. Reading one lamrim prayer plus your deity’s graduated path prayer each day is extremely important.

Please try to achieve guru devotion, the three principles of the path, to actualize the lamrim, especially bodhicitta, then, after this, the tantric path. However, your main project and main aim in life is to have realizations of bodhicitta.

Thank you very much for all your dedication and service to me, to the whole organization, to the teachings of Buddha, and to sentient beings.

With much love and prayers...