General Practice Advice from Rinpoche

My most dear, most kind, most precious, wish-fulfilling one,
I am so sorry for the many eons of delay in replying to your email.

When you give food to hungry ghosts it is so important to recite the mantras that allow the hungry ghosts to get the food. It’s very important for you to do this.

It’s OK to do it inside, but if you can do it outside that’s better, like on the windowsill or outside the door or someplace like that. If you can’t do it outside, then it’s OK to do it inside, but if you can do it outside the window, that might be better. Maybe you can have a window box and do it like that, outside the window.

Here, in past times I used to do Dzambala water offering and water charity for the pretas. This is giving them three different water offerings. In general, giving water charity to the pretas, we collect more merit than giving food charity to all the numberless beings in the desire realm, deva realm, form realm and formless realm.

One preta has flames coming from its mouth, so by making charity to this preta, we collect more merit than making charity to all the general pretas. Then there is the preta who has twenty-three knots in its throat. Making one drop of water charity to them and making charity to the ones with flames coming from their mouths, the merit is unbelievable.

I have a whole practice of food charity, three or four kinds, then if I am near the water (a stream or the ocean), there are also five different ways to give it to pretas. Normally there are three, or you can do four. I haven’t translated the book completely; it is from the Buddha’s teachings from the Kangyur. I have one book that I thought to translate well, so that many people can have the opportunity to do the practice of charity for the numberless pretas. This would be unbelievable, so they get water and food, and each person who does the practice would benefit.

I will send you the book when it is translated, meanwhile we do have one translation here. [Find links to Practices to Benefit Pretas, Nagas and Spirits in the FPMT Catalogue]

I think if we could see pretas, it would be like another universe, another world. It is supposed to be like a forest outside, but that’s not what I see. One time we did Chenrezig retreat at a monastery in Taiwan. The monastery had a cemetery and people brought bodies there to bury. We began the retreat and as advised, I tried to do prayers to generate the outside marker or boundary of the retreat place. You put stones there and visualize the protectors and so forth. It is for protection for the retreat, to not allow interferers to come in.

I was just reciting the words, but what happened is that one girl was possessed by a naga, which was trying to come inside during the retreat. The naga had some good karma, so even though the protector outside would not let the naga come inside, the protector kicked the girl and she had a pain in the neck, so the naga was able to come in through the girl doing the retreat. When the naga came into her, she was not able to walk. She could not separate her feet; it was like the two feet were stuck together. 

The naga asked me to show the path to practice, so I told it to not harm the girl, to free the girl. The naga explained how helpful the blessed water from the last nyung nä session is. During a nyung nä, the water is blessed in the last session; everyone normally blesses it. So I just do it, not really thinking that Chenrezig is blessing the water, but actually Chenrezig is blessing the water, because Chenrezig has infinite compassion.

After the water is blessed, it is sprinkled outside. The naga explained how helpful this is, so then each day we would fill three buckets of water and bless it all together. One very good nun, who never wastes her time and is always practicing, brought the water outside to sprinkle for the pretas, but she got scared. Then the girl who was possessed by the nagas sent her boyfriend outside to sprinkle the water, but he didn’t know how to do it, so she explained that outside it is like a forest of pretas. There are so many pretas, it is like a forest.

So then every evening three buckets of water were carried out and sprinkled around by her boyfriend. So we did that. It seems from that I understood how Chenrezig actually blesses the water. The point to know is that Chenrezig actually blesses the water.

In the last session, the student drank the water and her mind become Kuan Yin, then the naga became Kuan Yin and went away from her crown. So it’s very, very interesting. She said the naga didn’t want to talk much because this was the only opportunity to do prayers and practice. Anyway, she gave us much understanding of how fortunate we are.

So please make sure you are doing the mantras when you offer the food and water to the pretas.

Regarding all the practice you are doing, that is good, but it’s most important to do the practice How to Make My Lives Wish-Fulfilling: The Method to Transform a Suffering Life into Happiness every day.

What makes our life most meaningful, most happy, with real happiness, inner peace, and most beneficial for every sentient being, is living our life with bodhicitta, with compassion for others. Then there are no regrets now or in the future, and no regrets at the time of death. Especially, there are no regrets in the future, only the greatest rejoicing in the merits that are more than the sky.

Thank you very much.

With much love and prayers ...

It’s most important to be doing the practice during the actual eclipse time, so you need to check online each eclipse day to find out when that time is for your area in order to be doing the practice during that time.

The eclipse days refer to all eclipses, including partial eclipses. The merit-multiplying effect is the same, whether it’s a partial or full eclipse.

Merit-multiplying effect

Lunar eclipse: 700,000 times. This refers only to the time of the eclipse, not the whole day, and is according to the actual time when the eclipse is happening at your location.

Solar eclipse: 100 million times. This refers only to the time of the eclipse, not the whole day, and is according to the actual time when the eclipse is happening at your location.

My very dear one,
Thank you very much for your kind letter, I highly appreciate that you are engaging in the practices.

Amazing news that you are enjoying the practice. Please continue, because the perfect human rebirth with eighteen qualities (eight freedoms and ten richnesses) is very rare. It’s most rare, because every hour, every minute, the number of sentient beings born in the hell realms is like the number of dust particles; the number of sentient beings born as hungry ghosts is like the number of sand grains of the River Ganges and the number of sentient beings born as animals is like the blades of grass.

Please live your life continuously as much as possible in Dharma, especially bodhicitta, having a happy heart, a beneficial heart, to benefit others.

With much love and prayers ...

Student’s letter

After many years I finished 300,000 prostrations to the Thirty-five Buddhas. If I made any merit, I would like to offer it to you. May your health increase and please, please live long. May we be able to meet again and again from life to life. Thank you so much for everything. There are no words that can express my deep thankfulness and love to you. Please Rinpoche, can you kindly tell me which practice I should do next and what I should focus on?

Rinpoche’s response

Nyung nä retreat: Do eight nyung näs every year

OM MANI PADME HUM recitations: Plan to do three million if possible, and if not, do two million or a minimum of one million, with Chenrezig meditation. Visualize beams emitted from the Thousand-arm Chenrezig which purify all sentient beings— numberless hell beings, hungry ghosts, animals, human beings, suras, asuras and intermediate state beings.

Another meditation can be on the lamrim, then at the end you become Chenrezig and all sentient beings become Chenrezig and receive all the qualities.

Soon I will come out with a book on how to use prayer wheels, with one hand holding a mala and counting OM MANI PADME HUM and the right hand turning the prayer wheel. Meditate on beams being emitted from Chenrezig and the prayer wheel, purifying all sentient beings. For ten malas focus on purifying yourself, then for the next ten malas purify all sentient beings.

I am also planning to make a book of different Chenrezig prayers. Anyway, until then you can choose different Chenrezig prayers to recite every day. I plan to do a book in Tibetan as well as in English.

Do the practice with the strongest possible bodhicitta motivation. This is the most powerful purification, to purify negative karma and obscurations collected from beginningless rebirth as well as to collect extensive merits, and to generate realizations on the path to enlightenment, and especially to develop compassion for every sentient being—the numberless sentient beings in each realm, without leaving out one ant, one insect, even one mosquito or one fish from the ocean, or those animals that you can only see through a microscope, but can’t see with your eyes. Include the person who is your enemy, who is angry with you or with the black dog.

How is the black dog? I think one black dog died? Is that correct, your first black dog? Sorry, I went into the dogs, but this is for you to achieve enlightenment as quickly as possible, in order to free the sentient beings from the oceans of samsaric sufferings and enlighten them.

Tonglen: Do this 50,000 times. The main thing is meditation, but you can also recite the prayer. You can do this first then recite OM MANI PADME HUM.

Do effortful lamrim meditation using the lamrim outline. Keep circling in this way until you have gained stable realizations. Then do effortless meditation, no matter how many weeks, months or years it takes.

Continue until you have stable realizations on guru devotion, until you see one guru as all the buddhas from your side, and one buddha is all the gurus, so that you receive Dharma connection; until you are able to see that one hundred percent, for a long time, without effort.

If possible, each day also do a little bit of meditation on the graduated path of the lower capable being, the different levels. [Meditate on the] perfect human rebirth until you see from your side how precious this human body is, how it is more precious than a wish-granting jewel, skies of wish-granting jewels, until you feel this for months and years without effort, that it is most precious. So you go on like that, relating to each meditation. After that, meditate on its usefulness, how it is difficult to find again and so forth, then impermanence and death, with the nine-round meditation, then the suffering of the lower realms, refuge and karma.

After you have these realizations then train the mind in the path of the middle capable being, particular the sufferings of the deva and human realms, the general sufferings, the six and twelve types and the twelve links, until you see that samsara is like being in the center of a fire or like being in prison. It’s so unbelievable. Then without effort you will have renunciation every second without effort, wanting to be free from samsara.

[Meditate on] bodhicitta, the thought to achieve enlightenment, until it arises day and night without effort and you want to achieve enlightenment for every person that you see.

Then emptiness. You should meditate on this every day—I’m not sure how long for—by reading the Heart Sutra or different quotations, by reciting even a short verse on emptiness and meditating on that.

So you realize that the real I—what appears, what you trust in—is false. Recognize it as false and then see it as empty, after that you see it is totally empty,  it does not exist. From the beginning, by training the mind in that, you see as a result, what you realize first is ultimate truth and through that you realize the truth for the all obscuring mind, that the I exists in mere name. You realize that as a result it is merely labeled by the mind, so you see, the I exists in mere name and because it exists in mere name, that’s why it is empty. So, unified emptiness and dependent arising, when you realize that, then you have completed the understanding of emptiness.

Continue in that, by training the mind in that, then you achieve great insight meditation, emptiness with the realization of shinä, calm abiding, deriving rapturous ecstasy of body and mind.

Training the mind in that leads to the direct perception of emptiness, which ceases the seed of delusion. If there is no delusion and karma, there is no suffering and then you achieve nirvana, you achieve the ultimate nature of the mind, free from delusion and karma, and then with the support [of] bodhicitta, you can develop the ultimate wisdom. You develop ultimate wisdom, the direct perception of emptiness, by developing the supporting method, bodhicitta and so forth.

Then you can achieve full enlightenment, you are able to see the subtle obscurations, complete all the realizations in the mind, and then become a perfect guide and do perfect works for sentient beings.

Thank you very much. Please give my love to your black dog. Because you mentioned your black dog, then I remembered you.

With much love and prayers ...

Student’s Letter

Five years ago, you give me advice for my practice and I just finished it all. I did 100,000 mandala offerings. It was a great retreat. I also did Lama Tsongkhapa Guru Yoga 200,000 times and I completed writing the Arya Sanghata Sutra five times. These five years were very helpful, as my mind looks more and more into the Dharma. Every day I try to do prostrations, read the Golden Light Sutra, the lamrim, the Diamond Cutter Sutra, Calling the Guru from Afar and commitments. I’ll now start to write the Diamond Cutter Sutra. Dear Guru, please can you offer me new advice to tame this crazy mind?

Rinpoche’s Response

My most dear, most kind, most precious, wish-fulfilling one,

Wow, a billion, zillion times thank you for your wonderful inspiring letter. It’s good what you have done. Wow, wow, wow, great, great, fantastic, fantastic, fantastic!

You asked for more practices:

• Vajrasattva: 20,000
• Nyung näs: three. It’s good to do a nyung nä every year as well.

Thank you very much. I want to express billions of prostrations to you, thank you very much.

With much love and prayers ...

Dedicate for all sentient beings in the best way. May the numberless sentient beings be free from the oceans of samsaric sufferings and may they achieve enlightenment quickly.

May His Holiness the Dalai Lama have a long life and may all His Holiness’s holy wishes succeed.

May the whole FPMT organization always to be most wish-fulfilling for His Holiness. Also, may I become like that.

May there be success for the two Maitreya projects in Bodhgaya and Kushinagar and may all the projects of FPMT, especially building big statues, benefit the rest of the world. May the projects bring benefit to the numberless sentient beings, so they collect merit and purify the defilements and achieve enlightenment as quickly as possible.

May all students be free from all sufferings of body and mind and may all their wishes succeed according to the holy Dharma. May all their actions become the cause of enlightenment, and may they achieve all the realizations of lamrim, sutra and tantra in this life.

May Lama Zopa Rinpoche be able to benefit the teachings of the Buddha and numberless sentient beings, and offer service to the Sangha—who preserve and spread the Dharma—and to sentient beings, so that numberless sentient beings may be freed from the oceans of samsaric sufferings and brought to enlightenment as quickly as possible, and be able to fulfill His Holiness’s wishes in all the future lifetimes.

May all our wishes be successful according to the Dharma and may we have a long and meaningful life and actualize the path—guru devotion, the three principal aspects of the path and the two stages—in this very lifetime, as quickly as possible.

Also, in exactly the same way, may the wishes of the family be successful according to the Dharma. May they have long and meaningful lives and actualize the path in this life—guru devotion, the three principal aspects of the path and the two stages—in this very lifetime as quickly as possible.

Then most important for their mother who died a long time ago, if she is in a lower realm or a higher realm but hasn’t met the Dharma, may she be born in a pure land where she can be enlightened, or at least receive a perfect human body and meet the Mahayana teachings, meet a perfectly qualified Mahayana teacher who reveals the unmistaken path to enlightenment and by pleasing most the virtuous friend, may she achieve enlightenment as quickly as possible.

Also dedicate for all the sentient beings in every realm—the hell beings, hungry ghosts, animals, humans, suras, asuras and intermediate state beings, who are all suffering.