General Practice Advice from Rinpoche

My very dear Constance,
Thank you very much for your kind letter. I did my Mickey Mouse divination and in order for you to achieve enlightenment in the quickest way and to be able to enlighten sentient beings most quickly the main deities for you to practice in this life are:

• Heruka
• Vajrayogini
• Most Secret Hayagriva

From these three, Heruka and Vajrayogini are the best. If it is difficult to do both practices then I suggest Vajrayogini. Vajrayogini practice is extremely profound and contains important secret points of highest Tantra to enable you to achieve enlightenment quickly in one brief lifetime of this degenerate time. At the same time, it doesn’t have a very extensive mandala, with a lot of deities and details; the deity has a very simple appearance, with one face and two arms. The Vajrayogini practice has 4-5 special qualities and advantages. Please study the complete path of Vajrayogini. Before taking the initiation you need to take a great initiation as a foundation and preparation. Heruka is the best one for that.

After that, if you get an opportunity, you can take the initiation of Most Secret Hayagriva, which is the special deity of Sera Je College. If you receive the initiation then you can also do this practice. Maybe in your past life you were a Sera Je monk who didn’t have strong renunciation and didn’t keep pure vows. Maybe you became attached to a kangaroo and then were born in Australia (this is a little joke to put a smile on your face).

The conclusion is that what makes your life most beneficial is tantra, which is the quickest path to enlightenment. What makes it the quickest path is through practicing lamrim – the three principals of the path – which comes from guru devotion. Guru devotion is the root of the path to enlightenment – looking at all the buddhas as your guru and all your gurus as all the buddhas. The more that one can practice this the less hardships and difficulties one will have. One is able to have more success, to fulfill one’s wishes, complete the path, eliminate the defilements, complete the path of merit, wisdom and method, and achieve enlightenment, liberating so many sentient beings from all the sufferings and defilements. You do this by enabling sentient beings to achieve the path and bring them to enlightenment. This all comes from obtaining the guru’s advice and putting the teachings into practice. However much success one has depends on how much guru devotion one has.

Whatever service to your teacher needs to be done is the best purification and best way to fulfill one’s wishes. It is the best way to achieve all happiness up to enlightenment and the happiness of all living beings, temporary and ultimate happiness: liberation from samsara and ultimate enlightenment.

With much love and prayers...

How can you make your life beneficial for your most kind, precious mother sentient beings, especially the pretas, and receive all happiness of the three times, including liberation from samsara and the great liberation—peerless, full enlightenment?

Pretas suffer heavily from hunger and thirst, not finding even a drop of water or a spoonful of food for hundreds of thousands of eons. They suffer from incredible exhaustion, disappointment, heat, and cold. In particular, pretas experience three types of obscuration: outer, inner, and food obscuration. The Yeshe Karda (Transcendental Wisdom Star-Arrow) practice enables every single preta to receive drink.

If we go to the beach, how can we make our life most beneficial? If we do this practice when we go into the water, all the stones, lakes, and swimming pools are blessed. This is one way to make our life most beneficial for all sentient beings, here, in particular, for the pretas.

Take some water from the ocean or swimming pool, put it in a container, visualize the deity Yeshe Karda above the water or container, and visualize nectar flowing from the deity into the water in the container. Then, recite the heart mantra of Yeshe Karda seven times:

OM JÑANA AVALOKITE SAMANTA SPHARANA RASMI BHAVA SAMAYA MAHAAMANI DURU DURU HRIDAYA JALANI SVAHA

Then, pour the water back into the ocean or swimming pool. Again, take water from the ocean or swimming pool, visualize the deity and the nectar flowing into the water, then again recite the mantra seven times. Hold the bottom of the container with your left hand, and the top of the container with your right hand. This should be done seven times, each time reciting the mantra seven times.

Each time you pour out the water, visualize and say the following prayers:

“This ocean of water appears as nectar to all the pretas that the omniscient mind sees. All the pretas see it as an ocean of milk, they drink it and are fully satisfied. It liberates them from all sufferings, including the specific sufferings of the pretas, causes of delusion, karma, and defilements. These are all purified and they actualize the whole path to enlightenment.”

Visualize every preta becoming Chenrezig.

When you say this prayer, all the oceans appear as actual nectar to the pretas. The more detailed benefits of this practice are that all pretas will find devas’ food and drink. This is divine food in the form of nectar.

Also, all the other beings, including animals and insects living in the water or who drink the water, are purified and achieve a higher rebirth. They will go onto the path of a happy transmigrating being. Therefore, the benefits of this practice are not limited to only the pretas. The benefits are vast.

By receiving the blessing of this mantra, each preta receives as much food or drink as it needs, is fully satisfied, purified, and will be reborn in a higher realm. Whoever drinks this water has all their negative karma purified and will obtain a good rebirth in the higher realms.

*For more information on making offerings to pretas, see Appendix 4 of the book Teachings From the Vajrasattva Retreat.