HIV and Dharma Practice

My very dear one,
I checked and what came out best is to stay and study at Nalanda, taking care of your father and helping in those other ways. Regarding caring for your friend, you can do that in different ways, by talking on the phone, etc. Most important is to support him in the best way, which will really help from life to life, through Dharma imprints.

It’s a very good to plan to do Vajrasattva retreat when you can. There's some advice I gave to other people that you should listen to. This advice is for everyone, but I think it would be very good if you listen to it.

Generally you should do these practices:

• One guru yoga practice a day (Lama Tsongkhapa Guru Yoga, or Guru Puja)
• Prostrations to the Thirty-five Buddhas
• Vajrasattva at night (21 or 28 mantras)
• King of Prayers

Then, read the lamrim. Begin with Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand, and spend one month on each topic. For one month mainly focus on guru devotion, then spend one month on the perfect human rebirth, one month on the difficulties of finding it again, etc. Like this, go through each subject of the lamrim; you can use the outline that is in the back of Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand. When you finish, start from the beginning again. It doesn’t mean this is the only thing that you meditate on, it’s just your main focus for that month. Also, you don’t have to do all the meditation sitting down; it can be while you are at work or are walking. The main thing is to relate the lamrim to your own life. The point is to have realizations of the lamrim, so keep circling like this until you have stable realizations.

The best thing for your illness is to do bodhicitta meditation—exchanging yourself for others– and emptiness meditation. Use your HIV to achieve enlightenment quickly and to be able to liberate the oceans of suffering sentient beings in the six realms, to bring them to enlightenment. Then, look at your HIV as emptiness, by thinking of it as a subtle dependent arising, merely imputed by your mind. Meditate on it with emptiness, not as existing from its own side, but merely imputed by your mind. HIV doesn’t exist from its own side, it is only imputed by your mind and you label HIV on that. In this way, make it useful: to help you get out of samsara as quickly as possible and achieve enlightenment. Use your HIV to be free forever from samsara, from all the sufferings. This is the most important thing, and this is how to use HIV to help you.

HIV is given to you basically from attachment; it comes from desire and the self-cherishing thought, from ignorance, which is the root of samsara—holding the I as truly existent. Doing lamrim practice and meditation is the best antidote, the best medicine for this. The rest of the world uses HIV to suffer and worry, but that is just creating the cause of samsara and the lower realms. Here, you are using it to be free forever from suffering and the lower realms, and to achieve liberation and enlightenment.

The next best thing you can do is tonglen. Wow, this is the best thing, the benefit that you gain every second that you think “I am experiencing this suffering on behalf of all sentient beings, who are limitless.” You create seven times limitless skies of merit each time you think this–not just once, because you are thinking of numberless sentient beings in each realm. This is an extremely quick way to achieve enlightenment, to get out of samsara, to have all the realizations, to purify all the defilements, even the subtle defilements. So, HIV becomes like a wish-fulfilling jewel.

I already spoke about this one night during the teachings here, so it would be good if you get that transcript and read it. It is about how you can use sickness as a means to attain enlightenment. I was using a stanza from the Wheel of Sharp Weapons. This is how a sickness such as HIV is so powerful, most wishfulfilling, like having skies of wish-granting jewels. In fact, their value is nothing compared to having HIV, which makes you have compassion for all others who also have it and who will experience it in the future. It’s incredible how the disease is bringing you to enlightenment. Think that it is giving you all the realizations to renounce samsara and have unbelievable compassion for sentient beings, especially those who also have HIV. Even a wish-granting jewel doesn’t help to cease the sufferings of all sentient beings and purify numberless eons of negative karma.

Each time you practice tonglen—taking on the suffering of sentient beings—you collect seven times limitless skies of merit. This is like a jet or rocket taking you to the moon. This is your rocket taking you to enlightenment. Your HIV is your rocket to enlightenment. Wow!

Thank you very much for your service to the center, to the teachings of Buddha, and to me, and for your kind heart.

With much love and prayers...