How to Benefit Animals

My most dear, most kind, most precious. wish-fulfilling one,
Thank you very much for your kind letter. I’m very sorry, but I’m not a qualified teacher, as you think. I will check your questions, what is beneficial, so you try and I try.

You can do the practice of Medicine Buddha sadhana daily. It is very good doing the Medicine Buddha practice for the success of all our wishes for happiness, and also to help the sentient beings and to actualize the teachings of Buddha, and particularly to be able to benefit sentient beings, to free them from suffering and for them to achieve all the happiness up to enlightenment. It is so good to do this practice every day.

Practice lamrim with bodhicitta motivation. Even the training at the very beginning, correctly following the virtuous friend, should always begin with bodhicitta. Every lamrim meditation should be done with bodhicitta. Also living the life—eating, talking, sitting, doing our job—do it all with bodhicitta, as much as possible. There is a book about that called Bodhisattva Attitude, so if you can, read that.

However, not only in meditation, even living the life, doing the work, we should do everything with bodhicitta. That way all the actions of our body, speech and mind as much as possible become the cause of enlightenment. Our actions become most beneficial for every sentient being, for the numberless hell beings, numberless hungry ghosts, numberless animals, so that means numberless ants, not only in this universe but in numberless universes, for numberless chickens, goats, buffalos that people eat, numberless pigs, numberless slugs, numberless mosquitos, so every tiny insect, like that.

So for every sentient being—those living in the ocean, large like a mountain and the smallest that we can only see with microscope, all the worms living in the ground, every single insect, those living in the grass, on the trees, all the birds in the sky and so forth, numberless human beings in numberless universes, numberless suras, numberless asuras and numberless intermediate state beings—for the happiness of everyone. For them to be free from samsara, free from the oceans of sufferings and for them to achieve happiness, especially enlightenment.

Thank you very much.

Every day, if you can, try reciting OM MANI PADME HUM three thousand times. I would like to send you a mala if you can email back your postal address. Reciting OM MANI PADME HUM is incredibly good and it is a quick way to purify. It is an extremely powerful way to purify defilements and negative karma, the cause of the lower realms. It is so powerful for collecting extensive merits and even if we recite the mantra without bodhicitta we collect merits.

Reciting OM MANI PADME HUM even without bodhicitta, the benefit is more than the drops of water in the ocean, more than the number of sand grains in the Pacific Ocean, more the drops of rain that come when it rains. So, like that, there are unbelievable, unbelievable, unbelievable benefits.

If we recite OM MANI PADME HUM with bodhicitta even one time, we collect more than skies of merit. It is a quick way to be born in a pure land and it is a quick way to generate compassion for all sentient beings. This is the particular benefit, so that means it’s quicker to achieve enlightenment—the total cessation of obscurations and completion of realizations—buddhahood. It’s really fantastic.

I am hoping to produce a book soon with different prayers to Chenrezig so that students can use a different prayer each day when reciting OM MANI PADME HUM.

So, this is your main practice.

A zillion, trillion, numberless thanks from my heart for not butchering the animals. We can understand [their suffering] well if we put ourselves in the same situation as the animals being taken to be butchered, how we would feel. So we can understand from that situation, without thinking about the sufferings of the lower realms, what we are creating the cause to experience. [We can understand] the constant endless sufferings in samsara by thinking of the suffering of even that one animal.

I am sending you some Namgyalma mantras and you can also print out more. You can put them in your rooms and in the animals’ place, where they sleep or spend time. You can stick the mantra to the ceiling inside the room, with the mantra facing down toward the animals, so then the animals’ negative karma always gets purified and when they die they never get reborn in the lower realms.

I’m so happy that at least you have some feeling of compassion for the intestinal worms, because they are sentient beings living in the body of the other animals. There are some students and some very old friends who did not think well, so they keep pets and then feed their pets worms and live animals, such as mice, crickets, etc. They have attachment to the pets and no compassion at all for the insects that they are feeding to their pets. All the time they are feeding insects to the pets, even living insects, things like that, so they are always creating so much negative karma, so much negative karma, and also causing so much suffering for the other beings. The compassion that you have, the feeling of compassion for those intestinal worms and all the animals, I appreciate so much that you have compassion for them. Thank you very much.

What you have already done, giving medicine that killed the worms, I’m not giving particular advice to kill them, but you must do constant prayers for them. So recite the King of Prayers for them; for them to be like what the prayer says, for them to be like that. So every day if you can, recite that prayer in the evening time before going to bed or whenever it’s a suitable time for you. That’s very good, even by the way, for you to be born in the pure land. Of course it has that benefit, but here I am saying the main benefit is for others.

Thank you very much.

With much love and prayers ...

My very dear one,
Thank you very much for the news about your daughter. I am so happy to find out that she is very concerned about cows. They have to suffer so much. People use them for meat, as well as for milk and other things. So that means the mother suffers giving birth to the baby calf, and then it has to separate from the calf. There are so many different ways they get killed.

I just want to tell you one story. When I was in Singapore liberating animals the first time, there were three snakes bought the night before the liberation. The next morning, I reached for the reserved water and there were other animals, frogs and other things too.

Three snakes were in a sack and could have run away easily, but they were like intoxicated, maybe due to the heat, I’m not sure. They were fastened there in the sack. At that time I was wondering, if we let the snakes go, then the frogs and mice and many other animals would get eaten.

But if we did not buy the snakes to liberate them, their bodies, which are very long, would get cut in half and they would suffer so much. In the restaurants in China, Taiwan and Singapore they use snake for snake dishes.

So then, that made me think, what to do? There is no other method; the only way is for us to practice Dharma, to actualize the path, the four noble truths. First we must become free from the oceans of samsaric suffering. In that way we become free from samsara and sentient beings do not have to harm us. They don’t have to create negative karma with us, which is one big help.

By revealing Dharma to the sentient beings, they meet the Dharma, actualize the path and become free from the oceans of samsaric suffering. In that way sentient beings don’t have to suffer continuously, and they don’t have to create the cause to harm others. That is an incredible help, freeing them from suffering and the causes of suffering.

And the last thing, the biggest help, is to bring everyone to full enlightenment, sangye, the total elimination of all the obscurations and completion of all the realizations.

So all the time we should engage our life in Dharma practice, particularly trying to actualize the path. That is the solution, for all the benefits to happen. Whether the concern is for cows, or, for example, tigers and so forth, this is my answer.

Please tell your daughter this. I suggest to her that by practicing morality and practicing purification with mantras and so forth, and by collecting extensive merits with many other practices, for life after life we don’t have to harm other sentient beings directly or indirectly. And also sentient beings don’t have to harm us, creating negative karma.

She can chant OM MANI PADME HUM and visualize beams are emitted from Chenrezig, purifying her and the sentient beings—the cows and any beings she is concerned about.

Also, she can recite Vajrasattva mantra. She can visualize Vajrasattva on her crown and at her heart on the moon disk on a lotus are the cows and all sentient beings. Think that they are purified with nectar beams emanating from Vajrasattva. She can do like this, so they can become free from suffering and the causes of suffering , and not only that, they all become enlightened.

Later she can become a nun. Think in this way: if we don’t create the cause to harm sentient beings then sentient beings don’t have to harm us.

With love and prayers ...

My most dear, most kind, most precious, wish-fulfilling one,
How are you? I’m very sorry that for a long time I did not get to write to you. First of all, I am so happy you are there for me, Lama Yeshe, His Holiness and that you are there to serve the Buddhadharma and ultimately sentient beings, not leaving out even one ant or one maggot or fish or even one lice, and you are serving the people there and making everybody happy. You asked me a question when I was there, about what to do when you are working with flowers and the animals die.

You are right, when we look at flowers, they look so beautiful, and it’s like they exist from their own side, like they are real, in ordinary language. We don’t see that sentient beings suffer so much for that garden, so many sentient beings get killed for that. Only through so much suffering did it come to look so nice. It came from so much suffering, creating negative karma, killing, hot and cold, etc.

When I make offerings at the centers, to the guru, the buddhas, the deities—water offerings and other kinds of offerings—then the merits are dedicated for sentient beings. That is what we try to do, as much as we can.

If worms are cut or killed, you can pray like this: “Due to the past, present and future merits collected by me and the three times merits collected by countless buddhas and bodhisattvas, may this worm be free from the lower realm sufferings immediately and be reborn in the pure lands, where this sentient being can become enlightened quickly. Or at least, may it receive a perfect human rebirth, meet the Mahayana teachings and find a perfectly qualified Mahayana guru, revealing the unmistaken path to enlightenment.” If you pray like this, when you dedicate your own and all the buddhas’ and bodhisattvas’ merits, it becomes very powerful. It’s like when you collect one dollar from a trillion people, you get a trillion dollars, and then you get a lot of money to do big projects.

You can recite the Lotus Pinnacle of Amoghapasha mantra.

OM PADMO USHNISHA VIMALE HUM PHAT

Recite this a few times, then blow over the animal which was killed or injured. It’s very good to do that for worms which were killed or injured.

The other mantra is OM MANI PADME HUM. If you have done the blessing of the speech at the end of the Method to Transform, it’s like having recited tens of thousands or even tens of millions of mantras. It’s so helpful! Whether you have a commitment or not, if you recite these mantras every day it becomes so beneficial for yourself and sentient beings.

This is what I have been teaching and introducing in many centers: lamrim motivation, then blessing the speech and blessing the mala. The new title is The Method to Transform a Suffering Life into Happiness (Including Enlightenment). It is not called Daily Meditation anymore, because I don’t want people to think, “I don’t need to do any more prayers because I have already done my daily meditation.” It is not to stop people from doing more prayers.

If possible, of course you put the animals back where they belong. And if possible, put them into the boxes, even the injured ones, and take them around the stupa. I have designed two boxes; one is called wisdom and one is called method. So if you have the insects inside the house, you can scoop them up and they go inside the boxes, underneath the Stainless Pinnacle mantra and then they will have already purified countless eons of negative karma. Also, on top of the box is the Namgyalma mantra. It’s called Liberation Box, Protection Tool for a Fortunate Rebirth.

Then you carry the insects around the stupa. This will purify unbelievable negative karma collected from beginningless lives and they will collect the cause for enlightenment each second. Inside the stupa are so many tsa tsas and holy objects, therefore going around the stupa we collect so many causes for enlightenment.

The other thing is, I have seen small stupas there at the center, inside the rooms. So you can take one of those outside when you work with the flowers and take the worms or insects at least around that, if it is difficult to go around the big stupa. You can do that many times, not only once. Do it a hundred, thirty or twenty times. Take them around the base, not on top of the stupa. And you can recite the short Namgyalma mantra:

OM BHRUM SVAHA OM AMRITA AYUR DADE SVAHA

After reciting this mantra, the breath is so blessed, then you must blow on the animals to purify their negative karma.

If a fully ordained monk breaks all four root vows—sexual intercourse, stealing valuable things belonging to others, killing a human being and lying about having realizations one does not have—then that monk is reborn in hell. But if someone were to recite this mantra for that monk who broke the four root vows and was born in hell, he would immediately be liberated and would be reborn in the higher rebirths. This mantra is so powerful.

Also, we can light incense, then recite the mantra and let the smoke get into our clothes. Then we go to the person who asked for our help, and our help will be successful—that is what is said. So it is a very powerful mantra with many benefits.

Of course, OM MANI PADME HUM is the most powerful one, purifying negative karma collected from beginning less lifetimes. Reciting it, even without bodhicitta, we collect more merits than there are drops of water in the ocean, or more than all the sand grains in the Pacific Ocean, and especially, we generate compassion toward all sentient beings. That is why my mother, even though she could not read the alphabet, had one hundred times more compassion than me, who can read the texts and talk about compassion! This mantra is the quickest way to be born in a pure land and achieve enlightenment.

Regarding the Namgyalma mantra, if we are wearing a Namgyalma mantra protection amulet, it always purifies us, so when we die, we don’t get reborn in the lower realms. If we have it in our house, then mosquitoes, dogs, cats, and even guests, although they don’t know, are purified. So everybody from the house does not get reborn in the lower realms. The sentient beings who are touched by the shadow of the house, even their negative karma and obscurations are purified.

If the mantra is on a mountain, anybody who climbs the mountain or touches the mountain, their negative karma gets purified and when they die they have a higher rebirth. If the mantra is in the car, it becomes a holy object and all the insects and so forth get purified. When we drive a car, so many sentient beings (insects etc.,) are killed, but if we have the Namgyalma mantra in the car, they get purified. Of course, if you see an animal, do not drive over it!

If you come across someone who dies, put the Namgyalma mantra on their body, even for a little while, then their negative karma and obscurations are purified and they get a higher rebirth. When you do your practice, such as reciting OM MANI PADME HUM and Medicine Buddha mantras, think of the worms who got killed, maybe write it down so that you don’t forget them, then dedicate for them, so that your practice is done with bodhicitta. Then dedicate for them to achieve enlightenment as quickly as possible and to never get reborn in the lower realms.

Thank you very much for everything.

With much love and prayers ...

My most dear, most kind, most precious, wish-fulfilling one,
I heard you wanted very much to come here but you have a cat that is twenty-one years old and is very sick, so you couldn’t come. I understand, that’s very good taking care of the cat.

It’s good to recite Maitreya Buddha mantra in the cat’s ear. That causes the cat to never be reborn in the lower realms, to have a higher rebirth and to meet the Dharma. Also recite Medicine Buddha mantra, Chenrezig Buddha mantra, Milarepa Buddha mantra and Lotus Pinnacle of Amoghapasha mantra: OM PÄDMO USHNISHA VIMALE HUM PHAT. Recite these mantras several times each day. [You can find these mantras here: Powerful Mantras at the Time of Death.]

Also recite the Three Principal Aspects of the Path and different lamrim prayers. The most important thing is to take the cat around holy objects. If you can, make an altar on a table, and put many holy objects on the table, piled up—tsatsas, buddha statues, pictures and texts, then take the cat around, on the same level as the altar. Put pictures of buddhas, and statues and tsatsas, as many as possible, then go around that.

However many holy objects are there—one hundred or one thousand—each time the cat goes around the holy objects, it creates that many causes of enlightenment. It is good to have many tsatsas there and to take the cat around them as much as you can before he dies, otherwise there is nothing much you can do.

Here is a powa pill. When the cat dies, put it on his crown with butter and honey.

It is very kind of you to take care of this cat for twenty-one years. Perhaps the cat could also be a recent family member, for example, if your father or mother died, or sometimes it could be your wife from a past life. It could be anything.

Please continue to make your life most meaningful for every sentient being with bodhicitta. Thank you very much. I hope to see you soon.

With much love and prayers ...

My most dear, most kind, most precious, wish-fulfilling one,
Thank you for your kind letter. You should do the Medicine Buddha retreat to purify your own negative karma and obscurations collected from beginningless rebirths, and not only that, but also for all the six realm sentient beings and in particular for all the animals in the animal realms. That includes any animals that have been killed or have died with you.

There is a text for the Medicine Buddha retreat, complete with a fire puja at the end. If you have received the great initiation of Medicine Buddha—not just the short blessing—you can do that. If you have not received the initiation, then you have to wait until you can receive it, or if you are able to, you can come to a place where I will do the Medicine Buddha great initiation. I am doing it soon in Malaysia, but I am not sure if you can go. If you are unable to come, then you can wait until I give it another time.

You can still recite the Medicine Buddha mantra now, to purify all the sentient beings’ negative karma and obscurations—particularly all those in the animal realm and any animal that has died with you—and also to purify your own negative karma.

Visualize the Medicine Buddha as a real, actual living Medicine Buddha, not just as a painting or statue, if that is what you are looking at. Visualize beams emitting like the sun shining to all the six realm sentient beings—especially to any animals that have died with you and also to yourself—purifying all the negative karma and obscurations collected since beginningless rebirth. Think that all those animals that died have purified all their negative karma and defilements, then recite the mantra.

As well as the short mantra, if you can, recite the long Medicine Buddha mantra. This is in the extensive Medicine Buddha puja called Wish-granting Sovereign. If you can, recite the longest mantra 100,000 times, sending light rays like the sun shining, as I explained above.

This is the longest mantra:

TADYATHA GHU ME GHU ME / I MI NI MI HI MA TI MA TI SAPTA TATHAGATA SA MA DHYA DHIGHITE / AH TE MA TE / PA LE PA PA SHODHANI / SARVA PAPAM NA SHA YA MA MA BUDDHA BUDDHOTTAME / U ME KU ME / BUDDHA KSHETRA PA SHODHANI DHA ME NI DHA ME / ME RU ME RU ME RU SHI GHARE / SARVVA AH KA LA MRITU / NI PARANI / BUDDHE SU BUDDHE BUDDHA ADHIKHTHANA / RAKHANTU ME / SARVVA DE WA SA ME AH SA ME SAMANTA HARANTU / SARVVA BUDDHA BODHISATTVA / SHAME SHAME PRASHAMANTU ME / SARVVA ITU PA DRA PRA BA DYA TA YA / PURANE PURANE PURAYAME / SARVA ASHAYA / BAIDURYA PRATI / BHA SE SARVVA PA PAKHA YADA RE SVAHA

Also, from time to time you can do the short Medicine Buddha puja, called The Wish-fulfilling Jewel, for the same reason.

Maybe you don’t know that Medicine Buddha is extremely powerful for success and even for you to achieve enlightenment, to be able to free the numberless sentient beings from the oceans of samsaric sufferings and bring them to enlightenment as quickly as possible. For that you need to be enlightened, therefore you need all the success for this purpose and then no question, you will achieve happiness and success in the next lives, and in this life it comes by the way.

I have some things to suggest to you on how to help the animals ultimately. [See Compassion Brings Us Closer to Enlightenment for these suggestions and further advice.]

Some people take care of animals because they are attached to one type of animal. It’s not that they have compassion for all animals, it’s not that; they just have a lot of attachment to one particular type. Then because of that attachment they help those animals with something which is needed, like giving food to help them and so forth. However, the most important thing is to take care of them with compassion, loving kindness and unconditional love, not with attachment. I hope you are doing that and if so, in that case, I appreciate it very much.

So I am representing all those animals and thanking you for taking care of us.

You have to take care of them according to how they need to be taken care of; sometimes people don’t know how to take care of them. For example, in the West to keep the dog small, so it won’t grow too big, some people give food only one time each day. Of course the dog gets used to it, but I don’t think it’s right. This is what people like to do, but it’s not comfortable for the dog, it’s not what the dog needs. In my view, at least give them food twice a day. I didn’t think it was right when I heard that dogs are not fed in order to keep their size small. Then it is like it’s forced; it’s not for the dog’s comfort.

Some people love to take care of a certain type of animal, and they have some kind of attachment to that type of animal. This means when they take care of those animals, it is from their own attachment, to fulfill their desire, attachment. This means they are actually working for themselves and the main aim is not the happiness of the animal.

Also, for instance, in some parts of the world, once they have a daughter, parents very much want their daughter to get married as quickly as possible, and they don’t even check the husband. They don’t know all the unbelievable suffering their daughter might have to go through after the marriage—so much suffering, having to suffer, not free, unbelievable, unbelievable suffering. The children also have unbelievable suffering. They don’t think about that; they just hurry up and make sure their daughter gets married, so that they can have grandchildren. That makes the parents happy, when their daughter is married and has a child. It makes the parents very happy. That is their main motivation, just for their own happiness, so that they will have grandchildren in their life. Then they can always talk about them, so it’s for their happiness, not for the happiness of their daughter. It is what the parents want, so it’s like that.

I did make prayers for all your animals, especially the ones who died.

Thank you very much.

With much love and prayers ...

I have heard that you have to take indoor dogs out three times a day, so I thought that this gives you an unbelievable, incredible opportunity to help them.

By not harming and practicing morality toward even one sentient being, including these dogs, you can attain the state of the happy transmigratory beings. By not harming and practicing concentration and wisdom, even with dogs, you can achieve the happiness that is free from samsaric suffering. And by generating compassion, bodhicitta, you can attain buddhahood, ultimate happiness—the completion of all realizations and total freedom from all obscurations—through depending on these sentient beings, these dogs.

Another way to understand this is that by cherishing these dogs you can receive hundreds of thousands of happy rebirths and so forth in future lives. By cherishing these sentient beings, these dogs, you can achieve ultimate happiness forever. By cherishing these sentient being dogs you can achieve the peerless happiness of buddhahood. Not only that, but you also achieve the numberless past happinesses that you already have received since beginningless rebirths as well as your present happiness and all future happiness, including full enlightenment.

You may find this difficult to believe but it is logical. Your three time happinesses come from your good karma and your virtuous mind is the action of the Buddha. There are two actions of Buddha: one is within us sentient beings; the other is possessed only by the Buddha’s holy mind. Buddha comes from bodhisattva, bodhisattva comes from bodhicitta and bodhicitta comes from great compassion, which embraces numberless sentient beings, not leaving out even one: the numberless hell beings, pretas, animals, humans, asuras and suras.

So this is how you receive all your past, present and future happiness from each and every sentient being, which includes the dogs that you take out for a walk three times a day. So these dogs are most precious—think like this—most precious, most kind, most dear and wish-fulfilling for you.

The next thing to understand is that these sentient beings are objects to not be harmed. They are to be cherished by you, to be taken care of with your body, speech and mind; you are to serve them.

One more thing to understand is that you have been experiencing the sufferings of the six realms numberless times from beginningless rebirths and you will have to experience them again without end, over and over again, if you don’t practice Dharma.

At this time you have received the impossible, a precious human life. And not only have you received a perfect human rebirth but you have also met the Mahayana sutra and tantra teachings, so not only can you achieve liberation from samsara; through having met the Mahayana sutra teachings you can achieve full enlightenment for sentient beings. Furthermore, through having met the Mahayana tantric teachings you can achieve enlightenment in just one lifetime—you don’t need the three countless great eons to collect merit and purify obscurations that you do when practicing sutra. Finally, you have met Maha-anuttara Yoga Tantra, through which you can achieve the unified state of enlightenment in one brief lifetime of this degenerate age. So this time you are most fortunate.

Now, sentient beings who have received a perfect human rebirth like yours are extremely rare. Most other sentient beings haven’t even met the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha, which means they will have to experience samsaric suffering endlessly. If you really think about it you won’t be able to stand it, not even for a second, without wanting to free them from samsara. And not only that—they have been experiencing such suffering from beginningless, numberless lives.

Now the dogs are exactly the same. You have to think about this. These dogs have been experiencing suffering since beginningless lifetimes and will continue to do so without end. You can’t stand leaving them in that state of suffering for even one second.

So when you take your dogs out you should recite mostly OM MANI PADME HUM and the Maitreya Buddha mantras so that the dogs can hear them. That purifies their negative karma collected since beginningless time and allows them to collect merit. It purifies their mental continuum and brings them to enlightenment in the future: by meeting the Dharma they receive a higher rebirth, develop understanding through practicing Dharma and eventually achieve enlightenment. It is as if you are giving a wish-granting jewel to the dogs. Just by chanting you help them so much.

You can also recite the Medicine Buddha mantra, which helps them to not be reborn in the lower realms ever again, and the short Namgyälma mantra, which makes it impossible for them to be reborn in lower realms; this will be their last rebirth as an animal. Another mantra you can recite is OM PÄDMO USHNISHA VIMALE HUM PHAT. When you take the dogs out, chant so that they can hear it.

At the beginning, generate bodhicitta by thinking, “The purpose of my life is not simply to achieve the happiness of this life; nor is it to achieve either temporary or ultimate happiness for myself alone. The purpose of my life is to achieve enlightenment in order to free all sentient beings from the oceans of samsaric suffering and bring them to enlightenment. Therefore I must achieve the state of omniscience. Therefore I am going to recite these mantras for the dogs and even others who are passing by.”

You can recite the mantras by chanting them like a song. Others might then just see you as a happy person walking along with your dogs. If people ask what you’re singing you can say that you’re chanting mantras. It depends on who asks.

Scribe: Ven. Roger Kunsang, July 2016, New York. Edited by Nicholas Ribush.