How to Purify Sexual Misconduct

My very dear one,
Thank you very much for your letter and I am sorry it took so long to reply.

It is great what you have been able to do—studying Yangsi Rinpoche’s commentary on the Lamrim Chenmo, especially discussing, reading, and doing analytical meditation on the lamrim, offering water bowls, practicing the Ever-flowing Nectar of Bodhicitta, Thirty-five Buddhas practice, Medicine Buddha, Lama Tsongkhapa Guru Yoga, and animal liberation. This is amazing, really something to rejoice in. I wish everyone in the world could practice like this.

Regarding what practices to do for purification of sexual misconduct, doing 500,000 prostrations to the 35 Buddhas is a very powerful purification practice that purifies many eons of negative karma, not just karma created in one day, or in this life. The benefits of reciting just one name of the 35 Buddhas is incredible.

Also, for purification, it would be very good if you read the section on renunciation in the lamrim. I think here the essential idea is to understand how negative imprints are left on the mind and how this harms future lives. Understanding this is very helpful, to stop the pattern in future lives. By stopping this now it will make a difference in your future lives, so that you can live purely in morality, abstaining from breaking the vows. If you don’t live in morality then it makes other practices difficult; it makes it hard to have realizations because morality is the basis for those.

Of course, in Mahayana, if the three negative actions of one’s body (killing, stealing, and sexual misconduct) and the four negative actions of one’s speech (lying, gossip, slander, and harsh speech) are performed in order to benefit sentient beings, then they are permitted by Buddha. If the person’s attitude is coming from having a brave heart, pure attitude, compassion, bodhicitta, wisdom, and the thought of benefiting others, then from the individual’s side there is no harm engaging in these actions. There is no question when you are talking about a high level tantric yogi, having bodhicitta realizations, realizations of emptiness, and tantric realizations. His or her mind is already learned, so that means it is a pure basis. Because of that all their actions only become a quick path to achieving enlightenment.

When a practitioner of highest tantra, on the basis of the lamrim, guru devotion, and the three principles of the path, directs his or her actions as a cause to achieve enlightenment, then at that time one can take a different path to that of severe discipline. The practitioner can use a skilful means to create the conditions that directs one toward enlightenment, such as using the 64 arts of love as a condition to use desire on the path, using it to realize emptiness as the foundation, without losing one’s seed. In that way, one is able to generate great bliss, more intense than before, and to use that for deep meditation on emptiness. That meditation on emptiness is not done by the gross mind, so it is a very intense, powerful meditation that one is able to use to unite method and wisdom to eliminate the defilements and dualistic view. So, using these actions makes it a much quicker path for achieving enlightenment. This act becomes a very skillful action, like a roller coaster taking one quickly toward enlightenment.

One has to know what is most beneficial and also one has to base actions on the realizations of the three principles of the path.

With much love and prayers,
Lama Zopa

Practices:

• Refuge: 50,000
• Prostrations: 500,000 to the 35 Buddhas
• Vajrasattva: 7000. This is a big number to try to do all at once, maybe you can do some in retreat, but of course you still need to do it every day before bed, either one mala or 21 mantras. Especially if you have taken a highest Tantra initiation, it is very important to do this to purify vices.
• Samaya Vajra: 500,000. This is an easy one because the mantra is very short. This is a very powerful practice to purify one’s degenerate samaya and vows to one’s gurus.
• Dorje Khadro (burning offering): 500
• Guru Yoga: Continue daily to do Lama Tsongkhapa Guru Yoga
• Tsa-Tsas Deity: Three types of Buddha: Chenrezig, Manjrushri and Vajrapani (it is on one mould); Number: 800
• Recite the longest mantra of Chenrezig with tong-len meditation: the special bodhicitta practice of taking and giving.

Lamrim Meditations

• Guru Devotion: Five months
• Graduated path common to the lower capable being: three months
• Graduated path common to the middle capable being: four months
• Graduated path common to the higher capable being:
  • Bodhicitta: one month
  • Emptiness: three months

Do this complete set three times then practice the lamrim meditations until you achieve realizations, starting with guru devotion, the graduated path common to the lower capable being, middle capable being, bodhicitta, and then emptiness.