Lama Chöpa Tsog Offering

My most dear, most kind, most precious, wish-fulfilling one,
Thank you very much for your kind email. I am sorry for the long delay in replying.

You do have to check it is definitely zhinä [calm abiding]. You can check in Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand and other texts to make sure you are doing zhinä correctly. Make sure, so that you can recognize the gross and subtle mistakes, like the gross sinking thought and the subtle sinking thought. That is very important. Even many famous meditators in Tibet sometimes aren’t able to recognize that, and they think they have achieved zhinä. Lama Tsongkhapa made it so clear; also, we need to be able to recognize gross attachment sinking thought and subtle attachment sinking thought.

I checked regarding your retreat, and you need purification and to collect extensive merits, so my suggestion is to do Lama Chöpa tsog offering 100,000 times.

Do Lama Chöpa every day with Yamantaka generation (assuming you have Highest Yoga Tantra initiation) then do tsog every day and try to finish some number of tsog each day. Do the long version of the tsog offering three times and the short one three times. The short one is composed by Pabongka Dechen Nyingpo. Also, when offering the remainder of the tsog, it should be the same number of tsogs that you have offered. This means you recite that verse the same number of times that you have recited the other tsog verses. So if you offered one hundred tsogs, then offer the same number of the remainder, one hundred.

Most importantly, you must have the bala and madana (meat and wine), just a very small amount, in a clean container, and bread and other things that you can use for offerings. First you have to bless yourself as the deity, then bless the inner offering tsog. Nectar doesn’t mean something wet; nectar means infinite bliss nondual with emptiness.

With each prayer, you offer that to the Lama Chöpa merit field, but the essence is the root guru. You have to visualize that and generate infinite bliss nondual with emptiness. Generate infinite bliss in the heart of the merit field each time and that becomes offering.

Also, for the numberless sentient beings in each realm, [visualize them] in the form of the deity and offer the tsog to all of them. [Think they are] purified of all the defilements, all the illusory appearance; the delusions and hallucinated appearances are purified.

You can do some zhinä, but with bodhicitta. Do some zhinä, but continue with the tsog practice. If you don’t do purification and collect merits, then only a very lucky person can achieve zhinä, fully categorized zhinä.

So this is my advice. Please continue to make your life most meaningful with the thought of bodhicitta.

With much love and prayers ...