Lamrim Study and Meditation is Most Important

My very dear Les,
Thank you very much for your very kind letter. I’m very happy to hear you are practicing Dharma. Especially practicing the good heart, not harming others, and helping others is very good, extremely good.

The most important thing in your life is to meditate on and study the lamrim. First, try to learn it from beginning to end. You can use Lama Tsongkhapa’s lamrim, which is extremely profound, especially the section on emptiness. You may need a teacher to help you understand this unless you have a lot of merit.

The lamrim book Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand is very easy to understand, and there are other lamrim short texts that are easy to understand, such as The Essential Nectar. Study them from the beginning to end, become familiar with them, and meditate on them from beginning to end.

If you can, try to study for three months on the lower scope, from the perfect human rebirth up to karma, and try to cover all the topics in the lower scope. Whatever topic you can’t finish, continue with it the next day and continue like this for three months.

Then, if you can, study for three months on the middle scope, then three months on bodhicitta, and three months on emptiness. In this way, keep circling through the lamrim, from beginning to end, until you have stable realizations. This means during this period your main focus is on whichever topic you are currently studying, but that doesn’t mean that is the only thing that you meditate on.

I’m attaching some advice on how to meditate on the lamrim for you. Really try to mix the lamrim with your mind, try to have stable realizations on each of the meditations. Each day, no matter what, try to meditate a little bit on emptiness.

Every day, if you can, practice one guru devotion or guru yoga meditation. No matter how long it takes, no matter how many lifetimes it takes, try to have stable guru devotion. Then, when you have break time from your lamrim sitting meditation, still try to relate the lamrim to whatever you are doing in your life, such as in your work, at home, etc. Try to still have the same feeling of meditation. This is a very powerful and quick way to have realizations, to develop the mind, by using your break times to also meditate on the lamrim. Try to perform every action with a bodhicitta motivation, as much as possible. If you can try like this, you can change your life from iron to gold. This is the best thing to do in your life.

In the morning, if you can, doing prostrations to the Thirty-five Buddhas is very good, and in the evening you can do Vajrasattva practice.

Practice the lamrim meditation based on a guru yoga such as Lama Tsongkhapa Guru Yoga, or the Guru Puja, or whichever guru yoga practice you feel closer to. Also, you can do it within your deity sadhana, or within the Guru Shakyamuni Buddha meditation booklet that I put together.

With much love and prayers...