Making Life Beneficial

 My very dear Christine,
Thank you very much for your kind emails, and I am very sorry for the many eons of delay in replying. My assistant told me you emailed a number of times, so I am sorry it took so long to reply. I hope you didn’t get angry. I am very happy to hear from you, to hear you express your good heart, and that you really want to make your life most beneficial for sentient beings.

My suggestion to you, what is most important to develop, the best way to benefit others, is to develop your heart and to develop your mind on the path to enlightenment. If you are able to complete the path to enlightenment, then you are fully qualified to liberate numberless sentient beings from the oceans of samsara’s sufferings and bring them to full enlightenment. This is what sentient beings need. This is what is most beneficial for them. There is no greater success than this. This depends on your actualizing and completing the path to enlightenment.

Therefore, what I suggest is for you to meditate on the lamrim, really meditate on the lamrim. Each week focus on a different subject by following EXACTLY the lamrim outlines, up to emptiness. Then, go back to the beginning again and do this for a few years. This means to meditate every day on the lamrim. You can do two sessions a day. This doesn’t mean you only do meditation when you are sitting down, you can also do meditation on the lamrim outside, on your way somewhere, at the beach, etc. It does not have to be only on your cushion, but you can do one or two sessions a day on your cushion. The rest of the time you can meditate on the lamrim when you are walking, driving, when you are doing your job, so all the time your mind can be in meditation. Whatever you were focusing on in the morning, you keep your mind in that the whole day. In this way, you protect your body, speech, and mind from engaging in negative karma. It is very easy to create negative karma, so, in this way, whatever you do becomes a very easy way for all your activities to become virtue. This helps make your meditation sessions more effective, so your sessions help you in your break time. It makes them more effective and helpful in order to achieve the realizations more quickly. Each week take a different lamrim meditation – follow the outline. This means you don’t just make up the meditation, you need to follow the outline as it is laid out.

Follow the outlines, starting with the perfect human rebirth for one week, then the usefulness of it for one week, and how it is difficult to find again for one week. Like this, go through the entire lamrim. That would be extremely good.

I don’t know if you have received a great initiation. If you have, then you need to do six session guru yoga. You can stop within the six session, before the guru absorbs into you, and begin the lamrim meditation. Or you can do it based on guru yoga. You can also do your lamrim meditation within a lamrim prayer, such as the Foundation of all Good Qualities, the Three Principal Aspects of the Path, Calling the Guru from Afar (Pabongka Dechen Nyingpo composed this), or the Hymns of Experience (Lama Tsongkhapa).

Each day you can recite a different lamrim prayer or, if you prefer, you can recite the same one each day (like the Foundation of All Good Qualities). Then, before the guru absorbs into you, you do your lamrim session.

No matter what lamrim outline you are up to, you still need to do one meditation on guru devotion every day, regardless of the other lamrim meditation. It could be for 25 minutes, 30 minutes, or one hour, the time is up to you. Every day, if possible, meditate on guru devotion by following the outline. When you finish the guru devotion outline, then go back again and start from the beginning until you achieve stable realizations that all the buddhas are one’s gurus, including however many gurus that you have a Dharma connection with, that you have received teachings from, received refuge vows, pratimoksha vows, bodhisattva vows, tantric vows, or taken initiations from, whoever you have a connection with, thinking of the teacher as a guru and oneself as a disciple. You feel from the bottom of your heart that all one’s gurus are all the Buddhas, one’s guru is numberless buddhas. It is a stable realization, not only for a few hours or days, but is stable.

One thing is to develop your mind so you can benefit other sentient beings. As you achieve the realizations, you are more able to benefit other sentient beings. This is why it is most important to have the realizations. This is what you need to achieve, from the perfect human rebirth up to enlightenment, the graduated path of the lower capable being, the graduated path of the middle capable being, and the graduated path of the higher capable being. You must develop your heart into these three. It is extremely important to attain renunciation, the determination to be free from samsara, bodhicitta, and right view.

Your goal is to benefit so many sentient beings by having the realization of renunciation of samsara, then you enter the path to liberation. By having the realization of bodhicitta, you enter the path to full enlightenment (this is the total cessation of all the suffering in samsara and the causes – karma and delusion). With this realization you are able to liberate numberless sentient beings from the oceans of samsaric suffering and the causes: karma and delusion. By having the realization of emptiness, then you eliminate the very root of samsara, which is ignorance. Now you can see here that it is very urgent that you achieve the realizations, and achieve liberation and enlightenment. If you are not free from samsara, then you can’t liberate others, so what is needed is for you to achieve enlightenment quickly.

The way to achieve liberation and enlightenment quickly, so that you can liberate numberless sentient beings, is to practice highest tantra. This is extremely important, unbelievable, and most beneficial, not only for yourself but for all sentient beings.

So, to go over the main points:

1) Every day you need to study Dharma, and you can do this not only when you are sitting but when you are doing your job. You can perform your actions with your mind in renunciation of samara, with a pure motivation, non-attachment to samsara and its perfections, so that all your actions become the cause to achieve liberation from samara, from all the sufferings and the causes. If you perform all your actions with your mind in bodhicitta, then all your actions become the cause to achieve enlightenment for all sentient beings. If you perform all your actions with your mind in right view, then all your actions become an antidote to samsara and an antidote to karma, delusion, and ignorance.

2) Every day it is important that you practice one guru yoga, it can be Guru Puja (Lama Chöpa) or Lama Tsongkhapa Guru Yoga. Do this early in the morning. You can do your lamrim meditation on the basis of the guru yoga. Also, if you want to, you can do the Guru Shakyamuni Buddha daily meditation practice that I put together, as your guru yoga practice.

3) Every day you must recite one lamrim prayer. Each day you can do a different one, or you can recite the same one each day.

4) In the morning generate a strong motivation; you can use the one His Holiness the Dalai Lama composed (“never give up…”). My assistant can send you this if you do not know it. Also, you can make different prayers to generate your morning motivation.

5) Then do prostrations to the 35 Buddhas. This is extremely good to practice. Doing this practice is like an atom bomb to purify one’s negative karma, which is the main obstacle to attaining the realizations.

6) In the evening do Vajrasattva practice. You can do one mala of the Vajrasattva long mantra or half a mala, but you must recite at least 21 mantras. This purifies one’s negative karma. You need to do the practice with the four remedial powers. There is a big book of teachings that I gave during the Vajrasattva retreat in the USA. Also, there is a book by Lama Yeshe on Vajrasattva, and it would be very good if you were able to read these. This is so you can understand the practice more deeply. Since you asked how you can benefit others, this is extremely good to do for your own liberation and so that you can liberate all other sentient beings.

You can do the prostrations to the 35 Buddhas in the morning and at night; it depends on your time in the morning. You can go through them once or, if you have time, three times, five times, or ten times. It would be incredible if you can do them three times in the morning and three times at night (this means prostrating to each Buddha and reciting the name three times, so it comes to 100). Doing prostrations by reciting the 35 Buddhas’ names is extremely good to do, even once, so if you can do it more it is even better. You need to read a little how to do prostrations well, how to think and visualize, etc.

As well as doing daily meditation on the lamrim, you must first read a book on the lamrim. You must study this first, such as Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand. Read it from the beginning to the end. I don’t mean to read fast, you read it slowly by thinking of the meaning. Anything that you don’t understand or that you have questions about, you write that down and then discuss your questions with an older student or geshe.

7) The other thing that is very beneficial for all sentient beings is nyung nä retreats. This is an unbelievably powerful practice to develop compassion and bodhicitta, so that you can achieve enlightenment quickly. If you can, do 500 nyung näs throughout your life. This doesn’t mean all at one time, you can spread them out over your whole life. This is to bring all sentient beings to enlightenment.

There is a Brazilian nun who has now done 200 nyung näs and is continuing to do another 100. This practice is unbelievable; it is the best practice to purify, collect extensive merits, and particularly to develop compassion. If you develop compassion, that is the root of enlightenment, and you have no regrets now or in the future. If you can do 500 in your life, you can do some on the Buddha days, as the merit is multiplied then. Many centers do three in a row. So, like this, continue throughout your life. Do some each year and later you can do many together.

I am posting you some photos and cards. Also attached is some information on these practices; it is a lot, but it can help you. You can print it out and slowly go through it, so you learn more about the different practices.

Please practice as much as you can. Life is not long, the nature of this life is impermanent, and death can happen at any time. This is the foundation of the Buddha’s teachings, and this was the last advice Buddha gave before showing the aspect of passing away.

What makes your life most meaningful is meditation on the lamrim, then to live your life with a bodhicitta motivation. This is the best.

With much love and prayers...