Mitukpa Mantra and Being Vegetarian

My dear Kate,
Thank you so much your kind letter. I highly appreciate your sincerity and your confession—you wanted to express that you missed your commitments and have now started again. That is very, very sincere, very good, what you are doing.

Doing Mitukpa is great purification, so it is very good to do this practice. His Holiness the Dalai Lama usually advises when he is giving Mitukpa initiation that he collects bones and also after eating meat he keeps the bones then chants the mantra on them, to purify.

Mitukpa mantra is very good, even if you are vegetarian. When other people eat meat, you can recite Mitukpa mantra to the leftover meat or bones. This is something you can do, but I am just suggesting this; I am not saying that you must do it all the time. You can also recite this mantra if you are wearing animal clothing, such as skin, leather, fur and so forth. You can recite the mantra and blow on the clothing, and even if the consciousness of the animal is somewhere else, this still purifies their negative karma, so it is very, very good.

You can also recite this mantra loudly in the ear of people who are dying. Also, if you come across dying or even dead animals on the road, you can recite the mantra and blow on their bodies, and this purifies their negative karma. You can also recite Mitukpa mantra and blow over water, powder or sesame seeds and then throw these seeds, powder, water and so forth, on the dead body of the animal or human being, to purify its negative karma. This way it doesn’t get reborn in the lower realms. You can also throw the seeds on the body in the cemetery, or on a person’s bones, ashes and so forth. Doing this helps the person who has died not be reborn in the lower realms.

Also, just seeing Mitukpa mantra purifies the heavy negative karma of having abandoned the holy Dharma. The karma of abandoning the holy Dharma is heavier than destroying all the statues, stupas and scriptures in the world. Abandoning the holy Dharma means abandoning that which is Buddha’s teaching— losing faith or giving up faith in the teachings. Even if the philosophical subjects or certain teachings are hard to understand, rather than losing faith and saying, “This not for me,” instead you leave the teachings for the future; to understand these teachings then. So this is what is meant by giving up any of Buddha’s teachings.

So, these negative karmas get purified just by looking at Mitukpa mantras, and also, the karma of having criticized the Arya Sangha, which is very, very heavy negative karma that we have to experience without a break from another life. This means we immediately get reborn in the inexhaustible hot hell realms and we have to stay there for one intermediate eon. The heaviest negative karma of having killed one’s father, mother, an arhat or having caused blood to a Buddha, disunity among the Sangha, and then the ten nonvirtues—there’s no question that they get purified just by seeing the mantra.

Here I am mentioning the benefits we get at the time of death, but that doesn’t mean we only get them at the death time; we can receive these benefits even during the life.

In regards to you being vegetarian, I highly appreciate that, thank you. When I was in hospital I saw on TV many goats and sheep that were being sold as live export to Indonesia, where they would be killed. I saw on TV where the goats and sheep go in line to be killed, but it didn’t show them being killed.

I thought at the time that I didn’t have the power to stop this, but if I got better, then anywhere I go to teach, even if the subject is tantric, I will spread the message that it is very good to be vegetarian. I thought to do that, so in this way eventually more and more people will become vegetarian and generally that will mean less animals are killed.

Also I understand that even health-wise it is better to be vegetarian. There is a documentary called Forks over Knives, which is about some doctors in USA. It is very scientific, proving the benefits of a vegan diet and how so many people have recovered from many diseases by following a vegan diet.

The main thing is that you are doing this purely with compassion, so from that there is happiness and a long life for thousands and thousands of lifetimes, then ultimately it causes liberation from samsara and also enlightenment, as long as it is done with the thought to benefit others—renunciation and bodhicitta.

With much love and prayers...