Money Difficulties, Recession and Debt

My most dear, most kind, most precious, wish-fulfilling one,

I checked regarding your question, and what came out is for you to recite the Heart Sutra 500 times, thinking of the meaning without being distracted.

Also be kind to everyone, even insects, and help in whatever way you can, for example by giving food, making charity to ants, birds, worms, even mice. You can make charity with any food, not with worldly concern, attachment to this life, but with a very pure heart to benefit them, with bodhicitta.

Think, “The purpose of my life is to free numberless sentient beings from suffering and bring them to enlightenment as quickly as possible, therefore I must achieve omniscience, buddhahood, therefore I am going to make charity.” You can help animals and people in whatever way you can, offering help for each of them, not only those from this life.

Buddha said even if you make charity the size of a hair, you won’t be reborn in the lower realms for 80,000 eons and in your future lives you will have so much success and wealth, and also in future lives you will make charity. You will go toward enlightenment from every action that you do to help any sentient beings.

That is the best thing, so do that as much as you can, take the opportunity. Also, develop your bodhicitta, the good heart, so do like that. Thank you very much.

Also, when you get money, be careful. Don’t just spend a lot of money on your own pleasure; that could be a big waste of money, so be careful. Charity to help others is so worthwhile, but if you use money for your own pleasure, then so much money is wasted, so avoid that.

Thank you very much.

With much love and prayers ...

My very dear one,
I checked regarding your financial situation and it comes out very good if you recite the Ganapati mantra at least three times a day. Ganapati is not Hindu; the Hindu deity is Ganesh. In Buddhism there is Ganapati, who is the embodiment of Chenrezig, to help the sentient beings eliminate poverty and get high positions to benefit sentient beings. So Ganapati is a manifestation of Chenrezig.

The motivation for reciting this mantra should not just be to stop your problem. That is too small. With that motivation, it doesn’t even become Dharma, so it’s important to generate bodhicitta to make it most worthwhile. Recite it especially for sentient beings, to generate bodhicitta toward numberless sentient beings—numberless hell beings, numberless hungry ghosts, numberless animals, numberless  human beings, numberless suras, numberless  asuras and numberless  intermediate state beings—from whom we receive all our happiness from beginningless rebirths until now, as well as all future happiness, liberation from samsara and total elimination of all the obscurations and completion of all the realizations, so everything. 

Think, “I receive everything from each sentient being, therefore I will recite this for each sentient being to be free from the oceans of samsara’s suffering and to bring them to the peerless happiness, the state of omniscient mind. Therefore I need to purify the defilements collected since beginningless rebirths and collect all the necessary conditions to achieve enlightenment for sentient beings.”  Then recite the mantra.

You can see that here you are reciting the mantra, even one time, two times or three times, for sentient beings. It is not only to solve your problems but for numberless sentient beings, every single sentient being, to achieve enlightenment. 

On the special days of the Buddha [Saka Dawa, Chokhor Duchen, Lhabab Duchen and Mon-lam, the fifteen days of Losar] if you can, make some small offering. It doesn’t have to be much, but if you can, offer a small amount of money to beggars, making charity. If you give one dollar or one peso to one beggar on that day, you get the benefit of having made charity of one hundred million dollars or one hundred million pesos. On those special days, this is for any charity or offering you make.

Also if you make an offering to the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha on that special day, whatever you make as an offering becomes one hundred million offerings. So offering even one light, one piece of incense or food, even if it is just one, it becomes one hundred million times that offering, so it’s a really incredible, incredible, incredible, huge way to create good karma and merit.

With much love and prayers...

My most dear Leanne,
How are you? You were saying you had difficulties in finance. I thought you might have wasted a lot of money after you separated from your husband, if you were not being careful.

Regarding your financial difficulties, think carefully—this means according to Dharma. Then everything becomes good karma, collecting merits and purifying negative karma, so that means a good cause of success and happiness—both temporary and ultimate happiness; especially if everything is done with bodhicitta, the thought of benefiting sentient beings. Then every single mantra you recite collects limitless skies of merits, as well as each walk, each movement, and each word.

Guru devotion and service, obeying advice is the biggest solution; even enlighten all suffering sentient beings. Then with bodhicitta, tong-len [taking and giving] and lo-jong [mind training] you can overcome almost all the problems; with bodhicitta and emptiness you can solve any problems.

With much love and prayers...

Dear Lin,
Although your friend continues to live a life of luxury, it doesn’t mean he has money and is hiding the money. There is an Indian man living in Hong Kong who failed in business, but in order to face the organization and the people, he needed to maintain the same lifestyle.

What you want to get from your friend you might not achieve, but you need to believe in past karma, so what you experience now is the result of what you did before. As Aryadeva said in 400 Verses, if we cheat one sentient being, then we will receive cheating in a hundred thousand lives—not just in one life, but in a hundred thousand lives.

Therefore it is said, “Do not commit any evil, practice all good conduct, and purify one’s mind, this is the teaching of the Buddha.” If we don’t transform our mind, suffering comes.

FPMT had a project to buy a piece of land, but the person who helped to buy the land cheated a lot of money from FPMT. According to worldly methods, FPMT could sue this person and put him in jail, but I would never do that. Also one lady promised to help with some funds, but then she faced many difficulties. We spent a lot of money to help her in solving the difficulties, but in the end she disappeared, just like a show. Even checking the mo is under the control of karma.

In a past life, we created the cause and now we are experiencing the result. The object for us to experience the result could be either an ordinary being or a manifestation of holy beings, it’s hard to say.

We have to make sure that we are not causing the person to create negative karma by asking for the money back. Even if he is not able to give back all the money, just some of it would be fine. Also whatever we do to him, it depends on our motivation, on either virtue or non-virtue, and that will affect our future lives —not just one future life, but many future lives.

That student and the Maitreya Project experienced this because of past karma by our mind, so we have to think about our motivation. It is not that you can’t ask for the money, but it depends on your motivation. We have to think there are future lives, so how we are treated in this life —whether we are going to be happy or suffering —depends on our actions to others.

If our motivation is non-virtuous, we can experience a suffering result, not just once, but for a hundred or a thousand lifetimes, because karma is expandable. It is not that you can’t ask [for the money back]; you can ask for it, but your motivation has to be virtuous, so the future result is happy. If the motivation is non-virtuous then there is suffering for 500 or one thousand lifetimes.

It’s even more important to take care of future lives, because this life is just once. Taking care of future lives so we are free from samsara—how important that is. We want happiness in our future lives until we are free from samsara. It may be for numberless eons, I can’t say; it’s difficult to say. Your samsara might end after one life or two, I can’t say, it’s very difficult to say.

In this life, however much we suffer, it is just for very short time. There are people who live until they are 100 years old, but they are very few. It’s a very short life, so if we think about our happiness this year or in this life, no question that our future lives’ happiness is a billion, zillion, numberless times more important. Therefore, in this life if we cause others’ suffering, then we will be suffering in future; but if we cause happiness in this life, then we will have happiness in future.

When we don’t think about past and future lives, there is nothing to relate to about ourselves, and there are many ways to blame others. So many people in the world have this problem or a bigger problem.

Even we Buddhists believe these things, but in daily life when it is difficult, we don’t think about past or future lives; we think about this life and we blame others. But the minute we think about past and future lives, and about karma and reincarnation, because these different subjects come from our mind, our karma, that makes us think we need to take care of our life.

If we think the happiness of this life is so important, of course how important it is to achieve happiness in all our future lives, for numberless eons. It is so important, it is unimaginable. So that we have great happiness in the future, we must treat others well with every action, so we can enjoy so much unbelievable happiness in all our future lives . If we cause suffering to others in this life in order to achieve happiness for ourselves, that motivation is selfish and is done with the eight worldly dharmas. If we have a negative motivation, there is negative karma, then in so many future lives there will suffering. Therefore it is good to be wise in Dharma and in karma.

With love and prayers... 

Rinpoche checked about your friend and said it is very good for her to have the following practices done:

• Recite the Golden Light Sutra sixteen times.
• Recite the extensive Medicine Buddha Puja four times.
• Recite the Black Court Case mantra. Do this a minimum of fifty times, but one hundred times is best.
• Do the medium-length Medicine Buddha Puja ten times.

[You can find links to the Medicine Buddha practices in the FPMT Catalogue.] 

Of course, the world economy is going down, but even if the world economy is going up, there are many people in the world going down. That happens—that is the explanation and description of karma. And even when the world economy is going down, there are individual people going up due to their karma. What I am saying is that if we have lots of merit, we don’t suffer.

I know nothing about the economy, but regarding how we spend money, we have to decide what is meaningful. Spend money on what is meaningful and cut down spending on what is meaningless. In this way, we and other sentient beings receive a lot of benefit. By making offerings to the Triple Gem, we collect unbelievable benefit and happiness in this life and in future lives, up to liberation and enlightenment.

When the economy goes down, it means we should practice the good heart more towards sentient beings in our daily lives. We should develop more compassion and practice more patience. We don’t know who’s a buddha or bodhisattva, and if we get angry with a buddha or bodhisattva, then one thousand eons of merit that we have created in the past is destroyed in one second. Even if we dedicate it to the enlightenment of all sentient beings, if we don’t seal it with emptiness, the merit can be weakened, even if it is not destroyed.

We need to collect a lot of merit in our day-to-day life and practice kindness every day towards sentient beings, all the time, as much as possible, from the heart—this is Dharma. Each act of kindness becomes the cause for success not just in this life but in hundreds of thousands of lifetimes. From one act of kindness, all our wishes for happiness are fulfilled. Why? Because we fulfill the wishes of human beings, animals and other sentient beings. That is very, very important. Then we don’t experience an economic recession.

Practice with joyfulness every day. Whatever good things we see or hear about others, whatever good things happen, always rejoice. Think, “How wonderful,” like a mother rejoicing and praising her child, who she cherishes more than her life. If we act like this, then psychologically our mind is happy all the time—with no depression or unhappiness. We collect the most extensive causes of success and happiness when we rejoice. In one second, we collect limitless skies of merit. It is the easiest way to collect good luck, merit, and fulfill our wishes for happiness, and also fulfill the wishes of all sentient beings for happiness.

Then, thirdly, is patience. We may collect a lot of merit, but without patience, it is all destroyed.

Next, when someone harms us, we should practice forgiveness instead of harboring the harm in our heart. We create peace starting from one person, up to world peace. If we make a mistake and say some bad words or become angry, immediately apologize. Then there’s no grudge held by ourselves or others, and we create world peace.

Another quality to develop is contentment, especially so that we do not get addicted to alcohol or drugs and live in non-virtue. Also, develop courage in practicing Dharma: any good action that brings peace and happiness to us, the world, and others.

These are things we can do as the antidotes to the recession. Do something other than worry. Worrying makes us crazy; it doesn’t help.