Practices to Make Your Life Useful and Beneficial

My very dear one,
Thank you very much for your kind letter. Sorry for the long delay in replying. Please find attached my advice for your whole life.

For you, it comes out generally very good to study, meaning to study philosophy. Next, it comes out best to do retreat, so try to do some retreat each year. This is besides meditation on the lamrim while you are studying the Dharma and also working. All the time, meditate on the lamrim.

Regarding the lamrim meditation (see details in the sheets), please read my instructions well on how to do the preliminary practices effectively. I am giving you a list of practices for you to carry on with for your life. If you live for a billion years or even one year, this is how you can make your life very useful and beneficial.

Because one of your main practices is tong-len and the four immeasurables, it would be very good to take the Great Chenrezig initiation.

Regarding tantra, the main deity for you to practice to achieve enlightenment quickly, so sentient beings don’t have to suffer for a long time and so you can liberate sentient beings as quickly as possible, is Secret Vajrapani. When the opportunity comes, you can take the initiation, and then you can study the commentaries, do the retreat, and meditate on the path, but you do need a very strong practice of the lamrim. Therefore, you need to study the lamrim from beginning to end.

Then, the preliminary practices I have suggested are to purify your mind and for you to collect extensive merits and plant the seed of enlightenment, the whole path. These instructions are given to you so you know what to do with your life. It is not just preliminary practices, but to meditate on the lamrim, and then your deity for your quickest enlightenment. So, here is the whole guidance.

Then, please do Lama Tsongkhapa practice every day, Vajrasattva practice at night, recite the Golden Light Sutra however much you can – one line a day, one page, or more, then do prostrations to the Thirty-five Buddhas. If you can, according to your time, you can do the prostrations one time through (35 prostrations) or three times through (100 prostrations). This means you recite the names while you are prostrating. If you have physical difficulties then you can do less, or if you can’t prostrate then you can place your palms in the mudra of prostration and visualize the numberless 35 Buddhas, as well as numberless Buddhas, and then visualize that you are prostrating, covering the whole ground, or visualize billions of you prostrating, or that your body is giant so that it covers the whole ground.

Recite the names verbally with your hands in the mudra of prostration. In this way, so many eons of negative karma are purified, even just by reciting the names. This is unbelievably important and the most urgent thing, to stop rebirth in the lower realms and to take higher rebirths, so that one can practice Dharma, and so that one’s mind continues on the path, for sentient beings.

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 Buddha’s teachings, and this was the last advice Buddha gave, before showing the aspect of passing away.

Please make your life most meaningful with the thought of bodhicitta.

With much love and prayers...