Practice Advice for Centers

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

Thank you for your kind letter and offering. I am sorry there wasn’t time to meet in Bodhgaya.

Regarding how to bring more people and volunteers to the center, the first thing is that your motivation should be exalted, having bodhicitta, being totally dedicated to achieve enlightenment for sentient beings. Think, “We must achieve enlightenment, therefore we are working for the center to benefit sentient beings.”

When people come, you must show respect. Physically respect others and be kind to them. Your speech must always be respectful, sweet, admiring, praising others. You need to be respectfully kind, with a mind in compassion and devotion to the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha.

If you have compassion, loving kindness for sentient beings, and if you show kindness to sentient beings, then people will come. When they see that you treat them just as you treat yourself—when you treat others [with kindness and respect] then they will also treat you like that.

So then other people will come, not suddenly in one day or in one second, but gradually they will come, by seeing the change, by seeing the freshness, like dirty cloth being washed, like that.

Please try this.

With much love and prayers ...

What are the Buddha’s special days? They are the Fifteen Days of Miracles at Losar, Saka Dawa, Chokhor Duchen, Lhabab Duchen and also the solar eclipses. Once the special day starts, the merit is multiplied one hundred million times.

So what can you do on these days?

• You can rejoice in your, other sentient beings’ and the buddhas’ three times’ merits.
• You can read the Vajra Cutter Sutra, Chanting the Names of Noble Manjushri and the King of Prayers.
• You can meditate on emptiness and especially meditate on bodhicitta with whichever technique you choose.
• You can do Lama Chöpa and either at the beginning or during the lamrim section, you can meditate on emptiness.
• Whatever activity they are doing at your local center, you can join them.
• Of course, you can do self-initiation—that is the best one.
• You can do prostrations by reciting the Thirty-five Buddhas prayer.
• You can make more offerings or help sentient beings more. Liberate animals, or, with bodhicitta, practice charity to people or animals—do whatever you can.
• Recite OM MANI PADME HUM with bodhicitta.
• Of course, don’t forget that the best practice is bodhicitta, tonglen.

Keep this advice, especially in order to educate others and to help the numberless sentient beings.

It is so important also to understand that if we collect nonvirtue on the special merit multiplying days, that will also increase by that many number of times. We have to be careful to not increase nonvirtuous actions on the special days, as well as during solar eclipses.

When there is a lunar eclipse, the merit is only increased by seven hundred thousand times.

The longest period of time where merit is multiplied so much is during the Fifteen Days of Miracles (the first fifteen days of Losar, Tibetan New Year). To know this is unbelievable. During all those days we can create so much merit.

Please help by letting sentient beings know, so that they can achieve full enlightenment soon.

I received the information from His Holiness Chogye Trichen Rinpoche that on the Buddha's special days, the merit is multiplied one hundred million times. This comes from the Vinaya teaching, dulwa lung [Wyl: ‘dul ba lung]. Often Tibetan calendars say that the merit is only increased one hundred thousand times, but that is not right. It is one hundred million times.

[Find links to these practices in the FPMT Catalogue.]

To overcome obstacles, you need to recite the Buddha’s Name and Mantra that Fulfills Wishes. [See The Method to Transform a Suffering Life into Happiness (Including Enlightenment)] Recite at least one mala a day. This should be ongoing and is for you and for the center’s success.

DE ZHIN SHEG PA SA DZIN GYÄL PO LA CHHAG TSHÄL LO
TADYATHA / OM DHARE DHARE / DHARANI BÄNDHE SWAHA

Palden Lhamo puja has to be done for the center. This should be done six times at the center.

It is important that the center regularly does Four Mandala Offerings to Chittamani Tara puja.

Tsog puja should also be done regularly on 10^th and 25^th of each month. These are important pujas for the center to do.

• Drugchuma protector puja: 10,000 times
• Lama Tsonghapa Guru Yoga: Students to recite this.
• Extensive Medicine Buddha puja: five times

• 8,000-stanza Prajnaparamita (Tib: gya tong ba): To be recited four times.
• Chanting the Names of Manjushri (Tib: Jamphel Tsenjö; Wyl: 'jam dpal mtshan brjod): Recite this prayer a few times.
• Prayer of the eight goddesses (Verses for the Eight Noble Auspicious Ones): Recite this a few times.

My most dear, most kind, most precious, wish-fulfilling students and brothers and sisters,

How are you? I hope everyone is happy, because of having found the most precious human rebirth and having met the Dharma, Mahayana Dharma. This means Mahayana teachings and lamrim, which show how to practice Dharma—the Hinayana and Mahayana sutra and Mahayana tantra taught by Buddha, the graduated practice to achieve enlightenment.

Please continue to make your life most beneficial for every single sentient being—for the numberless ants, numberless mosquitoes, numberless insects, numberless fish in the ocean, and the smallest insects—so that means naturally for yourself, by the way.

Live life with bodhicitta, for sentient beings. Thank you very much, I hope to see you soon.

With much love and prayers ...