Preliminaries, Vajra Cutter Sutra and Lamrim

My most dear, most kind, precious wish-fulfilling one,
I am very sorry for the many eons of delay to reply to your request.

• Your main deity is Secret Vajrapani, but if there is the possibility to take a Secret Hayagriva initiation (this is not Most Secret Hayagriva) you can do that.
• Four immeasurable thoughts: 10,000
• Tsa tsas: 200,000. Divide between Guru Shakyamuni Buddha and the three long-life deities. This will help for the long life of you and your family. You should dedicate for His Holiness the Dalai Lama, holy beings who work for sentient beings, for the Sangha who preserve and spread the teachings, for the benefactors of the Sangha and the teachings of Buddha, and for anyone who does good things for others, also for evil beings, as Lungtok said many years ago, for them not to create negative karma and to create good karma and have meaningful, long lives. Dedicate for sentient beings to purify their negative karma.
• Water bowl offerings: 20,000
• Dorje Khadro fire puja: 100,000
• Mandala offering: 200,000

The majority of your practice should be the Vajra Cutter Sutra. Even if you don’t finish reading it in one day, read it the next day. Slowly, slowly, see if you can do 100,000. Sometimes do the recitations in retreat for five days or seven days. You can do sessions. Otherwise, read it sometimes more like retreat but read whatever you can each day. It is an excellent, quick way to realize emptiness so you can be liberated from the oceans of samsaric suffering very soon and then liberate the numberless sentient beings from the oceans of samsaric suffering and with bodhicitta bring them to enlightenment.

Your main study text is Lama Tsongkhapa’s Lamrim Chenmo or the Middle-Length Lamrim. You can read other lamrim texts, such as Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand, but your main text is Lama Tsongkhapa’s Middle-Length Lamrim.

Don’t worry, just do what you can. You don’t have to rush, just do whatever you can of the preliminary practices. Whatever fits, you can do gradually. Do the preliminaries one by one, or do two preliminary practices. Whatever suits you, you can do this.

You kindly praised me, kindness and all that, but I’m just an ordinary being who is trying to help the family however I can.

Do lamrim meditation, following the lamrim outline, for effortful experience. Repeat the lamrim outline four times. You can do that after finishing some preliminaries. Then do effortless meditation by going over the meditation outlines of the Middle-Length Lamrim or The Essential Nectar.

After bodhicitta is generated, then do more meditation on tantra, the graduated generation stage, and just do direct meditation on the completion stage to leave the imprint.

With much love and prayers ...