Preliminary Practices
A student wrote to Rinpoche requesting advice about his preliminary practices and for Rinpoche to be his guru. The student is an active member of the Mexico center. He met Rinpoche in Washington then saw him again at a retreat in Mexico.
My very dear Javier,
Regarding your request, I don’t have any qualities, but I accept. You try and I will try, OK? I have advised some preliminary practices.
Tong-len practice with bodhicitta is the most incredible practice for you, the greatest purification, collecting the most extensive merits and bringing you closer to enlightenment each time. You should also recite 300 million OM MANI PADME HUM mantras. This is the most important practice. Do it with tong-len meditation, not just chanting the mantra. Purify yourself with Chenrezig and then purify all other sentient beings, mostly with tong-len.
Motivate for numberless sentient beings in all the realms to be free from the oceans of samsaric suffering and its causes, karma and delusions, and to attain liberation and enlightenment, by actualizing bodhicitta and the whole path to enlightenment.
When you do the lamrim meditations, also meditate each day on guru devotion, for as much time as is convenient, even ten to fifteen minutes is OK, or longer. When you have completed one lamrim cycle according to my advice, repeat the cycle. When you do the next cycles, you don’t need to spend too much time on the realizations that you have stabilized, but continue with the subjects that you haven’t realized yet.
For example, first you have the realization of renunciation of this life, then realization of the perfect human rebirth, which is so difficult to find again, then the lower realms, delusion and karma, impermanence and death, etc.
Meditate for one day on the perfect human rebirth and its great meaning; the next day: how difficult it is to find; the next day: impermanence and death; the next day: the suffering of the lower realms; and the next day: karma. Then repeat.
Then do the same with the next level of the middle capable being. Meditate on the general sufferings of samsara, the six types of suffering, the four types of suffering, the three types of suffering, the suffering of devas and humans, and the shortfalls of delusions and the twelve links.
You can do a few cycles like this. Or, after one cycle, you can do each meditation one by one until you achieve that realization. For example, meditate on the perfect human rebirth continually, no matter how long it takes, how many weeks or months.
Start each morning with prostrations, meditation on impermanence and death, then meditation on bodhicitta, generating the motivation for life, and chant OM MANI PADME HUM mantras.
The first main practice is lamrim. The second practice is tantra.
You can read many lamrim books, but mainly Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand and the Lamrim Chenmo. For daily meditation, it is good to use the lamrim outline from Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand or The Essential Nectar. It is good to do a few nyung näs each year. Offering social service is also good.
With much love and prayers...
- Refuge: 300,000
- OM MANI PADME HUM recitations: 300 million
- Tong-len: 40,000
- Guru devotion: daily
- The graduated path of the lower capable being: one month
- The graduated path of the intermediate capable being: ten months
- The graduated path of the highest capable being: bodhicitta - eight months; emptiness - eight months