Purifying Negative Karma

My very dear, most kind, precious, wish-fulfilling one,
Thank you very much your kind letter. It may not be forever. I think you just have some karma from the past, so until you finish the karma you don’t have to worry about that.

Think you are finishing past karma, then you will be like the sun shining and there will be happiness in the future, not only temporary happiness, but ultimate happiness. You will become free from the oceans of samsaric sufferings and ultimately, you will achieve enlightenment.

I’ll be going to Nepal after three weeks. I hope there won’t be any big earthquakes during that time. After that I’ll be going to India.

I hope everything is going well.

With much love and prayers ...

My most dear, most kind, most precious wish-fulfilling one,
Thank you very much for your kind letter expressing yourself. Already I am so happy that you have been able to turn your life to Dharma, toward Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. Thank you very, very much.

How fortunate we are! We have been born numberless times as animals, in the lower realms, and as devas and human beings, and we have met Dharma just once, in this life. We are most unbelievably fortunate to have met Buddhadharma, and in particular Lama Tsongkhapa’s teachings, the unmistaken teachings of Buddha.

It is like being in a cave that never had light inside it from beginningless time till now, but for the first time light happened in the cave, so now we can see what is inside the cave and what is needed to improve. So for us that means how to complete the qualities of Buddha, how to cease all the gross and subtle defilements and achieve omniscience.

For example, by watching TV I noticed all the animals, how they are all kinds of shapes. Some are shaped like plants, some look like flowers and some like rocks, but their motivation is just seeking the happiness of this life, attachment to this life, so then they harm other living beings. They live their life just eating, then at the same time they get eaten by others. Even if they live for one thousand years they have no opportunity to confess, to purify the negative karma that they have collected in this life, but we do. Our mind is turned toward Dharma, so we have the opportunity to purify the negative karma not only from this life but from beginningless rebirths and then to develop [our good qualities.] We have buddha nature, the ultimate nature of the mind, which is not oneness with delusion.

It came out in my observation for you to do Vajrasattva practice and prostrations by reciting the Thirty-five Buddhas’ names. That is very good, but what came out in particular for you, which is not normal, is to recite the Sutra of Great Liberation. However, it is only in Tibetan and I guess you can’t read Tibetan. It is an unbelievable text, and there are incredible benefits, but it’s not translated into English yet. [Note: The Sutra of Great Liberation has now been translated into English and is available from FPMT Foundation Store.]

So it came out for you to read this, but you can’t read it until it’s translated, so hopefully soon it will be, or maybe you can check, maybe it has been translated and I don’t know.

Anyway, this is what came out as best for you, you need to read it for purification so you should read it 100,000 times. This is the plan.

Please pay attention to what the great bodhisattva Shantideva said:  "One who wishes to guide oneself and others, then practice secretly exchanging oneself and others."

Thus whoever wishes to quickly afford protection
To both the self and other beings
Should practice that holy secret:
The exchange of self for others.
 (Bodhicaryavatara, Ch. 8, v. 120)

One meaning of “secretly” is that for the bodhisattvas of lower intelligence it doesn’t fit to do that. If the bodhicitta is very strong, like a heroine, then we can renounce and let go of the I, which is the door of all the oceans of samsaric sufferings. This is the best way to achieve enlightenment for oneself and to generate higher Mahayana realizations and liberate the numberless sentient beings from the oceans of samsaric sufferings and bring them to buddhahood, by oneself. The biggest enemy, the biggest obstacle is the self-cherishing thought. Cherishing others, even cherishing one being is the door for all the happiness, include enlightenment, bringing happiness in this life and all future lives, liberation from samsara, peerless happiness and enlightenment. This is talking about oneself, but now talking about the happiness of every sentient being up to enlightenment and all the causes, so to even cherish one sentient being, even one insect, this is for the highest, most intelligent Buddhist practitioners.

The other meaning is that we shouldn’t announce to people what we practice, we should do the practice quietly. This is a mental thing, so no one can see, except those who can read others’ minds, who have clairvoyance, so no question about buddhas and bodhisattvas and arya bodhisattvas. 

And I want to say, in general if we stop harming others, then we never receive harm from others as a result and other sentient beings don’t receive harm directly and indirectly from us.

If we benefit others, we will receive benefit from others, now and in the future, and all sentient beings receive benefit from us, directly and indirectly, not only now, but also in future lives.

We don’t receive harm from other sentient beings and other sentient beings don’t receive harm from us. This is the most important practice; you have to know that this is bodhicitta practice. This is something in your life, that you have to live like that.

Then as you said, it’s good to know the benefits of bodhicitta as much as possible, so please read the first chapter and commentary on the benefits of bodhicitta in the Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life.

See also my general advice on the most important practices to do in your life, as well as the most important morning motivation to do every day, The Method to Transform a Suffering Life into Happiness (Including Enlightenment.) This is very important for everyone to do.

Please try to find and read advice on the benefits of bodhicitta.

I want to tell you a story, it is from one sutra about a clay-maker boy. He wanted to do the same business as his father, who got jewels from the ocean but then drowned. The boy’s mother was concerned that her son would also drown if he did the same business, so she made a business with grass and the son sold the grass and offered the money to his mother. Then he got four golden coins and gave these to his mother. He gave four golden coins to his mother four times. Then the son found out that in the past his father had actually worked getting jewels from the ocean, so the son wanted to go and do this as well. The mother grabbed the son’s feet and begged him not to leave, but the son beat his mother and left.

As the son went on the ocean he saw an island with palaces and many enjoyments, many deva girls, who all asked him to stay there with them, but he didn’t listen and left. Later he saw another island with the same enjoyments and many deva girls asking him to stay, but he went on. Then he saw two more islands which were similar but he left each one. Then he saw an island with a black iron fence around it and one man on the island whose head was being cut by a giant wheel. The wheel was turning and cutting the man’s head. The son heard a karmic voice from the sky saying that the wheel was going to transfer onto his head. Then he generated bodhicitta thinking “May I experience this pain for all others who also experience this pain.” Immediately the wheel left from above his head, because of the power of bodhicitta.

So the previous four islands that he saw, with many enjoyments, were the result of having offered the gold coins to his mother four times. The last island that he saw was the result of him hitting his mother. This story is to prove the benefits of cherishing others and the shortcomings of the self-cherishing thought.

This is the basis of the most powerful thought of bodhicitta, exchanging oneself for others, tonglen, giving one’s own happiness, body, possessions and merit to others and then taking others’ suffering and cause of suffering onto oneself. Then giving it to the self-cherishing thought, the ignorance, the root of samsara, so that it is totally destroyed.

It’s very, very true what you expressed. Dharma is the only thing that helps. Even if we get billions of dollars every day or even every hour, it doesn’t help. That alone doesn’t purify our negative karma to be born in lower realms. Even if we have skies of wish-granting jewels, that alone doesn’t purify our negative karma to be born in the lower realms. It doesn’t stop that.

Dharma is the most precious one. You have to know that the purpose of our life, the purpose of being born a human being is to practice Dharma, for our life to be of benefit to every sentient being. For our motivation to be bodhicitta, the wish to achieve enlightenment and to free every sentient being from the oceans of samsaric sufferings and bring them to enlightenment.

Also, reciting OM MANI PADME HUM even one time benefits every single sentient being in the six realms. Each realm has numberless beings and  it benefits every single one, including every single fly, all the flies that jump up when you walk in the grass, even the tiniest insects. It benefits everyone, even those in another universe. It frees them from the oceans of samsaric suffering and brings them to enlightenment. The benefits are amazing.

Not only when we meditate, but when we are eating, walking, sitting, sleeping, everything, begin with bodhicitta, so we are doing it for others. This means every single action—doing our job, walking, eating, sleeping and so forth—benefits every single sentient being, for them to achieve enlightenment. Therefore, practice bodhicitta, then our life is the happiest life, the most beneficial life for every single sentient being, not only for oneself. That is most beneficial for us, when it becomes most beneficial for others, it is most satisfying, most fulfilling.

Right now you have an incredible chance, you have received this human body. This is due to the kindness of your mother, who gave you this precious human body. Not just in this lifetime, but also from beginningless rebirths. The second reason is that your mother has been extremely kind by protecting you from life’s dangers, hundreds of dangers, even in one day, when you were a child, a baby, so at that time and starting from when you were in her womb. This is not the first time— she has borne so many hardships from beginningless rebirths, not just in this life. It’s unbelievable, unbelievable, not just in this lifetime but from beginningless rebirths. She gave you education, not just in this life, but from beginningless rebirths, so that now you have the chance to meet the Buddhadharma, to learn to read and write, so that you can hear the name bodhicitta and study and meditate on that. All this depends on the kindness of the mother.

So you can see how the mother is unbelievably kind and precious. This is in regards to the kindness of her being your mother and her extensive kindness to you. It is the same for all sentient beings, who have been kind to you from beginningless rebirths—every sentient being, every single snake, mosquito, bee, rat, every sentient being in the six realms. You have received all your happiness from them, from beginningless rebirths up to now and in all your future lives up to enlightenment. You receive every single happiness from each sentient being.

Please read about the benefits of bodhicitta. All your three times’ happiness comes from every sentient being, so please read the book Bodhisattva Attitude and as much as possible live your life—eating, walking, sitting, doing your job—for all sentient beings, to free them from the oceans of samsara and bring them to enlightenment.

For you, it’s best to recite the Sutra of Great Liberation. This is the best one, and it comes out again and again for you.

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

What makes your life most meaningful is meditation on the lamrim, and living your life with bodhicitta motivation. This is the best.

With much love and prayers ...

My most dear, most kind, most precious wish-fulfilling one,
Thank you very much for your kind letter, I am sorry about the delay.

I accept your confession, I'm very, very happy that you confessed, thinking that you created serious negative karma; feeling that. It is very important to feel like that; it is very important.

Yes, yes, do Vajrasattva practice with the four opponent powers and also do prostrations by reciting the Thirty-five Buddhas’ names. Thank you very much.

If you do the Thirty-five Buddhas practice well one time, with the remedy of the four opponent powers, Kyabje Denmo Locho Rinpoche said even the very heavy negative karmas—killing your father or mother, killing an arhat, drawing blood from a buddha or causing disunity among the Sangha [five immediate negativities]—can be purified.

Even those extremely heavy negative karmas—where you experience the karma without a delay and you are reborn in the lowest hot hell and experience the heaviest suffering there for eons, until the karma is finished; even if this world ends your karma does not, so then you go to another universe and are reborn in the lowest hell realm—can be purified by doing this practice.

Thank you very much.

My very dear one,
Thank you for your kind message. You are very precious, precious to me and to the sentient beings, and precious to repay the kindness of your parents. Numberless thanks, the best decision arose.

It’s very thoughtful to do something to purify your past negative karma and collect merit. Otherwise you would have to experience the  suffering of the hell, hungry ghost, animal, human, sura and asura realms numberless times. That’s just thinking of you.

There are numberless beings suffering in the six realms, and that is the real responsibility— to free them from all the suffering. That is the real responsibility and the greatest happy life. Realizing their kindness and cherishing them becomes the happiest life, the  most meaningful life.

The picture enclosed here is before the Buddha showed enlightenment. Mara attacked the Buddha, to disturb his achievement of enlightenment. This was shown in a violent way, but [the weapons] turned into flowers. Then young ladies and old ladies appeared, with organs showing to disturb the Buddha. But they could not disturb him at all and he developed loving kindness to all the maras and subdued them.

Please enjoy these photos and cards. Thank you very much.

With much love and prayers...

PS: That's very good that 180,000 people demonstrated in Hong Kong on 4 June. That’s very good they did that in Hong Kong, and they didn’t get hurt. It might help the government become more democratic and it might help Tibet also.

I don’t know the numbers but in a lot of Tibetan monasteries, so many high lamas were tortured and killed. It was completely upside down, as high officials became beggars. Unbelievable, so much suffering.

Even after Mao died, they can’t recite mantras, their lips can’t move, and they can’t have any pictures of buddhas in the house. They are able to have monasteries a little bit, but there is no freedom. Tibet has great difficulties.

When I was in Tibet, the Chinese police were watching. So many people were afraid. Therefore the demonstration might help the government become more democratic and for people to have peace and happiness and to help Tibet also. People are taken from their families, who don’t know what has happened to them and never see them again.

[Note: June 4, 2014, was the 25^th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre in Beijing.]

My most dear one,
Thank you very much from my heart for your kind letter. I understand all the problems, sadness and difficulties. Everything, the entire problem, all the shortcomings, arise from delusion, the wrong concepts and from attachment, particularly attachment. That’s what the delusions do, they cheat us, they deceive us.

Not only will we have difficulties in this life; that’s nothing. The resultant suffering in the lower realms is most unbelievable and unbearable. For example, one fire spark from the hell realms, how hot is it? It is sixty or sixty-five times hotter than all the power of the fire in the human world put together, which is like air conditioning or a snowflake compared to one single spark of hell fire.

It is mentioned in the teachings, and by His Holiness also, that we feel as if attachment is our supporter, that it is behind us, being good to us. Attachment appears to be helping us, but that is how it totally cheats us. We fully dedicate our life to attachment and become a total slave to that. Anger looks like our protector; it looks as if it destroys our enemy. We fully rely on anger in our life and it cheats us completely.

These delusions not only bring suffering in this life but also rebirth and suffering in the lower realms. It is most unbelievable, most unbelievable, most unbelievable, most unbelievable, most unbelievable. Not only that, it is said that just one negative karma, such as cheating somebody one time or killing somebody one time, causes us to be cheated or killed for five hundred lifetimes. If we kill somebody, as a result of that karma we will be killed by the continuity of the sentient being that we killed in the past for five hundred lifetimes. Depending on how we did the action of killing, we may be killed in an even worse way than what we did. 

It is mentioned in the great holy being Aryadeva’s Four Hundred Stanzas, “If you cheat one sentient being, as a result you will be cheated for five hundred lifetimes.”

In Buddhism whatever suffering you experience is all temporary. It’s not forever. Of course, in Christianity, if you are born in hell it is forever. However, in Buddhism, the mind is not oneness with delusion but is only temporarily obscured by delusion, therefore all the suffering and all the causes of suffering, the delusions, can be ceased. When the delusions are ceased then all the karma, which comes from delusion, is ceased. That’s how you receive everlasting happiness, the blissful state of peace for yourself, and not only that, by ceasing the subtle obscurations, you achieve sang gyä, or buddhahood in Sanskrit, the total elimination of all the obscurations and completion of all the realizations. To do this you have to actualize the right path.

It’s like when you are sick. You have to take the right medicine to recover and not just anything that is called medicine. In the same way, to cease the causes of suffering—delusions and karma, the obscurations—you have to actualize the right path and not just anything that is called spiritual. For that, you have to first engage in listening to a qualified teacher, then reflection and meditation practice in order to actualize the meaning of the path in your heart.

My suggestion to you is that, as you are my student, please practice these two things. One is the direct meditation on lamrim.¹ When you open your eyes in the morning please do this direct meditation in order to transform your life from kaka into gold. Transform it from a life that is the cause of the lower realms’ sufferings and not only that, but even the cause of so many problems in this lifetime, into a life that is creating the cause to go not only to nirvana but also to full enlightenment. By practicing this direct meditation, your whole life becomes the cause of full enlightenment, the total cessation of all the obscurations and cause of all the realizations, and then you are able to free the numberless sentient beings from the oceans of samsaric suffering and bring them to full enlightenment. At the end of this morning motivation are verses from A Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life explaining how to live your life for numberless sentient beings. That is great, great, great, great, thought transformation.

The other thing to do is the Medicine Buddha practice. This is the most powerful way to purify negative karmas collected from beginningless rebirth and also to achieve the success of all your wishes, especially to achieve enlightenment and free the numberless sentient beings from the oceans of samsaric suffering and bring them to full enlightenment.

For you particularly I suggest reciting the Sutra of Golden Light every day. Recite this every day, whether you finish it or not. That is another extremely powerful method for purification. It helps to bring all sentient beings to enlightenment and especially it brings so much peace and happiness in this world. It is an antidote to war and to all the other problems in this world, global problems and individual’s problems. For you to recite the Golden Light Sutra is fantastic. It brings you to enlightenment and purifies all your negative karmas. It is also good if you can encourage other people to recite the Golden Light Sutra. Then all the happiness comes and all the problems gradually go.

Some years back there was one nun in our FPMT organization who went to a small city in the countryside in Mongolia where the people were suffering very much. There was a lot of poverty and despair and the place was extremely harsh. People just wanted to leave that place as quickly as possible. She printed many copies of the fourth chapter of the Golden Light Sutra and gave them to the people. Many people came to receive a copy and they were very grateful; they kept it in their house and some recited it. By doing that, gradually the conditions and environment in that city became better and better.

When the nun returned several years later, the city had changed. It had become attractive with parks and places for the people to walk and children to play, and the people were now more affluent and happier. So the local democratic party awarded her a medal for spreading the Dharma. They said because she gave the people the Golden Light Sutra, the benefits described in the sutra happened: the weather was no longer so extreme, the rains came at the right time, the city became affluent and the people happier. This shows how powerful it is to recite the Golden Light Sutra.

Also recite 300,000 Vajrasattva mantras. You can do a little Vajrasattva practice every night and count the mantra, or you can do retreat some place to finish the 300,000 mantras. You can do some retreat —100,000 or 200,000—while you are working and finish that way, or you can do some in retreat and some while you are working. Do as you like.

As much as possible, as it’s mentioned in the morning motivation, do the work for sentient beings to free them from the oceans of samsaric suffering and bring them to full enlightenment. By recognizing all those negative karmas you have done and feeling they are bad, that itself is purification. As much as you do that, it makes the negative karma lighter and the suffering result becomes lighter and lighter, so it’s a very important quality. By recognizing what is wrong and what is right you abandon the cause of suffering and practice the cause of happiness. Thank you very much.

With much love and prayer...

Notes

¹  See A Direct Meditation on the Graduated Path, Containing all the Important Meanings. [Return to text]

You need to recite one million OM MANI PADME HUM mantras urgently, not just to purify your negative karma but also to purify the negative karma of those who killed the monk and the whole family. Recite OM MANI PADME HUM without a distracted mind. 

Visualize the Thousand-arm Chenrezig, huge like a mountain and radiating light. From Chenrezig beams of compassion are sent out to those family members who killed the monk, to yourself and to all your family. That’s the main thing. At the end of each mala think that the beams purify all sentient beings: the numberless hell beings, numberless hungry ghosts, numberless animals, numberless humans, numberless suras and asuras. They all become Chenrezig, including your family members. 

As you recite OM MANI PADME HUM, mainly concentrate on your family. Beams are continually emitted from Chenrezig purifying them. At the end of each mala think that all sentient beings are purified and become Chenrezig. Again do purification and continue like that. 

If you can, build a statue of Thousand-arm Chenrezig for the monk and those who killed the monk, for the rest of the family and for all sentient beings. The size of the statue should be 32 inches (80 cm).

 My mother used to do 50,000 Chenrezig mantras a day but when she was close to dying, one year before she died, she said she couldn’t do that much. Because she recited all those OM MANI PADME HUM mantras she had more compassion than me, though she couldn’t read even one letter because she didn’t know the Tibetan alphabet.

With much love and prayers...