The Real Meaning of Life

My most dear, most kind, most precious, wish-fulfilling one,
Billions and zillions of thanks, firstly for your kind service, being director for so many years and then even when you went back to your home, your wish to keep practicing Dharma, seeing that Dharma is the most important one. That made me so happy.

To make your life most beneficial—not just this life, but for all future lives—the most important thing is if you are able to practice Dharma. This is the best one. This is what affects your life now and also for hundreds and thousands of lives, until you are free from the oceans of samsaric sufferings and free from even the subtle obscurations. This happens by actualizing the path and achieving enlightenment—the total cessation of all the obscurations and completion of all the realizations.

As you know the most important thing is to study the lamrim. This is the essence of all the Dharma, of all the 84,000 teachings that Buddha taught.

Please find below the details of the practices for you to focus on. This doesn’t mean you can’t do the other nine preliminaries, it’s just that I checked and many didn’t come out, but that doesn’t mean you can’t practice them. It just means these are the main ones to finish, according to certain numbers, what to focus on more. For certain people it comes out that they have to do so many, for some reason, or they have to do most of the preliminary practices, but for you it is not so much.

However, for your daily practice if you can do Jor-chö/Lama Chöpa, but when you are very busy or it is hard to do, or you cannot do it, then you can do Lama Tsongkhapa Guru Yoga. Otherwise if you can, do Jor-chö in the morning and then Lama Tsongkhapa Guru Yoga in the evening. Lama Tsongkhapa Guru Yoga contains a lamrim prayer, so this is most important. You can change the lamrim prayer to a different one, like Calling the Guru From Afar (short or long), Three Principal Aspects of the Path, Hymns of Experience, and so on.

Please read Liberation in the Palm of your Hand one time. Study it from beginning to end and anything that you don’t understand or that you have questions about, write this down in a notebook and then you can ask a geshe or a student who has studied the lamrim a lot, or myself, from time to time. Sometimes I won’t be able to answer quickly, but if I know I will try to answer.

Please find below the details about how long to spend on each section of the lamrim. Go through the cycle five times, then focus on effortless meditation.

As a guide for your lamrim meditations use either The Essential Nectar or the outline from Liberation in the Palm of your Hand. That is for your daily life meditation, to use as a guide, then for commentary you can use Liberation in the Palm of your Hand (this is the main one) and any other lamrim texts like Essence of Refined Gold, etc. 

However, the main thing is to live your life for sentient beings as much as possible, with the motivation of bodhicitta. As much as possible live your life for others’ happiness and for others. Not only for their mundane happiness but for their ultimate happiness, liberation from samsara, the state of omniscient mind—to bring all sentient beings to achieve that and to live your life for that, as much as possible. Dedicating your life to others means that even your eating, walking, sitting, doing job etc. every activity that you do is for others.

Then not only does it become Dharma, unstained by attachment to this life, but it becomes pure, real Dharma. All the actions become the cause to achieve ultimate happiness, the blissful state of peace, the real nirvana, to be free forever from the oceans of samsaric sufferings, and not only that, they become the cause of enlightenment—the total elimination of all the obscurations and completion of all the realizations. Then you are able to free the numberless sentient beings from suffering and bring them to the peerless happiness, enlightenment.

Even shopping, everything you do, as much as possible do it with this mind so that it becomes Dharma. In this way not only meditation is Dharma, but all your activities and your whole life, as much as possible, becomes Dharma. That is the real meaning of life, living life with bodhicitta. That makes your life most useful for numberless sentient beings and most useful for yourself. Then from there all the happiness comes, all the inner happiness, nirvana, ultimate happiness and enlightenment for yourself and for numberless sentient beings. So you can see it is the most important thing to practice.

With much love and prayers...

Practices

• Refuge: 40,000
• Mandala Offerings: 500,000. Do this within the seven limb practice. Start with one or three long mandala offerings, then you can do the rest in that session using the short verse and counting in this way. Please look in my commentary on Lama Tsongkhapa Guru Yoga, as there is a short commentary on mandala offering within that.
• Dorje Khadro Burning Offering: 200,000
• Tsa-tsas, Green Tara and Heruka: 1,000, divided between the two, therefore make 500 of each.
• Also read Liberation in the Palm of your Hand one time, from beginning to end.
• For your daily practice do Jor-chö/Lama Chöpa and if you don’t have time then do Lama Tsongkhapa Guru Yoga.

Lamrim meditation

• Guru devotion: two months
• The graduated path of the lower capable being: nine months
• The graduated path of the intermediate capable being: two months
• The graduated path of the highest capable being
  
  • Bodhicitta: two months
  • Emptiness: two months

Do this cycle five times and then do effortless meditation.