Retreat Advice

My most dear, most kind, most precious, wish-fulfilling one,
Thank you for your email.

Regarding your retreat, first please look at the lamrim instructions and essential practices, then begin in the morning with the morning motivation, How to Make My Lives Wish-Fulfilling: The Method to Transform a Suffering Life into Happiness.

Then on basis of that, your retreat should be mainly a retreat on guru devotion. In the morning, do one hundred prostrations (by reciting each of the names of the Thirty-five Buddhas three times), then do several mandala offerings, then lamrim meditation on guru devotion. In the evening time do one set of prostrations by reciting the Thirty-five Buddhas names and Vajrasattva.

The main thing is guru devotion and to do everything with bodhicitta, not only your meditation but eating, walking, sleeping, sitting. As much as possible, do everything with bodhicitta to benefit sentient beings.

If you have notes from the London teachings, my teachings on guru devotion, or if you can get them to listen to, please use those. [See the LYWA book Sun of Devotion, Stream of Blessings]. Also read Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand, the section on guru devotion, and The Essential Nectar, that is very, very good.

Then during the break times, after lunch, etc., read the whole lamrim. Read other sections in the breaktimes; read the texts from beginning to end so you become familiar with them.

Please continue to make your life most meaningful with the thought of bodhicitta.

With much love and prayers ...

My most dear, most kind, most precious wish-fulfilling one,
Thank you very much for your kind letter and information about all your practice. It’s excellent, all that you did; it’s excellent, excellent.

The main thing, the most important thing is guru devotion meditation, so you must read The Heart of the Path. Please read this. Dr. Nick Ribush is an old student who worked at Wisdom Publications and now Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive. He started Wisdom Publications and he has been working on Dharma books since he first met the Dharma. He has been keeping busy on books and I have been working with him on books and translations. He and his former partner Yeshe Khadro have been so busy working for FPMT, working for the benefit of sentient beings and the teachings of the Buddha.

Nick said that The Heart of the Path is the best book that he has seen amongst all the books. This is what he said. Please read this book. It is most important, to practice, to follow well, to correctly devote to the virtuous friend. Also, meditate on renunciation, bodhicitta, right view and on top of that if you can, tantra—generation and completion stages.

If you don’t have realizations of guru devotion and the three principal aspects of the path, you need to spend more time on that, and then after that, tantra. So, second is tantra. Whatever you can, doing the preliminaries, that is extremely good.

In this way dedicate your life for sentient beings as much as you can—eating, sitting, sleeping, going to the toilet. As much as you can, besides the daily meditation, everything should be done with bodhicitta.

So that’s it. Thank you very much. A billion, zillon, trillion thanks.

With much love and prayers

My most dear, most kind, most precious, wish-fulfilling one,
Thank you for your email and what you expressed. I checked and it is best for you to do Vajrasattva retreat, with recitation of 500,000 mantras. It’s also very good if you can attend Geshe-la's teachings at the same time. If you can do both, that is very good.

Do the retreat in a more relaxed way.

Generally, what you need is to meditate more on impermanence and death and the lower realms. Death can happen anytime. Meditate on this. You have received this perfect human rebirth just one time; also meditate on the suffering of the lower realms. Meditate on the lamrim more.

Please recite Pabongka Rinpoche’s Heart-Spoon [Now revised and renamed as known asThe Heart's Utmost Need], every day, really recalling impermanence and death. That will help you and other sentient beings.

If your mind is subdued it will help you, however, you are just one person and other sentient beings are numberless, so their happiness is more important than yours, in order to free them from the sufferings of samsara and for them to achieve enlightenment.

Please try this.

With much love and prayers ...

Dear one,
This is best:

• Take long life initiation next year.

• 500 long life tsa tsas. You can request the Kopan nuns to do these, or they could be done at Nalanda. You just need to be very careful the holy image isn’t damaged while they are being made.

• Do Amitayus long life practice / meditation. Recite at least 300,000 mantras and do the sessions in the morning. Do this not only for yourself; in your heart think of His Holiness the Dalai Lama and all your gurus, and the Sangha who preserve and spread Dharma. Include the benefactors who support Dharma and all those who do good things for others, and also the evil beings—for them to meet Dharma and abandon nonvirtue, and to adopt Dharma. Of course, include your family.

First complete all the study and the practices above, then check again about retreat.

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

Yes, doing 200,000 Vajrasattva mantras as you walk is very good. You can do this as if you are making pilgrimage, and at the same time you can do a sort of retreat, like Vajrasattva, while you are walking. Also you can do things like refuge or reciting OM MANI PADME HUM and so forth.

Many years ago, His Holiness the Dalai Lama gave Chenrezig initiation and the commitment was 600,000 recitations of OM MANI PADME HUM. I met a very learned, expert monk in philosophy who had taken the initiation. He was making pilgrimage in Nepal and at the same time reciting OM MANI PADME HUM, the commitment he had received from His Holiness the Dalai Lama. He did this while he was travelling. Of course he was very busy at his monastery, reading texts, teaching and educating others, and learning himself. So he did the commitment immediately like this, with pilgrimage in Nepal.

It’s incredible to use the time like this. It’s so profitable and meaningful, instead of complaining, “I can’t get it done. I don’t have time, blah, blah,” but at the same time having so much time for gossiping and many other things, like eating, drinking and so forth.

Also during the walk or pilgrimage or while travelling, you can, for example, do lamrim meditation. It’s not always necessary to be in a room, sitting on a cushion and closing your eyes. You don’t always need to do that.

You can follow the lamrim outline on guru devotion for however many months you are travelling. Meditate on guru devotion by following the outline, to develop from your side the realization that sees the guru as all the buddhas—one guru as all the buddhas and one buddha as all the gurus—until you are able to realize this from your side, without effort, stable.

Whenever you have this stable realization for weeks, months and years, for your whole life, then come all the realizations up to omniscience, including the three principal aspects of the path (the foundation) and tantra (the two stages) up to the omniscient mind. Then you can even achieve enlightenment in one life. You can achieve enlightenment quickly, in a brief lifetime of this degenerate time, like Gyalwa Ensapa, Chökyi Dorje, Milarepa and many others.

When you are travelling, you can meditate on lamrim for one week, one month or whatever length of time you have. You can go through the outlines of the lamrim, for example, meditating on renunciation. Do this to get the realization that sees the whole entire samsara is in the nature of suffering, like being in the center of a fire or in a prison, or as if your naked body is sitting in a thorn bush. You see that it’s only in the nature of unbelievable suffering. Again do that for however long it takes to have the realization—weeks, months or years—until it is stable.

Or meditate on bodhicitta, again like that. On the basis of renunciation, meditate on bodhicitta. Think how you feel yourself being in samsara, that it’s most unbearable, and like you, there are numberless other sentient beings in samsara, so it is most unbearable, unbearable, unbearable. That is great compassion, wanting to free them from the oceans of samsara suffering. That is the basis of the realization of compassion and bodhicitta, wanting to achieve enlightenment for sentient beings. Meditate on this until it comes without effort, naturally; until it comes continually, day and night.

Also meditate on emptiness, using different techniques of emptiness and mindfulness and dependent arising—subtle dependent arising and dependent arising according to Madhyamaka Prasangika view. For example, the I exists in mere name, so practice mindfulness of that. Also practice mindfulness of action and object, which exist in mere name. Then that becomes a meditation on emptiness only, shunyata. Your understanding of shunyata and dependent arising then becomes oneness. That’s excellent, incredible.

In this way, however many months or years of travelling you do, it becomes the antidote to samsara and the root of samsara, ignorance. It directly cuts ignorance. This mindfulness is an extremely profound meditation.

Then with bodhichitta—if you are doing everything with your body, speech and mind with bodhicitta, then wow, wow, wow! You collect unbelievable merit, more than skies of merit every time you do that. Wow, wow, wow! This is without talking about tantric practice.

Thank you very much. This is to give you an idea.

Thank you very much for your service and for dedicating your life to His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Lama Yeshe and all the gurus, to fulfill their wishes. That is also service to the teachings of the Buddha, from where all the sentient beings receive all the happiness up to enlightenment. That is the ultimate goal, to bring the numberless sentient beings to enlightenment.

You receive all your past, present and future happiness including enlightenment from sentient beings. They are the most kind, most dear, most precious, wish-fulfilling ones and they have been your mother and kind in four ways from beginningless rebirth. [Your mother] gave you your body, particularly this human body, which allows you to practice Dharma; she protected your life from hundreds of dangers every day; she bore so much hardship every day, day and night, and she gave you an education. From beginningless rebirth every sentient being has been kind to you.

Serving sentient beings is the ultimate thing, in order to free them from the oceans of samsara suffering and bring them to peerless happiness, buddhahood—the cessation of all the obscurations and completion of all the realizations. That is the main purpose of life and what life is for, every single breath. In that way every second of your life is most meaningful, most beneficial, most happy.

Thank you very much.

Sometimes this can be better than sitting meditation, when you fall asleep, and then you become like a pig or a bear in hibernation.

With much love and prayers ...

My very dear one,
It is most, most, most important, as you know, to meditate on the usefulness of the perfect human rebirth. You must think this through carefully, again and again.

As Pabongka Rinpoche mentioned, there are the three great meanings. We have a very special human rebirth this time, so we have unbelievable potential to achieve enlightenment even in one lifetime. Also we have the three substances received from the mother and the three substances received from the father.

Our life can finish at any moment. It can finish in this moment or the next moment, therefore we must meditate on impermanence and death.

Even if we try to practice Dharma, most of the time we create negative karma, which will result in rebirth in the lower realms. We need to meditate now.

I cannot give you more advice on your work and finance. You need to think about these things carefully, and it’s something you have to be responsible for.

I can give you advice for the practices which I already explained above, but I checked again and what comes out best for you is to live in retreat. You have to understand that the real retreat is not being in a cave in a remote place. The real retreat is keeping the mind in the right place, taking care of the mind. The mind has to be in retreat, not the body. You have to understand this; maybe you are forgetting this.

Love and prayer ...