Teenagers

Rinpoche advised that the Golden Light Sutra should be read five times in front of the boy. Rinpoche said the person reciting the sutra needs to have a lot of compassion and bodhicitta.

Then do the washing of a holy object. Also do the practice of Dorje Namjom (Skt: Vajravidarana) five times, purifying the person.

My most dear, most precious, most kind, wish-fulfilling one,
Thank you very much for your kind letter. I think you sent it last year, and now it may be an old letter. Anyway, the change in your mind, that happens.

Even geshes who are expert in Buddhist philosophy, in the five extensive treatises—Pramanavarttika, Madhyamaka, Abhidharmakosha, Vinaya and Prajnaparamita—even though they’re expert, their past life’s negative karma is so strong and maybe they run out of good merit, so then even though they believed in reincarnation, karma, everything before and became expert, later everything is lost.

This is due to strong karma from past lives, strong heresy from the past life. Then [they experience] the negative imprint of that, so many imprints due to that, and then they also ran out of good karma. It’s like the fuel in a bottle, when the fuel has run out then the light stops, you know. The flame, the light stops when the fuel in the bottle runs out. It’s like that.

It’s like the butter lamp—when the butter is finished, then the light stops. So when the merit runs out, it’s like this. Therefore we need to collect merit all the time, as extensively as possible, and continually, otherwise this can happen. This has happened in the past, like the example I gave.

So your [loss of faith] is nothing and it can come back; if you pray, if you collect merit, it will come back. But this is from your past life’s habit, very strong heresy, so negative, and it happens due to the negative imprints.

You can pray to Tara, pray to His Holiness the Dalai Lama, pray to Chenrezig, pray to Medicine Buddha, pray for the [positive] mind to come back, the thought for you not to become a heretical being. So you can pray again and again, and collect much merit.

Also help people, many sentient beings, even insects. Do not harm them and benefit them as much as possible, then [your faith] can come back. And in relation to the fear of insects, those insects that are given to pets, you can liberate them, then if you do that more and more, I think the fear will become less and less.

Please write whenever, if you have some questions, if there’s something you need to know.

In regard to your grandmother, pray to Medicine Buddha, and then think Medicine Buddha, with great compassion, sends light into her body, until her body becomes totally purified of spirit harm, negative karma and defilements collected from beginningless rebirths. So the spirit harm, the sickness which came from that, to do with this life, is totally purified, healed, including the lymph glands and the heart. Do that every day and pray to Medicine Buddha to immediately pacify that sickness.

Also pray that her life becomes meaningful, to achieve bodhicitta in this life, to stop giving harm to others and only benefit sentient beings, including with enlightenment. Pray like that, to create that, not only for your grandmother and yourself, but for all your family.

With much love and prayers ...

P.S. It’s like the person not believing in reincarnation—not knowing that a second moment of consciousness or mind came from the previous second of mind, and that mind came from before, that continuation came from the second before. So this present minute of mind continued from the previous minute of mind. This present mind continued from the previous hour’s mind and the previous hour’s mind came from the continuation of the previous hour’s mind. Today’s mind is a continuation of yesterday’s mind and yesterday’s mind is a continuation of the day before yesterday’s mind.

That’s why we can remember what we did this morning, what we ate this morning, what we talked about this morning, and how we remember last night’s good dream or bad dream. We remember what we did yesterday, what we talked about yesterday, what we ate yesterday, what actions we did yesterday, so we remember all that.

If today’s mind is not a continuation of yesterday’s mind, then how can we remember anything? There’s no way, it’s impossible. Then it’s like we can remember somebody else’s mind has been our mind yesterday, so it becomes like that; our mind didn’t have continuation, but it’s somebody else’s mind, then that becomes very crazy.

It’s the same as this year’s mind not having come from last year’s mind and having no continuation from the child’s mind, when we were a child. That means we wouldn’t remember anything, what we did in childhood, nothing, or we would remember somebody else’s childhood mind. So it becomes like that.

Similarly, even this life’s continuity of mind is the continuation of the previous life’s mind. So then it is the deeper and more far intermediate stage from which we’re born, so that one. For that one we would need clairvoyance; if we have clairvoyance then we can remember. There are those who can remember past lives, but not everyone can remember that.

But when our mind is developed in meditation, reaching higher and higher paths, then we can remember our past life and the life before that, and a hundred past lifetimes, a thousand past lifetimes, a million past lives, as our mind reaches higher and higher paths and becomes more and more awake.

It’s just like the walls or anything which has excellent paintings but is covered by dust—the more and more we clean it, then we see the paintings more and more clearly, so like that.

It’s the same thing with the mind. As the mind becomes more and more obscured, then the qualities of the mind become more and more difficult to perceive, and difficult to remember. So like that, by purifying the obscurations, then we can see more clearly the past and the future, and so on.

So this much is enough. Here you have some logic, some basis. People who don’t believe today’s life is a continuation of yesterday’s mind, then there are all the things that you said, that people believe this hour’s mind is not the continuation of the previous hour’s mind, the mind of an hour before.

It is very silly, the example I gave, but people believe like that. I’m using this as an example, I’m not saying that people believe it, but I’m using it as an example. So it’s all about what your mind thinks, it’s like that. I hope this gives you a little solution.

Thank you very much and I hope to see you soon.

Lama Zopa

My most dear one,
Yes, I heard that sometimes you think that the buddhas are maybe not true or something.

So it’s like this, after actualizing bodhicitta, after realizing the guru is a buddha, with that realization, correctly following [the guru] with thought and action, then having the realization of renunciation, then bodhicitta and the realization of emptiness. Anyway, on the basis of these realizations; generally, it’s not that category, and the realization of emptiness can happen before or after bodhicitta.

However, after we actualize bodhicitta, then we enter the five Mahayana paths to enlightenment. There is the Mahayana path of merit, then the path of preparation, the right-seeing path, the path of meditation and the path of the unification of no more learning. So there are five paths to achieve enlightenment.

The path of merit has three levels: the small path of merit, the middle path of merit and the great path of merit. The great path of merit is called the concentration of the continual Dharma. So when we actualize the great path of merit, continual Dharma, at that time, the gross obscurations are purified, not completely, but they are purified. So at that time wherever we are—it doesn’t have to be in the gompa or altar or shrine room, wherever we are; even if we’re in the bathroom or even if we’re outside, wherever we are—we will just see numberless buddhas in nirmanakaya aspect. Just as the Buddha appeared to general people in India, with the thirty-two signs and eighty holy exemplifications, we will see all the buddhas appearing to us in that way, because our mind is purified.

And then we continue with the meditation and actualize the path, so the right-seeing path. At that time, we have the wisdom directly seeing emptiness, ultimate nature, not only of the I, but of existent things—form, sound, smell, taste, tangible objects, so forth.

At that time we see the buddhas in sambhogakaya aspect, the higher aspect, which has five definites or certainties. These five certainties include only giving Mahayana teachings, only teaching Mahayana disciples and existing until samsara ends. I don’t remember the others, but there are five definites.

Then, we still develop our mind in the path to enlightenment, so then we achieve the path of meditation and then the path of no more learning. After we achieve that, then we achieve the unification of the holy body and holy mind, the dharmakaya and rupakaya of the Buddha.

That is the time when we achieve the guru, so at that time we achieve all the buddhas. It’s not that we achieve numberless different aspects of Buddha—we achieve this buddha, but not that buddha—it is not like that. That’s why all the buddhas are one in essence.

That is the guru, what we meditate on. So at that time we become one with all the buddhas.

It is said in The Essential Nectar that until we are separated from our evil karma, our obscurations, even if all the buddhas appeared in front of us directly, we would have no fortune to see the adorned holy signs and exemplifications. That means appearing in the aspect of a buddha. What is left is the present appearance, which is ordinary. So what it is saying is that because our mind is obscured, that is why we don’t see a buddha in the aspect of a buddha, pure form.

So, because Buddha can benefit us, he only manifests in ordinary form. We can’t see a buddha’s pure form, because our ordinary mind is so obscured. For example, because our mind is so obscured, the only way His Holiness the Dalai Lama and many of the great lamas or gurus can guide us is by manifesting in ordinary form.

The definition of ordinary is having the root of samsara, ignorance, holding the I as real, while it’s not. The I exists in mere name on the aggregates, the base to be labeled, so the mind focuses on that, and that mind merely imputes “I.” So that’s all the I is. It’s nothing more than that.

Even slightly more than that is a hallucination, and what we discover or realize is that it’s a hallucination. That wrong concept is ignorance, the root of samsara, the root of our samsara, of the whole entire suffering of hell beings, hungry ghosts, animals, human beings, suras, asuras and intermediate state beings. So we discover or we recognize that ignorance is the wrong concept.

So [the guru] doesn’t have that, but shows the aspect of having that. [The guru] doesn’t have the self-cherishing thought but shows the aspect of having that. [The guru] doesn’t have ignorance, anger or attachment, but shows the aspect of having that, and making mistakes in their actions.

With much love and prayers ...

Most dear, most precious, most kind, most wish-fulfilling one,
Last time I didn’t get to give you The Method to Transform a Suffering Life into Happiness (Including Enlightenment). If you can, read this in the mornings.

By doing this, the mind gradually develops in renunciation—giving up the cause of suffering. Then you have greater inner happiness, and every action you do brings happiness forever. 

This gradually transforms the mind into bodhicitta, the precious mind of enlightenment, which is essentially the good heart always benefiting others. With bodhicitta, every action of body, speech and mind becomes the cause of enlightenment for all living beings.

Thank you very much. I was very happy to meet you and that we came to know each other. Thank you, I hope to see you again.

Love and prayers...

My very dear precious one,
How are you? Probably you are doing well, a good girl. I’m not sure, but maybe you are being influenced by some friends who don’t like religion, because they don’t know religions. To know one hundred percent of the religions in the world would be a deep subject. It’s not necessarily that all religions are wrong. There are right ones and wrong ones, and even wrong religions have some right things. People from wrong religions are sometimes required to help poor people, sick people and other suffering people who need help.

So many beings are suffering and you have the potential—the wisdom and compassion—to help, therefore you are responsible. Even non-believers with good hearts, reasonable human beings, would help by giving money, by giving medicine to those who need medicine and giving shelter to those who need shelter. No one wants suffering and everyone wants happiness, and you can help do that. Even non-believers try to make others happy. Even animals try to make other animals happy.

Beings with more understanding—human beings, suras and asuras—can develop their mind in the path to liberation from the oceans of samsaric sufferings and its cause, karma and delusion. Suffering comes in three ways, including the temporary pleasures that we can’t depend on and can’t count on. Dharma happiness, the happiness of meditation, can be completed with the highest happiness of full enlightenment.

There is unbelievable, unbelievable, unbelievable happiness by knowing the Buddhist path. There is incredible, inconceivable happiness by learning Buddhism, even the Hinayana path, and we can achieve calm abiding with rapturous ecstasy of the body and mind. We can learn about the four noble truths and realize the nature of true suffering and the true cause of suffering. We can actualize the path and achieve cessation, which is everlasting happiness, with liberation from the oceans of samsaric suffering and its causes. It’s impossible to experience suffering again because we have ceased its cause, karma and delusion.

The root ignorance is not knowing the nature of the self. It would be very good to discuss with your friends where the I is. You can’t find it in one of the aggregates (form, feeling, discriminative awareness, compositional factors and consciousness.) The compositional factors aggregate comprises 49 mental factors—the 51 mental factors minus feeling and discriminative awareness.

I’m not saying there is no I, because I exists. But the real I that appears to you and you believe one hundred per cent to be true can’t be found from the top of the head down to the feet, nowhere. Discuss this with your friends.

The mind is not the I. The mind is the base to be labeled; it’s part of the aggregates. It looks like there’s no I for whom we fight, thinking, “he harmed me” or “he helped me.” We can’t find that real I. When we get angry back at someone, we can’t find that real I. It’s a total hallucination.

By recognizing that the I is empty, we find real peace and happiness. By realizing and developing this wisdom, we can eliminate the root of karma and delusions, the cause of all our suffering. That’s the ignorance not knowing the nature of the I. Then we are able to be free by ceasing ignorance and the cause of ignorance, the seed of delusion. We’re then totally free from all the suffering—the suffering of pain, the suffering of change and pervasive suffering. The aggregates of body and mind are pervaded by suffering. The aggregates are completely under the control of karma and delusion, and come from an impure cause. That’s why the body suffers and the mind suffers. We have to understand how this is the cause of fear, worry and depression.

Another meaning of pervaded is that the aggregates are contaminated by the seed of delusion. The consciousness carries the seed of delusion, which compounds the suffering of mind and body. It also compounds future rebirth as well as future suffering. That’s why the aggregates are pervasive suffering. Total liberation from this is what’s called nirvana or the blissful state of peace for the self.

By meeting the Mahayana teachings we can develop compassion and bodhicitta, wishing to free all living beings from suffering, especially that of the lower realms, and bring them to enlightenment. There’s incredible happiness and joy in working for sentient beings. In the Mahayana sutras there are five paths and ten bhumis, where we can achieve incredibly great peace and happiness.

In tantra, with practices such as the Six Yogas of Naropa, we can achieve unbelievable, unbelievable happiness, much greater than before, and we can use that as the path. This is the quick way to overcome delusions, the wrong concepts. It’s the quick way to have success in meditating on emptiness. Without that as the antidote we can’t directly cease the delusions and then achieve enlightenment. It’s the quickest way to achieve the peerless happiness of full enlightenment, with complete realization and cessation for the benefit of all mother sentient beings—the numberless hell beings, hungry ghosts, animals, human beings, asuras, suras and intermediate state beings. We don’t just space out. We liberate the limitless other beings in each realm from their suffering and bring them to peerless happiness. That is the ultimate meaning of life.

It’s very, very important that you use your influence and check. Don’t just listen to what other young people say. They don’t have much wisdom and don’t know Buddhism so they can’t discriminate what is right—and to be practiced—and what is wrong— and to be abandoned. You can only know that by knowing Buddhism; you have to develop the wisdom to know this. I’m telling you frankly, first learn Buddhism, then you can discriminate. Once you know Buddhism, you will see that Buddhism is deeper.

Western science is coming closer to Buddhism, which is very logical about what is wrong and what is right. If you put your hand in the fire, you will get burned. If an action is positive it brings happiness and if an action is negative it brings suffering. It’s very important to discover this, so you can learn deeper and deeper. By learning Buddhism, you will generate the wisdom of Dharma, then you can check. Without wisdom, how can you check? It’s essential. Analyze whether something is to be practiced or not. Decide for yourself.

Even Buddha himself said to his disciples, “Examine my teachings like you check gold. You examine gold by burning, cutting and rubbing; thus, examine well my teachings, then practice, not by having blind faith.”

Other religions are not like this. In Buddhism we have total freedom to practice. The more we check, the deeper it goes. With other religions, the more we check, they don’t go deeper. There are no answers, so we can’t have a clear understanding. I’m not saying they’re wrong; I’m saying it’s good to discover. Just as different food and clothes suit different people; there are different religions for different people, based on karma.

For example, there may be medicines for sickness, and many wrong medicines don’t cure the sickness but the right medicine will cure it. Religions are similar. What are called religions, faiths, don’t necessarily bring ultimate happiness, liberation from suffering. Some create the cause of samsara, of the lower realms.

Guru Shakyamuni Buddha himself checked, experienced and achieved the path to enlightenment. He had great compassion for all sentient beings, totally sacrificing himself for others. He actualized the five paths and ten bhumis, purified the defilements and completed the two collections—the merit of fortune and the merit of wisdom—achieving the rupakaya and dharmakaya so that he could do perfect work for sentient beings. After the Buddha taught, many pandits and yogis, like stars in the sky, put the teachings into practice and numberless of them achieved enlightenment, with exactly the same experiences as the Buddha. This happened in China, Tibet and Nepal. The entire Buddhadharma was preserved by the Tibetans and practiced for hundreds of years. The whole land is blessed. Now Buddhism has spread all over the world, including very dark lands, which have the light of Dharma.

Followers in the East and the West have analyzed and seen Buddhism as real. There are different meditations, actual meditations that eliminate delusion, the sickness of mind, bringing freedom from all suffering and its causes. Buddhism is the fastest growing religion in Australia and in many other countries in the West. Buddhism is very scientific. When you study, you can check and discover so many things. It’s the source of so much happiness, higher and higher. It’s very good to read Dharma books, so you can understand more and more. Then you will develop realizations.

Here I want to say something. It’s very, very important to learn to benefit and not harm your parents, but to help them and make them happy. There are three types of karma. With one type you create the karma in this life and see the result in this life. Even helping in a small way is virtuous; it is powerful and therefore you see the result, happiness, in this life. However, it doesn’t necessarily mean only that. In future lives you will experience the results of one good act to your parents, such as praising them, saying nice things. If you harm them or get angry with them, even a small negative action such as criticizing them results in suffering in this life when you are older, not happiness. You can experience suffering in hundreds, thousands, of lifetimes, from that one act of disrespect.

The other type of karma is created in this life and experienced in the next life. Then there is the karma created in this life and experienced after billions, trillions, of eons. Even a small karma doesn’t get lost if it doesn’t meet opposite conditions. The happiness or suffering will be experienced even after eons.

All living beings experience different kinds of lives: success or failure, being educated, becoming a fool or a beggar, being forgetful or wise. Life can change with all kinds of experiences. It doesn’t stay one way all the time. Then it can also change from this life to the next life—being reborn as a hell being, a hungry ghost, a human being, an animal, a sura or asura, having all kinds of lives. These are real facts and the omniscient one, Guru Shakyamuni Buddha, has explained this. Everything can be checked; it’s not blind faith, it’s not just telling people what to believe.

Every single comfort and service you give to your parents is an unbelievably precious cause of success for yourself in this life and future lives. Buddha has shown the correct life that leads from happiness to happiness to enlightenment. Otherwise, life is totally lost and ignorant, like the moths that fly into candle flames and are burnt. Once the suffering or happiness resulting from an action is being experienced, it’s difficult to stop it at that time.

If suffering comes and you don’t know how it happened, the mind freaks out and suffers so much. By knowing about karma, the cause of that suffering, the mind has unbelievable peace. You should understand that negative karma can be purified, that actions done in the past can be purified. If you learn from Buddhism and have wisdom knowing what is right and wrong—the inner science—it will become more and more clear by checking. It’s different from other religions. The more wisdom you have, then no one can cheat you and there is a direction in life for you to follow. Buddha showed how to check and put this into practice for happiness and success. Buddha showed how to develop happiness in life, so that all your wishes get fulfilled and you fulfill others’ needs through Dharma.

Getting angry is one thing that destroys good karma, the cause of happiness, collected from beginningless rebirth. Hundreds or thousands of eons of merit get destroyed by even one second of anger arising toward someone whose mind is at a higher level than yours. If you are not a bodhisattva, getting angry with a bodhisattva for one second destroys hundred of eons of merits. Getting angry with a buddha destroys unbelievably much more. Unbelievable, unbelievable, unbelievable, unbelievable eons of good karma get destroyed. The most powerful one is the guru, thus anger toward the guru is the worst kind.

Practicing patience brings so much peace and happiness from life to life. By practicing patience and not getting angry, all your merits are protected and you don’t create the cause to be born in the lower realms. One second of anger destroys realizations for hundreds or thousands of eons. So you should live without anger and have a peaceful mind. If there’s only anger, it’s better to not communicate. That helps. Instead of saying something with anger, don’t talk. All actions done with delusion are suffering.

I love you, therefore I am giving you this advice.

With much love and prayer...

Rinpoche checked more for your daughter and said you should recite the Vajra Cutter Sutra. Try to recite it once each day.

You can also sponsor the recitation at Kopan Monastery, but not just one time, try to sponsor more. Your wife can also recite it, if she is willing to.

Rinpoche said it would be very good if all the course people at the Light of the Path retreat recite it one time for her. Maybe you can explain the difficulties and then people can recite the sutra and dedicate for her.

I have some incense for you to burn when it gets bad. (That means light the incense and sprinkle it on.) Rinpoche said there is another protection that she can wear if she is willing to.