Thanks to Long-time Student

My dear one,
Sorry I did not get to write or talk to you for many years, but I felt very much to do so this time. You are not only a student, but an older member of the FPMT, who dedicated and worked very hard for many years, attending meetings. Even though you were a busy business person, you still came to meetings. I remember the first meeting at Kopan, many, many years ago.

I am sending you the thangka with Buddha Amitayus, Namgyälma and White Tara, the three long-life deities. This is for your long life, to be able to see and remember Buddha Amitayus, recite the name mantra, make prayers to be reborn in Amitabha’s pure land, have a long life and so forth.

I am also sending you a copy of the Long-life Sutra, which I translated many years ago. It is good to read and mountains of negative karma get purified, and not only that, it has other unbelievable benefits too. It is the same as reciting all the more than 100 volumes of the Buddha’s direct teachings and all the more than 200 volumes of commentaries on the Buddha’s teachings by all the Indian holy beings and scholars. Reciting the Long-life Sutra has all those benefits, as well as many other benefits.

It can help to have a long life and also purify negative karma, the cause of depression. Purification is what needs to be done. Basically, any problem we experience in this life is a result of the ten nonvirtues, and they get purified by reciting this Long-life Sutra. Not only that, but it results in temporary happiness of this life and future lives—not just one, but hundreds, thousands, millions, billions.

While in samsara we have happiness and so forth, like the incredible enjoyments of the deva realms. It also causes us to achieve ultimate happiness, liberation from samsara forever, the blissful state of peace for ourselves. Not only that, it causes the peerless happiness of full enlightenment. We can free the numberless hell beings, hungry ghosts, animals, human beings, asuras, suras and intermediate state beings from the oceans of samsaric suffering.

Even by this opportunity we do not need to be depressed or upset. It is the greatest enjoyment in life, and even that we can experience for sentient beings.

Please keep this thangka, and with the thangka there are prayers that I did for your family.

Thank you very much. With much love and prayer to you, my dear...