Tsa-tsas

If you do nine tsa tsas according to the tradition of Lama Atisha, prepare everything according to what is normally instructed for making tsa tsas.

When you make the first tsa tsa think and dedicate: I will make this tsa tsa to complete all the wishes of the holy mind, that the three times (past, present and future) virtuous friend has.

Second tsa tsa: Dedicate, thinking to purify: May the tsa tsa purify completely, purify the obscurations and accumulate the merits of all the fathers and mothers of the past, present and future.

Third tsa tsa: Dedicate to purify the obscurations and negative karma of having collected the five heavy negative karmas without interruption of myself and all sentient beings.

Fourth tsa tsa: Dedicate for myself and every sentient being to not be reborn in the eight states, which have no freedom to practice Dharma.

Fifth tsa tsa: Dedicate, particularly, for myself and every sentient being to not be reborn in the three lower realms.

Sixth tsa tsa: Dedicate to heal all the diseases of all the sick people, myself and every sentient being.

Seventh tsa tsa: Dedicate that all devas who are dying not be reborn in a suffering world.

Eighth tsa tsa: Dedicate for intermediate state beings (to not have fear, to not suffer and to be born in a pure land where they can become enlightened or attain a perfect human body and meet Dharma in order to achieve enlightenment).

Ninth tsa tsa: Dedicate for all the sentient beings (to purify all the obscurations and achieve enlightenment).

Lama Atisha gave this advice on how to dedicate tsa tsas to Zue Dorje Gyaltsen (zus rdo rje rgyal mtshan). Then Dorje Gyaltsen gave this practice to Geshe Drogpo Kharpa (dge bshes grog po mkhar pa). Then he gave to Geshe Draknakpo (dge bshe brag nag pa), who gave to Gomrimpa (sgom rim pa), then he gave to Droe (grod) then he gave to Zhang (zhang) and then he gave to Chim (chim).

This is Lama Atisha’s tradition of practice for making tsa tsas, his holy heart practice. This is how he practiced. It is very inspiring. It gives incredible inspiration; then we want to make tsa tsas.

This is the idea of totally mad Zopa. In the West it is easier [to do this practice] as tsa tsas are not made from earth dust, they are made from plaster, so you can make many tsa tsas at one time. You can dedicate each tsa tsa according to what Lama Atisha explained. You can do like that or if you want to do more then you can dedicate for each two tsa tsas, each three tsa tsas or five tsa tsas, like that. You can do like that and if you don’t have time at all, if you are going to die right now then make one tsa tsa before the breath stops. Make one tsa tsa but dedicate that for all the nine purposes, the nine reasons.

OK. You are most welcome to enlightenment and to liberate sentient beings from the oceans of samsara as quickly as possible and to bring them to enlightenment as quickly as possible.

Thank you very much. Thank you very much.

My most dear, most kind, most precious, wish-fulfilling one,
Thank you for your email. Regarding your two-month solitary retreat, what came out best for you to do at that time is to make tsa tsas. Try to make 80,000. You can do this at the nunnery.

First thing in the morning, do Guru Shakyamuni Buddha meditation. There has been a brand-new translation of this, so please use that. Then also in the morning time do prostrations by reciting the Thirty-five Buddhas’ names three times. Then make the tsa tsas during the day. Each evening do Vajrasattva practice and recite the King of Prayers and then do the dedications that I normally do. [Find links to these practices in the FPMT Catalogue.]

When making tsa tsas with the nuns, the materials they use are earth or clay, so you have to be very careful that the images you make do not have broken noses or bubbles or missing parts of the holy body. They have to be perfect, otherwise you create negative karma. If there are imperfections then you need to fix them right away. That is part of the practice, so each one you make is best quality.

Do Chenrezig and Heruka tsa tsas for your two-month retreat, along with the morning and evening prayers that I mentioned above.

Make sure your motivation before making the tsa tsas is to free every sentient being—the numberless hell beings, hungry ghosts, animals, human beings, suras, asuras and intermediate state beings; not even one insect is left out, not even one lice—to free them from the oceans of samsara’s sufferings and bring them to enlightenment. Think, “I must achieve enlightenment, therefore I have to actualize the path, therefore I need to create extensive merits and purify, therefore I am going to make these tsa tsas.”

So you have to learn how to make the tsa tsas first. You can ask the nuns to help you. They use earth for the tsa tsas, so it’s very easy when making them for the image to be missing a nose or other things. You have to fix them as much as possible and not create incomplete or damaged buddhas. You have to learn how to do it correctly.

In the West we make tsa tsas with plaster, so it’s a different method, but still there are a lot of problems. In the Aptos house we have a pressure machine (a paint shaker machine and pressure tank) and we put the tsa tsas in that while the material is drying. That makes the images perfect, with no bubbles, because it shakes the mold as it is setting so all the bubbles disappear.

There is also a booklet published by FPMT on how to make tsa tsas. That is very good to read and become familiar with. [Find links to The Preliminary Practice of Tsa-Tsas eBook and PDF in the FPMT Catalogue.]

With much love and prayers ...

My dear one,
I didn’t think well while you were here in New York. I only asked you to take a picture of the Twenty-one Taras done by a very good artist. Now I am sending you several pictures.

The tsatsa of Lama Tsongkhapa is very precious because you can’t find Lama Tsongkhapa images like this—very joyful and not skinny, but very full. This is from Domo Geshe Rinpoche, who built the gompa in Tibet called Domo Drugkar Gompa, where I became a monk.

This great yogi Domo Geshe Rinpoche and some other lamas were in Tsang together with their guru—probably their root guru—and one day the root guru sent each of them to a different place. The guru told one of the lamas to go to Tsang and said to him, “You won’t benefit sentient beings, but you will be able to do your own practice.”

Domo Geshe Rinpoche was sent by the guru toward Domo near Sikkim to live in the forest. There the gorillas used to offer fruit to him. The shepherd of one of the rich families in Domo used to go to the mountains to look after animals and while there he sometimes saw a monk coming out and sometimes he saw gorillas coming out. He told the family, his boss, and the family told him to go and see the monk and invite him to come to them. So the shepherd went to see the monk and invited him to come down to the house. The monk accepted and came down and stayed for one year in the shrine room of the house. Then after one year he asked the family if they could build a monastery and they started to build him one.

That family’s name was Bumpo Tsang and they were a rich family in the area. They started the monastery and it was a good monastery for a long time. I became a monk there, but I only stayed there for six months. At that time all of Tibet was taken over by the Chinese. It was 1959 and the monastery was full of spies. There was all kinds of mess and Chinese leaders used to come sometimes to give talks. I offered my first examination there on one volume of a text, but I didn’t get to memorize the second volume because I escaped. But I memorized the text in the mornings and evenings in Pagri, which is a big place where I lived for three years. In the mornings and evenings I would memorize the text and every day we would go to do puja for the families who were benefactors of Domo Geshe’s monastery. We went every day except maybe once a year.

I think Lama Govinda came to Tibet and met Domo Geshe Rinpoche, and maybe heard some teachings from him. That’s why he wrote The Way of the White Clouds and a second book, [Foundations of Tibetan Mysticism] which is a mixture of tantra and science. The Way of the White Clouds was one of the first books available in the West and our very first student, Zina Rachevsky, the Russian princess, read that book and came to look for a guru at Domo Geshe’s monastery [in Ghoom, Darjeeling.] Maybe she was looking for Domo Geshe.

I was staying in a room in this monastery with my teacher who looked after me and my teacher Lama Yeshe. One monk called Drukdra, Sound of the Dragon, met Zina outside. He could speak a few words of English so he brought her to my room, opened the door and said, “Oh, here’s your friend.” She was blond and had a Tibetan sweater from the Darjeeling bus station. My teacher offered Zina some Tibetan tea poured from a Tibetan kettle into a monk’s mug and that day she drank it completely. That was the only day I saw her drink Tibetan tea. From that time onwards I never saw her drink Tibetan tea again. It was by meeting Zina that we started Kopan monastery and built Lawudo at the same time. Gradually all the other centers happened and now there are 170 or maybe more, and we have forty-four geshes or maybe even more.

Therefore, this tsatsa is very precious. Before it didn’t have anything behind it and then the artist Peter Griffin, who made many tsatsas, made the back side.

I have also sent you a picture of my Chenrezig thangka that I carry with me. That is my meditation thangka.

There is also a stupa [image] that has many mantras. That is Lama Atisha’s stupa. I saw a small one of these a long time ago, but could not read the mantras. I wished very much to see a clear one and then some years ago one nun went to Wolka Choeling in Tibet where Lama Tsongkhapa made many mandala offerings in the stone. The abbot of that holy place gave her a larger copy of this stupa with the mantras. The benefit of this is that if you wear it, then you don’t get pollution when you meet people who have broken samaya with the guru.

People who have heresy, anger and so forth to the guru and have broken their connection with the guru are the most dangerous people. For example, if a person like that was at Vajrapani Institute it would pollute everything at Vajrapani. Then even if somebody were to drink the water at Vajrapani their mind would degenerate, and they would lose all the realizations they had developed and go to hell. We receive very heavy pollution to the mind from such people, then the mind degenerates and we go to hell. It becomes very difficult for our mind to develop compassion and realizations.

If you keep this stupa with mantras on your body, then you won’t get pollution from people like this if you meet them. Also wherever those people have been the place is polluted and if you are at that place you also get polluted from the land. But if you have this protection you won’t get that pollution. So it is very, very important to wear this. Usually I wear this, but recently when I was in Australia I didn’t have this protection on my neck for maybe one or two days and there were Dolgyal people demonstrating near to where His Holiness was teaching. I didn’t feel good on those days because the road we drove on was near where they were protesting.

I think I gave you maybe three or four Namgyalma protection [amulets] at the house in New York, and I might have explained them to you.

The other thing is maybe the Tara painting that I did for Mummy Max, the African-American. Sometime after we met Princess Rachevsky, we met Mummy Max, who helped us build Lawudo Gompa and Kopan Gompa in the beginning. She is a student of Lama Yeshe and she looked after Lama for many years. When Lama was going to pass then he sent her away. I drew the Tara for her at Kopan Hill.

I also sent you a picture of a Vajrayogini that I have at my Aptos house. This Vajrayogini was painted by a monk in China and it took him six months to complete. He did it very secretly and never showed anybody. The drawing is done with coral and it is very precious.

There is one picture that looks like a naked woman holding a damaru and bell. That is Machig Labdrön from Tibet. The chöd practice became popular through her and so she is recognized as the embodiment of one mother, Mother Prajnaparamita. Chöd is “slaying the ego.” There were lamas practicing chöd before Machig Labdron. This wasn’t my photo but belonged to a nun from New York. I just sent it for you to recognize.

There was a nice green Tara that the nun had at her altar, which was very nice art. Then there is my picture of the bodhisattva Ksitigarbha with a yellow body, holding a wish-granting vase in the left hand and a wish-granting jewel in the right hand.

I don’t remember everything I sent you, but maybe the list is finished now. Thank you very much.

With much love and prayers ...

Do not put any tsa-tsas or holy objects that are damaged or broken inside stupas or statues. Doing this affects the mind of people who circumambulate the stupa.

Tsa-tsas going into a stupa should be made properly and shouldn’t be damaged. If damaged ones go in the stupa it is bad karma for the owner or maker. If the damaged tsa-tsa can be repaired—even if the border has to be sanded off—then it is fine to include the tsa-tsa in the stupa.

“Damage” primarily refers to the face and body of the holy object, including tsa-tsas with air bubbles. We should try to fix these. People making holy objects should make every single effort not to continue making damaged holy objects and should be mending any mistakes that have already been made.

Put damaged holy objects only in tsa-tsa houses. Ensure that these tsa-tsas are stored in such a way that they do not get dirty. Although it is not their main purpose, it is okay to circumambulate tsa-tsa houses.

If you have already put damaged tsa-tsas or other holy objects inside stupas, if it is possible to get these out that would be best. This would be the responsibility of the owners or makers of the stupa to do this, though of course others can create merit if they want to help.

For those who circumambulate a stupa that has broken tsa-tsas inside, there is no fault.

Students’ letter

We have made 2,756 tsa-tsas—stupas, Mitukpas, Herukas, Green Taras and long-life deities—to benefit sentient beings, to purify all negative karma, obstructions, diseases, spirit harms, broken and damaged commitment vows, and to fulfill your holy wishes. We dedicated each tsa-tsa session for the long life and perfect health of the incomparably kind Guru Chenrezig, His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama.

We also dedicated to you, holy and precious Guru, and continue to dedicate for your long life and the return of your holy Dharma speech. We dedicate to never being separated from you in this life, or in all of our future lives. Hook us with your great compassion forever! Please teach the holy Dharma to all sentient beings! Never give up on sentient beings and please remain until samsara ends!

Rinpoche's response 

Dear most dear, most kind, most precious, wish-fulfilling one,
I dedicate the merits of your practice and what you requested, and also for myself to be beneficial to sentient beings and for both of you to achieve enlightenment quickly. Thank you very much a billion, zillion times. Please continue to live your life as much as possible with a good heart.

With much love and prayers...

After finishing the tsa-tsas, you can offer them to people who are building a big stupa. You can give them the tsa-tsas to put in the stupa—either big or small stupas, however, very small stupas don’t have room for tsa-tsas. You can also put the tsa-tsas in rows around the walls in your house if possible, but not in the toilet and bathroom. There is  a very nice feeling of respect each time you look at the tsa-tsas because they are Buddha’s form, so this purifies the mind and there is a lot of benefit. Unbelievable!

It is said by Buddha, in the Sutra of the Mudra Developing the Power of Devotion,

If you look at a statue or painting of the Buddha, just in that moment you create far greater merit than making offering of 100 divine foods (nectar) and 100 divine dresses (the most precious and expensive dresses—all the human beings’ wealth is not enough to buy even one deva’s realm necklace) to solitary realizer arhats equaling the number of dust particles of the universe every day for 100 eons.

If we look at the form of Buddha, just for that moment—wow, wow, wow—we can’t imagine that much merit. So, if we have tsa-tsas in the room, we collect that much merit each time we look at them—more than making offerings to that many arhats. If we make offering of flowers and incense, etc, we create far greater merit than just seeing the painting or statue. So, it makes sense that if we offer many water bowls, this is unbelievable, unbelievable merit. Wow, wow, wow! Normally we think, “Oh, it’s just water.” We don’t realize how unbelievable the merit is. Wow, wow, wow! The bank rate goes up and down, but the merit always goes up and never goes down. There is no inflation and deflation, like with gold or the dollar.

Generally, if we want happiness, if we have faith in Buddha, Dharma and Sangha, then we have the opportunity to collect merit. Wow, wow, wow! If we don’t have faith in Buddha, Dharma and Sangha, but we have a  good heart then there is the possibility to create good karma. Otherwise we don't.

If someone has very bad luck and is born as a worm, a chicken or a pig, going around statues or stupas becomes the cause of enlightenment for them. But for worms this is difficult. Otherwise it’s difficult. Even if that person lives many years, all their actions become service for attachment to this life and their whole life is lived to create negative karma.

All these sentient beings become an unbelievable object of compassion for us. We can’t stand it even for one minute. Now they are insects and they are creating karma continually to be born in the lower realms.

It’s very important while we are human beings to not waste a minute, but to practice Dharma. And while others are human beings, it’s important to help them understand Dharma, because there is the opportunity to bring them to enlightenment. That’s why our centers are doing meditation courses again and again. You can see now why it is so important.

If you own a house and have space, you should put tsa-tsas there and also in other people’s houses. You can build a stupa outside and put tsa-tsas inside the base and around the stupa. Especially build the stupa outside the door, so many people can go around it. It’s not expensive and it’s very easy to do.

This is very good for cats and dogs and also flies and insects. Use two paper boxes to pick up the insects and then go around the stupa and tsa-tsas with them so they get purified. [Note: Rinpoche’s special animal liberation tools are available from Amitabha Buddhist Centre in Singapore or from the FPMT Foundation Store]. There is a mantra at the entrance of the box and Namgyalma mantra on top of the box that purifies them. Put the insects in the boxes and take them around the stupa. Wow, wow, wow!

Also you can give the tsa-tsas to centers for students to put on their altar, because getting holy objects is not easy and statues are very expensive. Especially paint the tsa-tsas gold, so they are nice, then people collect most amazing merit. Especially with bodhicitta, skies of merits are collected by making offerings and prostrations. We don’t create more merit because the statues are made of gold, but people can see how precious they are.