Dear most precious one, you who are not a seeker of liberation for yourself but a seeker of enlightenment for all sentient beings.

I am extremely happy with what you are doing because you are practicing the heart of the eighty four thousand teachings of the Buddha (the lam-rim), not just what’s “called” meditation or just only “one” meditation technique from the path.

What you are doing is putting into practice and trying to actualize what you have learned all these years. What you are doing is the real, ultimate solution for world peace, not only global peace but also for all countless universes, for all sentient beings. First one gets rid of one’s own delusions, so countless sentient beings don’t receive harm from you, only receive peace and happiness, and are liberated from the oceans of samsaric sufferings caused by delusions and karma by your revealing the path to them through your experience.

Doing retreat means you’re making war with your inner enemy—delusions, to conquer them, which have defeated you from beginningless samsaric rebirths, from time without beginning. All other enemies (external enemies) cannot last as long as that.

Therefore, it is extremely worthwhile spending time with your precious human life to make war with the inner enemies, to defeat them, no matter how difficult it is, no matter how many lifetimes or eons it takes.

Once defeated (including the seed of delusions) then that’s it, they never come back because there is no cause, because the imprint (seed) is eliminated. Therefore, this is the one time to make war with Dharma practice (the antidote to delusions), to destroy the delusions, even though it may take many lifetimes, even eons. We have this just one time to work on them with our Dharma practice.

With external enemies, even if you kill them, other beings become your enemy, and that same being will become your enemy and harm you, again and again, in other lives, without end! As long as you have the inner enemy, delusions, the external enemy will never end. If one is in harmony with other beings and offers service to them, all of them will offer benefit and happiness to you. If one devotes oneself to a delusion, it will harm you and will continue to cause suffering again and again in the future.

Even if suras, asuras, and all living beings rise up as an enemy toward me, they can’t lead me into the fire of the inexhaustible hell realm. Doing retreat is also a blessing for the area in which you live, especially if you are meditating on bodhicitta and also when you perform tantric practices.

Each of the eighty four thousand teachings taught by Buddha, every single word of the Dharma, the whole Kangyur and Tengyur, including OM MANI PADME HUM is to tame the mind, to take care of the mind. The mind enables us to achieve enlightenment and to experience hell, to experience samsara and to experience liberation, to experience peace and happiness in our daily lives and problems in our daily lives.

Whatever you experienced in the past and whatever you are experiencing now—forms, sounds, smells, tastes, tangible objects, and memories, including imagining the future, all of it comes from the mind. All the mountains that you can see around here came from the mind, from karma; the colours and forms, the shape of the rocks, and the mind which labels this and that—all come from the mind.

For success, one needs morality, samaya, and a good heart. Perform your practice with a good heart, and live your life with a good heart based on developing guru devotion.

In the Six Session Guru Yoga it says:

Please grant me blessings to see that achieving all the common and sublime attainments is by correctly devoting to the virtuous friend. Give up even one’s own body and life to accomplish what only pleases you.

In the Fifty Verses of Guru Devotion it says:

Do everything that pleases the guru. Abandon all the things that displease him!

Why? By pleasing him or her one will achieve the sublime transcendental wisdom of omniscience.

Please enjoy these offerings and the picture of Tara for long life. But don’t have a concept of a permanent life. Death can come any day, at any moment.

There is also a photo of Mickey Mouse for you, with prayers for success in your practice.

Any experiences, any development in the heart (or actual realization), even a strong experience of lam-rim, is a great development, a great progression for the FPMT organization.

With much love and prayers...