• 300,000 refuge with meditation
• 70,000 four immeasurables with meditation
• 100,000 water bowl offerings
• 500,000 tsa-tsas: to be divided between different deities with some Lama Tsongkhapa
• Kadampa stupa
• 30,000 prostrations to the Thirty-five Buddhas

Try as much as possible with the tsa-tsas. It is unbelievable merit and purification, and a good way to achieve enlightenment. If it’s really difficult and you can’t do all the tsa-tsas with plaster, you can print them on paper.

In life read the Sutra of Golden Light once a week, so that’s four times in one month. There are elaborate, middle and short versions. Middle is good but you can read all three versions—one time short, one time middle and one time long, but mostly middle is OK.

Recite OM MANI PADME HUM as much as possible. This purifies obscurations and negative karma collected since beginningless rebirth—more than all the drops of water in the ocean, the blades of grass growing in the fields and atoms on earth. If this mantra is recited with bodhicitta, more than skies of merit are collected.

This is an easy way to go to Amitabha’s pure realm and never be reborn in the lower realms. It is a good way to achieve enlightenment because you receive blessings from Avalokiteshvara. It is good to count however many you finish a day, so you can rejoice each day. This helps and is good.

The best lam-rim for you is Manjushri’s Own Words [The Sacred Words of Manjushri by the Fifth Dalai Lama.] Read this in English two times from beginning to end. Mark anything that you don’t understand with orange highlighter. You shouldn’t use black lines on or under the letters, as this will be a cause for you to go to the black line hell. Mark with nice pink or orange color, as if you are offering color to the holy speech, or write down in a different book and find a geshe or older students at the center to discuss. So do that and then do effortful meditation.

Effortful meditation

Follow this outline three times in total:

• Guru devotion: four months
• The graduated path of the lower capable being: ten months
• The graduated path of the middle capable being: fifteen months
• The graduated path of the higher capable being:
  
  • Bodhicitta: two months
  • Emptiness: two months

Deity: Yamantaka to achieve the quickest enlightenment.

If you can make your life this way, it will be extremely fruitful and beneficial for sentient beings. The Buddha practiced the six paramitas for three countless great eons. For three countless great eons he practiced for us sentient beings to be free from oceans of great suffering and to bring us to full enlightenment.

He made charity of his limbs and gave his whole body to a tiger. For three countless great eons the Buddha made great charity of his limbs for us to reach happiness. He did this selflessly and totally for others. He practiced patience, morality and so forth for three countless eons, for us to reach happiness and to be free from oceans of great suffering, and to bring us to ultimate enlightenment.

The hardships we suffer to practice Dharma are hardly anything. We must enjoy life by thinking how the Buddha suffered for us.

With much love and prayers...