My most dear, most kind, most precious, wish-fulfilling one,
I am very sorry for the long delay in replying to your email. Please do the Daily Meditation each morning; that is what you should do first thing. You must begin the morning with that. [See The Method to Transform a Suffering Life into Happiness (Including Enlightenment) which has now replaced the Daily Meditation.]
Your preliminary practices are:
- Refuge: 5,000
- Dorje Khadro: 10,000
You should read the Golden Light Sutra. It is not necessary to finish it every day, but you should read it for your whole life depending on your time and how much you want to read. Read it with bodhicitta, wishing to free the sentient beings from the oceans of samsaric suffering as quickly as possible and bring them to full enlightenment. For that you need to achieve enlightenment as quickly as possible. If you read the Golden Light Sutra with that motivation, it is unbelievable, unbelievable purification. You collect skies of extensive merits, and it brings all the success, including enlightenment. Also, read the sutra for peace in your country and in the world.
You should also study one lamrim text. There is the Great, Middle and Short lamrim by Lama Tsongkhapa. The short one is called Hymns of Experience and there is a commentary to that by the Third Dalai Lama called The Essence of Refined Gold. Then there is Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand by the great enlightened being Pabongka Rinpoche and Sacred Words of Manjushri [Tib: jampal zhel lung] by the Fifth Dalai Lama. There are different lamrim texts available in English and of course in Tibetan there are many more. Choose one lamrim text and read it from beginning to end. If there are things you don’t understand, you can write them down in a book and discuss with any geshes that come to teach or Western students who have studied well.
Practice effortful meditation on the lamrim outline starting with guru devotion, correctly devoting to the virtuous friend with thought and action. Meditate on the lamrim outline five times, then do effortful meditation.
Your deity is Secret Vajrapani. I haven’t done the retreat yet, so I can’t give the initiation but there are other lamas who can do it. Kyabje Chöden Rinpoche did the retreat at Sera Monastery because we requested the initiation at Land of Medicine Buddha. Once you have the initiation you can do the practice and read the commentary.
After having generated bodhicitta you can do more on tantra, the generation stage, and just a little bit of meditation on the completion stage to plant a seed.
Also do nyung-näs as much as you can. Complete any number of nyung näs each year. Doing a nyung nä well one time purifies the negative karma collected from beginningless rebirth and collects extensive merits. When you do nyung-nä with bodhicitta you collect more than the sky of merits with each OM MANI PADME HUM mantra, besides the nyung nä itself, and especially if you generate compassion to all sentient beings, then it is a quick way to be reborn in a pure land. Once you are born in Amitabha Buddha’s pure land there is no way to be reborn in the lower realms and if you are born in Vajrayogini’s pure land you will definitely become enlightened there.
Thank you very much. Please enjoy your life, making it meaningful by practicing Dharma. Not only meditating with bodhicitta but especially walking, sitting, sleeping and working with bodhicitta as much as possible.
With much love and prayers...
