Lama Tsongkhapa Guru Yoga Retreat

Lama Tsongkhapa Guru Yoga Retreat

Date of Advice:
May 2014
Date Posted:
May 2015

A student working at a Dharma center wished to do retreat for about two weeks. He wrote: “With folded hands I respectfully ask that Rinpoche kindly advises me on the subject for this retreat. Kind Lama, please suggest to me what would be most beneficial for those who I work with and all of the kind mother sentient beings who have been so kind to me.”

My most dear, most precious, most kind, wish-fulfilling one,
I still appreciate from my heart all that you do. You are so active, so alive, doing so many activities for the center, helping me, helping His Holiness, helping Lama Yeshe, helping the teachings of the Buddha and helping sentient beings. Thank you so much, a billion, zillion times.

So my suggestion for the two weeks is to do prostrations by reciting the names of the Thirty-five Buddhas in the morning and also at the beginning of each session, and to do retreat of Lama Tsongkhapa Guru Yoga. Please listen to the teachings from the recent Light of the Path retreat. [Held in May 2014, North Carolina. Video recordings of all the retreat teaching sessions can be viewed on the FPMT website.]  Do meditation on my recent teachings on guru devotion given at the Light of the Path retreat, then recite migtsema.

At the beginning do guru devotion meditation, after you have done meditation using quotations and logic that prove to your mind that the Guru is [inseparable from] the Buddha. Before that, you saw the Guru and the Buddha as two separate things. When you have proved that they are one in essence then recite Lama Tsongkhapa Guru Yoga and migtsema mantra and do visualization, purification mainly.

Then you can do receiving the four [of the seven] wisdoms—great wisdom, clear wisdom, quick wisdom and profound wisdom. Then whichever wisdom you want to expand, you can do more of that one. There is a secret meditation, but you need to receive it after you have received a Highest Yoga Tantra initiation. I can do the lung by telephone for you, then you can do the meditation, if you have previously received a Highest Yoga Tantra initiation.

Before you start your retreat you can study my commentary on Lama Tsongkhapa Guru Yoga, if you are a follower of Lama Tsongkhapa. I was advised by Kyabje Tsenshap Serkong Rinpoche that this guru yoga practice is such an important meditation.

Then at night of course do Vajrasattva practice. Please read my general advice for retreat also.

With much love and prayers...