Dear Lesley,
Sorry for the very long delay in replying to your letter. Please find enclosed instructions on how to do the different practices and the specific practices that came out best for your quickest enlightenment.
Please study the Dharma well and, at the same time, do the meditations on the lam-rim. The main one is to have a realization of bodhicitta in this life, and before that, renunciation.
First, check your present level of mind, if you have any realizations of the lam-rim, then do the next step of the lam-rim. If you don’t have realizations, then start from the beginning: guru devotion, renunciation of this life, perfect human rebirth, bodhicitta, and emptiness.
Then as a basis for planting the seed of the whole path to enlightenment in one’s mind, every day recite one complete lam-rim prayer, such as the Foundation of All Good Qualities or Lama Tsongkhapa’s Hymns of Experience, any lam-rim prayer. Also, recite one completion stage prayer every day, this is often found in the long sadhana of your main deity, at the end, where there is a prayer that goes through the stages of the path. This way, every day, you are leaving imprints of the whole path. This is extremely important to do every day because this plants seeds every day.
Then, whatever you do, as much as possible do it with bodhicitta.
With much love and prayers,
Lama Zopa
- Prostrations: 100,000, reciting the 35 Buddhas' names
- Mandala offerings: 300,000
- Vajrasattva: at night, 21 long mantras, with practice
- Guru Yoga: If possible, every day, it could be Lama Tsongkhapa Guru Yoga or Lama Chöpa, if you have time
- Diamond Cutter Sutra: 20,000
This is unbelievable purification practice. Doing this practice you collect incredible amounts of merit, limitless. This is such a quick way to realize emptiness, to be liberated from samsara, to liberate numberless sentient beings from all the sufferings and their causes, and to bring them to enlightenment. This is something that you should be most unbelievably happy to do, and do all the recitations with the thought of bodhicitta, the thought of benefiting all sentient beings. Also, if you can dedicate to all the projects of the FPMT, this would be very helpful. Also, this practice helps very much to pacify all the obstacles to your studies and all the obstacles to attaining the path to enlightenment.
