Practices for Life

Practices for Life

Lamrim, Preliminaries and Other Life Practices
Date of Advice:
July 2021
Date Posted:
January 2024

This advice was given to a student who had requested life practices and asked about their main deity for Highest Yoga Tantra.

My most dear, most precious, most kind, wish-fulfilling one,
According to my observation, your main deity or deities are Guhyasamaja, Vajrayogini and Tara Cittamani. You can choose according to whichever deity you have the strongest feeling for or feel closest to.

In order to actualize realizations of the path to enlightenment, the lamrim text for you is Jampel zhal lung, The Sacred Words of Manjushri. I’m not sure whether the translation is complete or not.

Meanwhile you can study Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand. According to my guru, who has total experience of these meditations, it has the clearest explanation, the perfect meditation on shamatha and bodhicitta. Study this text mindfully from beginning to end four times, so that it becomes a meditation.

Regarding effortful practice, meditate on the lamrim outline for the number of months indicated. Do this from beginning to end three times, then do effortless practice.

Preliminaries
  • 60,000 refuge and bodhicitta. Do this with the feeling of bodhicitta.
  • 70,000 water bowl offerings.
  • 80,000 Vajrasattva. Generally, you can do this as a retreat with sessions, however many you can do, or if you are working, you can do one or two sessions each day, whatever you can. This advice relates not just to Vajrasattva, but to the other practices as well.
  • 60,000 Guru Yoga. Recite the migtsema prayer according to the instructions. You can use Lama Chöpa in the morning and Lama Tsongkhapa Guru Yoga in the other sessions.

It’s very good for you to do nyung näs, and you can try to accomplish one hundred. Here at Kopan there is one nun who did two thousand nyung näs already. She did the nyung näs in a place called Tsum, which is quite far from here. Also, Geshe Lama Konchog did two thousand nyung näs.

For you, nyung näs are best. It doesn’t mean you have to finish them in a short time, like in one year, although if you do them continuously you could finish them in eight months or so. You don’t need a time limit, but it’s very good for you to do nyung näs.

The main thing is reciting OM MANI PADME HUM. Even when you’re walking, always think to purify the six-realm sentient beings from the oceans of samsaric suffering and for them to achieve enlightenment. When the mouth is free, like the Tibetans, you can recite OM MANI PADME HUM. You can also recite the mantra while you are walking and even when you are dying.

If you recite the mantra, then it can become just habit. Otherwise, when we have some very heavy disease coming, or pain or something, or when we die, we can’t practice at all, we can’t think of Dharma at all. This happens to many people when they die, then they’re born in the lower realms because they can’t transform their experience into virtue.

Each week recite the Vajra Cutter Sutra. This is very good, fantastic. It’s a quick way to become free from samsara without even thinking about sentient beings—just thinking of yourself becoming free from the oceans of samsaric suffering, and quickly, quickly realizing emptiness.

On top of that, think it’s for the numberless sentient beings. Wow! It’s so important to free them from the oceans of samsaric suffering. Just as it is important for us to be free of suffering, like that, numberless sentient beings are important. Like us, they are so precious and want to have happiness.

Welcome to enlightenment and goodbye samsara, the oceans of samsaric suffering which we have been experiencing from beginningless rebirths. Goodbye.

Thank you very much.

With much love and prayers ...

Life Practices to Purify Obstacles and Collect Merit
Date of Advice:
January 2010
Date Posted:
May 2022

Rinpoche gave this essential life practice advice to a student. Rinpoche advised daily prayers and practices, as well as lamrim meditation, preliminaries, and deity yoga.

Dear one,
I didn’t get to reply to you earlier. It is very good that you have quite a lot of prayers to do. Lama Tsongkhapa Guru Yoga is recommended and is very good as a daily practice. Within that, there is The Foundation of All Good Qualities, which contains the whole path and gives the imprints for the path to enlightenment. If you recite this every day, sooner or later you are bound to have realizations, to achieve enlightenment, and to liberate numberless sentient beings from the oceans of suffering and bring them to enlightenment. You also mentioned that you recite the Three Principal Aspects of the Path. It is very important to do the Vajrasattva practice with the four opponent powers so that it becomes a perfect confession.

One very important practice that is missing is prostrations to the Thirty-five Buddhas in the morning. You can do this in the morning, however, it’s good if you can do more than [one session each day]. If possible, do the prostrations to the Thirty-five Buddhas before reciting the Vajrasattva mantra; before doing your Vajrasattva practice. In the morning you can start with reciting the names of the buddhas. Repeat each name three times. That is very good. At least do that with prostrations. Meanwhile, in the evening time, just repeat the names once. If you can do this practice in the evening, just repeat the names one time. But when you finish, do the last part, otherwise it doesn’t become a complete confession practice.

You can also do the practice The Nine Attitudes of Guru Devotion and integrate this prayer into your practice of Lama Tsongkhapa Guru Yoga. How do you do this? When you recite The Foundation of All Good Qualities, recite the first stanza, then do the Nine Attitudes. Integrate the practice like that. If you are reciting the long version of the Six-Session Guru Yoga, integrate the Nine Attitudes into this practice where it talks about the guru:

All supreme and common attainments without exception
Depend upon correct reliance on you, my protector.
Seeing this, I completely give up my body and even my life;
Please bless me to practice only that which pleases you.

You can do the Nine Attitudes after reciting this verse.

Your main deity is Vajrayogini. What you need to understand is that to become enlightened and to lead all sentient beings to full enlightenment, you should learn the complete path of Vajrayogini. When you do the Vajrayogini sadhana, do the longer one, and for your other sadhanas you can do the short ones. This way you can spend more meditating on Vajrayogini. Chant the Vajrayogini mantra not only while you are doing the sadhana, but also when you are walking around. When you die, you will be able to easily remember the mantra of Vajrayogini, and Vajrayogini will bring you to the pure land.

Now, the most important practice is to develop your mind on the path to enlightenment. Why? Because the main purpose in your life is to liberate numberless sentient beings from the oceans of samsaric sufferings and bring them to full enlightenment. For that, you need to achieve enlightenment first, therefore you need to actualize the graduated path, therefore you need to meditate and train the mind in the path.

One meditation you should do every day is guru devotion, but how long you do it for depends on how much time you have in daily life. Sometimes you may spend a longer time doing it and at other times you may do it for a shorter time. It depends on your time in daily life. You should do the daily guru devotion meditation until you have generated stable realization of that.

Train the mind in the graduated path of the lower capable being, which means from the perfect human rebirth up to karma. Do this for five months. For example, spend one week on each meditation topic up to karma, then come back and repeat again. Then spend two months on the graduated path of the middle capable being. You can follow the lamrim outline for your meditation, using Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand or Geshe Sopa’s text of Lama Tsongkhapa’s lamrim teachings [Steps on the Path to Enlightenment]. Then spend three months on the graduated path of the higher capable being, with three months on bodhicitta and three months on great insight, emptiness.

This is the main focus of your meditation during those times. After that, you can start again from the perfect human rebirth, and go through the topics, one by one. You spend weeks, months and even years meditating on the lamrim topics until you achieve realizations. So this is the main practice, how to develop the mind in the path to enlightenment. In other words, how to make it possible to attain enlightenment.

Each year you can do retreat with whatever time you can find—days or months. Do a particular preliminary retreat combined with lamrim or do a lamrim retreat combined with the preliminary practices. Also, from time to time, you can do a deity retreat, a tantric retreat.

Preliminary Practices:

  • Refuge: 200,000
  • Four immeasurable thoughts: 300,000. These are not just words for reciting, but to think about the meaning.
  • Vajrasattva mantra: 10,000
  • Dorje Khadro fire puja: 50,000
  • Mandala offerings: 50,000
  • Guru yoga: 300,000, on the basis of doing Lama Chöpa / Guru Puja, but mainly do Lama Tsongkhapa Guru Yoga and count 300,000 migtsemas. If you are in retreat, do Lama Chöpa in the morning, then count the migtsemas. This guru yoga practice is very important.

Write the Diamond Cutter Sutra from time to time, but you don’t have to rush. You don’t have to finish it quickly unless you have time. Write some each day. This also leaves positive imprints to realize emptiness.

Doing these practices is how to make it possible to achieve lamrim realizations, by:

  • Doing preliminary practices to purify obstacles
  • Creating extensive merits
  • Training the mind in guru devotion, seeing the guru as a buddha with full effort, by applying the Buddha’s quotations and reasonings
  • The fourth one, the actual body of practice, is meditating on the path, which I have already explained to you.

With much love and prayers ...

Welcome to Enlightenment
Date of Advice:
February 2021
Date Posted:
July 2021

A student wrote requesting practices for life. Rinpoche advised a Highest Yoga Tantra deity practice, as well as the Method to Transform and lamrim study, in order to actualize realizations of the path to enlightenment.

Artwork by Lama Zopa Rinpoche

My most dear, most precious, most kind, most wish-fulfilling one,

Thank you very much for your kind letter. The deity for you, according to my observation, is Tara Cittamani, a Highest Yoga Tantra practice. This is to achieve enlightenment in one lifetime, and not just in one lifetime, because whatever tantra we practice is to achieve enlightenment in one lifetime, but Highest Yoga Tantra, the fourth one, is to achieve enlightenment in a brief lifetime of degenerate times.

That means you are supposed to have compassion, great compassion toward all the sentient beings, feeling it is so unbearable that they are in samsara and wanting to free them from samsara as quickly as possible and bring them to the highest enlightenment as quickly as possible, to the total cessation of obscurations and completion of all realizations. So that means you have to practice Highest Yoga Tantra, and that means you have to practice Tara Cittamani.

You need initiation for this and if you haven’t received the initiation, you should take it. However, you have to receive another Highest Yoga Tantra initiation first as preparation or foundation, so even Kalachakra or any Highest Yoga Tantra—Yamantaka, Heruka or Guhyasamaja—then it becomes the foundation for Tara Cittamani.

You asked for practices. The first thing that I tell many students in the FPMT is to practice The Method to Transform a Suffering Life into Happiness (Including Enlightenment). I tell the students to transform the kaka life into gold by transforming the mind of eight worldly dharmas, the non-Dharma mind, into Dharma, pure. And not only that, even to transform the self-cherishing thought, which has caused us to suffer in samsara from beginningless rebirths, experiencing the oceans of sufferings of the hells, the hungry ghosts, the animals, the humans, the suras, the asuras and the intermediate state beings numberless times from beginningless lifetimes.

If we follow the self-cherishing thought, then we will experience suffering without end, so here transforming the self-cherishing thought into bodhicitta, cherishing others. Then you see, with that mind, not only listening, reflecting and meditating, but also eating, walking, sitting, sleeping, going to the toilet, working, everything becomes the cause of enlightenment if it is done with bodhicitta.

Not only do you not waste your life but it makes your life most worthwhile, most beneficial for you and most beneficial for every hell being, every hungry ghost, every animal, every ant, every mosquito, every human being, every sura and every asura, so it causes happiness, enlightenment for every sentient being. Amazing, amazing, amazing!

So please do this practice, the Method to Transform, every morning, if you are not doing it already. It also includes blessing the speech, so then whatever you recite transforms into millions and millions of times, like that, an unbelievable number, increasing, then even gossip done in that day becomes like reciting a mantra. It has great benefit, like that. It’s unbelievable, unbelievable, making your life so meaningful for sentient beings. Also blessing the mala is very important to recite. Thank you very much. This is the first thing.

After you receive the initiation you can study the commentary, then you can do the enabling retreat, the short retreat, and then in the future you can do the long retreat. I think it might be a one-year retreat, I’m not sure. Yes, it’s quite easy to simply do retreat; even a long retreat is quite easy. But before that, recite the Twenty-one Praises to Tara and just the mantra of Tara. You can recite that if you are not already reciting it now, until you receive the Highest Yoga Tantra initiation of Tara Cittamani.

Read, study Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand. There are teachings on guru devotion, for example, in The Heart of the Path, otherwise read the section on guru devotion in Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand. The first meditation is how to correctly follow the guru. Read the whole outline, follow the outline and all the explanations and then you will understand. It will help to eliminate wrong, negative thoughts from your mind and it will cause you to only generate positive thoughts.

For you Lama Tsongkhapa’s great lamrim, Lamrim Chenmo, came out, so you have some karma there. Of course that is very good and you will get a very profound understanding of Buddhadharma. Reading lamrim is like reading the essence of Buddha’s teachings, the 84,000 teachings, like that. Also very important is Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand which is taught by the great Heruka, Kyabje Pabongka Dechen Nyingpo from Tibet. You can choose whichever one of these two lamrims. The most simple text is Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand then Lamrim Chenmo, so you can read both. Start with the simple one, Liberation, but read both. You can start with the one that is more simple, but it still gives a clear idea.

Study Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand one time or Lamrim Chenmo fifteen times, reading mindfully in order for it to become a meditation. Not so fast, but to have a positive imprint to have realizations of the lamrim, the path to enlightenment. Enlightenment is not just for our happiness, that’s a hang-up, sort of like taking drugs. It’s not like that, it’s to liberate us, because when we have omniscience we can liberate the numberless sentient beings from the oceans of samsara sufferings, and not only that, we can bring everyone to full enlightenment, peerless happiness, so that is the point.

We never waste time by reading lamrim. It never wastes our time, it is most worthwhile, and it is the way to go to enlightenment, by actualizing the lamrim realizations. Study of lamrim goes on that, so it never wastes time. It is beneficial not only for us, but for every hell being, hungry ghost, animal, human, sura, asura and intermediate state being. It is most beneficial because it leads to realizations.

You are most welcome to enlightenment—the cessation of obscuration and the completion of realizations—in order to free the numberless sentient beings from the oceans of samsara’s sufferings.

Thank you very much.

Life Practices: Prostrations, Nyung nä and Lamrim
Date of Advice:
January 2015
Date Posted:
September 2017

A student requested life practices. Rinpoche advised the following.

  • 150,000: Refuge
  • 1,000:  Tong-len practice
  • 50,000:  Mandala offering
  • 50,000:  Guru yoga migtsema on the basis of Lama Tsongkhapa Guru Yoga
  • 40,000:  Vajrasattva
  • 4,000:  Water bowl offerings
  • 200,000:  Dorje Khadro
  • 1,000:  Tsa-tsas: Vajrasatta and Eight Medicine Buddhas.

There is no specific number of prostrations, but you should do one hundred every day if you can. Many great practitioners in the past would do this, for example, Purchok Ngawang Jampa would do one thousand every day. If you are able to do some prostrations every day—one hundred prostrations or half that amount—by reciting the names of the Thirty-five Buddhas, that is excellent.

Do as many nyung nä every year as you can. As I told you, doing one nyung nä well purifies the negative karma of the lower realms and you will go to the pure land. It’s a quick way to purify negative karma and achieve enlightenment. Do whatever you can, at least one, two, three, four, five, eight or more. Do as many as possible. There are many people who do one hundred nyung näs. One lama, Drubchog Rinpoche, did two thousand and his past life’s disciple did three thousand. Geshe Lama Konchog did two thousand.

After you have studied the lam-rim completely from beginning to end, train your mind in effortful realization for one month by following the lam-rim outline. When you finish the outline do it over and over again during that one month, so according to how much time you have, you can finish the outline. You can do an abbreviated [version] each day and what you cannot do that day, then carry on with that the next day. Follow the outline like that four times then start effortless experience.

  • The graduated path of the lower capable being: five months
  • The graduated path of the middle capable being: three months
  • The graduated path of the higher capable being:
    • Bodhicitta: ten months
    • Emptiness: two months

This is the way you have to practice meditation for quite a number of years. What you should learn, of course, is mainly lam-rim but you can learn other Dharma, the philosophical texts. You can learn these also—as you get the opportunity, you can learn.

Practices After Retreat
Date of Advice:
March 2015
Date Posted:
May 2017

Advice for a student who had just finished retreat and asked Rinpoche what he should do with his life.

My most dear, precious, kind, wish-fulfilling one,
Do at least one hundred prostrations every day while reciting the Thirty-five Buddhas’ names. That’s very good if you can try to do that. If it’s evening time, do Vajrasattva practice at the end. Or if you prefer sitting, that’s OK.

Use either the Middling Lamrim or Lamrim Chenmo as your main lam-rim text. Of course you can use other lam-rim texts, but these are main ones. Still study the text from beginning to end and then do effortful meditation. Follow the lam-rim outline twice, then do effortless meditation.

Your main deity is Heruka, Cittamani Tara or Vajrakilaya. Whichever deity you have a stronger, closer feeling for, choose that as your main practice, and do the longer sadhana in order to actualize the tantric path.

Please have a most meaningful life, a beneficial life, and the happiest life for all sentient beings.

With much love and prayers...

Life Practices
Date of Advice:
February 2015
Date Posted:
April 2017

A student wrote to Rinpoche to request advice about life practices and future ordination. 

Yes, it may be possible for you to ordain in the future.

Life practice advice
  • 100,000: Generating the four immeasurable thoughts
  • 20,000: tong-len
  • 40,000: Guru yoga counting migtsema mantra on the basis of Lama Tsongkhapa Guru Yoga
  • 20,000: Mandala offering
  • Do at least 15 nyung-näs every year.
Lamrim

Choose one lam-rim text to study from beginning to end three times. There are the Great, Middle and Short Lamrim texts by Lama Tsongkhapa. The short one is called the 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 Manjushri’s Own Words [The Sacred Words of Manjushri; Jam päl zhal lung] by the Fifth Dalai Lama. There are different lam-rim texts available in English and of course in Tibetan there are many more. So choose one lam-rim text and read it from beginning to end three times.

The things you don’t understand mark with orange color as an offering, like painting a buddha statue or thangka, or like offering color or robes to holy objects, and so forth. In other words, mark the text in a respectful way. Don’t mark the texts with black ink. Marking texts in a disrespectful way creates negative karma and is a cause to be born in the lower realms. Also, you can write down all the questions you have, everything you don’t know in a book and then discuss these afterwards with the geshes or Western students who have done very good study in the Basic and Masters Programs. If there is someone who has studied well, then they can help.

Practice effortful meditation on the lam-rim outline for the number of months indicated. Follow the outline five times, then do effortless meditation.

Your Deity

Vajrayogini, but Yamantaka also comes out. So first you can take Yamantaka initiation if you haven’t already done so, then do the retreat and study. Then you can take Vajrayogini initiation and practice Vajrayogini. In your daily life practice—the sleeping, eating and all the yogas—if you prefer Vajrayogini you can do that, but if you prefer Yamantaka you can do that. Vajrayogini also comes out very strong. In the future you can also study and do retreat on Vajrayogini.

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