Practices to Reduce Obstacles

Practices to Reduce Obstacles

Date Posted:
November 2011

A student asked Rinpoche what she could do to reduce any obstacles to finding a job, after she lost her job twice in the past two years. Her unemployment had created a lot of stress and financial difficulties for her family. She said she had experienced a lot of obstacles over the last two years, including the death of her father-in-law. Rinpoche gave the following advice.

My very dear one,
Read the Arya Sanghata Sutra five times. Start reading the sutra now, with the motivation of bodhicitta. Also, do strong Medicine Buddha practice every day, making many offerings to Guru Medicine Buddha.

Make water offerings as much as you can, and offer 100 Christmas lights day and night, leaving the lights on all the time. Make offerings every day, also meditation offering. When you offer jewels, visualize them as large, wish-fulfilling jewels, and offer a few times every day.

It’s very, very, very important to put all the Medicine Buddha photos I gave you on the altar, and to make extensive offerings and do full prostrations as much as possible.

Practice the seven-limb prayer, collect lots of merit, and maybe ask Ven. Gyurme to discuss. At the offering part of the seven-limb prayer, do extensive offerings, then rejoice. Do each one seven times. When you are rejoicing, do this for a mala or half a mala, or rejoice at least ten or fifty times. Rejoice in the merit collected in the past, from beginningless rebirths up to now, and in the future. Rejoicing means feeling happy, thinking how precious the merit that you have collected is.

Beside not finding a job, the biggest thing is that death can happen at any moment.

If you do these practices, finding a job is like an atom, and you will have even great success—you will achieve enlightenment. Your mind will be purified from subtle defilements, and not only will you be free from the ocean of samsara suffering—the suffering of human beings, suras, asuras, nagas and hungry ghosts—besides that, your mind will complete all the realizations and you will liberate numberless sentient beings from the ocean of samsaric suffering. That is the second most amazing result; the first is leading them to achieve enlightenment.

From this practice that I ask you to do, among any success, this is the highest success.

With much love and prayer...