My most dear most dear wish-fulfilling one Anna,
I received your most kind letter, which makes me cry at how much unbelievable effort you put, since I got sick. What a great dedication of your life so much to me, but I know that of course the main reason is to benefit all sentient beings and the teachings of Buddha. It is unbelievable.

There are no words to thank you for your immeasurable kindness, and for the:

• 21,226 recitations of the long Amitayus mantra
• 426 short Medicine Buddha sadhanas
• 426 malas of Medicine Buddha mantra
• 1,459 recitations of the Praises to the 21 Taras
• 407 malas of White Tara mantra
• 349 malas of Tara mantras twice
• 259 recitation of the Panacea of Pure Nectar prayer

Your kindness is really, really unfathomable.

When you come to Nepal, please notify me—send me a note or email to this address, to let me know you are there, because I want to meet you and thank you. Please mention these practices you did, so that I remember. I would like to meet you if I am alive at that time. Maybe I should be alive because of all your prayers.

Regarding your question, all your success depends on the root, guru devotion—having stable established guru devotion, by seeing the guru as Buddha from your own side. Of course, by that, I am not saying I am Buddha, I am just a very, very ordinary sentient being, but of course through your stable guru devotion, by seeing the guru as Buddha totally from your side, putting most effort into that, it brings enlightenment quicker. Then the other one is bodhicitta for sentient beings —having compassion, bodhicitta for sentient beings; developing this as strong as possible.

You might have read the lam-rim text Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand. This is available in English, however, even if you have it, it comes out very beneficial for you to read it from beginning to end at least three times. Whatever you don’t understand, you can write the questions down in a book, then when you have the opportunity, ask a geshe or elder student who has done a lot of study in the lam-rim, and if they understand, then they can help you.

The most important thing is to develop guru devotion, by seeing the guru as Buddha, by following the lam-rim outline and by doing meditation. Please see the attached sheet regarding the rest of your lam-rim meditations and how long to spend on each section.

Regarding the lam-rim, this means following the outline, then after this, generating the effortless meditation, no matter how many months or years it takes. If you have not achieved stable realizations of guru devotion, then continue meditating until you have stable realizations. Then also, it is important to do some meditation each day on 1) guru devotion, 2) perfect human rebirth, to get renunciation of this life and 3) emptiness.

So go through the lam-rim, first training your mind in the graduated path of the lower capable being, then the graduated path of the middle capable being and then the graduated path of the highest capable being. After you have realized renunciation to attachment to this life, then renunciation to even future samsara, realizing that samsara is only in the nature of suffering and that all samsaric pleasure is just like being in the center of a fire. Then after that try to have realizations of bodhicitta and so on. Try to do a little meditation on emptiness every day, just a little bit every day. Try to see how all things are empty or meditate that they are merely labeled or an illusion or like a dream. Meditate like that in the break times while you are active or in the office or playing football. Then after realizing bodhicitta, put effort into tantra.

For your quickest enlightenment, so that you can enlighten all sentient beings, to free them from the oceans of samsaric suffering as quickly as possible, your yidam is: Secret Vajrapani or Gyalwa Gyatso. That is your main deity and in the future whichever one you feel closer to or have more faith in, you can follow that. So you can receive the full initiation and later do retreat. First do the short retreat, which enables the action, then later if possible you can do the three year retreat, the great nearing retreat. So, you can aim for that.

For your daily practice, put effort so you can finish reading Chanting the Names of Manjrushri in one day. If you don’t have this text, I can send it to you. Then the next day recite the Diamond Cutter Sutra. Do like that, on alternate days, for your whole life, as much as you can. So this means reciting one text each day. Of course if you like, you can do more.

Also if you like the Arya Sanghata Sutra you can read it, but the main thing is the Diamond Cutter Sutra and Chanting the Names of Manjrushri.

Then do these preliminaries (see attached sheet for more details). In order to have realizations on the path to enlightenment, you need to purify defilements collected since beginningless time and to collect merits, so you need to do:

• Refuge: 300,000 times
• Tong-len: 100,000 times
• Vajrasattva: 300,000 times
• Lama Tsongkhapa tsa-tsas: 40,000. Make the big one. (See the attached photo of the exact mould I am suggesting.)

A most powerful way to generate quick purification, collect extensive merits, and develop compassion for sentient beings is the nyung-nä practice, to be released from samsara quickly. It is good to know how to do nyung-näs well, so that you can do the practice by yourself and also so you can guide other people. This practice is extremely beneficial now in the world, and more and more students are trying to do 100 nyung-näs. Geshe Lama Konchog did 2,000 nyung-näs and one lama from Nepal also 2,000 nyung-näs. He was an expert geshe from Drepung who built a monastery. Then some of the nuns from the Tsum area have done over 3,000 nyung-näs.

As well as this, live your life with bodhicitta as much as possible, in every action that you do, whether it is eating, walking sleeping, meditating, going to work, etc.

Thank you very much.

With much love and prayers...