Lama Zopa Rinpoche's Online Advice Book
Health :
Mental Health
- Mental Health
- Schizophrenia
Mental Health
| Suicide and Manic Depression | |
| Rinpoche gave the following advice to a person who was suffering from manic depression, who felt suicidal as a result, and also suffered from chronic back pain. | |
You should read the Golden Light Sutra every day, however much you can. This is the most precious teaching of the Buddha. As long as this is in the world, we have the teachings of the Buddha. When this is no longer in the world, then the teachings of the Buddha don’t exist in this world.
Reading this purifies all the negative karmas. It causes only good rebirths in future lives. By reading this your life moves only towards enlightenment, not returning to samsara.
You need a blessing protection called Ka.go performed for you by a good practitioner. It needs to be done with you present.
You also need a puja called Gya.shi to be performed. I will read this special text by the Buddha to protect from danger of death, sickness, degeneration, and so forth. Five times at least.
It came out most beneficial for you to listen to Entering the Vashaila City, for helping with the pain. You must listen to it every time you start to experience pain, unless you want to practice lo.jong, thought transformation, and utilize it to practice bodhicitta.
The heart of the 84,000 teachings of the Buddha, the Vajra Cutter Sutra, should be read to you nine times.
To achieve enlightenment means to enlighten all suffering sentient beings – this is unbelievable.
| Severe Depression | |
| A student had been regularly visiting a man in hospital who was severely depressed. She asked Rinpoche whether she should continue or not, as she thought that it had become hopeless. | |
When nothing works, and you don’t have the necessary power, you must rely on higher beings: Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. Make strong prayers to the Twenty-One Taras, and visualize that light rays, which are the essence of great bliss, and which cause the depressed person to generate the whole path, are emitted from the heart of the Twenty-One Taras. Each atom of the person is filled with bliss. Then think that he generates the whole path, compassion, bodhicitta, and wisdom realizing emptiness.
You should go there and do that for him, and also chant some mantras, as if you are singing songs to him.
| Bipolar Condition |
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| A student who had been diagnosed as bipolar stopped taking her medicine and became manic, destructive, and confused in her thinking. After some time, she fell into a serious depression, and then started taking her medicine again. She asked Rinpoche for practices to help with her condition. | |
Recite two to three malas of Black Manjushri a day. This will help, and it came out very beneficial for you to practice this.
The other thing that you can do is to recite the sutra taught by the Buddha to Ananda, called Yang pa tong tru do in Tibetan. This is a very powerful sutra. It helps mainly with harm by spirits in villages and towns, where people are harmed, and even the doctors can’t see what the problem is, because they don’t know about harm from spirits. This sutra is very powerful in stopping that.
But, for you, Black Manjushri came out more beneficial. This is also general advice on what can be done for other people who have the same problems and difficulties. Also, they can check with a Lama.
More talks by Lama Zopa on this topic:
See the Depression topic in the Emotions chapter of the Advice Book.
