| Severe Depression |
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| 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.
Spirit Harm
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| A student wrote to Rinpoche about his
wife, who suffered from schizophrenia, sudden mood changes,
and other problems. Rinpoche gave the following advice. |
My very dear Charlie,
Thank you for your kind letter. I have checked regarding your
wife and there are some protections that she needs to wear.
If you give me your postal address I will send these to her.
There is one puja that needs to be done for her by a geshe
or good Tibetan lama. I do not know if there are any geshes
or lamas near where you live, but maybe you can check. If
there is a geshe or good lama available, you need to request
for the puja called Gagu to be performed. Your wife
needs to be present at this puja.
Then, according to my observations, she needs to do Medicine
Buddha practice. This would be extremely good for her
to do. It is very powerful purification, brings all success,
and enables all her wishes to be fulfilled.
It is important to perform the practice with a good heart,
with the wish to free all sentient beings from all sufferings
and bring them to enlightenment, including oneself. For these
reasons you recite the mantra and perform the practice of
Medicine Buddha. Practice it not only to heal your own sickness
but also for all sentient beings’ sicknesses, as well
as to stop wars, famines, disease, torture, dangers from the
elements (fire, earth, wind, and water), as well as all the
sufferings of all sentient beings, not only the ones in this
world.
I will also dedicate the Sur (offering smell to
the pretas) practice that I do each night to your wife.
There is another practice that she should do called Lion
Faced Dakini. The important part of this practice is for her
to recite the mantra and the praise.
Also, it would be very beneficial for her to recite the
mig-me mantra; this is Lama Tsongkhapa’s mantra.
This would be very good as a daily practice, to receive blessings
from the guru to achieve realizations, complete all the qualities,
attain enlightenment, and be able to liberate sentient beings
from all samsaric sufferings and bring them to enlightenment.
With much love and prayers...
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.
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