Member of the FPMT

My very dear Thomas,
Thank you very much for your kind letter and offering of $100.

Regarding your question on how to proceed after achieving calm abiding, put effort into realizing emptiness. It is good if you do lots of mandala offerings to collect merit and also meditate strongly on guru devotion in order to receive blessings. Put more effort into collecting merits in order to realize emptiness.

You can do this according to the Mahamudra tradition. You make prayers requesting to the Mahamudra lineage holders, then perform Lama Chopa, then, before the very end, before the lamrim prayer, after you finish the request, before the guru enters your heart, you watch the mind. Recognize the object of refutation, try to recognize that: the inherently existent “I” that doesn’t exist. Then, take a minute or a second to realize emptiness, and use emptiness as the object of your one-pointed concentration. Put effort here in developing renunciation of samsara – this is the door to the path.

Check well the teachings from Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand to check the stages that you have reached. Make sure there is no mistake.

Also, you have to put effort into guru devotion, until that realization comes all the time – that every single buddha is all the gurus and every single guru is all the buddhas. One is like all and all is like one, like the water, rain, river, and oceans are mixed up and coming out of a waterfall. They are all oneness with the water, or like milk and water mixed as one. Your mind realizes this.

All the buddhas, bodhisattvas, and sentient beings are thanking you for developing your mind in the Dharma to benefit them.
With much love and prayers and good luck...

Dear Colin,
By now you must be very close to practicing the special tantric conduct that comes just before achieving the unified state, enlightenment. Each person’s special conduct is not the same, it is different. Sometimes the conduct is being crazy (Kirti Tsenshab Rinpoche gave examples like one practitioner’s special conduct was chopping up animals in many pieces, another built a multi-story house, which had absolutely no purpose). Maybe we need to ask His Holiness what special conduct you have to perform. I am sure yours will be very special….this is a joke at this moment, time wise.

Here is my advice – concentrate on the object of ahtung to complete shine. The great advantage is that in one’s daily life you can keep the mind in virtue easily and naturally, without much effort. It helps to not create negative thoughts, which create negative karma, many of which happen in one day. It makes one’s life very stable and calm, very happy. The great advantage is one can easily generate realizations of renunciation and bodhicitta. This is the most important thing in this life, also emptiness. Also, it is easy to achieve the tantric path – gross and subtle generation stage, as well as the six yogas – the completion stage. That means it is easy to achieve the Dharmakaya and Rupakaya – after that, goodbye.

Do everything with your whole heart for the benefit of every hell being, preta, animal, human, sura, and asura being, including President Bush (so many hundreds and thousands of people hate Bush).

As I mentioned earlier, you need to put effort into renunciation and bodhicitta. Even if you are practicing shine? now, this should be the main aim. Without bodhicitta, whatever other realization you have doesn’t mean much, even the realization of emptiness.

Even tenth-level bodhisattvas can make mistakes in trying to benefit sentient beings.
With much love and prayers...

Please perform the Tomo Metsig purification practice. Every morning, when you are brushing your teeth, recite the Tomo Metsig mantra three times:

OM ARYAM SIRKAM BIMANASE UTSUMA MAHAKRODHA HUM PHAT

Then brush your tongue and rinse your mouth out with water three times.

Also, when you take a shower, visualize Tomo Metsig washing down your body. The purpose of this practice is to purify your mind and improve your visualizations.

Tomo Metsig Washing Practice
As it is said in the text Ka ri ka, “Having cleaned the dirt from your face and teeth, respectfully prostrate to the fully awakened Buddha.” After waking up in the morning, when you wash you can do so as when initiating the individual deities of the four classes or you can do the following practice.

On top of your crown in an instant abides the dakini, Metseg, and through the vase water she cleanses the outside of your body, beautifying all uncleanliness and pollutions.

Visualize in this way, and then recite the mantra while washing yourself:

OM ARYAM SIRKAM BIMANASE UTSUMA MAHAKRODHA HUM PHAT

After you have brushed your teeth and tongue and rinsed your mouth three times, the dakini on the top of your crown dissolves into you and blesses you.

If you practice as above, you will not have the faults of uncleanliness, pollution, etc.

After that, arrange offerings in front of the holy objects according to your capacity.

The student wrote many years later to say he had recited the mantra while brushing his teeth for 15 years and his visualizations had greatly improved.

Putting as much effort as possible into self-initiation is great, either the long or short self-initiation. Just recently, Kyabje Chöden Rinpoche said for self-initiation you have to have the initiation of Vajradhara, or the initiation of the vajra guru/master, in order to actually receive the initiation and purify broken samaya vows. When I asked about Vajrayogini, Rinpoche said it is included within the four initiations of Vajrayogini. Reviving the vows is, I guess, when you take the vow again. Normally, you do need the vajra master initiation in order to purify the vows. The other, shorter self-initiations of Yamantaka, Chakrasamvara and Guhyasamaja normally contain the vajra master initiation.

Normally, the place to do the mahamudra meditation is at the end of Lama Chöpa after the guru enters your heart, or in Lama Tsong Khapa guru yoga after the guru enters your heart. You can do the same with Six-Session Guru Yoga, doing the meditation after the guru enters your heart, where it says “those who do the illusory body practice, arising from within." You can start there. If it is sutra mahamudra, mainly the meditation is after the guru enters your heart. It is also very helpful to meditate on emptiness with great bliss, meditating on the Dharmakaya. Meditate on emptiness, that phenomena do not have true existence. Look at phenomena as empty, with the wisdom seeing emptiness, experiencing infinite bliss, which is non-dual with emptiness. Keep your mind in that state as much as you can. This is also very helpful.

Tantric mahamudra has outlines in the Six Yogas of Naropa, with tum-mo meditation.

It is good to do these self-initiations every day so as to be ever more pure as a gelong, not only the pratimoksha but also bodhisattva and tantric vows. Then, your mental continuum doesn’t get stained from one day to the next, so it is very good. That is the best preparation for death. A lot of people talk about what to do for one’s own death, what to do at that time, only expecting that time to be difficult. So, preparation now is the best thing, then at that time you don’t need any effort, it is very easy, like an airplane taking off in good weather, no bumps, no cyclones or thunder.

Taking self-initiation is highly admired by Lama Tsong Khapa. It is said Lama Tsong Khapa took on the aspect of missing the sadhana of Secret Vajrapani and since that day Lama Tsong Khapa did self-initiation every day. He was already Vajrapani, so maybe he did that for our benefit. So, you are catching with up Lama Tsong Khapa’s example.

It is recommended by the 13th Dalai Lama and others as important because it plants the seed of enlightenment all the time, and purifies the defilements, all the heavy negative karmas of all the different broken vows, pratimoksha vows, etc. Each time it plants the potential to achieve the four kayas—that is how it makes it possible to achieve enlightenment.

Purifying negative karma and broken vows is what allows one to achieve realizations of the path to enlightenment easily. Otherwise, one gets stuck. No matter how great a scholar you are, knowing the whole Kangyur and Tengyur by heart, if you lack these practices of purification, all the negative karmas are there, so the mind cannot really develop, and it gets stuck.