Member of the FPMT

You should rejoice more; you need to meditate on the perfect human rebirth, how precious each one is, and how useful, with great meaning. Think of the benefits that you can achieve with a perfect human rebirth. In each second, with a perfect human rebirth, one can achieve any happiness one wishes, because one can create the causes. With bodhicitta, in one second, you can create the causes of enlightenment, and that can also become the cause of achieving liberation along the way, and to have happiness in future lives, as well as happiness in this life. This shows how precious the perfect human rebirth is. It’s the most precious thing. Each second of it is unbelievably precious. Meditate on all these points extensively, such as how difficult it is to find again, and so on.

You should think about how many ants there are in one single field compared to how many people there are in the whole country. The number of people is so small when compared to the field’s ants, not even mentioning the number of ants on a mountain. Compared to that, the number of people in the world is small. So, the number of human beings is very little, and the number who are Buddhist is much smaller even than that, while the number who are not Buddhist is so huge. Then, the number of Buddhists who have met the unmistaken path is very small, and the number who have met the Mahayana teachings is even smaller. The number who have met tantra is the smallest. But you have met all these teachings of the Buddha, so you are the most fortunate one. You have also met the top guru in the world, His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Of course, as for myself, I have no qualities, but you have met so many other great masters, the most qualified in the world, so you are the luckiest one.

In regards to living according to pure vows, even if you broke a branch vow, you haven’t broken any root vow. “Pure” depends on the different levels of definition. What makes one’s life pure is that at the end of the day, you purify negative karma and vices when you go to bed. That makes it pure.

Another example is a fully ordained monk who did not break the four root vows or the 13 residues; that is also living according to pure vows. Compared to one who broke their root vows, those who haven’t broken the root vows are pure.

You must also meditate on the lower realms’ suffering and on karma. That will help you to achieve happiness and a peaceful mind. What you need is contentment, and that comes only by cutting attachment and the dissatisfied mind. For that reason, you should meditate on impermanence, death, the suffering of the lower realms, and karma. That will help cut the expectations of receiving happiness in this life, and will cut all the superstitions. That will make your mind contented, and only this way will you have inner peace and happiness.

You should also read my book The Door to Satisfaction.

You are extremely fortunate to teach Dharma to other sentient beings. Because even for the buddhas, whose highest action is to guide and benefit sentient beings by freeing them from the oceans of sufferings and bring them to enlightenment though eliminating the cause of suffering, this is only done through teaching Dharma. This is what you are doing now, so this is your most precious gift to sentient beings. Dharma is the only thing that cuts the cause of suffering, delusion, and karma, and eliminates the defilements. Only through this can sentient beings be free from all of samsara’s suffering. Only through this can they achieve liberation and enlightenment. Therefore, you should feel very fortunate.

There is a reason why Buddha revealed three levels of teachings: Hinayana, Paramitayana, and Vajrayana, and that they contradict. It is like when a doctor advises, first of all, that a person stop eating meat and drinking alcohol when he or she is sick. Then, when the person recovers from the disease, the advice changes, depending on the person’s health. Therefore, the advice is contradictory, but not for the well-being of that person. So, too, with the three levels of teachings. Another reason why Buddha taught different levels of vows is because there are different levels of beings. Similarly, Buddha offered different levels of ordination.

In the Pratimoksha, seven negative actions are emphasized. In the bodhisattva path, a bodhisattva, with brave compassion, can go to the hell realms and exchange his or her happiness for the suffering of other beings. The Paramitayana texts prohibit drinking alcohol or eating meat, but in tantra, when you reach the level of the illusory body and clear light, drinking alcohol becomes a cause to see the clear light. When this level is reached, when there is no danger of your falling to the lower realms, it only becomes a cause to see the clear light and eliminate delusion and the subtle negative imprint which projects the inherently existent view. At that time, you practice the wisdom mother and drink alcohol, because it only benefits the yogi, and helps him or her to achieve enlightenment and to lead others to enlightenment.

So, a person takes the Pratimoksha vows and progresses until he or she does not find one single attraction in samsara, even in a dream. Then, upon that, bodhicitta is developed. Then, upon that, the gross and subtle generation stages and the completion stage are practiced. But if you haven’t reached the level of completion stage, and can’t use the wisdom mother and the great bliss for the clear light, then there is danger. Similarly, there is danger when you don’t have bodhicitta, you have self-cherishing thoughts, and you can’t remove the seed of subtle imprints. Then, you have to suffer and sentient beings have to suffer for so long. The more bodhicitta you have, the more realizations will come.

Denma Lochoë Rinpoche explained the following about taking vows. He said that if you have taken vows to refrain from committing certain actions and you abide by that, you receive benefits and merits. However, if you refrain from committing certain actions without having taken the vows, you do not accumulate the merit. For example, to be born as a human being you need the preliminary cause of pure morality. This means having taken vows in the past and living purely. Then, in the case of a perfect human rebirth, this means having practiced charity. To have the opportunity to practice tantra, and to attain enlightenment in one life (in highest yoga tantra, enlightenment is possible in three short years) comes from having practiced pure morality in the past. If we don’t take vows, then we don’t receive the benefit of abstaining from these actions, day and night, even when we’re asleep.

The minute we take the vows (until death for Pratimoksha vows, and until enlightenment for bodhisattva and tantric vows), day and night we collect merit all the time by living according to those vows. It is a cause to receive a good rebirth in your next life. If it is performed with renunciation, it becomes a cause to achieve liberation from samsara. If it is performed with bodhicitta, it becomes a cause for enlightenment. Then, day and night become a cause for enlightenment and to enlighten sentient beings. In the Mahayana practice, the goal is not just to achieve enlightenment yourself, but to lead all beings to enlightenment. Your goal is clear.

If a person is locked in a house alone and there are no insects in the house, he or she cannot kill anything. The person doesn’t commit the action. But that doesn’t mean the person creates the cause of a higher rebirth. However, if this person had taken the vow not to kill, then day and night he or she would create merit and progress on the spiritual path. By living according to vows, you have the freedom to practice the vows.

Worms and insects do not steal but they are not collecting merit. It is like a person in a coma or hibernating animals. They are not making their lives meaningful. But if the person in the coma has taken Pratimoksha, bodhisattva, or tantric vows, then in every second they are making their life meaningful.

So, it is not just about abstaining from negative actions. The higher training of morality is the basis for the higher training of concentration, which is the basis for the higher training of wisdom, which is the cause to purify samsara. Without that insight you can’t generate bodhicitta, and without that you can’t practice the tantric path and achieve enlightenment in one brief lifetime in this degenerate time.

Most worldly people base their lives around eating, sleeping, and getting married. They do not live according to vows. People who live according to vows collect merit all the time, collecting the cause for happiness in hundreds of thousands of lives. But without the vows, and if they have self cherishing thoughts, then they are continuously creating negative karma.

My very dear Nina,
Thank you very much for your kind letter. I understand that you were unable to keep the pratimoksha vows many times. We are living in the West, where the objects of delusion are constantly advertised. Tibet, even though it has changed a lot, is still an inspiration for the Dharma. Tibet doesn’t inspire us much toward other delusions or desires. In most parts of Tibet, there are monasteries, caves, lamas, and yogis going through great hardships, sacrificing their lives to actualize the path to achieve enlightenment for sentient beings. Prayer naturally inspires renunciation there, and we don’t need so much effort to control delusion. Of course, there is also the blessing of the place, the environment, and the feelings attached to those. However, in the West, the objects of attachment, particularly the body, samsaric pleasure, pleasures of the body, such as sex, and so forth, are advertised. In such an environment, you are totally overwhelmed by delusion, it is like a great wave, and the dam is broken, and everything is covered by water. Our life is generally like that: totally overwhelmed by ignorance, the concept of true existence, and grasping at true existence. There is this huge hallucination of the true existence of appearances, which does not come from its own side, but is projected by our mind. This is due to the negative imprints left on our mental continuum by having wrong concepts and ignorance, holding things as truly existent, in the past. We are completely trapped by this.

On the basis of this hallucination, there are other delusions—attachment, anger, jealousy, pride, and many other things—84,000 delusions in total. All these wrong concepts are sickness of the mind. And each delusion has its own view, which is an hallucination, false. It is not like that in reality. These things are only projected by delusion. All the objects built by delusion are nonexistent. It’s like when you are dreaming—you win an election and become the president of the country, or you marry the person you like, you have children, and buy a new house. All these things are projected by the mind in the dream, but they don’t exist. When you wake up, they don’t exist. So, being in the West, where all the objects of delusion and desire are constantly advertised on TV and in the newspapers, the minute you open your eyes, that’s what you see; therefore, it becomes great challenge for you. External objects influence your mind.

If you are meditating on the lamrim, on mindfulness, emptiness, and dependent arising, looking at hallucination as hallucination, then, when desire arises, your mind is able to look at the object as having the nature of impermanence or of the deity, to think about the shortcomings of the object, and is able to control the object and the delusion. Delusion, the object of desire, is empty, and is under the control of your mind. It can’t influence you. Similarly, you can meditate on loving kindness and compassion, thinking of the object as empty, and, if the object is a person, how precious the person is, how all the person’s negative actions of body, speech, and mind are so precious, benefiting you, helping you to practice Dharma, meditate on the lamrim, develop compassion and patience, and bring you to enlightenment. Without changing your mind from self-cherishing thoughts to bodhicitta and cherishing others; from anger to loving kindness and patience; from desire to renunciation; without discovering the nature of suffering, you can’t achieve liberation and enlightenment. So, the person is supporting you, helping you to change your mind and practice the lamrim.

Practicing the lamrim and trying to live according to your vows is a billion times more victorious than winning the Olympics. You should always remember that. The Olympics is nothing. Even if you become famous in the world, it is nothing. If you haven’t defeated your delusions, you haven’t won the real battle.

My suggestion to you for purification practice is to perform 200,000 prostrations while reciting the 35 Buddhas’ names and the rest of the confession prayer, involving the remedy of the three powers, including regret, purifying your negative karma. Reciting the names of Buddha purifies the ripening aspect of the result, which is rebirth in the lower realms. Then, you make a vow to not commit these things again. While you are prostrating, you recite the same name over and over until you put your forehead on the ground. Then, you recite the next Buddha’s name until you put your forehead on the ground. After that, you can recite the last part of the prayer. Or, if you want to do more prostrations, you keep on reciting the same Buddha’s name over and over quickly for one prostration until you put your forehead on the ground. Then, after that, you chant the next name. You do that without reciting the last part of the prayer, the power of remedy, of regret for the negative karma, the power of restraint, and the power of the object. You also prostrate when you take refuge at the beginning.

If you have time, you can do a retreat for three days, seven days, or every weekend. You can prostrate at the beginning of a session, and then you can do lamrim meditation for the last half hour. If you cannot find the time to do that, it is OK. As far as retreat is concerned, integrating the preliminary practices with the lamrim is incredibly beneficial. So much negative karma is purified and merit is collected by the preliminaries, and this makes the lamrim meditation more effective, and realizations are actualized. The lamrim makes the preliminary practices more powerful, more pure, and the preliminary practices make the lamrim meditation stronger and more powerful. You can do about 300 prostrations every day, 100 three times a day. You can do more in the morning, and a little before going to bed, reciting the names with prostrations just one time. By reciting one name, there is the power to purify thousands of eons of negative karma. We have committed so many negative karmas in this life and past lives, from beginningless rebirths. You can see that this is terrifying.

Lama Tsong Khapa, before he went to sleep, always recited the 35 Buddhas’ names with prostrations, which makes everything very pure, and you also have a very happy mind with which to go to sleep, with no regrets. He was a very pure monk. Then, the negative karma collected related to the guru is purified. One of the 35 Buddhas is Tathagata Metog Päl, Glorious Flower; reciting his name once purifies 100,000 eons of negative karma.* You should do the prayer to multiply mantras at the beginning before you start the prostrations.

Then, you should also recite the Vajrasattva mantra 70,000 times, also for purification. You can complete some of the mantras in a retreat, and then, if you do not finish them in the retreat, you can recite some every day, such as one mala or half a mala. You could do the Vajrasattva mantra recitation in the evenings. That purifies not only broken bodhisattva root vows, but also tantric root vows.

If you have taken a highest tantra initiation and have done the retreat, then you can practice that deity’s self-initiation by yourself. You can do the short version, and sometimes the middle-length or elaborate version of the self-initiation. You can also practice the long version with a group, which is more powerful.

When you are doing these purification practices, my advice is to feel in your heart as much as possible that you are doing them for others, to free all the hell beings, hungry ghosts, and animals from the most unimaginable suffering and bring them happiness. Remember that you are practicing for the benefit of all sentient beings. Otherwise, the motivation is too much concerned with one’s own mistakes, negative karma, and avoiding the hell realms. All of this involves the self too much, has a selfish motivation, since one does not have a realization of bodhicitta. Then, make a dedication to develop and actualize bodhicitta for oneself and sentient beings without the delay of a second, and that if it is generated, may it increase.

Here, you purify your past negative karma, but the question is, what if you commit it again? If you commit negative karma again, you have to purify it again, so there is no end to the practice of purification. The practice of purification becomes endless because one commits negative karma again and again. That is what most of us do. Therefore, a very important solution for happiness, not only temporary but ultimate liberation, especially for the happiness of all sentient beings, is to not commit it again, and live according to that vow. That is essential. You can take the five lay vows again and again, but that doesn’t mean you should break them again and again. Also, the bodhisattva vows can be taken again and again, and you should do this. When you practice self-initiation, you can take the bodhisattva vows. Restoring vows and purifying the path is part of self-initiation.

Therefore, one should try, as much as possible, to preserve one’s vows. Of course, the secondary vows are difficult, and you should try not to break them, but put a lot of effort into not breaking the root vows. The minute you break or degenerate your samaya, or collect any negative karma, the wise thing is to purify it immediately. Do not delay, because negative karma increases and multiplies. By the next day it has doubled. If you kill one tiny insect today, by the next day it has doubled, which means on the second day, you have killed two beings; on the third day, it doubles again, so you create the same negative karma as killing four beings; on the fourth day it multiplies to eight; on the fifth day to sixteen. So, it becomes very frightening. As you know, the great enlightened being Pabongka said that after 18 days, you will have created the same negative karma as killing a human being. So, when death comes, the negative karma will have multiplied to the number of atoms in the earth. This karma becomes so heavy in future lives and you have to suffer for so long in the lower realms. It is difficult to be born in the human realm. How can liberation and enlightenment be possible in this situation? Please keep this in mind.

If you are surrounded by strong Dharma practitioners, who are living according to samaya vows, then they can help you, inspire you to practice, and to live according to your vows. However, if you are surrounded by people who are behaving in the opposite way, then they can influence you easily, and you can become like them.

Live according to your precepts and vows. Abandon negative karma and engage in good karma. Sometimes it is useful to be in retreat or even to just be alone. This is useful for us ordinary beings who do not have stability in our minds, control of our minds, or do not have realizations.

Thank you very much. I hope this is enough advice for you.

With much love and prayer,
Lama Zopa

P.S. Keep in mind the lamrim—guru devotion, renunciation of samsara, and bodhicitta. These things help you to not commit negative karma again.

*Note: See Everlasting Rain of Nectar (Geshe Jampa Gyatso, Wisdom Publications, 1996), page 33: “Glorious Flower purifies all obscurations of body.”

Other talks by Rinpche on this topic:
See the Ordination topic in the "Dharma Work and Sangha" section of the Advice Book.