Advice for a Couple

Advice for a Couple

Date Posted:
November 2011

A couple wrote to Rinpoche asking for practice advice. The two students were enrolled in the Master’s Program at Istituto Lama Tzong Khapa, Italy, following advice given by Rinpoche at Osel Ling Center, Spain, in 2005. They would like to start preliminary practices and establish a daily practice, and for that purpose, they were requesting recommendations and any other advice that Rinpoche considered appropriate. Rinpoche’s response is below.

For one person:

For the other person:

  • Prostrations by reciting the Thirty-five Buddhas’ names every day, at least once through
  • Vajrasattva: 17,000, plus some every day
  • Dorje Khadro (burning offering): 7,000
  • Water bowl offerings: 400,000 with extensive offering practice
  • Lama Tsongkhapa Guru Yoga: 500,000 to Lama Tsongkhapa
  • Main deity: Heruka Five Deities or Heruka Body Mandala. In the future, plan to do the long three-year retreat.

For both of you, please:

  • Meditate on guru devotion every day, until you have stable realizations that one guru is all the buddhas and one Buddha is all the gurus.
  • One year: meditate mainly on renunciation.
  • The following year: meditate mainly on bodhicitta.
  • The following year: meditate mainly on emptiness.
  • Continue this way through the lamrim until you have stable realizations. Once you end the cycle, then start again from the beginning until you experience the realizations of that path.
  • After you have achieved the bodhicitta realization, then spend more time on tantra, first the generation stage and then later the completion stage. After the gross generation stage then spend more time on the completion stage.

Then, of course, achieve enlightenment, so that you can enlighten each and every sentient being.

Millions of thanks to you both for your practice of Dharma. May you both have a stable life in the Dharma.

With much love and prayers...

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