My very dear one,
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 lam-rim, 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 lam-rim, 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 lam-rim.
Practicing the lam-rim 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 Thirty-five 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 lam-rim 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 lam-rim is incredibly beneficial. So much negative karma is purified and merit is collected by the preliminaries, and this makes the lam-rim meditation more effective, and realizations are actualized. The lam-rim makes the preliminary practices more powerful, more pure, and the preliminary practices make the lam-rim 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 Tsongkhapa, before he went to sleep, always recited the Thirty-five 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 Thirty-five 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.
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 lam-rim—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.”
