Confession of Anger

Confession of Anger

Date of Advice:
January 2015
Date Posted:
January 2015

After reading Rinpoche’s book, The Heart of the Path, a student wrote to confess a moment of anger toward Rinpoche that had arisen during a retreat 10 years ago. She said that one night at about 1.30 am she was very tired and cold, and felt angry with Rinpoche for keeping her up late and causing her discomfort. Although she recited Vajrasattva mantra immediately and did purification practices for the next ten years, she continued to feel disturbed by that moment of anger toward Rinpoche. She wrote, “Reading your words in The Heart of the Path I understood that what I had not done was to confess and express my regret about that anger to you personally. On reading this I felt a huge surge of relief, hope and confidence that by following your advice to do this, I may finally manage to purify that dreadful moment or at least lessen the severity of the karmic results.” Rinpoche gave the following advice.

You should do at least 10,000 prostrations to the Thirty-five Buddhas if you can. If not, do as many as you can manage, and then do the remaining prostrations by putting the palms together and visualizing many bodies doing prostrations by reciting the Thirty-five Buddha’s names. The last buddha’s name purifies particularly the negative karma created with the gurus, so recite that not just once but five times. I did mention about this buddha’s name in the past and some students recite that name three times when they do the prayer, but you can recite it five times.

It’s best, excellent what you did, even purifying right away by reciting Vajrasattva mantra. First recognizing the mistake immediately, then purifying with Vajrasattva is excellent, not taking much time. Then finally you did confession to me, so that’s an excellent thing to do.