Crippling Debt

Crippling Debt

Date of Advice:
August 2014
Date Posted:
January 2016

A student wrote that he was in severe, crippling debt due to an outstanding loan. The situation was very worrying for him. Rinpoche advised recitation of Ganapati mantra with bodhicitta motivation and making offerings on the Buddha’s multiplying days.

My very dear one,
I checked regarding your financial situation and it comes out very good if you recite the Ganapati mantra at least three times a day. Ganapati is not Hindu; the Hindu deity is Ganesh. In Buddhism there is Ganapati, who is the embodiment of Chenrezig, to help the sentient beings eliminate poverty and get high positions to benefit sentient beings. So Ganapati is a manifestation of Chenrezig.

The motivation for reciting this mantra should not just be to stop your problem. That is too small. With that motivation, it doesn’t even become Dharma, so it’s important to generate bodhicitta to make it most worthwhile. Recite it especially for sentient beings, to generate bodhicitta toward numberless sentient beings—numberless hell beings, numberless hungry ghosts, numberless animals, numberless  human beings, numberless suras, numberless  asuras and numberless  intermediate state beings—from whom we receive all our happiness from beginningless rebirths until now, as well as all future happiness, liberation from samsara and total elimination of all the obscurations and completion of all the realizations, so everything. 

Think, “I receive everything from each sentient being, therefore I will recite this for each sentient being to be free from the oceans of samsara’s suffering and to bring them to the peerless happiness, the state of omniscient mind. Therefore I need to purify the defilements collected since beginningless rebirths and collect all the necessary conditions to achieve enlightenment for sentient beings.”  Then recite the mantra.

You can see that here you are reciting the mantra, even one time, two times or three times, for sentient beings. It is not only to solve your problems but for numberless sentient beings, every single sentient being, to achieve enlightenment. 

On the special days of the Buddha [Saka Dawa, Chokhor Duchen, Lhabab Duchen and Mon-lam, the fifteen days of Losar] if you can, make some small offering. It doesn’t have to be much, but if you can, offer a small amount of money to beggars, making charity. If you give one dollar or one peso to one beggar on that day, you get the benefit of having made charity of one hundred million dollars or one hundred million pesos. On those special days, this is for any charity or offering you make.

Also if you make an offering to the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha on that special day, whatever you make as an offering becomes one hundred million offerings. So offering even one light, one piece of incense or food, even if it is just one, it becomes one hundred million times that offering, so it’s a really incredible, incredible, incredible, huge way to create good karma and merit.

With much love and prayers...