Daily Practices and Tong-len Advice

Daily Practices and Tong-len Advice

Date of Advice:
March 2015
Date Posted:
April 2017

A student requested guidance in her daily practice. She also asked about tong-len as she had become unwell after doing tong-len practice for sick friends and felt afraid. The student didn’t know what to expect and whether it was normal to get sick after practicing tong-len.

My very dear, most precious, most kind, wish-fulfilling one,
Thank you very much for your kind letter. Usually if you get sick after doing tong-len practice then your tong-len practice is regarded as extremely successful. You visualized taking suffering and the cause of suffering from others and giving away your merits and then you got sick, so that is regarded as extremely successful.

This may not happen all the time. If it happens all the time it’s even more successful, incredible, like finding a jewel. It’s more precious than finding a jewel, even a wish-granting jewel, which cannot be compared to diamonds, silver and so forth. If you have a wish-granting jewel it means you can get whatever enjoyment you need in this life by praying to that jewel.

Preliminaries

Now, the preliminary practices to purify negative karma created since beginningless rebirth and to collect extensive merit so that you can get enlightened for sentient beings:

  • 400,000:  Refuge
  • 100,000:  Tsa-tsas.  Make three types of tsa-tsas; the saviors of three types [Tib: rik sum gönpo] are Vajrapani, Manjushri and Chenrezig. [Lama Tsongkhapa is said to embody all three types.]
  • 300,000:  Prostrations by reciting the names of the Thirty-five Buddhas.
  • 500,000:  Vajrasattva. Don’t worry about numbers. When you have time you can do more and when you don’t have time, do less. This way you will gradually finish. For example, the flea jumps but doesn’t reach far, however, the turtle goes slowly but reaches very far.
  • 300,000:  Mandala offerings. When you begin the session, at the beginning you offer one, two or three extensive mandalas then what you count is the seven-heap mandala offering. Lama Tsongkhapa explained in The Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment (Lam-rim Chenmo) with only a few words: “When you offer mandala, the quality and quantity of the offerings you visualize are most important. The objects should be the most rich quality and also numberless.”
  • From time to time read the Sutra of Golden Light, even from now, for all your success and to liberate sentient beings and bring them to enlightenment.

Don’t worry about the number of preliminary practices, that’s advice generally for your life. That’s how to make your life most meaningful, not just for you but for numberless sentient beings—numberless hell beings, hungry ghosts, animals, humans, suras and asuras. That’s how to make your life happiest, even if death happens before finishing that number. As long as it’s done, try to do your best.

Deities

Tara and Guhyasamaja, Vajrakilaya. Choose whichever deity you have a stronger feeling for, a closer feeling to be your deity. If you haven’t received the initiation you can try to receive it. I have received the Vajrakilaya initiation but I haven’t done the retreat so you need to receive the initiation from other lamas like His Holiness Sakya Trizin.

Lam-rim

Your main lam-rim is the Middle Lam-rim. Read it twice from beginning to end. The things you don’t understand mark with orange color as an offering like painting a buddha statue or thangka, or like offering color or robes to holy objects. In other words, mark the text in a respectful way. Don’t mark the texts with black ink. Marking texts in a disrespectful way creates negative karma and is a cause to be born in the lower realms. Also you can write down all the questions you have, everything you don’t know, in a book and then discuss these afterwards with the geshes or Western students who have done very good study in the Basic and Masters program. If there is someone who has studied well then they can help.

Practice effortful meditation on the lam-rim outline for the number of months indicated. Repeat this three times and then do effortless meditation.

With much love and prayers...