My most dear, most kind, most precious wish-fulfilling one,
Thank you for your emails, I have read all of them. I’m extremely happy about what you have been doing, your practice. It is double, triple than me, it is great, great!
Doing prostrations by reciting the Thirty-five Buddhas’ names, is extremely important for you, not just as a preliminary practice but as a daily practice. The eighth, ninth and tenth bhumi bodhisattvas manifest millions, zillions, trillions, many trillions of bodies and when they do prostrations, so many bodies manifest doing prostrations.
The most important thing is guru devotion. If you have finished studying the lamrim outline, then you need to do effortful meditation on guru devotion for two months. The aim is to have the realizations, no matter how long it takes; no matter however many weeks, months or years it takes. Then after that, do effortless meditation for however long it takes so that the realizations become stable. This is very effective and will help you to have strong realizations. It is very good.
One very important thing is guru devotion, so try to have the realizations by following the outline of The Essential Nectar, or whichever lamrim that you are following. When you have realization of guru devotion, without effort you see the guru is all the buddhas, and each buddha is all the gurus, so oneness. From your side that happens without effort, for weeks, months, years, stable, without effort, from your heart seeing that. It's like when the monk thinks of the monk’s coat (Tib: dagam), he sees the color and shape at the same time, not separately. The realization of guru devotion is like that. So each buddha is all the gurus and each guru is all the buddhas, one, from your heart. As you know, from guru devotion, the blessings of the guru, all the rest of the realizations come very easily.
Start the day off with the daily meditation, which includes the mantras for blessing the speech and the direct meditation on the path to enlightenment. [See the FPMT Catalogue for The Method to Transform a Suffering Life into Happiness (Including Enlightenment).]
Do the lamrim meditations on the basis of Lama Tsongkhapa Guru Yoga. There are eight benefits of Lama Tsongkhapa Guru Yoga, so it is very good to do this practice every day. Also within it there is a lamrim prayer, the Foundation of All Good Qualities, so in that way you go through the lamrim every day and that leaves imprints on your mind. This practice is very good not only for purification but also to develop wisdom.
Keep circling through the lamrim outline until you have gained stable realizations and then do effortless meditation, no matter how many weeks, months or years it takes.
What you have been doing is very good. Thank you very much and I am very, very sorry I took a long time to answer you.
Please make your life most beneficial for yourself and for all sentient beings and live your life as much as possible with a good heart. Thank you.
With much love and prayers ...
