- Take long-life initiation
- Go around Swayambunath
- Recite 500,000 White Heruka mantras
Rinpoche advised the following practices for a student with life obstacles.
Rinpoche gave the following advice to a new student who had life obstacles in the next two years.
My very dear Michael,
Thank you very much for your letter. I am happy that you are part of __ center. There are some obstacles to your life in the next two years, so you should take a long-life initiation, and liberate 4,000 animals for your long life.
These animals are going to be killed, so by liberating them it causes our long life. Normally I tell people that even though it is for our long life, the main motivation is to free the animals from the heavy suffering of being killed. Also, dedicate for His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s long life, because he is the leader of peace in this world. He preserves the complete Buddhadharma in this world, and from that, sentient beings receive happiness up to enlightenment. He is the sublime guide of sentient beings, so dedicate for all his holy wishes to succeed, as well as for the holy wishes of all the holy beings to benefit others.
Next, dedicate for the Sangha who preserve the Dharma for sentient beings and for them to complete their listening, contemplation and meditation on the path. Dedicate for the teachings to last a long time and for all the benefactors who support the Sangha to have long lives. After that, dedicate for anybody who chants OM MANI PADME HUM, and who lives in morality, which results in good rebirth next life—not only Buddhists, but those who are living in pure morality. Dedicate for anybody who does good things for others.
With every animal or insect you liberate, dedicate extensively like this, so it helps everybody.
Usually where there is a Chinese town, it is very easy to get worms, insects and crickets in plastic bags. You can get many of those cheaply. Also, you can get worms from the shops where people buy them to catch fish. The worms suffer unbelievably because the fishing hook goes through their bodies. Normally, worms were fishermen before, who are then reborn as worms. That has to be the case. Also, many of the fish that are caught could have been fishermen before. Even if due to their good karma they are reborn as human beings, because of their past karma they are reborn as fishermen.
Also for next year, have the la-küg tse-küg puja [ Tib: བླ་ཀུག་ཚེ་ཀུག་; Hooking the life and life potential puja] done. Ask either a geshe from Kopan monastery or Geshe Gelek to do it.
Your preliminary practices:
This is a most unimaginable practice. Each time we take the suffering and its causes, we purify negative karma from beginningless rebirth. Generate strong loving kindness and compassion, and give away the body, all the wealth and the people surrounding us, and the merit of the past, present and future, and the resultant happiness up to enlightenment—give all this away from the heart.
Especially this time, we collect numberless merit, and the causes to achieve enlightenment, liberation and future life happiness. There is no question about success for this life, even without clinging to that, without thinking about it. We create numberless causes of happiness—not one time, but numberless times, even if we do tonglen just once. This is the most unimaginable, best practice. Each time we do this, we are closer to enlightenment. This means we are closer to enlightenment for all sentient beings, so it is most worthwhile.
Don’t worry, the main thing is to just do it. If you are afraid of the number, then it doesn’t ever happen—not even 100,000, 100 or even one mantra. This is something we should enjoy; it’s something that is most exciting and brings the most happiness. When we purify negative karma from beginningless rebirth, then all the realizations up to enlightenment come. Then we can liberate numberless sentient beings from each realm and bring them to enlightenment.
You don’t have to be frightened. Just do a little bit each day and count the mantras. If you have more time, do more meditation sessions as if you are in retreat. If you have no time, do 100 or less mantras each day when you are busy.
Make each tsa-tsa to purify the negative karma of sentient beings in each realm and to achieve enlightenment as quickly as possible.
Count the four-line migtsema prayer, not the whole practice.
Even if you are busy, read a few lines. That brings you to enlightenment, and your life will only go up, not down. It will benefit the world, and bring healing to the city where you live. It makes you unbelievably fortunate. Your wishes also get fulfilled.
You should meditate on:
While you are doing this, you should also do one meditation on guru devotion every day by following the outlines in Liberation of the Palm of Your Hand. Once you have read the commentary, the other text for daily meditation is The Essential Nectar. There is no particular outline in this text and it is neither very short nor long, but very inspiring. When you have time meditate for a little longer, but if there is no time do a shorter session; whatever you feel is better.
Meditate on guru devotion as much as possible every day by following the outlines until you see the guru is all buddhas, discovering this from the bottom of your heart. This should be something that is very stable—that goes on for weeks, months and years, not just for a few hours or days. For example, meditate for one week each on the eight benefits of correctly devoting [to the guru] and the eight shortcomings of not correctly devoting. Then there are the four major outlines that prove to your mind that guru is Buddha. Do this for one month, then spend two weeks on the kindness of the guru. Repeat this process until you get realizations.
After completing this process over this number of months, whichever realization you do not have, meditate on that. You still need to meditate a little bit on the ones that you have realizations for, in order to stabilize them. For example, if you don’t have realizations from perfect human rebirth up to karma, meditate again on the perfect human rebirth, no matter how many weeks or months it may take. Do the same for every topic.
Generally if you do this seriously, at the same time accumulating merit, doing purification and making single-pointed request to the guru, of course change and realizations will come. If you are lazy, or if you delay or don’t do it sincerely, then it doesn’t happen.
Without renunciation, there is no bodhicitta. We need to have the realizations step-by-step, but we should do some meditation on emptiness every day. This way, the idea is to have the realization of guru devotion, renunciation, bodhicitta and right view. If not three, then two; if not two, then at least one realization. The lowest thing is, even if we do not have any realization, it brings us closer to realization. That makes it possible to achieve realization in future lives.
Your deity for quickest enlightenment is Vajrayogini. You need a great initiation as a preliminary for taking Vajrayogini initiation, because it has the body mandala and is very secret. Heruka is the best preliminary or Yamantaka or any great initiation of Highest Yoga Tantra.
By practicing Vajrayogini, even just chanting the mantra every day, we can be reborn in the pure land of Vajrayogini. If that happens, we can be enlightened there because there is tantra there. There is no opportunity to practice tantra in most pure lands, even in Amitabha’s pure land. Many lamas say the bodhisattvas in these pure lands pray to be born here in our world, because there is no tantra there. Therefore this body of ours is very precious.
With much love and prayers...
Rinpoche gave the following advice to a student with life obstacles.
My very dear Connor,
I was recently checking for one student and your name came up. Anyway, I checked and this year it seems there is some obstacle for you.
It came out for you to liberate 300 animals who are in the danger to be killed. It can be fish or some small animals and some big ones. If you don’t have much money, then you can also buy crickets or worms. In one plastic bag, there can be up to 1,000 crickets or worms, so you can do like that and include some bigger animals who are going to be killed if possible. If you can liberate 1,000 animals, this is best. You can buy them from a pet shop that uses them to feed to other animals, like snakes and so forth. That is one easy way to save many animals quickly.
Please make sure the motivation when doing the practice is not just for your long life, but for the long life of His Holiness the Dalai Lama and the long life of all the holy beings, the long life of all the Sangha who spread the Dharma teachings, so that Dharma can last a long time and for the long life of all the students who do good things, for all those who recite OM MANI PADME HUM and for all those who are doing good in this world for other people, for those who are living in morality and so forth. By dedicating to everyone’s long life, you collect most unbelievable, unbelievable, unbelievable merits.
It also came out for you to read the Amitayus Long Life Sutra 70 times. This is also great for purification. Then it also came out for you to take a long-life initiation—as soon as you can would be best.
With much love and prayers...
Rinpoche gave the following advice to a student with life obstacles.
Dear one,
Rinpoche has checked and you have some life obstacles. You need to:
Rinpoche checked extensively for a student who had life obstacles and gave the following advice.
1) Chi lu puja (betraying the death).You can ask Geshe Ngawang Drakpa to do this.
2) Paint the Boudha and Swayambhunath stupa. This also entails offering umbrellas and banners to the stupas. [Note: This is something that Rinpoche does every month ; it costs about $350 to do this offering. Kopan Monastery takes care of this, but it can be arranged for you, or you are welcome to do it.]
3) The whole Prajnaparamita needs to be read. This takes about seven days. The Gyume monks in Dharamsala come out best to do this for you, so for this you can email the director of Tushita Centre and ask her to arrange it. Ask for the cost first and also work out the food offering and the offering to each monk. The director of Tushita can give you some guidance about this; she may know what is normal.
4) It is most important for you to do White Heruka practice every day in the early morning, for the next four months.
You need to do more purification practice and collect merit; it seems there is something heavy. Also do tonglen more, as well as practicing the five powers in your life as well as at death time. [Find links to the booklet Practicing the Five Powers Near the Time of Death in the FPMT Catalogue.] Pay attention to this practice and study it more. It is good to make preparation, anyway. With the world situation now and all the disasters, it is more possible to die than to live, so it is wise to think like this, to prepare for death now and not to think that you will live forever.
A student with life obstacles that year needed to do the following practices.