Dear John,
Thank you very much for your kind letter. Regarding faith, it depends on which faith and faith in what. Generally speaking, we need a lot of merit to generate faith, and we also need to purify negative karma and defilements. So, we need both of these practices.

If we wish to generate devotion, then we must one-pointedly make requests to the guru and meditate on the lam-rim (as Manjushri advised Lama Tsongkhapa), following the outlines from Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand. Spend two weeks each on the sections on benefits and disadvantages, referring to the commentaries on Liberation and other texts. Spend four weeks on the four outlines in the section on recognizing the qualities and two weeks on the section recollecting the kindness of the guru. In terms of actions, we should obey the advice, offer service, and if we have offerings, then offer these. These four outlines on how to meditate in relation to guru devotion are mentioned in Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand.

If we wish to generate faith in the truth of karma, we need to read about it while also making strong purification and accumulating merit with one-pointed requests to the guru. In the Jorchö practice (preliminary practice for meditating on the lam-rim), there’s a long section of requests to the lineage lamas and the guru. We can do the long version or a shorter version, but with many requests to the guru. We can do the short request to the guru many times—ten, fifteen, fifty times, or one mala—not just saying the words but from the heart.

Nectar emanates and purifies all the negativities and obstructions to realization. Basically, if the mind is blocked this is due to defilements. Even geshes who have studied using many kinds of logic have things they don’t understand. Continue the three (purification, accumulation and requests), and if these are done purely, we realize that the teachings are true. Basically, it is like that. Studying the teachings is not enough—in order to realize them, we have to make strong requests. Similarly, generate faith in Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. That’s about it.

The deities for your practice are Secret Vajrapani and Hevajra. Of the two, Secret Vajrapani is your yidam.

With much love and prayer...

PS. Please make your life meaningful with bodhicitta, as this life is received just once. Even if there are skies filled with wish-granting jewels, without this jewel of a perfect human rebirth we can’t achieve a perfect human rebirth or higher rebirth again. Pay attention to not wasting this human body.