Helping Others

Helping Others

Date Posted:
November 2009

Rinpoche gave the following advice to a doctor who was trying to facilitate various projects to help his patients.

Dear Tony,
My advice is to do various practices to facilitate the work to benefit others. These include:

Medicine Buddha Practice
This practice can be done for any sorts of problems, for success in projects, etc. The motivation for doing the practice is twofold:

  1. for others to be able to receive the benefit
  2. for one’s wishes to succeed.

I recommend performing the short or middle-length practice. In the short sadhana, the recitations are to be performed seven times. This is important. The visualization involves the other Sugatas dissolving into the last Medicine Buddha, and then you recite the mantras. At the end of the practice, dedicate it for whatever you have prayed for in the past to succeed, and for whatever you are praying for now for yourself and sentient beings to succeed immediately.

Most Secret Hayagriva Practice
For some of your projects to succeed, you need the power of controlling others (for the purpose of getting them to listen to you and obey you). I suggest you pray to Hayagriva for this. While the purpose of the Medicine Buddha practice is for general success, this practice is specifically for controlling specific purposes. Examples of how to use this practice are making prayers to Hayagriva and chanting a mala of the mantra before going to meetings. First, you generate as the deity, then visualize all the buddhas in the form of Hayagriva dissolving into you. At this time, generate the strong feeling of having received omniscience; great compassion for all sentient beings; perfect power to work for all sentient beings; and the power of control over others – for everyone to be under your control immediately in order to benefit the work for all sentient beings. Then others will like you a lot and agree with what you say.

You can meditate in different ways to control others. One is so that others think only of you; the second is to purify others first, and then bring them into your body; the third is receiving the perfect power of the deity for having the power of control. The third method is the most important. You should do this one the most.

Make strong prayers to Hayagriva when you have crucial meetings or are working on important projects. You can also recite the torma offering prayer to Hayagriva. You can do this the day before an important event and dedicate it to the success of the meeting or project. There are also praises to Hayagriva, and requests to overcome obstacles that you can recite.

You can also recite different mantras for success. You should do the Blessing of Speech in the morning. This will give power to your speech. Also, doing this practice will increase recitations of mantras by 10 million times. Even chatting becomes a recitation of mantras.

You can also recite the Mantra for All Success seven times a day:

TADYATHA NAKSHEDE SAPHA DITTHI MUTENA SHATRANI MESA MITA DAHNI BAHPHENTU SVAHA

Regarding your question about not being able to perform meditation commitments due to your busy schedule, when I asked His Holiness the Dalai Lama about this issue he said the following: The purpose of meditation practice and prayers is to benefit others. If one’s work is to benefit others, and because of that there is difficulty performing commitments, then there is no need for regret. One’s meditation commitments are, after all, also for the benefit of others. However, if commitments are not done for no reason or because of laziness, the loss is to yourself.

Regarding your questions about Guhyasamaja practice, even if you are not performing it properly, it seems that the special nature of the practice results in a sense of calmness and peacefulness.

Regarding retreat, you should do the enabling action retreat first. Perhaps you can do the elaborate Guhyasamaja practice later on in your life, eg after retirement, when there will be more time.

Regarding your questions about tsog offering, this can be performed anywhere, eg at home, over lunch. Small amounts of meat and alcohol are readily available, even on airplanes. Bless the inner offering and offer oceans of nectar to: direct and indirect gurus, deities, sutra buddhas, arhats, and Dharma protectors. Generate incredible bliss while you make the offerings. Reciting 21 “OM AH HUMs” would be very powerful for purifying degenerate samaya. The most important thing here is the meditation on generating countless oceans of nectar and generating great bliss and emptiness.

Regarding your questions about what attitude to have if one hears criticism of one’s guru, once a connection has been made, it is critical not to lose faith or devotion to one’s guru, otherwise this would result in creating the heaviest negative karma. There would also be no possibility of generating realizations.

For example, Garchen Geshe Kyaltsen left out his ga-ka teacher from the merit field. This teacher had disrobed, stolen things, and apparently was a terrible person. However, because Geshe Kyaltsen let him out of the merit field, he was unable to generate lam-rim realizations despite meditating for a very long time. Then, he was advised to make this teacher the central figure of the merit field. After doing this, realizations came.

Whatever a teacher does or does not do, it is the disciple’s responsibility to cultivate and maintain proper devotion. A disciple should close his ears, even if the whole world criticizes one’s guru. In this case, the disciple should stay in his or her own world. If he does so, he will profit from this, will develop stable faith, have all realizations, and achieve Buddha’s holy body, speech, and mind.

If the disciple remembers that the main goal of his life is to liberate sentient beings from samsara, then, for that purpose, he should follow whatever method will facilitate achieving that, no matter what others say. If one wants to help other sentient beings, then the practice of guru devotion will be your practice, because this is the means. Moreover, it is impossible never to experience criticism of holy beings. Even at the time of the Buddha, the Buddha was criticized by Hindus for drinking milk. Even His Holiness the Dalai Lama is criticized by others.

Please read and recite the Nine Attitudes of Guru Devotion that I have translated. Every time you have such problems, in my experience, they will disappear after reading those verses.