My dear one,
Life is very short. We can’t say how short it is—we may die today or tomorrow, so take it easy and don’t worry so much. The main thing is to purify past negative karma and always collect extensive merits by chanting OM MANI PADME HUM and the Seven Medicine Buddhas’ names—doing this is the same as having done Medicine Buddha puja.

Then do lam-rim prayers, such as Calling the Guru from Afar, the short and long one, and other lam-rim prayers. Even if you can’t do other practices, just do this much. This is the best preparation for enlightenment, so that you can soon give happiness to all sentient beings—to the numberless sentient beings, numberless hell beings, numberless pretas, numberless animals, numberless human beings, numberless asuras, numberless suras and the numberless intermediate state beings.

This is the most important thing in the life; there is nothing more important than this. This is benefiting all sentient beings.

Thank you very, very much for your concern for me—to go to mainland China and to receive the doctors’ suggestions, that you thought to do, etc. Hopefully I will still go in the future.

With much love and prayers

Lama Zopa

PS: When your family was suffering and experiencing problems, I prayed to help and now when I am experiencing suffering, your family is praying to help me, so this is very good. We are one, so that means we are one person in reality, with different bodies—small, big, old, fat, skinny, etc. Thank you.