Offering Comfort and Help to the Sick

Offering Comfort and Help to the Sick

Date Posted:
November 2012

A student wrote to Rinpoche about her nursing work. She hoped to offer service as a nurse at one of Rinpoche’s projects or centers in the future. She also asked Rinpoche about practices and a yidam in this life.

My very dear Julie,
Thank you very much for your kind letter. I am sorry it took so long to reply.

Yuthok Yonten Gonpo, a great lama who established the knowledge and lineage of Tibetan medicine, gave this advice from his experience of the benefits of meditating on and reciting the seven Medicine Buddha’s names and the Medicine Buddha mantra for sick people. He said that patients are the great merit field of all the collected merits, and even though there are very extensive and very, very profound means of collecting merit that have been taught by Buddha, there is no comparison with serving someone who is sick.

  • If you take seven steps to help one patient, it is the same as circumambulating all the buddhas.
  • If you give medicine one time to one patient, it is the same as having made charity to all sentient beings.
  • When you fulfill the wishes of one patient, it is equal to having made offerings to all the worthwhile objects.

There are numberless bodhisattvas who totally dedicate their lives to sentient beings, including all the sick people, so even their breathing in and out is only for us sentient beings. They never even take a breath for themselves. It is sentient beings that they pay the most attention to and love and cherish the most; just as a mother cares for her beloved child and cherishes her child the most, even more than buddhas and other sentient beings. Definitely she cherishes her child more than herself. So, for example, if somebody even praises her child a little, it makes the mother so unbelievably happy, or if someone gives the child a present, it makes the mother so happy. Also, if someone criticizes the child even just a little, the mother becomes so upset and hurt.

This is how bodhisattvas regard sentient beings. So, if we give a little harm to sentient beings, bodhisattvas are so sad, and if we give a little help or comfort to sentient beings, bodhisattvas are so happy; this is what makes them most happy. This is just mentioning bodhisattvas, so no question about buddhas. Now there is not just one Buddha, there are numberless buddhas.

Helping one patient by giving medicine or whatever comfort, physical or mental, that you can give; now you can see how this becomes the best offering to all the numberless bodhisattvas and buddhas. You can also see that harming one sentient being, by cheating or killing them and so forth, but then making offerings to Buddha—you can see that really does not please the buddhas.

Giving medicine or any comfort that you can to a patient is the best offering to numberless bodhisattvas and buddhas; it is what makes them so happy. This is not just referring to patients, but to any sentient being. To give comfort or help to any sentient being is the best offering to the buddhas and bodhisattvas.

It is said in the Bodhicaryavatara:

Even the mere thought of benefiting sentient beings
Is higher than making offerings to the buddhas.
Therefore actually attempt to work for sentient beings’ happiness.

Here, there is no need to actually mention medicine specifically; helping in this way is the best offering to numberless buddhas and bodhisattvas. Therefore, cherish your patients and all sentient beings as much as possible, with love and compassion. Helping your patients is so good; it is the best Dharma and such a good practice. As I have mentioned here, it is a way to collect the most merit, the most good fortune and the most good luck. It is really great!

Whatever you do with your body, speech and mind for sentient beings—whether it is giving medicine, food, money or whatever is needed to your patients—then this becomes a very special offering to all the buddhas and bodhisattvas. When you help or give offerings to your patients (or another sentient being), you should think that you are offering to all the buddhas and bodhisattvas. Then it not only becomes charity to your patient or any other sentient beings, but it also becomes an offering to numberless buddhas and bodhisattvas, and numberless holy objects. So it is one action, but it has two benefits.

So it is very good to do your work and live your life with this motivation, then whatever you do becomes cherishing other sentient beings and every action that you do to help them becomes a quick cause of enlightenment.

For example, even though Maitreya Buddha generated bodhicitta earlier than Shakyamuni Buddha, he became enlightened later than Shakyamuni Buddha, because Shakyamuni Buddha’s bodhicitta and compassion towards sentient beings was much stronger. When Maitreya Buddha and Shakyamuni Buddha were in a past life, they were brothers. They were walking and saw a starving tigress with five cubs that were all dying of starvation, but Shakyamuni Buddha could not bear it and came back later to offer his body to the starving tigress. He gave his body, but Maitreya Buddha didn’t do that. This shows that Shakyamuni Buddha’s compassion and bodhicitta was stronger and this is why he attained enlightenment faster. This was due to his strong compassion. So, the stronger the compassion that you can generate to sentient beings, the quicker you will attain enlightenment. This is what it depends on.

You are so fortunate, such a very fortunate person, and it seems you are very sincere, from your letter and what you mentioned.

For your greatest success and so that your actions can benefit others most, it comes out for you to practice Medicine Buddha and especially to recite the Medicine Buddha’s name and mantra. There is a booklet that I put together many years ago with Ven. Gyatso. This booklet is the essence of the Medicine Buddha sutra and the Medicine Buddha puja. This is what you should practice. [Note: this booklet, the Medicine Buddha Sadhana, is available from FPMT Foundation Store.]

Reciting the seven names of the Medicine Buddha is great, so unbelievable. Reciting these names is the same as reciting all the buddhas’ names. Making offerings to the Medicine Buddha is the same as making offerings to all the buddhas. Making prostrations to the Medicine Buddha is the same as making prostrations to all the buddhas. Circumambulating the Medicine Buddha is the same as circumambulating all the buddhas.

If you recite the seven Medicine Buddhas’ names and make prostrations and offerings to the seven Medicine Buddhas, then all the prayers that are mentioned in the sutra become successful.

It is very good if you recite the long mantra of Medicine Buddha 100,000 times, if you can find the time; if not, then recite this mantra 40,000 times. If you can do that, it would be so good. You can do it in retreat, or if it is hard to do strict retreat, then do a session in the morning or twice a day, if you have time, and in this way complete the recitation.

Then study the Middle Lam-rim of Lama Tsongkhapa (I can email this to you if you need it). Also study Manjrushri’s Own Words (this is a lam-rim text). Then use The Essential Nectar lam-rim to meditate on, by following the outlines. Please read the Middle Lam-rim from beginning to end three times.

Do effortful meditation on guru devotion for four months, then the graduated path of the lower capable being for one month, the graduated path of the intermediate capable being for five months, then the graduated path of the highest capable being: bodhicitta for two months and emptiness for three months. Keep circling like this, for this length of time until you have stable realizations, effortlessly. So, continue this meditation until you have stable guru devotion realization—not just for a few hours or in one session, but continuously—until from your heart when you think about the guru you see Buddha. The guru reminds you of Buddha; there is Buddha, having ceased all obscurations and mistakes and completed all the qualities. Without effort, 100 per cent you see that from your heart. So, if you don’t have this realization then you must continue to meditate on this, no matter how many months or years it takes, by following the outline. You can use The Essential Nectar, but also read other lam-rim commentaries; also by following Manjrushri’s Own Words lam-rim outline, whatever is easier.

For daily meditation, use The Essential Nectar. In this way try to have all the realizations of the lam-rim. First try to have effortless realizations of the lower capable being’s path; meditate on that to have the realizations of each meditation, step-by-step, no matter how many months or years it takes. Then continue until you have effortless realizations of the middle capable being, then bodhicitta. Once you have realized bodhicitta, then you can do more tantric practice. But you should meditate a little on emptiness every day, even just for five, ten or fifteen minutes. After you have realized bodhicitta, then mainly you can do tantric practice—generation and completion stage. So, this is my main advice for now.

Please find my advice attached for your life practices, what to focus on for your whole life, along with some additional information.

I hope to see you again; life is short and this human life is more precious than skies filled with wish-granting jewels. Try not to waste a second of your life and make your life most beneficial for sentient beings.

So you being a nurse is very good for sentient beings. Thank you very much.

With much love and prayers,

Lama Zopa