My very dear Max,
Thank you very much for your kind letter. Your motivation should be not only to purify cancer of this life. Your motivation should be for more important things, not just purifying the negative karma of this and past lives. It should be like that, but not just that. It should be for becoming totally free from oceans of samsara suffering and its cause, delusion. It should not be only for yourself to be free from samsara. Most important is to liberate numberless sentient beings from oceans of samsara suffering and bring them to full enlightenment, peerless happiness. For success of that, you need to achieve enlightenment. That should be the main motivation. I am sure you know all that, but I just want to emphasize it.

That means, each time, reciting the mantra for numberless hell beings, numberless hungry ghosts, numberless animals, numberless human beings, numberless suras, numberless asuras and numberless intermediate beings to achieve enlightenment. Not only that, but for you to achieve enlightenment. Therefore, you must actualize the path to enlightenment. For that, you need to purify the defilements and negative karma collected through your body, speech and mind from beginningless rebirth, in particular, the broken pratimoksha vows, bodhisattva vows and tantric vows from beginningless rebirth; and the heaviest negative karma, including harming the guru’s holy body, disturbing the holy mind, arising heresy and anger, breaking advice, and giving up the guru after having made a Dharma connection. So this negative karma collected since beginningless rebirth should be purified immediately, without delaying for a second, because death can happen any day, any hour, any minute, or any second.

Your main meditation for healing is Black Manjushri mantra. It is not just for healing cancer, but most importantly, for purifying negative karma. Recite this mantra 300,000 times. After one month of strong meditation, then you can have the operation. However, the ultimate solution is bodhicitta for the benefit of other sentient beings. This is the best.

Please give my big love to your mom. Don’t worry. Rely on bodhicitta and it will be okay.

With much love and prayer...