Daily Practices to Clear Obstacles

Daily Practices to Clear Obstacles

Date Posted:
September 2012

A student asked Rinpoche what she should do in order to clear obstacles in her Dharma practice. Rinpoche had previously advised her to recite the Thirty-five Buddhas and Vajrasattva mantra every day.

Practices:
  • 100,000:  Refuge
  • 300,000:  Generating the Four Immeasurables with prayer
  • 2,000:  Tsa-tsas. The lam-rim merit field comes out for the tsa-tsas, but Peter hasn’t made it yet. My suggestion is to develop large photographs of the merit field or print the merit field by making large photocopies or using a wood block. Some you can do by making photos, some by printing and some by photocopying, like this.
  • 50,000:  Guru yoga on the basis of Lama Tsongkhapa Guru Yoga counting migtsema. This can also be done based on Lama Chöpa, or do some with Lama Chöpa and the rest with Lama Tsongkhapa Guru Yoga. You can do one session of Lama Chöpa once a day with migtsema and the other sessions can be Lama Tsongkhapa Guru Yoga. It means you are doing a few sessions each day.
  • 500,000:  Water bowl offerings. If you go to Kopan, every year they do water bowl offerings with many people together. They perform water bowls together and everybody offers at the same time; so you are offering many bowls, even though they are offered together. In Tibet, one lama used to do like this in a tent, offering many thousands of bowls. So in this way, you can finish the water bowls very quickly. You can do some yourself at your house or somewhere. Do more when there is free time and at other times do whatever you can.

For five years, read the Golden Light Sutra one day and the next day read the Sanghata Sutra. You can read the sutra all at once or read half and then stop and continue later, but you should finish it in one day. You can take breaks between reading.

If you are working, one way is to get up early and do half in the morning, then do the other half at night. It also depends what work you do—some jobs you can read while you are at work. Also, it goes faster and faster the more you read.

But the most important thing is to read with bodhicitta. Think, “For every six realm sentient being to be free from the oceans of suffering and the causes of suffering, karma and delusion and to bring them to enlightenment by myself alone, I must achieve full enlightenment. Therefore I am going to read the sutra.” That means you are reading this even for the ants you see inside and outside on the road, and the dogs and cats and worms you see inside and outside the house. Everyone. Even the tiniest insect you can see only through the microscope. How incredible that is. Pray for every single hell being, hungry ghost, animal and so forth.

For effortful experience of lam-rim

For effortful experience in order to gain effortless meditation:

  • Five months: Guru devotion
  • Two months: Lower path
  • Three months: Middle path
  • One month: Bodhicitta
  • Five months: Emptiness

Then do the effortless experience of that, no matter how many months or years it takes. First, guru devotion, following the outlines of the lam-rim or Essential Nectar until you have stable realization of guru devotion—seeing the guru as buddha 100 percent, from your heart. Not just for a few days, but for months and years. Stable.

Then, of course, while you are doing effortful experience, realization can happen at that time. Then there is renunciation of this life, renunciation of future lives and bodhicitta. Go step-by-step until you have stable realization. After that, shamatha.

The five months of meditation on emptiness is to get effortful realization, but every day do some meditation on emptiness, using the Heart Sutra or the Four Analyses, or one stanza or verse. There are different ways to meditate on emptiness.

After you have the realization of bodhicitta, meditate on tantra—generation stage and a little bit on completion stage, just for imprints.

Overall, the minimum commitment for life is to do one lam-rim prayer every day, for example Lama Tsongkhapa’s Foundation of All Good Qualities, Pabongka Rinpoche’s Calling the Guru from Afar, or Lama Tsongkhapa’s Hymns of Experience, in order to leave the imprint of the path. Then, whichever is your deity, read the graduated path of the deity. This comes usually at the end of the sadhana. You should recite this every day to leave an imprint.

Deity: Yamantaka or Secret Vajrapani.

Billions and zillions of thanks for doing the Thirty-five Buddhas and Vajrasattva.