The reasons I give preliminary practices and meditation on the lam-rim, explaining which deity to practice, are as follows:
1) Because it is just this one time that we have this precious human body, which is most rare. Not only that, we have a perfect human rebirth, which is even rarer and with which we have this incredible opportunity to achieve our present happiness and future lives' happiness, such as being born in a pure land after we die, where we can become enlightened so quickly; or again to have a precious human rebirth, meet a perfectly qualified guru, meet the Mahayana teachings, train the mind on the path, and achieve enlightenment for sentient beings.
By the way, by doing these practices, you will create merit for a long life and happiness now and in future lives, whatever you need; then liberation from samsara, ultimate happiness, and full enlightenment—all this can be achieved. You can achieve cessation of all the mistakes of the mind and complete all the realizations; you can cause happiness in this life for so many other living beings; you can cause all the happiness of their future lives; cause liberation from samsara and ultimate happiness; and cause numberless sentient beings to achieve full enlightenment.
This is all because now you have this human rebirth, which is more precious than a wish-fulfilling jewel, more precious than all the wealth in the world. The wealth of the deva realm is nothing compared to this precious human body. Every second you can achieve all these things. If you don’t get to practice Dharma, then each second all of this is lost, all these profound benefits. It is like having lost billions of dollars, gold, diamonds, even wish-granting jewels. Even if all that wealth were lost—the whole sky filled with gold—it would be nothing compared to wasting this most precious human body. Even to waste one second is a great loss.
2) We have achieved all the qualities—clairvoyance, psychic powers, the eight siddhis, common powers, etc.—countless times in the past, but they did not free us from the suffering of samsara, because we did not cease the cause of the suffering. This is because we have not achieved the realizations of the lam-rim, the graduated path to enlightenment. We have to actualize the Four Noble Truths. We need to develop renunciation of what is suffering, realizing all samsara's perfections are really suffering, and seeking liberation from this, constantly, day and night, all the time, by seeing that samsara is in the nature of suffering, and finding no attraction to samsaric happiness even for one second.
Only the five paths to liberation (the path of accumulation, path of preparation, path of seeing, path of meditation, and the path of no more learning) cease all the defilements - the distracted thoughts and obstacles, including the seeds - making it impossible to be reborn again; impossible to experience all the suffering, sickness, relationship problems, and death. As long as we don’t realize the Four Noble Truths and complete the path that I just mentioned, we will have to suffer in samsara without end, as it has no beginning.
3) The purpose of life is to benefit others; the highest benefit is to bring sentient beings to enlightenment. For that we need to achieve enlightenment, actualize the Mahayana path, and practice the lam-rim. So, you can see the purpose of practicing the lam-rim is as vast as the limitless sky. We should dedicate our lives to actualizing the lam-rim, the stages of the path to enlightenment. This is the ultimate, best way to benefit sentient beings, to liberate them from the oceans of samsaric suffering and bring them to full enlightenment, the peerless happiness.
4) The purpose of the preliminary practices, and the reason I give all these numbers of preliminary practices and meditations on the lam-rim, is to complete the works for the self -ceasing the defilements, the mistakes of the mind, and completing all the realizations - so as to be able to perform perfect works for countless sentient beings, so they can actualize the path and achieve enlightenment. For that we need to purify the obstacles, negative karma and defilements, and create the necessary conditions, the merits. Then we need to receive blessings from the guru; for that we need to practice guru yoga. That is why these practices are given, to purify the mind and collect merit.
5) In this way, life is not wasted. By doing these practices, as advised - little by little, over time, doing some every day - slowly they get done. In this way, you collect vast amounts of merit, especially, if you perform the practices with bodhicitta; you purify many eons of negative karma each day by practicing.
6) Life is very short. This most precious human rebirth is very short, much shorter than a thousand years and even hundreds of years; life is becoming shorter. Not only can death happen at any time, death can happen any day, any hour, any minute or second. So we must do our best to engage in beneficial actions, practicing Dharma, living life with a bodhicitta motivation, which is the cause to achieve enlightenment, besides meditating on the path which leads to bodhicitta; then meditating on emptiness, learning about emptiness, to develop the wisdom that directly ceases all the defilements; and living our daily life with those meditations as well as correct devotion to the virtuous friend, guru devotion. This is the essence of Dharma practice.
7) It is difficult to meet other lamas and teachers. Even if you are able to meet them, many lamas do not speak English, so you need a qualified translator, and sometimes those are quite difficult to find, too.
Then, also, I don’t get to meet you very often to discuss what practices you are doing. That is the reason I give them all now, so you know what to focus on, so you have something to do for quite a number of years. In this way, you can make your life most meaningful. You are preparing for happiness, starting from now up to enlightenment.
With much love and prayers...
