Rinpoche's Thank-you Cards, Letters and Gifts

My most dear, most kind, most precious, wish-fulfilling one,
Thank you for your kind letter. I am sending you some cards, but I also wanted to send this to you by email, so you get it quickly.

If you can recite Vajra Cutter Sutra once a week for your lifetime, it is most unbelievable, unbelievable, unbelievable. You will probably be able to memorize the text after some time. This is best for everything, not only for study. It is most important to actualize emptiness as quickly as possible and to free all sentient beings from the oceans of samsaric suffering and the causes; to free the numberless sentient beings in each realm from the oceans of samsaric suffering forever and bring them to enlightenment.

Also to develop wisdom with bodhicitta and develop bodhicitta with wisdom. This is the path of method with wisdom to achieve enlightenment.;

Do tonglen meditation every day. Basically, you can set a goal of 100,000 sessions, doing whatever you can in any number of days, continuing for years and years over your lifetime. In this way, you can complete 100,000. Or, without focusing on a number, you can just do tonglen meditation every day. That is the best Dharma practice.

This is a most powerful practice to purify the negative karma collected since beginningless rebirths and to collect the most extensive merits. It’s the quickest way to become free from the oceans of samsaric sufferings, the quickest way to achieve the pure land and the quickest way to achieve full enlightenment, so that is everything. It is the best cause for all the success.

You are great! What you have done is great!

Regarding your questions:

Prostrations by reciting the names of the Thirty-five Buddhas is always good to do. Even arya bodhisattvas who achieved very high paths still manifested millions, billions, zillions of holy bodies and did prostrations. So of course, with this one body, we must do it.

If you are going to live in celibacy anyway, it is much, much better to be a nun, then you are living in so many more vows and there is so much benefit because there are more vows. [Your negative karma is] purified much more and you bring greater benefit to sentient beings, to be able to free them from the oceans of samsaric sufferings and bring them to enlightenment. So if you can, do that, especially with bodhicitta. That is very, very good, so please do that.

From your information, what you said in your email and being celibate, it sounds like you are stable person, so that is very good, that is what is needed. It is the foundation of Dharma practice and you have already accomplished the practices.

Here I would like to thank you from my heart on behalf all the buddhas and bodhisattvas and His Holiness the Dalai Lama, and on behalf of all the sentient beings who receive so much benefit from you, as your merits are dedicated for them. At the beginning of any practice, we start with bodhicitta and then at the end of any practice we dedicate the merit for sentient beings to achieve enlightenment.

Regarding your completion of these practices:

• 300,000 Medicine Buddha tsa tsas. Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow!;
• 300,000 refuge. Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow!
• 100,000 mandala offerings with refuge and bodhicitta. Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow!
• 100 000 prostrations to the Thirty-five Buddhas. Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow!

But you should think you’re not just prostrating to the Thirty-five Buddhas. Whether one buddha or many buddhas, all are in essence your root guru. Without thinking of your guru and only thinking of the Thirty-five Buddhas, it is so much less [merit]. It’s still good, but compared with thinking of the guru—if you are missing that they are in essence the guru, then it is poor.

• 100 000 Samayavajra in the context of Lama Chöpa. Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow!

And then leading nyung näs. This is incredible, this is incredible. All this purifies the negative karma and obscurations collected since beginningless rebirths and collects the most extensive merit in so many ways, by reciting the Chenrezig mantra and taking the eight Mahayana precepts, then doing Chenrezig meditation and prostrations by reciting the names of the Thirty-five Buddhas. In so many ways, this is a quick way to develop compassion for all sentient beings—for every mosquito, every single fish, chicken, dog, cat, goat, snake, maggot, chameleon, every penguin.

In the Antarctica, where the penguins gather for three months, it is so cold, with so much wind. Every minute, it is incredibly cold, so they all huddle together and every few minutes they have to change position. The ones inside, in the middle of the circle, move to the outside so the ones on the outer edge can move in and get warmer. It is incredible politics. They have to come there from very far away, it takes weeks; wherever they are, they have to come there, then the father penguin keeps the eggs and the mother goes away to eat food. When she comes back she knows exactly who her husband is, even though they all look the same, so it’s hard to recognize [her husband]. It’s really amazing. So [we develop compassion] for every single pitiful deer, zebra, monkey and snake; for every human being, sura, asura, and every single intermediate state being in the numberless universes, all those sentient beings.

Developing compassion becomes the quickest way to achieve enlightenment, the easiest way to achieve the pure land, and to bring all sentient beings to enlightenment by freeing them from the oceans of samsaric sufferings. Wow, wow, wow!

You’re also doing Lama Chöpa—wow wow, wow, wow, wow—that is great, great, great! It’s the quickest way to achieve enlightenment. This practice is in all the four sects and the ancient Indian pandits, the yogis, all achieved enlightenment in one lifetime based on the practice of guru yoga. This is what made them to achieve that. Panchen Losang Chökyi Gyaltsen looked at all the four sects and integrated them all into Lama Chöpa, not only guru yoga but also the lamrim, particularly lojong, using the problems, including death, in the path to enlightenment.

Thank you very much. Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow!

I checked regarding your further practice. You should use the Middle-Length Lamrim as your main lamrim, using the outline as a guide for your meditation. Please study it twice from beginning to end. That itself becomes meditation.

Vajrayogini is your main deity. You may have already known this, but according to my observation, that is what came out as your main deity to practice.

Thank you very much again. Numberless thanks for making your life precious.

This human life is so precious, having received this perfect human rebirth and then having met the Mahayana teachings, and not only that, but the Mahayana sutra teachings and the Mahayana tantra teachings, which bring enlightenment in one brief lifetime of degenerate time, and having met a perfectly qualified guru, such as His Holiness the Dalai Lama, who is the real Chenrezig, a qualified perfect guru, so that doesn’t include me. Just about one time we have this opportunity, and you have made it so meaningful. Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow!

So happy life, being most beneficial for every sentient being, as you do every practice as much possible with bodhicitta motivation, and also at the end, dedicate for every sentient being. It’s so unbelievable, and no question that you get the benefits by the way.

Thank you very much.

With much love and prayers ...

Dearest one,
I was extremely happy to receive your kind letter and the very beautiful thangka of Maitreya Buddha. Thank you  very much. Everything went extremely well in Bodhgaya at the teaching of His Holiness. His Holiness visited the land to bless it and to give advice; it was unbelievable. In the tent that was set up there, there were one thousand sets of offerings to Maitreya Buddha for the pujas that were done. There was a large fire there and the whole tent was flamed by fire. In the morning it was unbelievably beautiful, but by the afternoon it was completely gone. Only the Maitreya Buddha thangka was untouched by the fire, which is regarded as very auspicious for prosperity. I wish you had been there.

The thangkas of the Sixteen Arhats are so beautiful. I haven’t yet seen the thangka of the Twenty-one Taras. I will see it soon.

From my heart I wish to send billions of thanks to Rinpoche, the head of Kumbum Monastery, for his contribution toward publishing our books. Please tell Rinpoche what happened in Bodhgaya. Also, please tell Rinpoche that I hope to meet him in the future when I come to China.

Either in the Beijing library, or perhaps you can ask Rinpoche, there is a collection of Kurukulla texts called phe pung. I would very much like to have copies of that collection of texts, as well as a copy of the commentaries on Hevajra by Khedrub Rinpoche. If you can help with that, I would be very appreciative.

For your father, I will sponsor the Medicine Buddha puja five times at Dharamsala, to be done by the monks of the Tantric College, for whatever is best for your father to happen. 

At the moment, I haven’t decided yet, but I will definitely come to China sometime, to spend a little time and perhaps to do some retreat.

Thank you so much again. Please write to me regarding anything you need to tell me.

With much love and prayers ...
 

My very precious, kind and wish-fulfilling jewel one,
A billion, billion and billion times thank you. In London I stayed at your house for two months, a few months. I stayed there, so thank you very much. Then you were the director of the FPMT center; you did that for quite a few years, so [thanks] for all that kindness. 

Also driving the car for His Holiness, being chauffeur for His Holiness, and the many services you and your wife did for Tibet for so many years. Anyway, you did service for His Holiness, so for all that, thank you very much. A billion, trillion, zillion thanks! 

I hope you did what I explained, visualizing His Holiness and then confessing. Also, I accept your confession and all that, any mistakes you have made during your life and all that. 

I made prayers in the past and yes, I will keep doing prayers. Thank you very much. 

I gave advice already for you to practice the five powers near death time, so thank you very much, OK. So I will make prayers now and I will just recite one mantra that I think I did before: the mantra from the Great Liberation Sutra.

Thank you very much. I am sure you will meet His Holiness again, because you did so much service and created so much good karma to meet His Holiness again. Please give my love and prayers to your wife. Thank you very much.

With much love and prayers ...

My most precious, most kind, most dear, wish-fulfilling one,
I want to thank you from the depths of my heart, from the very inside of my heart and bones. Thanks to you and the others for organizing the mani retreat each year. This is one of my dreams, to have this each year and for it to continue forever, even after I die, even after the people living now die. Those who are working, offering service now—to continue even after they die; to continue for as long as the country exists.

This is like offering infinite skies of help to sentient beings. Even each session, even reciting one mala purifies negative karma and all the obscurations created from beginningless rebirths. This is even without doing it with bodhicitta. Then we collect merit more than the drops of water in the Pacific Ocean, more than the sand grains of the Pacific Ocean, more than the blades of grass growing on the mountains and on the lands of the earth.

Doing it with bodhicitta, even if we recite OM MANI PADME HUM one time, we collect merit more than skies. It’s unbelievable, unbelievable, unbelievable; we collect so much merit. In particular, it causes us to develop compassion for others, for numberless sentient beings in the six realms— numberless hell beings, numberless hungry ghosts, numberless animals, numberless human beings, numberless suras, numberless asuras and numberless intermediate state beings.

Generating compassion is most powerful, and that is what helps us achieve enlightenment rapidly. Even if we generate compassion for just one sentient being, that is the quickest way to purify all the defilements and complete all the merits, which is a necessary condition to actualize the path to enlightenment.

The conclusion is that this helps us to achieve enlightenment, buddhahood, the total cessation of all the obscurations and completion of all the realizations, as quickly as possible. This means being able to free all the six realm sentient beings from the oceans of samsaric suffering quickly and being able to bring the numberless sentient beings to buddhahood quickly. This is the achievement, the most important thing. It’s more important than anything else in the life and especially by generating compassion we are able to achieve this quickly.

For example, my mother was not able to read texts because she hadn’t learned the alphabet. I have read Dharma texts and also I explain a little bit to people and I can write, but her compassion is one hundred times more than mine, little Mickey Mouse. She told me one year before she died that she recites 50,000 OM MANI PADME HUM a day, but then she became too old and could not recite as much. From this, she had so much compassion for people.

In Nepal, we took my mother by car down to Boudha Stupa and different places, and when she saw Nepali people walking without shoes, she felt so sorry and had so much compassion, so much feeling for them. She didn’t want them to suffer. In Dharamsala, we have a meditation center called Tushita, so when she was there, every morning when she ate breakfast, like pancake, she would eat some and then half she would pack up and keep in her dongka (shirt) pocket. She would carry this half-pancake and when she circumambulated His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s temple (also when she went around the mountain where His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s palace is) she would share her half-pancake with the beggars on the road. So like that, she had much greater compassion than me, so much, so much.

I see many old people, ladies who often do nyung näs in the temples in the villages. They haven’t learned the alphabet, so many of them can’t read texts or do the sadhana, but they have so much faith in Chenrezig and they recite OM MANI PADME HUM and take the eight Mahayana precepts. That’s what they do. I spoke just a few words to one of the ladies and I felt that she had much compassion, more than me. This was because of reciting OM MANI PADME HUM every day and doing nyung näs, as I have explained.

My plan is not only to do the 100 million mani retreat in the main city, but also in other cities, to gradually start 100 million mani retreats. Then by the way, it helps all the people who come there. They achieve the happiness of future lives so easily and ultimate happiness, liberation from the oceans of samsaric suffering so easily, and buddhahood, the total cessation of all the obscurations and completion of all the realizations.

All those people who have been able to give time to come to this mani retreat, even coming for just one part of the retreat, even coming for one day, it is very wise. It is one of the functions of the center and it extremely worthwhile for our center. It is so beneficial for sentient beings, particularly those in the country.

With much love and prayers. I hope to see you soon.

Lama Zopa

I will check what can be done. Thanks for your good heart, working for sentient beings and the teachings of the Buddha.

The teaching of Buddha is the only thing that can free the sentient beings from the oceans of samsaric suffering forever. It also removes delusion and karma, so it is most worthwhile, however hard it is or how long it takes.

Samsaric pleasure is in the nature of suffering, so however much [pleasure] we experience, it finishes, then we have to work again so there’s no end, even though we try again and again, even after reincarnating. Of course, the whole thing depends on confession and wisdom; that is the essence.

I really thank you for all your time every day, including your breath, your breathing.

My most dear most precious, most kind, wish-fulfilling one, director of ___center,

I am sending this card just to say how are you? To see if you will smile, just for a minute.

Anyway, a billion, zillion, numberless thanks for your dedication to me, and for making the center beneficial for sentient beings, and in that way benefiting the teachings of Buddha and sentient beings.

That is so great, so great. What else can you do in this world? It is so great.

Hope to see you soon.

With big love and prayer ...