Schizophrenia and Negative Thoughts

Schizophrenia and Negative Thoughts

Date of Advice:
May 2014
Date Posted:
May 2015

A student wrote to confess that he had developed an impure perception of Rinpoche. He felt that Rinpoche was trying to harm him, but he realized it was a wrong view due to his schizophrenia, and he was trying to purify all wrong views toward his gurus. He wrote, “This sickness is very bad for my spiritual practice, it has been blocking my will to try and practice a lot. It has a lot of negative energies. My body just doesn't want to cooperate with my thoughts.”

My very dear one,
Thank you very much for your kind email and information. It is huge, the most important thing, that you recognize it is wrong and that the strong thought to purify is arising.

Try to do 400 tsog offerings based on Guru Puja. This might be difficult for you to do, so if it is difficult you can ask the monasteries to do it. This is confession and restoring the samaya vows. It is a very, very strong practice to hook the realizations and to purify degenerate samaya vows. 

Then do the Thirty-five Buddhas practice. This is very powerful, with the remedy of the four opponent powers. What makes confession very powerful is if the four opponent powers are gathered, if they are there. That is what makes it very powerful.

In the life story of Lama Tsongkhapa, he did 700,000 prostrations by reciting the Confession of Downfalls to the Thirty-five Buddhas, then after that the realizations came like rainfall. Just reciting the first Buddha’s name purifies one billion or more eons of negative karma, then so many eons of different negative karma are purified if you recite that only once. Then by doing prostrations to Glorious Flower, if you recite that one time it purifies 100,000 eons of negative karma. It is unbelievable, unbelievable.

This disease you have is spirit harm, it is the result of past karma, having harmed others. The past means past lives—it could be numberless eons ago or a few lifetimes ago; it could be anything. Of course I am not an enlightened being, I am an ordinary sentient being. I am not an arhat, so of course I do have mistakes, but the spirit, the result of your past karma, causes you to think negatively.

A long time ago when I was in Singapore, one family’s son joined our center, ABC, and I gave him a mala. It seemed there was a spirit that had been harming him, telling him all kinds of things, so the spirit pretended to the son’s family that it was me harming the son. They came to the center with their son, and they were very, very strong, pushy. The son came and asked to be free of me and returned the mala. They believed it was me hurting him, but it was the spirit. The spirit can tell lies, many spirits tell lies. They enter in the medium and they tell lies. Western scientists and doctors haven’t discovered this yet, they just call it schizophrenia, but they don’t know really well, so there is a need for protection, mental protection. 

As I heard your letter, this is what I thought to tell you immediately, to help.

With much love and prayers...