Sponsoring a Monastery to Complete Preliminary Practices

Sponsoring a Monastery to Complete Preliminary Practices

Date of Advice:
January 2017
Date Posted:
February 2020

A student asked if a monastery could be sponsored to do sutra recitations which Rinpoche had advised as a preliminary practice. The student also asked about reusing water offered in water bowls.

My most dear, most precious, most kind, most wish-fulfilling one,
You asked about the practices you have left to do and suggested sponsoring a monastery to do the practices instead of doing them yourself.

Regarding sponsoring the recitations of the sutra by a monastery, it’s best if you can do the recitations yourself. This is such a quick way to realize emptiness and to quickly become free from samsara forever. Not only that, if you do the recitations with bodhicitta then it is a cause to achieve enlightenment quickly, to realize emptiness quickly, to be free from samsara quickly, and then to be able to free all sentient beings from the oceans of samsaric sufferings and for them to achieve enlightenment quickly. So you need to think of all that—it’s not just for yourself; it is to never ever be reborn in the lower realms and there is unbelievable, unbelievable benefit for yourself and others.

There is a lot for you to do, so you can have 50,000, 60,000, 70,000 or 90,000 sutra recitations done by a monastery. You can sponsor the monks to do some of the recitation—you can decide the amount—but the rest you need to do yourself. You can finish those that are not done by the monastery later—over time or do some every day. When you sponsor the monastery, you need to make offerings to all the monks who are doing it for you. You can discuss the cost with the monastery. The monastery that came out best for this is Ganden Jangtse [in Mundgod, south India].

Regarding the sutra recitation and other practices you have to do, it can be good when you are doing this to read my advice to make sure you have all the details of how to do the practices well.

You can’t reuse the water which has been offered in water bowls. Regarding a place to do the water bowl offerings, many centers now offer an annual water bowl retreat, for example, I think Institut Vajra Yogini and Kopan Nunnery do it. You can count everyone’s offerings, so not just your own. You count the amount the group does, so it is very easy to complete a lot of water bowls in a short amount of time.

When and where you do retreat is up to you. It depends on your time, your finances, the places, your visas, etc.

Are you doing the daily motivation, The Method to Transform a Suffering Life into Happiness (Including Enlightenment)? If not please start doing this, as it is very important.

Thank you for starting your commitments again, this is very important.

Please, you must be aware that death can come at any time—this year, this month, tomorrow or even today. Death can come at any time, and the only thing that can help is Dharma. When you practice Dharma, the mind becomes positive, virtuous, unstained by attachment to this life, unstained by future lives’ samsara, unstained by the self-cherishing thought and unstained by ignorance holding the I, the aggregates and so forth as truly existent, while they are not.

Please make your life most meaningful with the thought of bodhicitta day and night and in every action you do.

With much love and prayers ...