From time to time, each month, you should take the eight precepts/24-hour Mahayana vows. This should be done especially on the special Buddhist days, such as enlightenment day, Shakyamuni’s birthday, descending day, etc. There are four major days and four small ones.

Whatever merit you collect, you can increase it 100 million times on precept days. On these special days it is very profitable to increase your virtue. When the sun is eclipsed, the practice of virtue is increased 700 million times, with the Mahayana precepts. Also, your precious virtue can increase 100,000 times through taking the Mahayana precepts. It’s very wise to take precepts on the special days to increase your merit 100,000 times. You can create merit all the time, even while sleeping. On the days you take precepts any virtue increases. The reason to take the precepts is that you can’t guarantee that you’ll be reborn as a human being in your next life.

First of all, just being a human depends on having practiced pure morality in the past. It is extremely difficult even to be born where you will know the Buddha again. You should use every opportunity to take the precepts, even if there are many obstacles. Even when you are not practicing well, virtue will increase if you take the precepts.

We need to try to practice correctly. Even if your practice is performed with virtue, it is very weak without the proper motivation and a good amount of practice. Also, if you do not perform a dedication, then your practice is still very weak. The three parts of the practice are very important.

First of all, we have the precious opportunity to practice well with the Four Noble Truths and a chance to be liberated from samsara. Without Mahayana Tantra, the Vajrayana, the path takes a long time. All sentient beings depend on you to be liberated, and they have to wait a long time. However, with tantra, we have the opportunity to achieve enlightenment in a brief time, in just one lifetime. Therefore it’s very important to do whatever makes your life most beneficial.

It’s good to practice lam-rim meditation. The purpose of life is to benefit all sentient beings. We need to be qualified to be able to do this. We need to actualize the stages of lam-rim meditation. Try to develop your mind in the complete path, so you know what you’re doing and where you’re going. First you should develop your meditation practice and study for some years, then start taking initiations as soon as possible.

Try to practice bodhicitta in your daily life with your family, friends, and at your job as much as possible. Practice bodhicitta with a strong mental focus to collect vast amounts of merit. With a bodhicitta motivation, offering one light to the Buddha increases the merit by 100,000 times. While you’re eating, walking, and sleeping with a bodhicitta motivation, your aim is to benefit all sentient beings and free them from suffering, by offering service to others.

We have to earn money in life, but when it’s done with a bodhicitta motivation to benefit others, your hours at work increase your merit. Your drive to work and every step you take at work, with bodhicitta, is done for countless sentient beings. It increases the merit and brings incredible purification. Each step becomes a cause for enlightenment, and collects so much merit. Every action becomes a cause for enlightenment.

There are two types of meditation: sitting and active meditation, which work in harmony and increase the benefits of each. The everyday work of washing clothes, working in the house, at a job, all these actions become the cause for enlightenment, and the cause of happiness for all sentient beings.

Daily practice is very important. Time is very short. We need to pay attention all the time and practice awareness of watching the mind stream and putting in effort. After some time, the mind is trained and works with bodhicitta. Eventually, quite naturally, everything you do becomes bodhicitta. Not only indifferent actions become virtue, even the harshly spoken, seven negative actions become virtue. The break time from your sitting meditation should not be a break from Dharma. You should make your actions Dharma as much as possible. This will activate your motivation and then activate your bodhicitta.

Try to learn Dharma as much as possible. Begin at the first stage, and take the learning opportunities from the foundation up. Otherwise, without going step by step, slowly, you can’t have many realizations.

It takes many, many years and lifetimes to achieve enlightenment. It is a way of benefiting countless sentient beings. Even if one doesn’t have any idea of the lam-rim, read about it slowly, and let the ideas sink in. You can read it two or three times to meditate on the ideas, then when you are learning and following the meditations that come later, they’ll make sense. With a broad view and understanding, you’ll have a map to guide you. From the beginning, you’ll have some methods to work with and they will help to make it all more familiar. You will be confident that you can accomplish what you want. Later, after the preliminary practices, you can meditate and have the confidence to achieve realizations.

Meditate on guru devotion from the bottom of your heart, with full confidence, while seeing your guru as a buddha. When your experience is stable, this should be done every day for 10 to 15 minutes. Start by meditating on the perfect human rebirth and renunciation, just two or three subjects. Work from the beginning, and then you will have a realization of impermanence.

I advise doing purification practice in the morning, especially prostrations to the Thirty-five Buddhas. This makes it so easy to purify billions of your negative karmas. Many eons of karma are purified countless times from doing this practice. You should recite each of the Buddhas’ names three times.

In the evening I advise reciting the Vajrasattva mantra for purification. You should recite the short mantra 100 times or the long one 28 times, with the four opponent powers, every evening. If you don’t do this, your negative karma is doubled by the next day, the third day it is four times greater, the fourth day it is eight times greater, and so on. If this negative karma is not purified, it will increase to the size of the earth. It will be very heavy at the time of your death, and then it may continue on in the next life. You may not be reborn as a human, without the ability to help yourself and others in the next life. A wise person knows that negative karma can become great, but with the four opponent powers and purification of our negative actions, our life will become most profitable.

The practice of guru yoga is very important. Taking the teachings of Manjushri, Chenrezig and Lama Tsongkhapa, to actualize the path, will help your practice of guru yoga. Also, using reasoning and quotations from Buddha himself will help your practice at home. With guru meditation as a guide for mind training, using guru devotion and realizations from their own side, you will have realizations.

Bodhicitta is the right view for building the path. The human body is qualified to achieve enlightenment by going up through the eight stages of the path. This is why we survive in life and eat food to take care of our bodies. The whole point is to liberate countless sentient beings and bring them to enlightenment.

Lama Tsongkhapa and guru yoga help us to develop wisdom. There are six types of wisdom: great, quick, profound, debating, writing, and meditation. Developing wisdom helps us to go to Amitabha Tushita Pure Land when we die. It develops the cause to be reborn in the higher realms. It is also a cause to meet Lama Tsongkhapa in the next life. With right conduct, right view, a pure life, and realizing emptiness, it is much more definite that you will achieve enlightenment.

It is said by Manjushri that we should do more meditation on impermanence and the perfect human rebirth. This will help you to have other realizations quickly. Meditate on emptiness for five minutes daily, reading a few stanzas of the teachings, to leave a positive imprint and to help you become more familiar with it. Later, when you have the time, you can do more. Also try to meditate on single-pointed concentration, with no distraction at all, in a calm, quiet place, in order to achieve the state of calm abiding.

Deity meditation comes after taking a Highest Tantra Yoga initiation. Realizations generate the completion stage. Devotion comes when the realization is stable. Starting with the perfect human rebirth, you develop, step by step, renunciation and bodhicitta. Then you can realize emptiness with the practice of purification of obstacles, and meditation on the lam-rim. We need to purify the negative emotional thoughts. They make it difficult to have attainments and accomplish realizations.

You can continue collecting merit in your life. Start with the preliminary practices; generally they are what need to be done. After meditation on bodhicitta, use the Dharma teachings on karma. In the break from your sitting meditation, perform your work with Dharma.