Training the Mind in Lamrim

Training the Mind in Lamrim

Lamrim the Main Practice
Date Posted:
October 2005

A new student in Australia wrote asking for advice on practices to do. Rinpoche advised the following.

Dear one,
Thank you very much for your kind letter. Sorry it took eons to reply.

You are very fortunate to have met the Buddhadharma and even more than that you are extremely fortunate to be able to practice, because the Buddhadharma is the only complete path to remove the suffering of the cycle of death and rebirth and all the sufferings in between. It is the only complete path to purify all negative karma and its causes—karma. It is the complete path to achieve full enlightenment by eliminating all the subtle defilements, and to be able to enlighten all sentient beings. So, you are extremely fortunate.

Your main practice should be lam-rim. Try to have realizations of the Three Principles of the Path, on the basis of guru devotion. So that you can be successful, I am sending you some preliminary practices to do. You can do one preliminary practice a little each day while you are working and sometimes you can do a semi-retreat for a weekend or 10 days and do preliminary practices combined with lam-rim. It is very good also to do deity retreat sometimes, combined with lam-rim.

Please continue to practice Guru Shakyamuni Buddha meditation every day, and combine the lam-rim meditations on the basis of that, using a lam-rim text such as Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand. Then, before going to sleep, please practice Vajrasattva using the four powers.

If you are able to read the King of Prayers each night, which is the extensive dedication prayer, that would be very good. If you can’t recite it every day, then read it when you have time.

Please make your life most meaningful with the thought of bodhicitta.

You can do the following preliminary practices:

  • 300,000 prostrations to the Thirty-five Buddhas
  • 300,000 mandala offerings
  • 50,000 water bowl offerings
  • 5,000 tsa tsas
  • 700,000 OM MANI PADME HUM recitations

Please meditate for three months on the lower path, four months on the middle path, five months on bodhicitta, and five months on emptiness.

With much love and prayers...

Familiarity with the Dharma
Date Posted:
October 2005

A new student wrote saying he felt that Buddhism was very familiar to him and wondered if it meant he had practiced in past lives.

My dear Keith,
Thank you very much for your kind letter. I am sorry for the delay.

When you hear the Buddhadharma, teachings, and when you practice, if you feel it is very familiar and easy, then it means you met the Buddhadharma in the past. You can tell from that experience. It is proved from that experience.

If you want to achieve liberation and enlightenment, there is no other way but to practice the Four Noble Truths taught by the Buddha. You have to learn the Four Noble Truths by actualizing the two paths and the cessation of suffering. That is how you totally remove from suffering forever, because you have removed the cause of suffering completely, including the seed imprint. This is not taught in any other religions – Hinduism, Islam, or Christianity. Then, if you want to help sentient beings—liberate and enlighten them—you need to learn the whole Mahayana path, to achieve enlightenment for the sake of all sentient beings.

Thank you very much.

With much love and prayers...

Train the Mind in Lamrim
Date Posted:
October 2005

Rinpoche gave the following advice to a new student, a 50-year-old man, who wrote asking what was the main practice he should do, and saying that he had very little time.

My very dear Jim,
Thank you very much for your kind letter. Sorry for the long delay in replying.

It is best if you can meditate daily practicing Lama Tsongkhapa Guru Yoga, as well as reciting one lam-rim prayer each day.

Lamrim is what you should focus on your whole life, even while you are working. This is what you should keep in your mind. It is the most meaningful, profound practice, especially keeping the mind in bodhicitta, performing each action with your mind in bodhicitta. This should be your practice; this is what you should try to accomplish in this life, it is very important.

The main purpose of having a human life is to benefit sentient beings, to free others from suffering, to eliminate the causes of suffering – karma and delusion, and to bring all beings to full enlightenment, the peerless happiness. To do this you have to actualize the path first.

My advice to you is to please study the book Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand by reading a little every day, a page, or more or less, to study and meditate on each part that you read, and to read the whole book from beginning to end.

Whatever parts you do not understand, or if you have any questions, then write them down in a note book, and then when you meet a more experienced student or a geshe, someone who knows the lam-rim quite well, you can ask those questions.

So, train the mind in lam-rim, meditate on the lam-rim every day, whatever you can do, even while you are working. First, train the mind in the graduated path common to the lower capable being, then in the graduated path common to the middle capable being, then in the graduated path common to the higher capable being: bodhicitta, and then in emptiness. Keep meditating like this until you have stable realizations.

Later, you can take tantric initiations and practice the two stages of tantra.

In this way use every second of your life to train in the lam-rim.

With much love and prayers...

 

Focus on Lamrim Practice
Date Posted:
October 2005

Transcribed at Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s request from handwritten notes handed to Ven. Holly Ansett with the comment that they might be useful somewhere. Kachoe Dechen Ling, Aptos, CA, April 2005. Edited by Nick Ribush.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche, Bendigo, Australia, Sep-Oct 2014.

The most important thing you can do in your life is to practice the lamrim; that’s the most important thing to focus on. But that doesn’t mean only practicing meditation.

Your lamrim practice should be based upon devoting yourself correctly to your virtuous friend, who is the most important person in your life. Proper guru devotion is more important than anything else. On the basis of this you can receive all the realizations of the path and complete enlightenment; without guru devotion or practicing it incorrectly will create only obstacles and suffering.

Training your mind step-by-step in the three principal aspects of the path and later, if you can, secret mantra, is like building an inner stupa, or an inner buddha statue.

However, those, yourself included, who can’t meditate or concentrate—especially those who don’t meditate on the path, who don’t know Dharma or know it only intellectually, who are unable to generate pure motivation before engaging in daily life activities, or who when doing their daily prayers and practices spend less time on that than anything else—should build holy objects. (The amount of time we spend on activities like eating, watching TV, sleeping and so forth, which we do so well, is much greater than the time we put into our Dharma practice.) Building holy objects is a very powerful way for such people to accumulate much merit and purify many obscurations and gives them and unbelievable opportunity to gain realizations of the path and attain liberation and enlightenment.

Since the opportunity to create virtue and good karma, the cause of even temporary happiness, is extremely rare, those who don’t know any prayers or who don’t put the prayers they know into practice should keep in mind as purely as possible that building holy objects such as stupas, buddha statues and prayer wheels is a very powerful form of practice. Finally, if you build a buddha statue, it should be incredibly beautiful and inspiring.

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