This is my very important message and very important practice advice to you; it is bodhicitta, destroying the self-cherishing thought.

The self-cherishing thought has been our own real enemy from beginningless rebirths. It has caused us to suffer from beginningless rebirths, experiencing the oceans of suffering of the hell beings, the oceans of suffering of the hungry ghosts, the oceans of animals’ suffering, the oceans of human beings’ suffering, the oceans of suffering of the sura beings, asura beings and preta beings. From beginningless rebirths the self-cherishing thought has caused us to suffer.

But of course, without even having studied the lamrim, we have no idea about the suffering of the lower realms, and no idea of even the gods, the desire realms, the form realm gods or the formless realms gods. We have no idea of their suffering, the different levels of suffering, then also there is the desire realm suffering—the suffering of pain, the suffering of change and pervasive compounding suffering.

The form realm gods do not have the suffering of pain, but Geshe Sopa says they have the suffering of change. The formless realm beings do not have the suffering of change, so what they have is the third type of suffering, pervasive compounding suffering, which is the basis of the other two sufferings.

Without reading the lamrim we won’t get the feeling, even without studying the sutras, so we will not even get a rough idea. We just say “suffering” but we don’t really feel that in our heart if we don’t know first how it is explained in the lamrim.

All the sufferings now, and the causes of samsaric suffering, make us suffer continuously. If we continue to follow self-cherishing thought, the real enemy, it will continuously make us suffer without end. There is no beginning, it’s beginningless, but there will also be no end to our suffering in samsara. If we follow the self-cherishing thought, there will be no end to our suffering in samsara. Unbelievable, unbelievable, most unbelievable!

People in the world don’t know this because they haven’t met Dharma and they don’t know Dharma, so then they have no idea. They are only thinking of this life. Even this life they don’t understand well. They don't think of the suffering of their future lives, therefore they use whoever they can, particularly animals. They use others like a handkerchief or a napkin, something that is just thrown away.

Lama khyen! So much suffering, they cause so much suffering, like for pigs in the world or the fish and chickens. Some animals are eaten while they are still alive, such as octopus. I saw this many times, how many animals are eaten alive.

Lama khyen! Lama khyen! Lama khyen! Some people completely use the animals like tissue paper, just as human beings use tissue paper. Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow. They even know the animals are suffering, but still they use them like tissue paper.

Anyway, the self-cherishing thought is really, really, the real enemy. Wow, wow. We think it is our best friend and we always serve the self-cherishing thought; we serve it like a guru, or like a king or like a parent. We totally serve the self-cherishing thought. Even for those of us who are sometimes practicing Dharma, it is for the self-cherishing thought.

Not only that, the self-cherishing thought made us harm numberless hell beings, numberless hungry ghosts, numberless animals, numberless human beings, numberless sura beings, numberless asura beings, numberless intermediate state beings, every sentient being from beginningless rebirth, with no beginning. Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow.

We are just one sentient being, but we see others are numberless. We feel, “Someone is so bad to me; how I suffer is so bad.” But there are numberless sentient beings, wow, wow, wow, wow. There are even numberless hell beings and in each realm there are numberless beings. The self-cherishing thought made us harm the numberless, numberless, numberless beings, everyone. Not just one time, but numberless times from beginningless rebirth. This is the worst thing, the most terrible thing.

So now, this harm that we are receiving, think that this is most precious, most precious, more precious than wish-granting jewels. In the past the bodhisattvas found this jewel in the ocean and cleaned it three ways and put it on a banner on the fifteenth day. Then whatever they needed, like the needs of this life, they prayed for that, then they got it immediately. Just as Sai Baba [appeared] able to produce watches and things, then most people got ashes.

It is like that with a wish-granting jewel, we make a prayer then it is actualized the next minute. So how many helicopters we want, how many swimming pools we want, how many hotels we want, how many comforts we want—we get that immediately. Not just one wish-fulfilling jewel, but numberless, filling the whole sky. So this unpleasant thing we are experiencing, what we have been believing is bothering us, is more precious than that. Now we can see how it is so precious. We can use it as an atomic bomb to destroy the self-cherishing thought. To destroy our enemy, the self-cherishing thought.

It is the self-cherishing thought that has caused all our sufferings from beginningless rebirth, now and in the future, endlessly. Not only that, it has also caused us to harm all the sentient beings from beginningless rebirths. So that means when sentient beings harm us, it is the result of having harmed sentient beings before. Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow.

So we should give this unpleasant thing to the self-cherishing thought, to destroy the self-cherishing thought, bomb it. If we are able to destroy the self-cherishing thought, then comes bodhicitta. Only then is there a place for bodhicitta in our mind. Otherwise, bodhicitta is like the horn on the rabbit, it is like a horn on our head. It is like a billion dollars in our hand. It is like a hair growing on the turtle’s backside, so it is like that.

Bodhicitta comes from destroying the self-cherishing thought, and this is then what comes, bodhicitta, jang chub sem. When jang chub sem comes, that is the root of the path to enlightenment—wishing to free each sentient being, the numberless sentient beings, each sentient being, from the oceans of samsaric suffering and bring them to enlightenment, peerless happiness.

Therefore, this suffering is so precious, more precious than wish-granting jewels. Even if we own so many wish-granting jewels, that doesn’t cause us to be free from the lower realms, that doesn’t cause us to be free from samsara, that doesn’t cause us to be free from lower nirvana, so that doesn’t cause us to achieve enlightenment.

But this one, destroying the self-cherishing thought, from that we can actualize bodhicitta. Wow, wow, wow, wow. The benefits of bodhicitta are like the sky, limitless. If buddhas talk about bodhicitta, they cannot finish explaining it.

So this is how we should think—that it is so precious, unbelievably precious. For us, it is unbelievably precious, because it can destroy the self-cherishing thought. We should think that instead of thinking that the self-cherishing thought is our best friend, like a god. We don’t say it’s a god, but we follow it like a god. We [don’t] say from the mouth, "God, god, god,” but in reality, the self-cherishing thought is like a god. We follow everything that the self-cherishing wants. If somebody disturbs the self-cherishing thought, then we kill them, we chop them, like chili, we do everything bad that we can to hurt them.

So you can think that this unpleasant thing that you are experiencing—I am using this as an example for you, but for other people, there are other problems. We can use that problem as most precious; we should see it as the most precious, most precious one.

Why is the obstacle so precious? Why? It is because we are experiencing it for all the sentient beings; we are experiencing this problem for all the sentient beings. Numberless sentient beings have this problem, so we are experiencing it for them. This is so precious because we are experiencing it for them. Then think that they become free from suffering in samsara and achieve enlightenment.

That’s why this is so precious, precious, precious for us. So then, we can use this for any problem we have. The real problem is the self-cherishing thought. The self-cherishing thought becomes like a god, it becomes our best friend, forever, in the morning and at night, all the time, constantly; the self-cherishing thought is close and we totally rely on that. Therefore, that is the biggest problem; that is the biggest enemy.

Why is there this problem? Because of the self-cherishing thought.

This practice may be hard for very new people, it might be difficult to understand, but for older students, this is exactly what they have to practice. Whatever disease, cancer, spirit harm, black magic, anything we have, we can think in this way.

Thank you very much. You have pain, so this advice is the same.

Please, please, please, life is very short and we can die anytime. We can die anytime. By this time next year, our consciousness may be somewhere else and our body will be already burned. By this time next month or next week or even tomorrow, now here, even today or tomorrow, we can be on the firewood, with the body burned. Then other people are scared to come, even our friends who liked us very much, who came to see us before, who do not want to be separated from us. Even they will be scared to come close to this body, this corpse.

Dharma practice is for all the time because the mind is continuous, not only beginningless but also endless. Whether we have a happy life or a suffering life in the future depends on karma. However, because we like only happiness and do not like suffering, what we need is only Dharma practice, not nonvirtue. So not only the four noble truths, the Lesser Vehicle path, but also the Mahayana path to achieve enlightenment, then on the basis of that we can be free from samsara. Then on the basis of Mahayana sutra [we practice] Mahayana tantra, then we can achieve enlightenment in one life. [Practicing] Highest Yoga Tantra, we can achieve enlightenment in one brief lifetime of these degenerate times.

You have received so many teachings, even from His Holiness the Dalai Lama—wow, wow, wow—and also from other qualified other teachers. Wow, wow, wow. Thank you very much. 

Maybe what you are experiencing is spirit harm.

There was somebody who had similar spirit harm. That person could hear a sound all the time, like someone talking. She had this sound, then when she traveled to another country the language she could hear also changed. So that was from spirit harm; they can do like this. She had it for quite a long time.

There is another nun who was going to do shinä; she wanted to achieve shinä, but then this sound came. The sound was an obstacle, like the huge noise of water running, like a river, and it became an obstacle for shinä. Shinä is not easy and if you do not have much merit, then many obstacles arise. So this had been happening for a long time for her. Therefore, I told her to write out sutras in gold instead, using real gold, writing the Prajnaparamita to create the cause for shinä.

I did some prayers for you, but you also need to read the Vajra Cutter Sutra five times.

When we experience bad things, we think it’s very bad, but in reality, it is very good. It means our past lives’ negative karmas get purified by experiencing this now. So then, we don’t have to be born in the hell realms, the lower realms, and suffer for eons, for such a long time. That is the heaviest, the worst, the most painful suffering, for such a long time, for eons.

So that experience is due to our Dharma practice, the power of our Dharma practice, like bodhicitta. When we experience [sickness, spirit harm and so forth] in this life, then the karma gets finished, so we don’t have to be reborn in the lower realms and suffer for eons and eons. Then our future life is like the sun shining in the world, then we have so much happiness, happiness, happiness, wow, wow, wow, from life to life, and then we go to enlightenment.

Kadampa Geshe Kharag Gomchung said:

Even just this small suffering
Finishes our past bad karmas and causes happiness in future lives.
Don’t look at the suffering as negative.
Rejoice; be happy with the suffering.

Thank you very much. Wow, wow, wow.

With much love and prayers ...

Dear gentlemen, my brother,
I heard that the previous person in charge caused all the problems for you. He took the big house that you built and did not finish, and he also took the money. You should think that this is very good.

No matter how much money we have—billions, zillions, trillions—for us ordinary beings, since we are born, we have to die. Like the plants—they are born, but they die. This is their nature and it’s the same for us ordinary beings.

Of course, Shakyamuni Buddha and numberless buddhas were ordinary beings like us, but they changed their minds and instead of cherishing the I, they renounced it. They cherished not just one person but numberless sentient beings—hell beings, hungry ghosts, animals, sura beings, asura beings and numberless human beings.

They became free; they realized truth and emptiness. They became free from samsara and achieved the total cessation of obscurations and the completion of realizations, enlightenment. They liberated numberless sentient beings from the oceans of samsara and are still doing that now, but we didn’t change our mind. Instead of cherishing numberless others, we cherish one I and renounce others.

Buddhas and bodhisattvas renounced the I and cherished numberless sentient beings. They all achieved enlightenment and caused temporal and ultimate happiness to others.

We are unable to give happiness to others and we destroy even our own happiness by cherishing the I, so we are still not free from the suffering of samsara. There is the suffering of pain, which is the cycle of death and rebirth, old age and sickness. Then the second type of suffering is all the samsaric pleasure, which is temporary. The third type of suffering is pervasive compounding suffering.

The five aggregates—form, feeling, discriminative awareness, compositional factors and consciousness—are under the control of delusion and karma. That’s why they are pervaded by suffering. The aggregates are contaminated by the seeds of the disturbing thought and controlled by karma, action. From the seeds of delusion, suffering arises again, thus we are still not free from all of these. This is the cycle of death and rebirth, the cycle of pain.

When death will happen to us, we cannot say. It can happen at any time—any month, any week, any day, any hour, any minute, any second. When death happens, the beggar, for example, who has only one stick, only one possession, has to leave this stick when he dies.

The king or president who has so many possessions, servants, population—however much wealth he has, gold, diamonds, wish-granting jewels—even though he has everything, when he dies, he will need to leave everything. Not only his possessions, but he cannot bring even the body which he cherishes to next life.

Even our own single hair [is left behind]. Consciousness alone will go to the next life. Only karma, our positive and negative actions, will go to the next life in our mental continuum. Otherwise, nothing. But most people don’t think like that. Even billionaires or zillionaires, when death comes, they have so much attachment, clinging. When they suddenly die, then unbelievable suffering comes. They are separated from their family, their possessions and their own body. They don’t know where all the suffering and happiness come from. The cause for happiness is so rare to create and [most people] don’t know it.

Even when you explain it to people, first of all they have no faith when they hear holy Dharma because they don’t have the karma. Even if they have the karma, they cannot accept it. Sometimes they get angry when they hear Dharma and they run away.

There is unbelievable worry, fear in their faces [at the time of death]. They don’t know [Dharma] and when death happens they suffer in the lower realms as hell beings, animals and hungry ghosts, for thousands of years without finding food, or as animals which steal or eat each other.

Therefore, you should know the reality is like this. There is nothing to be upset about and there is no need to think that this person is so bad. Even billionaires, zillionaires, trillionaires, as I mentioned, can die at any time.

This may be difficult for you because you don’t know all these stories. There was one Tibetan layperson called Milarepa. When Milarepa’s father died, his mother was badly treated by his uncle and aunt, and they also took all their wealth, so his mother advised him to learn black magic. He learned it and destroyed the whole house while the relatives were dancing and drinking. Thirty people and more animals downstairs were killed.

As a result of that karma, Milarepa would have suffered for so many eons and eons, but he was very sad after that happened. Then that lama who taught him black magic told him to see Guru Marpa if he wanted to practice holy Dharma. So Milarepa met Guru Marpa, who was an enlightened being, not an ordinary, obscured, suffering being.

Milarepa didn’t have any possessions, so he offered his body, speech and mind to Guru Marpa. He requested Marpa to teach holy Dharma and to provide the means of living together. So Marpa accepted and started to guide him and within a few years Milarepa was able to purify all the negative karma and achieve enlightenment. He achieved that in one brief lifetime of degenerate times.

Guru Marpa let Milarepa build alone a nine-story tower, but when it was finished Marpa asked him to tear it down and take all the stones back to where he found them. Then Marpa said to rebuild the tower again, and again tear it down, and again rebuild it. The tower still exists in Tibet but I didn’t see yet. The place is called Lhodrag in Tibet.

Marpa didn’t give teachings to Milarepa. He only scolded him, gave him a hard time and even beat him when he came with other students to receive teachings. Marpa himself was a buddha. Later he gave Milarepa teachings and initiations, and then Milarepa went to the mountains to meditate.

Milarepa followed Guru Marpa’s advice exactly and in that life he was able to purify all the defilements and negative karma and to achieve enlightenment, the unified state of Vajradhara, buddhahood. It’s not only Milarepa. There are many others who achieved enlightenment in one brief lifetime of degenerate times, but Milarepa became well-known to people, even in the West.

So I’ll tell you, in his early life, because he met the guru and had stable devotion—he never lost faith, he didn’t become heretical being and he always had faith that Marpa was a buddha—he was able to achieve enlightenment in one lifetime of these degenerate times, within a few years.

Similarly, you can also be like that. You don’t need to be a holy being from birth. If you change your mind, you can become a holy being during your life.

The second thing is about your situation. Because we have attachment to possessions, money, there is so much negative karma. Therefore, we suffer in this life, we suffer during death and after we die there’s unbelievable suffering for eons in the lower realms, as a hell being, hungry ghost or animal, and also in the human realms, on and on.

So now you don’t need to collect that heavy karma because of all the attachment. Now you are free. That person made you free, haha! 

So you can see, he is very, very kind, doing that to you. He is extremely kind, unbelievably kind. He saved you, he liberated you from many eons of unbelievable suffering of the lower realms and even the human realms in the future. Wow, wow, wow! What a kind, precious person!

Not only that, now you can make charity. You don’t have to feel you lost. You didn’t lose. You gained!

Anyway, death can happen at any time, and you can lose that [object of attachment] any time. This makes your life very simple, very easy, because there is no object to be attached to. So, you can make charity to him of all the money and the house.

You should think like this:

The purpose of my life is not just to achieve temporary happiness, such as money or a house. It’s not for that. Even liberation from samsara is not enough. The purpose of my life is to free other sentient beings from suffering and to help them achieve peerless happiness, to bring them to buddhahood, the total cessation of obscurations and completion of realizations. Therefore, I’m going to make charity of this money and the house to the person who is taking it.

That becomes the cause of enlightenment; you are creating the cause to achieve peerless happiness, buddhahood. So you are not losing, you are gaining. The house and money is nothing.

Actually, by making charity with bodhicitta, it becomes the cause for you to achieve the highest enlightenment, peerless happiness. If it is done with bodhicitta, when you make charity of however much money, however many rooms there are—for example, if you give back one dollar as an act of charity—you create infinite skies of merit, good karma, the cause of happiness.

If you make charity of however many millions of dollars or bricks of the house, wow, wow, wow, you are actually gaining most unbelievable, most unbelievable, most unbelievable skies of merits. So many, many times. Actually you should rejoice, feeling happiness all day and night, all your life.

There is no place in your mind to feel depression, sadness. You should feel unbelievable happiness. So now think that person is most unbelievably kind; his kindness is like the sky to you. So do this practice of charity for him. This is my heartfelt advice to you. If you thank him for taking all these things, it’s saving you, protecting you from the suffering of samsara, and you receive many, many eons of merits.

The great holy being, the bodhisattva Shantideva said:

If I didn’t harm others, nobody will harm me.

If others are harming you at this time, it is the result of your harm to others before. Even the mosquito or ant biting us is the result of past karma, when we harmed others. It’s all caused by us.

Most people, except those who know precious Dharma and karma, when harmed by others they will harm them back even more. But if we harm back, that means we are again creating the karma, the cause, and then next time, in the next life we will suffer again. It goes on forever like that, without end. We will always suffer. Therefore, the best solution is to not harm back and to practice patience, tolerance and compassion. Wow, wow, wow! Practice bodhicitta. Wow, wow, wow!

Also, because of harming us, they get reborn in the hell realms, so that’s caused by us. That’s the way to develop compassion, instead of anger, instead of harming back. Whatever is of help to them, at least you can dedicate your merits and recite OM MANI PADME HUM for other people to not be reborn in hell, to not suffer.

Overall, everything comes from our mind. Hell, enlightenment, samsara, nirvana, happiness, suffering—everything comes from our mind. Our world comes from our mind. That’s the basic idea in Buddhism. By knowing that, you can see that you have unbelievable freedom. By changing your mind, you can stop the suffering and gain happiness, even enlightenment, peerless happiness. Not only to be free from samsara.

You can keep this letter and read it again and again, from time to time. This is so good for you to read it again and again. For years and years, it will bring so much happiness in your life, to you and your family. If you have happiness, you can give happiness to others.

Thank you very much.

The purpose of me meeting you and understanding your problem, or your incredible freedom, is so that I can discuss it with you. I am so happy.

With much love and prayers ...