- 500 tsa-tsas of the three long-life deities need to be made.
- Namgyälma long-life puja: to be done by the Kopan Lama Gyupas.
- White Tara long-life meditation.
Rinpoche checked and advised the following practices for a student who had cancer of the stomach.
Rinpoche gave this advice to a student with pancreatic cancer. Rinpoche emphasized purifying all negative karma in order to achieve enlightenment for the benefit of all sentient beings.
My very dear Max,
Thank you very much for your kind letter. Your motivation should be not only to purify cancer of this life. Your motivation should be for more important things, not just purifying the negative karma of this and past lives. It should be like that, but not just that. It should be for becoming totally free from oceans of samsara suffering and its cause, delusion. It should not be only for yourself to be free from samsara. Most important is to liberate numberless sentient beings from oceans of samsara suffering and bring them to full enlightenment, peerless happiness. For success of that, you need to achieve enlightenment. That should be the main motivation. I am sure you know all that, but I just want to emphasize it.
That means, each time, reciting the mantra for numberless hell beings, numberless hungry ghosts, numberless animals, numberless human beings, numberless suras, numberless asuras and numberless intermediate beings to achieve enlightenment. Not only that, but for you to achieve enlightenment. Therefore, you must actualize the path to enlightenment. For that, you need to purify the defilements and negative karma collected through your body, speech and mind from beginningless rebirth, in particular, the broken pratimoksha vows, bodhisattva vows and tantric vows from beginningless rebirth; and the heaviest negative karma, including harming the guru’s holy body, disturbing the holy mind, arising heresy and anger, breaking advice, and giving up the guru after having made a Dharma connection. So this negative karma collected since beginningless rebirth should be purified immediately, without delaying for a second, because death can happen any day, any hour, any minute, or any second.
Your main meditation for healing is Black Manjushri mantra. It is not just for healing cancer, but most importantly, for purifying negative karma. Recite this mantra 300,000 times. After one month of strong meditation, then you can have the operation. However, the ultimate solution is bodhicitta for the benefit of other sentient beings. This is the best.
Please give my big love to your mom. Don’t worry. Rely on bodhicitta and it will be okay.
With much love and prayer...
A student with a tumor in her nose asked Rinpoche for practice advice. She had previously experienced many side effects from radiotherapy and was doing prayers and practices that she hoped would heal the cancer.
My dear Susan,
Concerning your request for advice for nose cancer and whether what you are doing is enough, the following practices will be beneficial for you.
You need to recite four malas of the Black Manjushri mantra each day, and also wear the protection of Hayagriva.
The pujas ga gön and lü dang sadag gi dondrol (Liberating from the Harm of the Naga and Landlord) need to be performed for you. If there is a lama where you live who can do this for you, please let me know, as it needs to be checked. It is not enough just to have the prayer recited. Also, the practice of Drugchuma should be done ten times and for this you should request Geshe Ngawang Dakpa of the Tse Chen Ling center in San Francisco.
Chab trü is another practice to do, where vase water is blessed with the Vajra Armor mantra, then the water is used for washing and purification. Recite one mala of the mantra, then blow over the water, so it becomes blessed by the deity, who sends beams of light from the heart, making the water powerful to purify disease and defilements since beginingless time. After each mala, bless the water to make it powerful to purify and then take a few spoonfuls in the morning, at 4 pm and at bed time.
You also need to receive the jenang of Vajrapani Hayagriva Garuda, then chant the mantra OM VAJRAPANI HAYAGRIVA GARUDA HUM PHAT. Recite five malas of this mantra each day then blow over water and drink it. Visualize the deity Vajrapani Hayagriva Garuda above the water, then make requests to bless the water, to purify disease, spirit harms, negative karma and obscurations. While chanting the mantra, light flows from the mantra at the deity’s heart to bless the water and at the end of the mantra recitation the water is blessed. Then at 9-10 am and 3-4 pm, take a few spoonfuls of the water.
With love and prayers ...
A student wrote to Rinpoche about his brother, who was in hospital in UK and had been diagnosed with acute leukemia.
Dear Jason,
Rinpoche has been checking regarding your brother. What comes out best is for your brother to take some blessed powder (blessed by His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s retreat). Rinpoche refers to this as phurba powder. We have a few packets that I can send to your brother, or I can send them to you to send to him.
1) Rinpoche said he needs to take some phurba powder four times a day, every day—before breakfast, before lunch, afternoon and before dinner.
Rinpoche is going to try and contact Tashi, His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s ritual attendant, to try to get more packets of this phurba powder. I am sending you a picture of the packet in case you also have a way to get it.
2) If your brother can, he should recite the long Namgyalma mantra in Tibetan and do the practice every day.
3) The best practice for your brother to do is tong-len, if he can. Rinpoche said he should take on all the sufferings of all sentient beings, as well as the causes of suffering. He should take it all on himself and think it destroys the self-cherishing mind, the ignorance. Then he should offer himself to all sentient beings—giving them all his merits and the results up to happiness, up to enlightenment . He should think that he becomes a wish-fulfilling jewel for all sentient beings. Rinpoche said this is the BEST practice he can do.
4) Rinpoche is doing chag-sum puja for him. This is being done in India now.
Rinpoche said he is also doing prayers. Rinpoche will check if there are any more pujas that can be done and if so, he said he will arrange them.
Practice advice for a student with nasal cancer.
My dear one,
It comes out very good to have both chemotherapy and radiotherapy, but prior to having this done, it’s important to start doing the following practices immediately.
Do each of these practices every day:
Doing these practices creates unbelievable merit for future lives, as well as for the benefit of this life. The future lives are more important than this life, so think about this, because even without cancer, we can die at any time. Even if we are young there are still many things that can cause sudden death, even for children. So it’s much more important to think about our future lives. These practices are incredibly beneficial for future lives and ultimately for enlightenment.
The immediate benefit is for the cancer, but the main benefit is for your long-term future and ultimately, for achieving enlightenment for sentient beings. This is the most important thing. It’s very important when you do these practices to motivate in this way, to achieve enlightenment for the benefit of all sentient beings.
I don’t mean that you shouldn’t try to prevent the cancer; what I am saying is how important it is for all your future lives to do these practices, compared to this one small situation of cancer in this life.
Also if you can do some tong-len, that is very good.
With much love and prayers...
Rinpoche sent the following advice to a student who had brain cancer.
Dear Michael,
You need to have done the following pujas done:
Also, it is very important, if you can, to recite at least five malas of Vajra Armor mantra a day. If you can do tong-len, that would also be very good.