Thank you for your messages asking how to help those who have died and have suffered so much in Asia as a result of the great earthquake and tsunami.

I have been doing the five great powerful mantras and Medicine Buddha puja as well as extensive offerings.

Regarding the prayers to help those who have died, this is my suggestion for practices that the centers and students can do:

• Recitation of the five powerful mantras
• Medicine Buddha puja: recite the Medicine Buddha name mantras
• Sur offering
• Recitation of OM MANI PADME HUM, with tonglen
• Nyung nä practice
• Tsog offerings

The five powerful mantras are:

1. Kunrig
2. Mitukpa
3. Namgyälma
4. Stainless Pinnacle
5. Wish-granting Wheel Mantra (which I would like to now translate as: the Lotus Pinnacle of Amoghapasha, the heart of the Stainless One.)

Benefits of the five powerful mantras

The five powerful deities manifested to purify negative karma; these mantras are extremely good and are the main mantras used in jangwa practices for the dead. They are the key mantras for blessing mustard seeds that are used to throw on the [body] of those who have passed away so that the consciousness can be hooked. These mantras are very important and very powerful in the jangwa prayers.

In powa first there is the purification and then there is the recitation of these mantras that make it more possible to reach the pure land. The five powerful mantras can be used in holy objects, for blessing water, blessing seeds (for example, black sesame seeds which are then used to sprinkle on a dead body). The mantras when written can be put on the head of a dead person.

Any one of these five powerful mantras can be recited for any person who has died in order to liberate them from the three lower realms. You recite the mantra while thinking of the person(s) who have died.

These five great powerful mantras have an unbelievable positive effect for those who have died. The benefits of reciting these mantras are mind-blowing.

What to think while reciting the five powerful mantras

Before reciting the mantra of each deity you can do the seven limbs from the King of Prayers of Good Deeds. Within the seven limbs you can perform extensive offerings. According to the physical space you have, try to set up as many offerings as possible, especially light offerings. You can do it at your home and you can even set up many Christmas lights over the trees and offer as light offerings. Within the seven limbs do extensive rejoicing.

These practices are creating merit which you then completely dedicate to those who have died. At the same time you can dedicate the merit to all those who have died in war. This is such an excellent thing to do. We create so much merit this way and we have so much to give to those who have died and those who are suffering. Many have died a terrifying death.

Do the seven-limb puja with each deity and when reciting the mantra of each deity make strong requests to purify all the six-realm sentient beings, especially those who have just died. When you finish each deity’s mantra recitation then you can do extensive dedication. The more we recite the mantra the more we dedicate; the more extensively we do the seven-limb puja the more merit we create, which we then dedicate to those who have died and have suffered so much.

After reciting each mantra of each deity visualize that all sentient beings have been purified and also visualize that each sentient being receives all the qualities of the Buddha. You can visualize that each sentient being achieves enlightenment in the form of that deity. If you are not familiar with how that deity appears then you can just think of the aspect of Shakyamuni Buddha.

Visualize the deity absorbing into you and then go on to the next deity. At the end of the practice of the five great mantras then again try to do dedication as extensively as possible.

Other practices you can do

Medicine Buddha puja and after completing Medicine Buddha puja then do the King of Prayers, and again do extensive dedications as we have in the FPMT prayer book. Especially do the dedication sealing with emptiness.

Other ways to benefit those who have died, if people are very keen to help, is to do nyung nä for them.

Another way to help is to do tsog offering.

Of course, reciting OM MANI PADME HUM is excellent, or any mantra that you can do for those who have died.

Also you can recite OM MANI PADME HUM with tonglen practice, taking on all their sufferings and giving away all your happiness.

Then there is the Yeshe Tala mantra. When recited 21 times it definitely liberates beings from the three lower realms.

Another very powerful method is sur offering (burning puja offering aroma.) This is a way of helping those who have died and are in the intermediate state. I try to do this as much as I can, almost every day. This is an excellent method to help those in the intermediate state. Intermediate state beings have clairvoyance so when you think of them they can be present.

In the sur practice there is a very important prayer where you ask the intermediate state beings to remember the past advice of their gurus etc., and in this way you can help them to be reborn in the blissful pure land of Amitabha. You can also add instructions on bodhicitta using the stanzas from Lama Chöpa.

Generally any virtuous action can be dedicated to helping the victims, even eating Chinese noodles, McDonald's burgers or gelato ice-cream.

With much love and prayers ...

It is worthwhile to make charity, even of the cost of one of your daily meals, in order to help those millions of homeless and sick survivors—not only for their immediate help, but also for the long-term construction of villages and factories, and for the creation of jobs, if the governments can organize them. If you don't have any money to donate, maybe you can go without dinner one time and offer that.

My suggestion is especially good for alcoholics, or people who like to drink alcohol, because you are not only wasting your money, but you are wasting all the money your parents so kindly worked so hard to earn for your upbringing and education. They worked so many years to be able to pay for your education in school, college and university; for you to become a kind and good human being; to be healthy and have a long life. Finally, you found a job, you used your perfect human body to make money and now you use that for your own comfort, not for your survival but only for pleasure. It's a total waste.

Not only that, it destroys your health and endangers yourself and others' lives, through car accidents or fighting with your wife, husband, children and other people; it makes you lose your job and your wealth. It causes you to engage in many evil actions, endangering yourself and others with your uncontrolled mind. No shame.

However, if one makes charity of this beer money to the world, even to one sick or homeless person or to educate a child, it is so useful. Here you can donate for millions of people just by giving $100, $10 or even $5, whatever. It will cover many millions of people because it mixes with the general funds.

For example, in monasteries, even if you can't offer tea to thousands of monks, just offering one tea bag or some tea leaves to the main pot covers all the monks, so you get the benefit of offering tea to thousands of monks. The point is that you collect that much merit.

During Buddha's time, somebody who had nothing offered medicinal drinks to four monks. From that karma, the person was born in the next life as an Indian king, with much power and wealth. Because karma is expandable, the result is you experience so many chances, not only in one life but in hundreds and thousands of lifetimes.

Because of holding vows, monks become holy objects; the more vows, the higher the object, so anyone who makes offerings receives much greater merit and from that merit they can have enjoyable lives over many lifetimes. This is by being an ordained person. Simply living in the vows you can benefit so many sentient beings, even though you are not famous and don't have great scriptural knowledge. Simply living in the vows every day you become a very powerful source of happiness to others. They collect so much powerful merit from you. By living in the vows you stop so much harm to yourself and others in the world. One vow stops those harmful negative karmas. You make a vow to abandon negativity, to live in morality. Each morality you practice becomes an incredible source of peace and happiness, not only for you but for your family and all the living beings in the area, in the country and in the world, because living in morality you have peace of mind and abstain from vices.

Not abstaining from vices means no peace of mind. Well-trained peaceful actions support a peaceful mind. Only on that basis can you gain realisations of perfect meditation and great insight, from which you can have wisdom directly perceiving emptiness, the arya path. Then you can directly cease the delusions and karma, including the seeds of delusions. This is how you achieve nirvana, total liberation, freedom forever from the ocean of samsaric suffering and its causes. Also, by actualising bodhicitta and entering the Mahayana path you are able to cease the subtle defilements, with all those extensive collections of merit. Then you are able to achieve the limitless qualities of Buddha's holy body, holy speech and holy mind. Then you are able to do perfect work for sentient beings, freeing them from the oceans of samsaric suffering and bringing them to full enlightenment. Not only to cease the continuity of samsaric rebirth but to be able to bring them to full enlightenment.

This is talking about the Sangha, but as another example, these five million people need shelter and food, and in the long-term, factories to create jobs. If it costs $1 billion, if there is one dollar less it cannot become $1 billion so your contribution of one dollar helps it to become $1 billion.

Regarding alcoholics and smokers, finally in the West it is being discovered more and more how these substances cause cancer. They make the body very dirty, impure, and that affects the mind. It's like putting a drink into a dirty cup—it becomes dirty. Recently, on the TV or radio, I heard a doctor from a Western country saying they have discovered that alcohol causes cancer. He was talking about this discovery as his own experience.

Nowadays, smoking is forbidden in many places. Anyway, if somebody is happy smoking or is unable to stop, here you can spend that money to make charity to others. Each dollar you spend on smoking can help millions of people. This can also apply to drug addicts or people who take drugs. If you make donations of this money to others, you get so much satisfaction, so much happiness, because there are so many millions of people, so much suffering. For others it is a matter of survival, for you it's not. Because you can see the need it gives so much satisfaction and makes you so happy. This happiness is peaceful; you can feel it deep inside, in your heart.

When you take drugs, you get some pleasure and that's it, finished. That gives you the desire to buy more and get the pleasure again. That again gives you the desire for more—there's no end. Then you go to prison as punishment. Then you run out of money, so you have to steal money to get drugs, or you give problems to your parents by stealing jewellery or money from them. So it creates many problems for others, especially for your own most kind parents, and that is very heavy negative karma.

This is a good opportunity, a nice way to switch. Also you will be liberated from bad health, cancer and all those potential problems. You will be free from that and free from the negative karma and all the resultant sufferings, a heavy, terrifying death and so many future lives of very deep suffering.