You could read the Golden Light Sutra for all the prisoners in the world. Recite it with the thought to liberate them from prison; for them to have peace and happiness.

As I have mentioned many times, it is important to collect merit. One way to achieve this is by reciting the sutras. They are unbelievably precious. When we have merit, all our problems just naturally become less and all our wishes for happiness will succeed. You will see—even just the next day, suddenly, things happen. With merit, it’s like this. And, of course, you also purify your negative karma.

There are various sutras that you could recite; below I discuss the benefits of just three: the Golden Light Sutra, the Arya Sanghata Sutra, and the Diamond Cutter Sutra. There is so much benefit from reading even just a page a day, half a page.

1. The Golden Light Sutra for world peace

The Golden Light Sutra directs your mind toward enlightenment every time you read it. It has unbelievable benefits; all your negative karmas get purified and you never get reborn in the lower realms. It’s unbelievable, unbelievably unbelievable.

This sutra is mainly for world peace. You can read it for all the prisoners in the world, not only for those in the place where you are. Recite it with the thought to liberate them from prison; for them to have peace and happiness, to change their minds and develop the good heart; to be free from anger and selfish mind; to be kind-hearted toward others, to cherish others, benefit others.

Pray also that everyone becomes a source of peace and happiness for the whole world—not only for the whole world, but for all sentient beings, like the Compassion Buddha, Chenrezig. Dedicate your recitation not only for prisoners, although of course that is your main focus, but for all sentient beings to purify their negative karma and never be reborn in the lower realms, to purify the causes of samsara and be free from the oceans of samsaric suffering, and finally to achieve enlightenment quickly.

2. The benefits of reciting the Arya Sanghata Sutra

Each time you simply hear the Arya Sanghata Sutra, the merit you collect is equal to the merit collected by twelve times as many buddhas as there are very subtle grains of sand in the Pacific Ocean.

First of all, one buddha has completed the merit of wisdom and the merit of virtue—there is nothing more to collect. The merit that just one buddha has collected is beyond words. But the merit collected here by merely hearing this sutra is equivalent to merit collected by twelve times as many buddhas as there are grains of sands in the Ganga River.

This means that anyone hearing it—humans, birds, insects, even spirits—collects that much merit. Can you imagine? It is like an impossible thing to happen.

The very minute you hear this sutra, you purify the five uninterrupted negative karmas—the extremely heavy negative karmas that ripen immediately after death, without interruption of another life, as rebirth in the lowest hot hells, which have the heaviest suffering of the lower realms and which last for one intermediate eon. Just by hearing this sutra, that karma is completely purified.

If merely hearing the sutra can purify these heavy negative actions, then no question about the ten nonvirtuous actions.

When I would drive in Washington, in the United States—the forty-minute drive to go shopping, for example—I would play the CD of the sutra in the car. I remember one time, when I was sitting in the front of the car and two nuns, Holly and Chösang, were sitting in the back. It was not sunny weather; it was a bit foggy and cold. I kept the window down so sentient beings could hear the sutra. The wind on the nuns was very cold! But if I had cared only for them, all the people living in the houses along the road and all the cows and animals would not have heard the sutra.

I played the sutra very loudly, just like the young people playing their music in their cars—those young people who have that strange hair that stands straight up on their head or who have a lot of rings on their ears or on their face, around the eyes . . . I’m just being descriptive!

In this way, even going shopping, just one way, benefits so many sentient beings. I remember there was a deer on the road, so we stopped and gave it the opportunity to hear some of the sutra as well.

And, of course, the people in the car also purify all the negative karmas and collect unbelievable merit as well. It is such an easy way to make life meaningful. You just put the CD in the car and you play it, that’s it. As long as you are not deaf and can hear, you don’t need to make any effort. It’s the easiest way to purify negative karma, the easiest way to collect unimaginable extensive merit.

This makes it easy to realize the emptiness of the “I,” the aggregates, phenomena; it is a quick way to eliminate the root of samsara, ignorance. And, of course, it’s a quick way to actualize bodhicitta. You need so much merit, unbelievable, unbelievable merit to actualize bodhicitta.

That means it is the quickest and easiest way to achieve liberation from samsara, to finish all the oceans of samsaric suffering that one has experienced numberless times without beginning, and to achieve enlightenment.

Reading and writing out the Arya Sanghata Sutra creates even more merit

Now, if you read the Arya Sanghata Sutra, you’d collect far greater merit than what you’d collect from hearing it. And if you write it out, you create even more: eight times more. In other words, by writing out the sutra you collect eight times more than twelve times—that is, ninety-six times—the merit collected by as many buddhas as there are grains of sand in the River Ganga.

During a recent visit to Malaysia, because of my little advertisement about how much more merit there is if you write out the Arya Sanghata Sutra, many people did so!

After they had written it out at the Malaysian center, somebody offered $100,000 for a school. In New Zealand, a man at the Nelson center read the sutra just once. In the gompa, he thought, “Buddha wouldn’t lie,” and with that strong faith he read it. He won a lottery—a large house in Australia! His idea was to sell the house and to use the money for Dharma projects. Then, a lady at Istituto Lama Tzong Khapa in Pomaia, Italy, who had been smoking her whole life and was unable to stop, after reading the sutra gave up smoking just like that! This means that, really, Buddha is working, blessing, through this text. Buddha is really in action.

With all this merit you are able to fulfill all the wishes of all the sentient beings—you should realize that. You are able to help the numberless hell beings, the numberless hungry ghosts, the numberless animals, the numberless humans, the numberless gods, the numberless demi-gods, the numberless intermediate state beings. You are able to bring them to higher rebirth, then liberation from samsara, and then to enlightenment.

If every day you could write even a few lines it would be extremely, unbelievably good. When you write it, of course, it is quite slow, but when you write you will also read it, so you could write a few lines and then read the whole text. Doing this every day, gradually you will finish writing it.

3. The benefits of reciting the Diamond Cutter Sutra

Then there is the Diamond Cutter Sutra. The merit you create by merely listening to it and not giving up faith is far greater than the merit you’d create by, for example, giving your body as charity to sentient beings in the morning, then again at noon, and then in the afternoon, and if you did this every day as many times as there are those subtle grains of sand in the Pacific Ocean, and you did it for eons.

Offering your body to sentient beings even just once is incredible, but here not only once, not only three times a day, but for as many times as there are grains of sand in the Pacific Ocean and doing it for eons. Those merits are unbelievable, but they would still be small in comparison with merely hearing, with faith, the Diamond Cutter Sutra.

It goes without saying, then, that if you keep this sutra, read it, memorize it, and study its meaning, the merit you would collect would be far, far greater than merely hearing it.

Besides the incredible merit you collect by reading the Diamond Cutter Sutra it is also a source of unbelievably powerful purification of all the previous negative karmas you have collected since beginningless rebirth, even all the heavy ones.

Also, reading it plants the seed to realize emptiness. The more you read it, the more the imprints, making it easy to realize emptiness, and to realize emptiness quickly, in this life—and if not in this life, then in future lives.

Then you meditate on emptiness unified with single-pointed concentration and are able to derive the rapturous ecstasy of the body and mind. You will then achieve the direct perception of emptiness, which ceases the defilements, the disturbing-thought obscurations—first the intellectually-acquired delusions, then the simultaneously-born delusions. This is how you achieve liberation: by ceasing, completely the disturbing-thought obscurations, including the imprint, the seed.

Then, combined with bodhicitta, that direct experience of wisdom ceases even the subtle defilements and you achieve omniscient mind.

Now you are able to do perfect works for sentient beings; you are able to enlighten all sentient beings, bring them to enlightenment. To bring sentient beings to enlightenment is the goal of our life.

REMEMBER

• Reciting sutras, the words of the Buddha, creates so much merit and purifies so much negative karma.
• Recite the Golden Light Sutra for world peace, for the peace of all people in prison.
• Merely hearing the Arya Sanghata Sutra purifies so much negative karma.
• Reading and writing out the Arya Sanghata Sutra purifies even more negative karma and creates infinite merit.
• Reading the Diamond Cutter Sutra creates the cause to realize emptiness.
• When you’ve realized emptiness you can then, combined with bodhicitta, become a buddha.