Advice on Depression

My very dear Jean and Peter,
Thank you very much for your kind letter.

Regarding your questions about your daughter, you and Peter can recite the Sanghata Sutra for your daughter 21 times.

Regarding the mantras for balloons, just sending balloons up into the air and then they are blown away is not very beneficial. You must print mantras on the balloons, so that you can collect a lot of merit. By printing mantras on the balloons and writing praises for success, whatever you wish, it is the same as the function of prayer flags.

There is a monk at the Dharma center who can help you to write the mantras. It is better to have a stamp made, so that you don't need to ask other people to write them every time.

These are the mantras to put on the balloons:

• Mani mantra (Compassion Buddha)
• Medicine Buddha mantra
• Any of the Five Powerful Mantras

With much love and prayers...

Dear Helena,
Thank you very much for your kind letter. I thought I heard your life had changed. It seems now you have become Vajradhara, with the father and mother together. I am not sure whether the Vajradhara is permanent or impermanent, but I don't have the qualities.

I suggest that your daughter practices very short Vajrasattva purification with the remedy of the four powers. Depression comes from past negative karma. In the Wheel of Sharp Weapons degenerating samaya is one explanation and another explanation from the Kangyur is that experiencing depression at night, when you can't explain the reasons for it, means it comes from the past negative karma of sexual misconduct. It is also there when the person wakes up in the morning. Anyway, she needs some purification. If she is not Buddhist she can do this as a psychological practice, as a therapy. She can look at it that way.

Also, practice Ganapati when she feels unhappy and depressed, even if she has reasons for her depression. It can fill the heart with happiness. Maybe you can find the six-arm Ganapati, in color, in an art book, maybe at the Dharma center. Otherwise, I can send you one. I will send you the mantra, many short ones, from a consecration text, a long one. When you fill statues with the mantras, first you put the nine deities in, then Ganapati, then the eight auspicious symbols and the double vajra. This is the meditation and mantra that you use to bless. The text has the different mantras for blessing the life trees, substances, and so forth. If she wants to practice I can send the visualization and mantra. This is the first idea of what can help.

Also, please check the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive website for advice on depression. She should read and study the advice on depression, and do whatever she finds most effective. First, to study is very important. She can study, and you can explain and help her.

She can also recite four malas each day of the following mantra for her depression:

The Mantra Eliminating the Harsh Pain of the Three Grounds:
OM HE HE SU SVAHA / OM KU KE KA TA SVAHA / OM SHU HE KA SHA SVAHA

With much love and prayer...

My very dear Janet,
Thank you very much for your kind letter. I'm sorry for the long delay in replying.

Please read and study well the various advice that I have given for depression, especially the advice I gave to a student who had very bad depression. The thing that she found helped the most was doing tonglen practice, bodhicitta practice—this means the path to enlightenment, and the wish to liberate suffering beings and to enlighten all suffering beings. That is the greatest achievement in life, making the happiest life.

With much love and prayers...

When nothing works, and you don’t have the necessary power, you must rely on higher beings: Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. Make strong prayers to the Twenty-One Taras and visualize light rays, which are the essence of great bliss and cause the depressed person to generate the whole path, are emitted from the heart of the Twenty-One Taras. Each atom of the person is filled with bliss. Then think that he generates the whole path—compassion, bodhicitta and wisdom realizing emptiness.

It is very understandable that it is difficult to live in the West, where all the objects that give rise to desire are advertised constantly, in a society that puts particular effort into advertising those objects. When you are living in the family-life environment, also, you must expect hardships. This involves always fighting with the enemy, your own delusions, and having to defeat them. You have to do that as much as possible, for your own benefit, your own good rebirth and liberation, and, most importantly, in order to bring about all sentient beings’ happiness now, in future lives, and up to liberation and enlightenment. One has to try as much as possible. It doesn’t mean you must succeed all the time. It’s as if you are living in the nest of a poisonous snake. Such an environment is not like the places where the ancient Tibetan, Nepali, and Indian yogis lived as hermits, in caves. For example, when you go sightseeing in Tibet, all you go to see is caves and statues. There’s nothing other than that. So, of course, the overall environment is different, with much less distraction. Nowadays, there is more distraction in Tibet, since the communist Chinese brought in movies and other entertainments.

It is very important, too, to have a stable morning and evening practice. This is extremely important for stabilizing your life. It helps always to purify and collect merit, and if you are doing lamrim meditation, this brings you closer every day to enlightenment, for yourself and for all sentient beings.

Please read the book called the Wheel of Sharp Weapons. This explains where problems like yours come from. Any problem you have, including depression, you can read about in this book, which explains how to use the problem to cut through the ego and self-cherishing thoughts. Self-cherishing is the main enemy to bodhicitta, which is what you need to achieve enlightenment and to enlighten all sentient beings. This is the best technique for you to heal your depression.

Try to always have deep in your heart, in your mind, an awareness of impermanence and death. Death can happen at any time. If you are able to keep this awareness, it will help you continue to practice, and will remind you to practice. It will also help stop a strong desire and clinging to this life, which lead to all the distractions and interruptions to your practice, to your mind, and to your life, and prevent you from putting an end not only to samsaric sufferings, but particularly to the sufferings of the lower realms. These sufferings are the result of desire. Detachment—renunciation—brings liberation, which helps to develop bodhicitta, which leads to enlightenment.

After getting up in the morning, rejoice that you did not die in the night. Rejoice in your perfect human rebirth, and at having met the Dharma. This human rebirth gives you the opportunity to create the cause of happiness, unbelievable happiness. Then rejoice at having met Mahayana teachings, which makes it possible to achieve enlightenment, and at having met tantra, which allows you to achieve enlightenment quickly, using every second of your perfect human rebirth—your one precious rebirth, which is like a whole sky filled with wish-granting jewels. Without a human body, however much wealth you have, you cannot achieve enlightenment in this life and cannot stop rebirth in the lower realms.

Rejoice. This gives you a strong determination to practice, to live your life in bodhicitta. Think, “I must practice and live in bodhicitta, no matter how much unhappiness I have, and no matter how many problems or ups and downs I have with anybody, in any circumstance or any place.”

The most important thing is to make efforts to develop bodhicitta. No matter how easy or how hard it is, keep in mind the thought of benefiting others and achieving enlightenment for others. That is the best attitude to have, toward your family and toward all others. As much as possible, perform all your other activities with that attitude.

Even if you are just going to the beach, go with that thought, wishing to benefit others. You might not succeed all the time, but you must try, since you want happiness and others’ happiness and to eliminate suffering. This is the most important thing.

If possible, recite OM MANI PADME HUM while meditating on bodhicitta, the shortcomings of self-cherishing, and the benefits of cherishing others.

Make sure you set your motivation strongly before going to work. Make sure your motivation for all the activities in daily life is the enlightenment of all sentient beings. The important thing is bodhicitta. Set your motivation so that many actions become Dharma, the purest cause of enlightenment. And try to control anger by practicing compassion and patience.

With bodhicitta, you can change your life.

That is good! That is very good, otherwise you might waste your time and instead of being helped, there is more harm. These days there is another kind of psychology, a new kind. Some of our students are studying this now, and it is like a bridge to the Dharma. This is very good, especially for non-Buddhists.

From other psychologists, there may be a lot of harm, danger to one’s life and a lot of negative thoughts get created. At first, you didn’t have negative thoughts toward a certain person, then by going to the psychologist, you come to blame that person, especially your parents. They become the root of your life’s problems. That is terrible. That makes you have a grudge against your parents for your whole life and that grudge makes your mind negative toward them. I don’t know what the parents’ solution would be, who they are going to blame. It’s very strange.

The new psychology is very close to Dharma and there is no harm created, nothing that makes your mind negative toward anybody. It doesn’t involve that. It is presented in a very skillful way.

Read the second part of Rinpoche's advice here