Rinpoche's Thank-you Cards, Letters and Gifts

My most dear, most kind, most precious, wish-fulfilling one,
Thank you billions of times for your great support and service, since you came to the center in 2007 and for the retreats you did. Thank you billions of times for the Vajrasattva retreat and for working at center. This is working for all the sentient beings to educate them, to wake them up from ignorance, to enlighten them.

By thinking of me as your guru, then if you are working for the center, you will collect the most extensive merit, and it is the most extensive and greatest purification, every day, every hour, every minute and every second. Also you are offering to numberless buddhas, Dharma, Sangha, statues, stupas and scriptures.

Sakya Pandita mentioned that having practiced the paramita of charity for thousands of eons, having given away one’s head, legs and hands, then even the merits of this—having given these away to the sentient beings for thousands of eons—all the merit collected is achieved in one second by following the guru’s path.

That means when you work for the guru, following the guru’s advice or fulfilling the guru’s wishes, all the merit that has been collected for thousands of eons by making charity, when you fulfill your guru’s wishes or follow the advice of the guru, in one second it gets done. You have to understand this.

So please rejoice in your whole life, it’s unbelievable, it’s most unbelievably happy—happy in Dharma, not happy with attachment and anger, that is totally different. Happy to achieve enlightenment to benefit sentient beings, so like that there is no time for depression, day and night, and even when you are sick, you can be happy!

Please find attached a whole lifetime of practice. You can die in a most unbelievably happy way, with no worries. In this way nobody has to help you, because you are guided by yourself and you are the happiest person in the world.

Thank you very much.

With much love and prayers...

My very dear one,
Thank you for your kind service for everyone. The most important benefit is to preserve and spread Dharma for sentient beings, because all sentient beings’ happiness comes from Dharma—temporal happiness and ultimate happiness, including enlightenment.

That service is most important. No matter how much sense pleasure [it doesn’t benefit] if there is no Dharma.

I want to thank you. See you soon. Take care!

With big love...

My most dear, precious, kind, dearest, wish-fulfilling jewel,
I am very happy you are able to attend such a precious occasion—the eighteen lamrims [Jang-chub Lamrim teachings] from Chenrezig, the Compassionate-eye Buddha, His Holiness the Dalai Lama.

Numberless thanks for everything, for all that you have done and for what you are doing. We highly appreciate all your help to FPMT, to develop it and to benefit sentient beings and the teachings of Buddha.

How wonderful it is! Wow! Wow! Wow!

The result of this for sentient beings is unbelievable, unbelievable. It brings not only temporary happiness but ultimate happiness, liberation from samsara, since it involves Dharma education and opening the mind in the right path to enlightenment.

With much love and prayers...

My dear one,
Sorry I did not get to write or talk to you for many years, but I felt very much to do so this time. You are not only a student, but an older member of the FPMT, who dedicated and worked very hard for many years, attending meetings. Even though you were a busy business person, you still came to meetings. I remember the first meeting at Kopan, many, many years ago.

I am sending you the thangka with Buddha Amitayus, Namgyälma and White Tara, the three long-life deities. This is for your long life, to be able to see and remember Buddha Amitayus, recite the name mantra, make prayers to be reborn in Amitabha’s pure land, have a long life and so forth.

I am also sending you a copy of the Long-life Sutra, which I translated many years ago. It is good to read and mountains of negative karma get purified, and not only that, it has other unbelievable benefits too. It is the same as reciting all the more than 100 volumes of the Buddha’s direct teachings and all the more than 200 volumes of commentaries on the Buddha’s teachings by all the Indian holy beings and scholars. Reciting the Long-life Sutra has all those benefits, as well as many other benefits.

It can help to have a long life and also purify negative karma, the cause of depression. Purification is what needs to be done. Basically, any problem we experience in this life is a result of the ten nonvirtues, and they get purified by reciting this Long-life Sutra. Not only that, but it results in temporary happiness of this life and future lives—not just one, but hundreds, thousands, millions, billions.

While in samsara we have happiness and so forth, like the incredible enjoyments of the deva realms. It also causes us to achieve ultimate happiness, liberation from samsara forever, the blissful state of peace for ourselves. Not only that, it causes the peerless happiness of full enlightenment. We can free the numberless hell beings, hungry ghosts, animals, human beings, asuras, suras and intermediate state beings from the oceans of samsaric suffering.

Even by this opportunity we do not need to be depressed or upset. It is the greatest enjoyment in life, and even that we can experience for sentient beings.

Please keep this thangka, and with the thangka there are prayers that I did for your family.

Thank you very much. With much love and prayer to you, my dear... 

My most dear ones,
[You have] compassionate hearts, even though I took the time on the empty days to give a talk to the students about the most important thing, the root of the path to enlightenment, correctly following the guru with thought and action, which gives all the happiness—this life’s happiness and the next life's happiness, liberation from samsara and [attainment of the] state of complete enlightenment, the elimination of all obscurations and completion of all the realizations.

At the end, I did the initiation and stayed there all night, to finish on time. But I spent most of the time at your house sleeping like a pig, a very fat pig. Of course in the ordinary world, ordinary people believe that it is a very good thing. Maybe their lives are very busy or hard, so for them plenty of sleep is quite important, the most important thing. But in Dharma it is a total waste of life.

It is said in the teachings by one famous Buddhist pandit: “Anyone who is ignorant, not collecting even a small treasure of merit, enters the house of suffering, the house of unceasing suffering. He enters the lower realms—the hells, the hungry ghost or animal realms. That is like the businessman who goes to the land of jewels and comes back home empty-handed”.

Like that, not only is it a totally wasted life, but also all the actions become negative karma, and the cause of reincarnating in the lower realms. I am very sorry for that.

Before I leave tomorrow, I will dedicate for both of you to have a healthy body and mind, and for all your wishes to be successful according to the holy Dharma. Never to be reborn in the lower realms and to achieve peerless happiness, the state of omniscient mind, as quickly as possible.

We all enjoyed staying at your house. [Thank you for] all your kindness, giving us happiness from beginningless rebirths.

With much love and prayer...

My most dear one,
What an unbelievable thing you did for me and for the khangtsen. Numberless times, thank you, thank you from my heart. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.

I will tell them to pray always, to dedicate their merits to you. No question my small merits to you. All the past, present, future [merit] I offer to you, my dear.

Dedication and service, you. A billion, zillion [thanks from the] bottom of my heart.

Thank you, thank you, thank you. One with [my] heart to your heart.