Animal Liberation for Life Obstacles

My very dear one,
This year there seem to be no obstacles for you, but next year looks a little heavy. To deal with these obstacles, my suggestion is to liberate ninety animals. This can be done at the beginning of next year or just before it starts.

You could do it at the center and include everybody; that way everyone gets to participate. It is very important to follow the prayers I have put together for liberating animals, including setting up the altar and doing circumambulation. [Find links to Rinpoche’s book Liberating Animals in the FPMT Catalogue.] It’s good maybe if it’s done outside as there is the large stupa at the center.

Please try to do as many mantras and prayers as you can for the animals. Recite different mantras, then you can blow on the water, which is used later to sprinkle on the animals. Then you can do the circumambulation, then again recite mantras and blow on the water. This becomes preparation for each of the sentient beings to go to enlightenment.

If there are one hundred holy objects that you circumambulate around with the animals, then it becomes one hundred times the causes for enlightenment. If there are one hundred billion holy objects, like, for instance, merit fields that have so many holy beings in one picture, and if you have many pictures, then each time you go around them it becomes equal to the number of holy objects that you circumambulate, so you create that many causes of enlightenment. It plants that many seeds of enlightenment. If you have one billion holy objects, you plant one billion seeds of enlightenment and it becomes that many times quicker to achieve enlightenment.

Please do have many holy objects— statues, pictures and tsa tsas—so that you can circumambulate them, then it becomes unbelievable merit by walking around them just once. Also by making clouds of offerings, traditional offerings and other kinds of offerings to the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha.

This is an incredible special opportunity and brings so much great benefit to you. Even the thought of benefiting sentient beings is unbelievable and creates great merit. Even thinking to benefit someone is much more special than offering to all the buddhas, so if you actually work for sentient beings then no need to say how much that will benefit.

If you can’t do all this at once, you can do different sessions.

Please remember when you buy the animals that they have to be animals that are going to be killed. That way you are actually saving their lives and you create the cause for your own life to be longer. Also be careful how you liberate them, thinking as best as you can of a good place for them to be safe.

My advice is that when you practice lamrim, you are practicing all the philosophical texts. When you achieve lamrim realizations, you achieve all the realizations of the philosophical texts.

For example, the texts on bodhicitta—in the Kangyur there are six volumes, so [when you generate bodhicitta] you have that whole experience, you receive all that benefit. Regarding the teachings on emptiness, the texts are all in the Kangyur, both extensive and condensed texts down to the Heart Sutra. So when you realize emptiness, you are experiencing all that the Buddha taught on emptiness.

It’s the same with renunciation, therefore, please think this way. You should think in this way, otherwise if you’re not careful you could get lung and want to give up everything.

I am going to recite the prayer promised by Tara [The Mantra Promised by Arya Mother Liberator Herself]. I will recite this for you.

With love and prayers ...