Essential Practices for Beginner

My most dear, most kind, most precious wish-fulfilling one,
To make your life most meaningful, not only to be free from suffering, not only to cease the oceans of samsaric sufferings, not only to achieve higher rebirth and not be reborn in the lower realms, but to achieve enlightenment for all sentient beings, please, if you can, do the morning motivation, How to Make My Lives Wish-Fulfilling: The Method to Transform a Suffering Life into Happiness. Do this every morning, even if you are travelling, at least do this morning motivation after you wake up.

After doing the morning motivation, recite this refuge and bodhicitta prayer three times.

REFUGE

To the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha
Always I go for refuge 
With wisdom and compassion, for the sake of all sentient beings, 
I, in front of Buddha, 
Generate the precious thought to achieve full enlightenment.

Then recite Purifying the Place, Invocation, Offering Prayer, the Seven-Limb Prayer and the short mandala offering. [You can find these prayers in the FPMT Essential Prayer Book.]

Recite a lamrim prayer, The Foundation of All Good Qualities, or sometimes The Three Principal Aspects of the Path.

Then do prostrations to the Thirty-five Buddhas. You can play a tape recorder, using the audio recording as a guide, so you repeat [the names of the buddhas] while also standing and doing prostrations. At the end, do the dedication.

So do this for a while and the prayer of the Thirty-five Buddhas and prostrations.

Do everything—all the prayers from the beginning motivation—with bodhicitta, then for the rest of the day, all your actions of body, speech and mind, whatever you do, try to do everything with bodhicitta. Think, “To free the numberless sentient beings from the oceans of samsara and bring them to buddhahood, the peerless happiness, by myself, I need to achieve the omniscient state of mind, therefore I am going to do all my actions with bodhicitta.”

That way, whatever actions you do become the cause of enlightenment. Try to do everything for the benefit of sentient beings as much as you can, including sleeping, the last activity of the day.

So do these practices for a while. Later, instead of doing these, you can change to Lama Tsongkhapa Guru Yoga. So that is your daily practice.

That is your life practice, or your practice for many years.

If there is a center near where you live, you can study there. So this is my advice for you.

With much love and prayers ...