Important Practices for the Rest of Your Life

My most dear, most kind, most precious, wish-fulfilling one,
Thank you very much for your kind letter, giving all your life story. A holy being’s life story is called namtar in Tibetan. Nam means the aspect of life, how the meditator subdued and pacified the delusions, pacified the mind and practiced Dharma. How the meditator experienced so much hardship in order to practice Dharma on the basis of renouncing the eight worldly dharmas, renouncing the happiness of this life, renouncing the future life’s samsara and renouncing the self-cherishing thought and ignorance. Holding the I as real, renouncing that—the total hallucination of I held since beginningless rebirths, that which is totally false, that real I, the I that exists in appearance but is totally non-existent.

For your practice, please do the following:

1. Prostrations by reciting the names of the Thirty-Five Buddhas: Do this every morning. In the evening, recite the text once more and then do Vajrasattva practice.
2. Vajrasattva mantras: Every night recite the long mantra—one mala or twenty-eight or twenty-one times—or recite the short mantra twenty-eight times.
3. Shakyamuni Buddha name and mantra: Recite one mala every day.
4. OM MANI PADME HUM: Recite this every day.
5. Medicine Buddha mantra: Recite this every day, along with the seven Medicine Buddhas’ names.

The main lamrim text for you to study is the Lamrim Chenmo. It is more extensive than other lamrim texts, but it came out good for you to read this. Read it seven times from beginning to end.

There is a short lamrim text, The Essential Nectar, and there is Geshe Rabten’s commentary on this text. Geshe Rabten was my first teacher of debate. Otherwise, you can follow the lamrim outlines for effortful meditation. Go over the outlines and meditate. In the Lamrim Chenmo there is a lot of negation of wrong views. The Middle-Length Lamrim doesn’t have this debate part; it is taken out and it has Lama Tsongkhapa’s definition and explanation instead.

In terms of effortful lamrim practice, go over the outlines again and again. Go through the cycle on each topic five times and then do effortless meditation.

At night-time recite the long Vajrasattva mantra, either one mala, twenty-eight or twenty-one times or more. Or recite the short Vajrasattva mantra, OM VAJRASATTVA HUM, twenty-eight times. Otherwise, our negative karma increases; it doubles and triples like that. It’s so important to do this with the four opponent powers. Not only that, we purify the negative karma from today, yesterday and the past. Wow, wow, wow!

If we don’t do Vajrasattva then after fifteen days the negative karma created increases by 18,184 times. That means even if there is no story of having killed a human being, each negative karma of our body, speech and mind increases to be equal to killing a human being. So many! It becomes like killing so many human beings and after eighteen days, our negative karma increases by 100,072 times. It’s so heavy. By increasing day by day, by the time we die, one atom becomes like a mountain, so heavy, and then we take rebirth in the hells for eons. This is just for this life, forget about past lives.

So now we can see that Vajrasattva practice done with the four powers gives us incredible protection. That’s how we protect ourselves from the lower realms. We can’t think there is a God who protects us from negative karma. We have to purify it.

In the morning, do the Thirty-five Buddhas practice with prostrations if you can, and in the evening recite it one time, then do Vajrasattva practice.

Before sleeping, examine the day’s karma, how often it was created and what was negative and what was positive. If positive karma was created we should rejoice, as each time we rejoice it increases two or threefold. Regarding the negative karma created, we should purify it with Vajrasattva. Then even if we were to die in our sleep we would have no regrets and we would have a very happy mind.

Lama Tsongkhapa did the Thirty-five Buddhas practice thirty-five times every night, then with a very happy mind, as a pure monk, he slept.

This is what we should do. This is how to develop the mind of enlightenment, through lamrim study, listening, reflecting and meditating, and through reciting mantras like OM MANI PADME HUM. For general people this is the most important thing, more important than purifying and accumulating merit.

When we recite OM MANI PADME HUM, the merit is more than the sand grains in the great rivers and the drops of water in the great oceans. If we recite it with bodhicitta—the motivation to free all sentient beings from the oceans of samsaric suffering—then reciting the mantra just one time, we get skies of merit. Also, we receive Chenrezig’s blessing and strong compassion, so then we go quickly to enlightenment. The stronger our compassion, the more quickly we reach enlightenment.

Recite the Medicine Buddha mantra for success. Also recite the names of each of the Medicine Buddhas seven times, then do the mantra. This is for everything, but mainly for success.

This is the minimum for you, therefore you must do it. The main reason why we feel there is no change or development of the mind is because of not meditating on the lamrim.

You are most welcome to enlightenment.

Remember the story of Milarepa, who killed many people and animals by using black magic. After learning black magic he made a hole in the mountain where he practiced black magic, then he killed thirty-five people. Later, after having met his guru, Marpa, he followed all the guru’s advice and never arose heresy, even though he had to build and destroy a nine-story tower twice and then build it again a third time, though he had no porters to help him.

Later Marpa’s wisdom mother pushed Marpa to give him an initiation, so Marpa generated the mandala and gave Milarepa the initiation. Then Milarepa went to the mountain and bore many hardships to practice meditation. He generated the tantric path and fulfilled the whole path to enlightenment.

It’s helpful to think of this story, especially since you didn’t kill any humans, Milarepa did this and still attained enlightenment in a brief lifetime of degenerate times. So you can do it. Why not?

At least you can be close to the path of enlightenment by generating the three principal aspects of the path on the basis of generating guru devotion, then this becomes the basis of tantra. With bodhicitta you then meditate on the generation stage and practice the completion stage for imprints. With the generation stage you can practice gross and subtle levels. The completion stage practice has five stages.

Even if we have no realizations of those things mentioned, by practicing, our mind becomes closer to realizing this in the next life.

Regarding the lamrim meditation, you can do this at home or in retreat in a more intensive way. Then you don’t have to feel that nothing is happening in your mind.

Geshe Sopa, from the USA, is my teacher and is very well-qualified and well-known at Sera, Ganden and Drepung monasteries in Tibet. Out of all the tens of thousands of monks, he was renounced; he was the very top geshe in the general peoples’ view, while in my view he was a buddha, because he was my guru. He was regarded as a very top geshe by the three monasteries and colleges.

Geshe Sopa gave teachings on the Lamrim Chenmo. This is now published as five volumes of commentary on the Lamrim Chenmo. Some Chinese students cry when they read it. Ven. Roger says it’s so good. When we meditate on the lamrim we will find the real taste of Dharma, like tasting ice cream—yum, yum, yum—but that’s just food; we can’t imagine the taste when we practice Dharma.

I would like to thank you for all the mantras and practices you have done, as well as all for the service to the FPMT, to the centers, to His Holiness the Dalai Lama and the Tibetans. Also, thank you for doing the practice How to Make My Lives Wish-Fulfilling: The Method to Transform a Suffering Life into Happiness (Including Enlightenment). Maybe you are the only person I have heard of who does this continually. Thank you very much from my heart.

You should also recite one mala of Guru Shakyamuni Buddha’s name and mantra with bodhicitta:

[LA MA] TÖN PA CHOM DÄN DÄ DE ZHIN SHEG PA DRA CHOM PA YANG DAG PAR DZOG PÄI SANG GYÄ PÄLGYÄLWA SHA KYA THUB PA LA CHHAG TSHÄL LO

[Guru], Teacher, Bhagavan, Tathagata, Arhat, Perfectly Complete Buddha, Glorious Conqueror Shakyamuni Buddha, I prostrate.

TADYATHA OM MUNE MUNE MAHA MUNAYE SVAHA

This mantra purifies 80,000 billion eons of negative karma every time we recite it. It directs our mind and life toward Dharma and makes it easy to generate realizations and become beneficial for sentient beings, like the Compassionate Buddha.

In general, I want to mention to you that after reading your letter, the prayers in daily life are not just prayers, they are to transform undesirable things onto the path through compassion or emptiness, in order to develop bodhicitta. So the prayers are mainly for that; not just for recitation.

You should keep the book, Transforming Problems into Happiness, and refer to it when there are undesirable conditions, using the problems to make them desirable and to make them part of transforming into the path of enlightenment through generating compassion, in order to develop bodhicitta, or through emptiness or renunciation.

Again, you are most welcome to enlightenment.

With much love and prayers ...