Practices for Life

My most precious, most kind, wish-fulfilling one,
According to my observation, your deity is Heruka and Vajrayogini, so you can practice both or whichever one you have a stronger, closer feeling for. Vajrayogini is good but best is Heruka. There are different Herukas and I am referring to Heruka Body Mandala. In order to receive Heruka Body Mandala great initiation, you have to receive the Heruka Five-Deity initiation first.

Generally, Heruka is considered a very powerful deity to practice, especially during the time of degeneration. This is when the deity’s power is increased; when the deity becomes more powerful. Then, according to tantra, Heruka is more powerful. According to sutra, Medicine Buddha becomes more powerful. If you practice Heruka, then Vajrayogini comes by the way.

The main lamrim text for your study and practice is Essence of Refined Gold. Read it again and again. You can also read other lamrim texts, such as Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand or the Middle-Length Lamrim. There are many texts, but not all of them are translated into English. From reading other lamrim texts, you can use the information as a commentary to integrate into your study of Essence of Refined Gold. Study this text three times from beginning to end. You can check with Geshe Namdak at Jamyang London Buddhist Centre if there’s anything that you don’t know or understand.

In terms of effortful practice, please read my advice on how to meditate on the lamrim outline. First spend five months on correctly devoting to the virtuous friend, seeing the guru as a buddha from your side using quotations and logic. This is the root of the path to enlightenment and it brings all the success up to enlightenment. Continue until everything is well established and stable.

So the purpose of your meditation, learning the whole path, including tantra, is to achieve enlightenment for the sentient beings—for every hell being, every hungry ghost, every animal, every human, every sura and every asura being.

Continue step by step with the lamrim outline and bodhicitta, repeating it twice, then do effortless meditation.

In terms of the preliminaries:

• Refuge: 60,000.
• Tonglen: 10,000. This is for developing bodhicitta. It’s the most important practice for purification, extensive purification, as well as collecting the most merit and the quickest way to achieve enlightenment.
• Tsa tsas: 80,000. Use the three long-life deities and Maitreya Buddha, and divide between these. There’s an excellent mold, a very beautiful one, from Taiwan. The Maitreya Buddha tsa tsa comes in different sizes. There are many small ones in America and some are from Tibet. It depends on your finances which size and which ones you use.
• Prostrations while reciting the names of the Thirty-five Buddhas: 70,000.
• Guru Yoga: 60,000. Recite migtsema (five lines). This can be done within Lama Chöpa in the mornings or if you do many sessions you can use Lama Tsongkhapa Guru Yoga.
• Mandala offerings: 70,000.
• OM MANI PADME HUM: Recite this mantra as much as possible with the ultimate good heart, bodhicitta, wishing to free the numberless six-realm sentient beings from all the sufferings and bring them to enlightenment. Recite the mantra with that mind.
• Nyung nä: Do this each year, whatever you can, even one helps a lot. It’s a quick, great purification, and you collect the most extensive merit, so you’re able to quickly develop compassion, and therefore bodhicitta and go to enlightenment.

My root guru mentioned that by doing nyung näs, within sixteen lifetimes we will definitely become enlightened. In this way we will come to enlightenment and say goodbye to samsara. That means goodbye to the oceans of suffering of the hell beings, the hungry ghosts and the animals, all the problems, depression, everything, every suffering of the humans, asuras, suras, and intermediate state beings. We’re saying goodbye by practicing lamrim. This is our daily medicine.

With much love and prayers ...

This is my advice for your life practices.

Please read my advice on how to meditate on the lamrim, the graduated path to enlightenment. Continue step by step with the lamrim outline, then do effortless meditation. Later you can take the main deity initiation.

After bodhicitta is done, you can spend time on the generation and completion stages. While meditating on the generation stage, you can go over the outlines of the completion stage. The time for tantra is afterwards. You can meditate on tantra but first spend more time meditating on lamrim. After that you do effortless meditation.

• Refuge: 500,000. You can take teachings on and study the Jorchö commentary, or study the refuge section in Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand.
• Tonglen: 100,000. Recite the words but also do the meditation. With this practice you collect the most extensive merit and purify negative karmas collected from beginningless rebirth.
• Do Vajrasattva every day, especially in the evening. Recite one mala, half a mala, twenty-one mantras or as many as possible.
• Prostrations by reciting the Thirty-Five Buddhas’ names: 50,000. Please read the explanation of how this practice brings powerful purification and how it was practiced by Lama Tsongkhapa. In the Lama Tsongkhapa tradition, it is regarded as so important and was practiced by the lineage lamas. Even when Lama Atisha was showing an elderly aspect, he still did prostrations. Even though the holy body was shaking, he still did prostrations.
• Mandala offering: 50,000. 

This is a method to collect extensive merits. For quick enlightenment you need to collect the merits of virtue and the merits of wisdom. All success in attaining realizations and enlightenment comes from merit, as does all success, even in samsara.

In other words, if you do the preliminary practices and meditate on the lamrim, you can achieve enlightenment for sentient beings and then save numberless sentient beings from the oceans of samsaric suffering and bring them to enlightenment. It brings all success and happiness, good rebirths for eons and all success while you are samsara.

Western science has no explanation of reincarnation and karma. Even though someone is educated, with a degree, it doesn’t mean that they will be able to find a job easily. Happiness and success come from good karma. Actualizing the four noble truths, liberation and enlightenment, the preliminary practices and lamrim cause all success and happiness, even in samsara. All the answers are there if you want to progress.

If you can, recite the Diamond Cutter Sutra every day.

Life is very short. Purification like Mount Everest is needed to purify the negative karma and obscurations collected from beginningless rebirths and to collect inconceivable, inconceivable merits. [Reciting the Diamond Cutter Sutra] is a quick way to realize emptiness. It will be very, very good if you can put effort into this practice.

While reading the Diamond Cutter Sutra once every day, you can dedicate for people with sicknesses, life-threatening diseases and difficulties in their life, such as not finding a job. You can dedicate for anyone with problems.

It is very, very powerful and great, great benefits are explained. Sorry, the benefits have not yet been translated into English; but they can be translated; they are not long. You can start reciting the Diamond Cutter Sutra now.

After receiving initiation and studying the commentaries, you can do the enabling retreat of your deity.

• Refuge recitations: 4,000
• Prostrations by reciting the Thirty-Five Buddhas’ names: 30,000
• Vajrasattva mantras: At least 300,000
• Dorje Khadro Burning Offering mantras: 400,000
• Guhyasamaja Root Tantra text: 3,000. This is extremely profound. There isn’t a good translation in English yet, but if you are able to read Tibetan, you can do it in Tibetan. It creates unbelievable, unbelievable merits and brings quick enlightenment.

Nyung nä retreats: In your life, the most important thing is to do the two-day Chenrezig fasting retreat. It is an extremely powerful method to purify the negative karma collected from beginningless rebirths and to collect extensive merits, and in particular, to develop compassion for sentient beings. It helps us develop compassion for each sentient being, and it brings us to buddhahood. It is the quick way to be reborn in the pure land and then become enlightened soon. Generally, we are able to achieve enlightenment quickly.

It would be so good if you could do a few nyung näs every year. Many people do one hundred, many Westerners have done this, and especially Tibetans. By doing some nyung näs every year, you can reach one hundred. Then you can do five hundred, and if you finish five hundred, then you can do another five hundred. The main thing is not the number, but just to get them done well.

Tsa tsas: The deities for you are Lama Tsongkhapa, Padmasambhava, Guru Shakyamuni Buddha and the Thirty-five Buddhas. (If you do the Thirty-five Buddhas, Shakyamuni Buddha is there.) So this means you divide your time between these deities. When they are finished you can paint them and offer them to people, or if somebody is building a large stupa or statue, the tsa tsas can go inside—it can be filled up with the tsa tsas. Or you can give them to other people for their garden or for outside, or put them on a table for circumambulation, so in this way you collect extensive merit.

Also you or other people can build, inside a doorway, on a table. Make a few levels and then you can put the tsa tsas inside and decorate the outside, and on top put a large stupa or statue. In the West, we have a stupa that is six feet tall, the middle size is one and a half feet, and the smallest stupa is ten inches.

Or you can mount them on the wall, below the ceiling, then underneath you can have a line of wood and Christmas lights that are offered on the wood. That is unbelievably good, so you are offering continuously. You can even have three or four or five rows. It depends how you want them in the house. Or you could have one wall completely full of the tsa tsas, so that becomes your altar, where you prostrate.

Make 300,000 tsa tsas. You can do them slowly, slowly. The Tibetan way is to make them from clay. This is how Tibetans make them. In the West they are made from plaster. There is a cheap one, a middle cost and best quality. You can mix the best and cheap quality plaster. But you don’t have to worry; you can do this slowly. If you have plaster and if you have many molds, that makes it easier to finish a large number in a short time. You can have thirty, forty or fifty molds, so in that way you finish more quickly, because you are mixing the plaster and pouring it into the molds just once. So you can get twenty, thirty or fifty or more done at once.

To gain effortful lamrim experience, please read my advice. First study a lamrim text from beginning to end, then practice effortful meditation, by following the outline from beginning to end. Then do effortless meditation, no matter how many weeks, months or years it takes.

Your main deity is Guhyasamaja or Secret Vajrapani, whichever you feel the strongest connection or close to. You need to take the initiation before practicing the sadhana, then you can do retreat. Until you receive the initiation you can recite the mantra and visualize the deity in front of you, maybe with refuge and bodhicitta and the seven-limb practice. You can receive the lung or oral transmission of the mantra.

My most dear, most kind, most precious wish-fulfilling one,
Regarding your financial situation and success, if you can, recite the Golden Light Sutra, for temporary [success], to help your financial situation, and ultimately for enlightenment, to bring all the sentient beings to enlightenment, the peerless happiness.

Recite the Golden Light Sutra once and the Arya Sanghata Sutra four times. After that, if you can, try to recite the Golden Light Sutra once a month. Also recite the Arya Sanghata Sutra once a month, but first recite it four times. The Golden Light Sutra is unbelievably precious; you only go toward enlightenment, then everything happens by the way. The Arya Sanghata Sutra collects the most unimaginable merit and from that, all the success happens. Without merit we cannot find a job, we cannot find money, besides not having realizations.

Please do How to Make My Lives Wish-Fulfilling: The Method to Transform a Suffering Life into Happiness (Including Enlightenment). Please do this practice every day, along with Lama Tsongkhapa Guru Yoga and Prostrations to the Thirty-five Confession Buddhas.

In the evening, do Vajrasattva practice and if possible, recite the King of Prayers at night before going to bed.

These are your daily practices. [I am also sending] life practices, what to plan for your life. Don’t worry, you don’t have to do them all now.

Regarding what can help now, you should recite the Buddha’s name and mantra, which are in the Method to Transform booklet.

Also recite two malas of Shakyamuni Buddha’s name while constantly looking at a photo or statue of the Buddha. Think nectar beams are emitted and are purifying you and all sentient beings of the negative karmas collected from beginningless time. At the end, think you become Buddha and all sentient beings become Buddha.

So this is my advice. Please make your life most meaningful with the thought of bodhicitta.

Preliminary Practices

• Prostrations by reciting the names of the Thirty-Five Confession Buddhas: 150,000 times. It's good to memorize the names; that makes it very easy.
• Arya Sanghata Sutra recitation: once a month.
• Golden Light Sutra recitation: once a month.
• Four immeasurable thoughts: 140,000 recitations. With each of the four, you collect more than skies of merit. [You pray for] sentient beings to abide in equanimity, free from anger and attachment; for sentient beings to not be separated from temporary happiness; for sentient beings to be free from samsara; for sentient beings to accomplish ultimate happiness, and within the ultimate happiness, the state of peace, freedom from samsara and peerless happiness, buddhahood.

Sometimes when you have time, you can do this in the form of a retreat, with meditation sessions. Otherwise you can do some every day and write down the number, counting like that. Why? Because you don’t have much time to practice, because you have to work.

For you, the main lamrim to read and study is The Happy Path, translated by Geshe Sopa and Jeffrey Hopkins. This is a short text, and it doesn’t mean you can’t read others; you can read other lamrim texts as well. The Happy Path is the main one you should study from beginning to end. Write down whatever you don’t understand and check with a geshe or with students who have studied well, otherwise we get misunderstanding. Study The Happy Path first, reading it three or four times from beginning to end.

You need to practice effortful meditation by following the lamrim outline for the number of months I have indicated, until you have stable realizations. Then you can do effortless meditation.

With much love and prayers ...

My most dear, most precious, most kind, wish-fulfilling one,
According to my observation the lamrim text for you to study is the Lamrim Chenmo.

Buddha taught 84,000 teachings and these come into three: the Lesser Vehicle path, the Greater Vehicle path of sutra, and the Greater Vehicle path of tantra. All these are embodied into the lamrim, the graduated path to enlightenment, and that comes in three levels: the graduated path of the lower capable being in general, the graduated path of the middle capable being in general and the graduated path of the higher capable being. These are embodied in the three principal aspects of the path to enlightenment.

Lama Tsongkhapa gave teachings on that, so it’s extremely important to learn and to understand the commentary very clearly. There are also many other great enlightened beings who explained the lamrim, the graduated path to enlightenment, according to their experience.

Lama Tsongkhapa wrote the Lamrim Chenmo, not so much about the preliminary practices, but more [to explain] what the mistakes were of the practitioners of different traditions or sects. He elaborated on the mistakes they made and he gave a very clear explanation of shi nä, calm abiding, and emptiness, and all the conduct. In the Lamrim Chenmo he negated all the wrong views and he explained the philosophy of the Middle Way school. He gave a very clear explanation of the Prasangika Madhyamaka, the second division of the Middle Way school.

There’s also the Middle-Length Lamrim by Lama Tsongkhapa. It doesn’t have all the debate about emptiness, but the very essence is there. Then there’s a very short lamrim, the Hymn of Experience of the Path to Enlightenment. There’s also a commentary written by the Third Dalai Lama, Sonam Gyatso, called Essence of Refined Gold.

Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand has clear elaborations on the preliminaries; that text is small and simplified in terms of the lamrim. You can find it useful, because many subjects are there, especially the preliminaries.

You should carry your main text with you wherever you go, just as the ascetic lamas and monks did. Those ascetic ones carried their texts everywhere. So like that, study and practice.

So you must have Geshe Sopa’s five volumes of lamrim commentary, the Lamrim Chenmo. It’s unbelievably clear and many Chinese cry when reading this commentary. I would like to give you this set. Ven. Roger will check if you want a physical set or a digital version; please let him know, so it can be organized. 

Read it three times or at least twice, from beginning to end, but best is three times from beginning to end. Any new words you can write in a new book, copy into that, then you can ask a Western student who has studied well, who knows Dharma well, otherwise you’ll get the wrong understanding. Or, you can ask a geshe who has a very good translator, otherwise again, you can get wrong ideas if you don’t have a good translator. Maybe it’s good to ask Geshe Namdak; you can ask him questions.

In terms of effortful meditation, you can do the following:

• Three months on guru devotion, covering the outline. When you have finished, go over it again and again, in order to get the realization that the guru is a buddha. Use all of the outline to have several realizations of that. It’s important to know how to follow the guru’s wishes and advice.
• Three months on the graduated path of the lower capable being in general.
• Three months on the graduated path of the middle capable being in general.
• Nine months on bodhicitta. There are two techniques. You can spend three weeks on all sentient beings having been our mother, the seven points of cause and effect instruction. Then for the next three weeks, meditate on the extensive kindness of mother sentient beings, and exchanging oneself for others by realizing the shortcomings of cherishing I and the benefits of cherishing others—the limitless shortcomings of the self-cherishing thought and the limitless benefits of cherishing others.

You can do the above for that many months, and then spend two months on emptiness.

Do this three times, going around the outline, then do the effortless meditation. 

Lama Tsongkhapa asked Manjushri, “What is the quick way to achieve the graduated path to enlightenment?” Manjushri answered, “The quick way is to purify the negative karma and obscurations, and collect the necessary conditions for realization.”

[To purify] the obstacles to achieving realization, he mentioned purification practices such as Vajrasattva and so forth. And to collect merit, the necessary conditions, by offering mandalas and so forth. Then, with one-pointed mind, requesting the guru.

To elaborate on that, it’s done with great guru devotion mind, with all the effort, no matter how many weeks, months, years or lifetimes it takes. With all the effort, as much as possible from your side, try to see the guru as a buddha, then as a result, you will see the Buddha, so with that mind make a one-pointed request.

Then the next one is the actual meditation, training the mind in the path to enlightenment. So we need to purify and collect merits, and then we make a one-pointed request to the guru. These things are what is needed. The meditation on the path to enlightenment—that’s the actual body, and we must have that in mind all the time. That’s Manjushri’s answer.

The preliminary practices, what I am going to give you here, are to purify the defilements, negative karma and obstacles; to collect extensive merits, the necessary conditions; to develop guru devotion; and to increase the merits.

So these are the preliminaries for you:

• Vajrasattva: 300,000. You can do some mantras in retreat with more sessions, and you can do some more loosely—either two sessions, one in the morning and one in the evening, or one session if you are working, that’s the light way. Then in this way you can finish them easily. [You can find The Preliminary Practice of Vajrasattva in the FPMT Catalogue.]  
• Dorje Khadro: 110,000. You can get a statue of Dorje Khadro in Nepal. The fire goes below and then you offer black sesame seeds into the [visualized] holy mouth. You can get the lung and commentary for this. It’s a very powerful purification practice and is one of Lama Tsongkhapa’s golden teachings.
• Tsa tsas: 10,000, shared between the stupa and Maitreya Buddha, a fifty-story Maitreya Buddha tsa tsa.

There’s a very, very nice small tsa tsa from America. I don’t know the name of the company, but we have it in Aptos, so Holly can send it to you. The Tibetan way is to take very fine earth from the mountain and use it to make blessed pills and tsa tsas. In the West, you can buy well-made earth mixed with water, making a kind of dough, then the block goes on top of that, and you print in that way. But in the West many tsa tsas are made from plaster. There are different qualities—cheap, middle and best.

If you’re making a lot of tsa tsas, you will need many molds, maybe ten, fifteen, twenty or twenty-five. You can fill them up all at once with plaster, then they dry after a few minutes and in that way you can finish them very quickly.

In Australia, I made tsa tsas during my retreat. The way I did it was by mixing the best quality with the cheapest one, and then it was better. Otherwise, using only the cheap quality, they break so easily.

As I’m sure you do, besides the meditation, when eating food, when going to the toilet, or when walking, sitting, talking, sleeping, whatever it is, do everything with bodhicitta as much as possible.

Also there’s emptiness—not only studying and learning and leaving it in the book, not only that, but you have to realize that you are empty and all the rest of the things [are empty], so you have to live like that.

You are most welcome, my dear, to enlightenment, as quickly as possible, to become free from samsara. You can say goodbye to all the oceans of samsaric suffering by practicing lamrim. Just like an apple a day, then “goodbye doctor.” That’s it.

For your deity, there’s Vajrayogini and also Secret Hayagriva, not Most Secret Hayagriva. These came out as your deity. I haven’t done Secret Hayagriva retreat, so maybe I can [give] Vajrayogini initiation if you haven’t received it. That is easier. Secret Hayagriva I haven’t done, but of course, if you wish, you can take the initiation from other lamas, or maybe from the Nepalese cooks in the main kitchen at Kopan, you can take it from them.

Thank you very much. I don’t know if you have received Vajrayogini already or not; maybe not. Thank you, numberless thanks for your wellbeing, just [for] yourself, how you are. I rejoice like the sky. Thank you very much.

With much love and prayers ...

My most dear, most precious, most kind, wish-fulfilling one, 
Thank you very, very much, a million, zillion times, for studying Lamrim Chenmo. It’s the most worthwhile Dharma subject that you’re studying, for you and for all sentient beings—for every ant, every mosquito, every snake, every elephant, every snail, every turtle, every sloth animal, every alligator, every crocodile, every scorpion, every pigeon, and all those people you don’t like, and those animals, those pitiful suffering sentient beings who have incredible suffering. So it’s for everyone, not only for you, but for everyone who is important, like you. It will bring happiness for them and free them from suffering, just like yourself. 

So now, according to my observation, the Middle-Length Lamrim is your main meditation text. Of course, you can read Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand and other lamrim texts, and then something that is beneficial for your mind which is not particularly expressed in the Middle-Length Lamrim, you can bring it there; you can integrate it there. 

The whole idea of meditating, reading, studying Dharma, all the essence is to actualize the lamrim path, the path to enlightenment, so that you can achieve enlightenment quicker, and then you can free the sentient beings from the oceans of samsaric suffering quicker, and bring them to enlightenment quicker. That should be your main goal or aim, your purpose in life. Thank you very much. 

You have already read the commentary before, so you know how to expand it and how to meditate. Study the text three times from beginning to end, reading it mindfully, so that it becomes a meditation. 

Read my advice on how to do effortful lamrim meditation. After going through the lamrim outline one time, then do effortless meditation. 

In terms of your deity, there’s Yamantaka, Heruka, Secret Hayagriva, Vajrakilaya and Secret Vajrapani. I think from those, maybe practice Heruka. If you want to, on the basis of that, you can take initiations for those other deities that I’ve mentioned. But mainly just do Heruka or Secret Vajrapani, whichever deity you feel closer to and stronger [connection with]. You can decide that. 

For the preliminaries, according to my observation:

Refuge practice: 101,000.

Tonglen, for developing bodhicitta: 130,000. When you do tonglen one time—one time giving and one time taking, separating the sentient beings from suffering—each time, you collect the highest, most extensive merit, and you do the biggest purification. So, it makes your life the best, best Dharma practice. 

Even if you die with that, it’s so worthwhile, it’s the best way to die. As His Holiness often says, the best way to die is to die with bodhicitta.

Not only that—the best way to die is to die with bodhicitta—not only that, but everything that you do, do it with bodhicitta as much as possible, so then everything becomes a cause of enlightenment, and you cause everyone to achieve enlightenment. That’s the best way to benefit your parents, who have been most kind among those ordinary sentient beings.

Do at least five nyung näs every year, and if you can, do more. Every year do as many as you can. That is the one best thing for you; it came out according to my observation. By doing one nyung nä well, you purify negative karma and you get reborn in the pure land when you die. Then you stop rebirth in the lower realms and so forth. So this is a quick way to be free from samsara. 

Of course, to be a monk is the best life, yes, and a monk with lamrim practice, that’s one of the tops. It’s like the ice cream and then you get a cherry on top, like that. So it’s very, very good. 

So go in that way, direct your life in that way, it’s very good, then you can take ordination. Thank you very, very much. Thank you so much.

It’s mentioned in the meditation instructions to live your life as much as possible with bodhicitta for sentient beings: eat for sentient beings, drink for sentient beings, sleep for sentient beings, meditate for sentient beings, study for sentient beings, go to the toilet for sentient beings, anything. 

Thank you very, very, very much.

With much love and prayers ...