Practices for Life

My most dear, most kind, most precious, wish-fulfilling daughter,
In essence, these are your life practices. Your main deity is Heruka body mandala deity practice.

The main lamrim text for your study and practice is Lama Tsongkhapa’s Middle-Length Lamrim. Read this mindfully so that it becomes a meditation. Read it five or six times.

Then you need to practice effortful meditation by following the lamrim outline. Meditate for eleven months on correctly following the virtuous friend; five months on the graduated path of the lower capable being and three months on the graduated path of the middle capable being.

Spend three months on bodhicitta, dividing this into three sections, week-by-week, if that is suitable. Meditate on the extensive kindness exchanging self and others, and then the seven point cause-and-effect instruction. The third division is receiving the protection and happiness of having a house, clothing and food, and that we have freedom because of that. Remember the numberless sentient beings who died, were killed or created negative karma, and the evolution of each aspect, for example, for one plate of vegetables, one grain of rice, one piece of clothing, and even the foundation for the house. Think how beings are involved, how they suffer and create negative karma for our protection, happiness and freedom. Then do effortful meditation for one month on emptiness.

Repeat this cycle three times. [Read more here about effortful lamrim meditation.] For these lamrim meditations you can use the outlines from the Middle-Length Lamrim or The Essential Nectar. After having studied, you can read different commentaries, and from that, integrate that knowledge into your practice. So you cycle through the effortful practice three times.

Regarding the preliminaries:

• Four immeasurables: 60,000.
• Tsa tsas: 50,000, of Dorje Chang, Thirty-five Buddhas and Medicine Buddha.
• Vajrasattva: 70,000.
• Mandala offering: 100,000.
• Lama Tsongkhapa Guru Yoga (Ganden Lha Gyäma): 100,000 with meditation. Do Lama Chöpa in the morning, then do sessions with Ganden Lha Gyäma counting the number of migtsemas.
• Chanting the Names of Noble Manjushri: Recite this once each day if possible. 
• Golden Light Sutra: Recite this once each day if possible. If that is not possible, then recite half of both Chanting the Names of Manjushri and Golden Light Sutra on one day, and recite the other half the next day.

What makes your life most meaningful is meditation on the lamrim, and to live your life with bodhicitta motivation. This is the best.

With much love and prayers ...

My most dear, most kind, most precious, wish-fulfilling one,
Just as you helped the dog by reciting the Medicine Buddha mantra, you should continue this healing for people and animals. With full faith, you can totally leave it in the hands of Medicine Buddha. 

I remember at Root Institute in India, when I was there to give teachings, on the road outside the building there were some people from Singapore, and one person had some danger that they would go to prison or some other threat. When they asked me to help, I left it in the hands of Medicine Buddha, then in the next day or so that person was freed.

Anyway, you should continue with Medicine Buddha practice every day, reciting the names seven times. The short version of this is the Medicine Buddha Sadhana and there’s another practice, the middle-length Medicine Buddha puja, called The Wish-fulfilling Jewel. At the centers they do this. We also have the most extensive one, which is most inspiring. The dedication is done for every sentient being; it’s so good. [You can find links to these practices in the FPMT Catalogue.]

There’s also a new Medicine Buddha practice that I wrote, for daily practice. You could also do that. It has so much power to help others and to purify us, to purify our negative karma and obscurations collected from beginningless time, but most importantly, it brings the success of all our wishes. Don’t think it’s only for healing—no, it’s for success and it’s very powerful.

Medicine Buddha is from sutra. The more time passes and becomes more degenerate, then Medicine Buddha is more powerful for bringing success. And from the tantra side, Heruka is more powerful for bringing success, according to Pabongkha Dechen Nyingpo, who is Heruka.

I’m not a qualified guru, but I can try to do what I can to be your teacher. It’s very good that you met the nun, as she’s helping many people in Sri Lanka with the bodhisattva Ksitigarbha, and also maybe with Medicine Buddha practice.

Below are your lifetime practices. A main lamrim text for you to study, according to my observation, is Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand. Buddha taught the 84,000 teachings, which are condensed into three: the Lesser Vehicle path, the Greater Vehicle path of sutra and the Greater Vehicle path of tantra. These are all embodied in the lamrim.

In Tibet, when Buddhism was so degenerated, there were many misconceptions about tantra, and at that time Lama Atisha was invited to revive Buddhism. After Lama Atisha heard about all the problems there he wrote the Lamp for the Path to Enlightenment. So the lamrim, the graduated path to enlightenment, started from that time. It canceled all the wrong concepts about the practice of holy Dharma, all the misconceptions about tantra, about both the Lesser Vehicle and Greater Vehicle sutra and tantra. All these are for our graduated practice to achieve enlightenment, our enlightenment.

There are many commentaries on Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand and on the Lamp for the Path to Enlightenment. For example, Lama Tsongkhapa wrote The Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment (Lamrim Chenmo), the Middle-Length Lamrim, and the very short Hymn of Experience. Then there’s the shortest one, Three Principal Aspects of the Path. I’m just talking here about Lama Tsongkhapa.

The main thing is that the essence of all Dharma is contained inside [these lamrim texts.] For you, Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand becomes your main text, and you should study this four times from beginning to end, reading it mindfully so that it becomes a meditation.

The whole aim is to actualize the lamrim path that will lead you to enlightenment in order to free the numberless sentient beings from samsara, for you to actualize the path and bring them to enlightenment.

Your main deity practice according to my observation is Kalachakra, Secret Vajrapani and Most Secret Hayagriva. For you, Most Secret Hayagriva comes out as the main deity, but you can take those other initiations when the time and opportunity comes, and then do retreat and become closer to enlightenment.

Please read my advice on why we should practice Highest Yoga Tantra, remembering that the whole point is to lead sentient beings to enlightenment as quickly as possible. To free them from samsara and lead them to enlightenment as quickly as possible is the main point, the ultimate point, the ultimate aim.

In terms of effortful practice, please follow the lamrim outline. Read my advice on how to meditate on correctly devoting to the virtuous friend, then meditate on the graduated path of the lower capable being and middle capable being. Spend two months on bodhicitta, breaking it up into weeks. In the first week, meditate on the extensive, most precious kindness of sentient beings, equalizing and exchanging oneself and others. In the second week, meditate on the seven points of Mahayana cause and effect.

All our happiness, the protection of our body, our comfort, having a house, all comes from the kindness of sentient beings, who have suffered or died, and created negative karma for us. All the happiness of eating food, having this comfort, and even surviving each hour, minute and second is due to the kindness of those numberless sentient beings who suffered, who created negative karma for us. Humans created negative karma; they harmed or killed others, all that.

For our clothes, our dresses, besides the skins and animal products, numberless sentient beings died, were killed, and people created negative karma. All our happiness is received by the sentient beings’ kindness. So that’s the third week. 

After that, spend three months on emptiness to complete the cycle one time. Then do effortless meditation.

In terms of preliminaries:

• Four immeasurable thoughts: 80,000.
• Most Secret Hayagriva tsa tsas: 30,000. The tsa tsa is what you print, the deity or buddha figure, that’s what a tsa tsa is. At Nalanda Monastery they might have one small, very nice one made by Peter.
• Prostrations by reciting the names of the Thirty-five Buddhas: 600,000. This is an extremely powerful purification of Lama Tsongkhapa, who did so many hundreds of thousands of prostrations while reciting the Thirty-five Buddhas. So many rainfalls of realizations came after reciting that.

Prostrations while reciting the Thirty-five Buddhas is Lama Tsongkhapa’s lineage, and the lineage lamas regarded it as great protection, and because of that, they did so many each day, hundreds. Many practitioners do five hundred, a thousand or any number, and not just as a preliminary practice, but for purification. In everyday life when you have time it’s extremely good to do this, so aim to do like this, then your life becomes so beneficial for sentient beings, not only for yourself. Of course, it should be done with bodhicitta to benefit every sentient being, to free them from samsara and achieve enlightenment as quickly as possible. To free sentient beings from samsara means to free them from samsaric sufferings.

• Mandala offerings: 110,000. This is a way of collecting extensive merits with each mandala. The offering of each mandala helps you to have quick realizations, for quick enlightenment in order to help the sentient beings.
• Recite OM MANI PADME HUM. This should be one of your main practices. You can recite the mantra even when you’re walking or jogging, doing it as the Tibetans do. In Solu Khumbu, where I was born, they recite the mantra while turning a prayer wheel in one hand as they go to different places.

Reciting OM MANI PADME HUM is so good for us. Then all the heavy negative karmas collected from beginningless lifetimes are purified and we collect extensive merit. Even without bodhicitta, even if we recite the mantra one time, it purifies the heavy negative karmas of killing a human being, lying, telling lies about realizations that we don’t have, stealing things from others, and sexual misconduct. So those things are purified. Even by reciting the mantra one time our negative karma is purified.

• Reciting OM MANI PADME HUM one time purifies the four defeats of a fully ordained monk and the five heavy negative karmas without break.
• Reciting OM MANI PADME HUM seven times purifies 100 eons of negative karma.
• Reciting OM MANI PADME HUM twenty-one times purifies 1,000 eons of negative karma.
• Reciting OM MANI PADME HUM 108 times (one mala) purifies 40,000 eons of negative karma.

Reciting the mantra in an animal’s ears causes them to not be reborn in the lower realms. Also, reciting the mantra helps us to develop compassion, particularly for the sentient beings. Regarding the merit, even without bodhicitta, we collect merit more than the atoms, the sand grains in the Pacific Ocean, more than the grass on the mountains, more than the drops of water in the ocean. It’s unbelievable. The merit is like the sky.

Of course, with bodhicitta we collect unbelievable, unbelievable merit. Specifically, we generate compassion for all the sentient beings, so the stronger the compassion that is generated, the quicker we achieve enlightenment. Relying on compassion is so important in order for the sentient beings to achieve enlightenment.

Each year do nyung nä, whatever you can. By joining a group, you can learn how to do the practice, then you can do it by yourself, and with that knowledge you can also lead others, guide others.

Thank you very much for your great energy. I’m so happy. You are most welcome to enlightenment and goodbye to samsara. If there are some other important things you want to ask me, I will try to answer.

As a reminder, it’s very important to also do the morning motivation, How to Make My Lives Wish-Fulfilling: The Method to Transform a Suffering Life into Happiness.

With much love and prayers ...

My most dear, most precious, most kind, wish-fulfilling one,
According to my observation, your main deity or deities are Guhyasamaja, Vajrayogini and Tara Cittamani. You can choose according to whichever deity you have the strongest feeling for or feel closest to.

In order to actualize realizations of the path to enlightenment, the lamrim text for you is Jampel zhal lung, The Sacred Words of Manjushri. I’m not sure whether the translation is complete or not.

Meanwhile you can study Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand. According to my guru, who has total experience of these meditations, it has the clearest explanation, the perfect meditation on shamatha and bodhicitta. Study this text mindfully from beginning to end four times, so that it becomes a meditation.

Regarding effortful practice, meditate on the lamrim outline for the number of months indicated. Do this from beginning to end three times, then do effortless practice.

Preliminaries

• 60,000 refuge and bodhicitta. Do this with the feeling of bodhicitta.
• 70,000 water bowl offerings.
• 80,000 Vajrasattva. Generally, you can do this as a retreat with sessions, however many you can do, or if you are working, you can do one or two sessions each day, whatever you can. This advice relates not just to Vajrasattva, but to the other practices as well.
• 60,000 Guru Yoga. Recite the migtsema prayer according to the instructions. You can use Lama Chöpa in the morning and Lama Tsongkhapa Guru Yoga in the other sessions.

It’s very good for you to do nyung näs, and you can try to accomplish one hundred. Here at Kopan there is one nun who did two thousand nyung näs already. She did the nyung näs in a place called Tsum, which is quite far from here. Also, Geshe Lama Konchog did two thousand nyung näs.

For you, nyung näs are best. It doesn’t mean you have to finish them in a short time, like in one year, although if you do them continuously you could finish them in eight months or so. You don’t need a time limit, but it’s very good for you to do nyung näs.

The main thing is reciting OM MANI PADME HUM. Even when you’re walking, always think to purify the six-realm sentient beings from the oceans of samsaric suffering and for them to achieve enlightenment. When the mouth is free, like the Tibetans, you can recite OM MANI PADME HUM. You can also recite the mantra while you are walking and even when you are dying.

If you recite the mantra, then it can become just habit. Otherwise, when we have some very heavy disease coming, or pain or something, or when we die, we can’t practice at all, we can’t think of Dharma at all. This happens to many people when they die, then they’re born in the lower realms because they can’t transform their experience into virtue.

Each week recite the Vajra Cutter Sutra. This is very good, fantastic. It’s a quick way to become free from samsara without even thinking about sentient beings—just thinking of yourself becoming free from the oceans of samsaric suffering, and quickly, quickly realizing emptiness.

On top of that, think it’s for the numberless sentient beings. Wow! It’s so important to free them from the oceans of samsaric suffering. Just as it is important for us to be free of suffering, like that, numberless sentient beings are important. Like us, they are so precious and want to have happiness.

Welcome to enlightenment and goodbye samsara, the oceans of samsaric suffering which we have been experiencing from beginningless rebirths. Goodbye.

Thank you very much.

With much love and prayers ...

Dear one,
I didn’t get to reply to you earlier. It is very good that you have quite a lot of prayers to do. Lama Tsongkhapa Guru Yoga is recommended and is very good as a daily practice. Within that, there is The Foundation of All Good Qualities, which contains the whole path and gives the imprints for the path to enlightenment. If you recite this every day, sooner or later you are bound to have realizations, to achieve enlightenment, and to liberate numberless sentient beings from the oceans of suffering and bring them to enlightenment. You also mentioned that you recite the Three Principal Aspects of the Path. It is very important to do the Vajrasattva practice with the four opponent powers so that it becomes a perfect confession.

One very important practice that is missing is prostrations to the Thirty-five Buddhas in the morning. You can do this in the morning, however, it’s good if you can do more than [one session each day]. If possible, do the prostrations to the Thirty-five Buddhas before reciting the Vajrasattva mantra; before doing your Vajrasattva practice. In the morning you can start with reciting the names of the buddhas. Repeat each name three times. That is very good. At least do that with prostrations. Meanwhile, in the evening time, just repeat the names once. If you can do this practice in the evening, just repeat the names one time. But when you finish, do the last part, otherwise it doesn’t become a complete confession practice.

You can also do the practice The Nine Attitudes of Guru Devotion and integrate this prayer into your practice of Lama Tsongkhapa Guru Yoga. How do you do this? When you recite The Foundation of All Good Qualities, recite the first stanza, then do the Nine Attitudes. Integrate the practice like that. If you are reciting the long version of the Six-Session Guru Yoga, integrate the Nine Attitudes into this practice where it talks about the guru:

All supreme and common attainments without exception
Depend upon correct reliance on you, my protector.
Seeing this, I completely give up my body and even my life;
Please bless me to practice only that which pleases you.

You can do the Nine Attitudes after reciting this verse.

Your main deity is Vajrayogini. What you need to understand is that to become enlightened and to lead all sentient beings to full enlightenment, you should learn the complete path of Vajrayogini. When you do the Vajrayogini sadhana, do the longer one, and for your other sadhanas you can do the short ones. This way you can spend more meditating on Vajrayogini. Chant the Vajrayogini mantra not only while you are doing the sadhana, but also when you are walking around. When you die, you will be able to easily remember the mantra of Vajrayogini, and Vajrayogini will bring you to the pure land.

Now, the most important practice is to develop your mind on the path to enlightenment. Why? Because the main purpose in your life is to liberate numberless sentient beings from the oceans of samsaric sufferings and bring them to full enlightenment. For that, you need to achieve enlightenment first, therefore you need to actualize the graduated path, therefore you need to meditate and train the mind in the path.

One meditation you should do every day is guru devotion, but how long you do it for depends on how much time you have in daily life. Sometimes you may spend a longer time doing it and at other times you may do it for a shorter time. It depends on your time in daily life. You should do the daily guru devotion meditation until you have generated stable realization of that.

Train the mind in the graduated path of the lower capable being, which means from the perfect human rebirth up to karma. Do this for five months. For example, spend one week on each meditation topic up to karma, then come back and repeat again. Then spend two months on the graduated path of the middle capable being. You can follow the lamrim outline for your meditation, using Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand or Geshe Sopa’s text of Lama Tsongkhapa’s lamrim teachings [Steps on the Path to Enlightenment]. Then spend three months on the graduated path of the higher capable being, with three months on bodhicitta and three months on great insight, emptiness.

This is the main focus of your meditation during those times. After that, you can start again from the perfect human rebirth, and go through the topics, one by one. You spend weeks, months and even years meditating on the lamrim topics until you achieve realizations. So this is the main practice, how to develop the mind in the path to enlightenment. In other words, how to make it possible to attain enlightenment.

Each year you can do retreat with whatever time you can find—days or months. Do a particular preliminary retreat combined with lamrim or do a lamrim retreat combined with the preliminary practices. Also, from time to time, you can do a deity retreat, a tantric retreat.

Preliminary Practices:

• Refuge: 200,000
• Four immeasurable thoughts: 300,000. These are not just words for reciting, but to think about the meaning.
• Vajrasattva mantra: 10,000
• Dorje Khadro fire puja: 50,000
• Mandala offerings: 50,000
• Guru yoga: 300,000, on the basis of doing Lama Chöpa / Guru Puja, but mainly do Lama Tsongkhapa Guru Yoga and count 300,000 migtsemas. If you are in retreat, do Lama Chöpa in the morning, then count the migtsemas. This guru yoga practice is very important.

Write the Diamond Cutter Sutra from time to time, but you don’t have to rush. You don’t have to finish it quickly unless you have time. Write some each day. This also leaves positive imprints to realize emptiness.

Doing these practices is how to make it possible to achieve lamrim realizations, by:

• Doing preliminary practices to purify obstacles
• Creating extensive merits
• Training the mind in guru devotion, seeing the guru as a buddha with full effort, by applying the Buddha’s quotations and reasonings
• The fourth one, the actual body of practice, is meditating on the path, which I have already explained to you.

With much love and prayers ...

My most dear, most precious, most kind, most wish-fulfilling one,

Thank you very much for your kind letter. The deity for you, according to my observation, is Tara Cittamani, a Highest Yoga Tantra practice. This is to achieve enlightenment in one lifetime, and not just in one lifetime, because whatever tantra we practice is to achieve enlightenment in one lifetime, but Highest Yoga Tantra, the fourth one, is to achieve enlightenment in a brief lifetime of degenerate times.

That means you are supposed to have compassion, great compassion toward all the sentient beings, feeling it is so unbearable that they are in samsara and wanting to free them from samsara as quickly as possible and bring them to the highest enlightenment as quickly as possible, to the total cessation of obscurations and completion of all realizations. So that means you have to practice Highest Yoga Tantra, and that means you have to practice Tara Cittamani.

You need initiation for this and if you haven’t received the initiation, you should take it. However, you have to receive another Highest Yoga Tantra initiation first as preparation or foundation, so even Kalachakra or any Highest Yoga Tantra—Yamantaka, Heruka or Guhyasamaja—then it becomes the foundation for Tara Cittamani.

You asked for practices. The first thing that I tell many students in the FPMT is to practice The Method to Transform a Suffering Life into Happiness (Including Enlightenment). I tell the students to transform the kaka life into gold by transforming the mind of eight worldly dharmas, the non-Dharma mind, into Dharma, pure. And not only that, even to transform the self-cherishing thought, which has caused us to suffer in samsara from beginningless rebirths, experiencing the oceans of sufferings of the hells, the hungry ghosts, the animals, the humans, the suras, the asuras and the intermediate state beings numberless times from beginningless lifetimes.

If we follow the self-cherishing thought, then we will experience suffering without end, so here transforming the self-cherishing thought into bodhicitta, cherishing others. Then you see, with that mind, not only listening, reflecting and meditating, but also eating, walking, sitting, sleeping, going to the toilet, working, everything becomes the cause of enlightenment if it is done with bodhicitta.

Not only do you not waste your life but it makes your life most worthwhile, most beneficial for you and most beneficial for every hell being, every hungry ghost, every animal, every ant, every mosquito, every human being, every sura and every asura, so it causes happiness, enlightenment for every sentient being. Amazing, amazing, amazing!

So please do this practice, the Method to Transform, every morning, if you are not doing it already. It also includes blessing the speech, so then whatever you recite transforms into millions and millions of times, like that, an unbelievable number, increasing, then even gossip done in that day becomes like reciting a mantra. It has great benefit, like that. It’s unbelievable, unbelievable, making your life so meaningful for sentient beings. Also blessing the mala is very important to recite. Thank you very much. This is the first thing.

After you receive the initiation you can study the commentary, then you can do the enabling retreat, the short retreat, and then in the future you can do the long retreat. I think it might be a one-year retreat, I’m not sure. Yes, it’s quite easy to simply do retreat; even a long retreat is quite easy. But before that, recite the Twenty-one Praises to Tara and just the mantra of Tara. You can recite that if you are not already reciting it now, until you receive the Highest Yoga Tantra initiation of Tara Cittamani.

Read, study Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand. There are teachings on guru devotion, for example, in The Heart of the Path, otherwise read the section on guru devotion in Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand. The first meditation is how to correctly follow the guru. Read the whole outline, follow the outline and all the explanations and then you will understand. It will help to eliminate wrong, negative thoughts from your mind and it will cause you to only generate positive thoughts.

For you Lama Tsongkhapa’s great lamrim, Lamrim Chenmo, came out, so you have some karma there. Of course that is very good and you will get a very profound understanding of Buddhadharma. Reading lamrim is like reading the essence of Buddha’s teachings, the 84,000 teachings, like that. Also very important is Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand which is taught by the great Heruka, Kyabje Pabongka Dechen Nyingpo from Tibet. You can choose whichever one of these two lamrims. The most simple text is Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand then Lamrim Chenmo, so you can read both. Start with the simple one, Liberation, but read both. You can start with the one that is more simple, but it still gives a clear idea.

Study Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand one time or Lamrim Chenmo fifteen times, reading mindfully in order for it to become a meditation. Not so fast, but to have a positive imprint to have realizations of the lamrim, the path to enlightenment. Enlightenment is not just for our happiness, that’s a hang-up, sort of like taking drugs. It’s not like that, it’s to liberate us, because when we have omniscience we can liberate the numberless sentient beings from the oceans of samsara sufferings, and not only that, we can bring everyone to full enlightenment, peerless happiness, so that is the point.

We never waste time by reading lamrim. It never wastes our time, it is most worthwhile, and it is the way to go to enlightenment, by actualizing the lamrim realizations. Study of lamrim goes on that, so it never wastes time. It is beneficial not only for us, but for every hell being, hungry ghost, animal, human, sura, asura and intermediate state being. It is most beneficial because it leads to realizations.

You are most welcome to enlightenment—the cessation of obscuration and the completion of realizations—in order to free the numberless sentient beings from the oceans of samsara’s sufferings.

Thank you very much.

• 150,000: Refuge
• 1,000: Tonglen practice
• 50,000:  Mandala offering
• 50,000: Guru yoga migtsema on the basis of Lama Tsongkhapa Guru Yoga
• 40,000: Vajrasattva
• 4,000: Water bowl offerings
• 200,000: Dorje Khadro
• 1,000: Tsa tsas: Vajrasatta and Eight Medicine Buddhas.

There is no specific number of prostrations, but you should do one hundred every day if you can. Many great practitioners in the past would do this, for example, Purchok Ngawang Jampa would do one thousand every day. If you are able to do some prostrations every day—one hundred prostrations or half that amount—by reciting the names of the Thirty-five Buddhas, that is excellent.

Do as many nyung nä every year as you can. As I told you, doing one nyung nä well purifies the negative karma of the lower realms and you will go to the pure land. It’s a quick way to purify negative karma and achieve enlightenment. Do whatever you can, at least one, two, three, four, five, eight or more. Do as many as possible. There are many people who do one hundred nyung näs. One lama, Drubchog Rinpoche, did two thousand and his past life’s disciple did three thousand. Geshe Lama Konchog did two thousand.

After you have studied the lamrim completely from beginning to end, train your mind in effortful realization for one month by following the lamrim outline. When you finish the outline do it over and over again during that one month, so according to how much time you have, you can finish the outline. You can do an abbreviated [version] each day and what you cannot do that day, then carry on with that the next day. Follow the outline like that four times then start effortless experience.

• The graduated path of the lower capable being: five months
• The graduated path of the middle capable being: three months
• The graduated path of the higher capable being:
  
  • Bodhicitta: ten months
  • Emptiness: two months

This is the way you have to practice meditation for quite a number of years. What you should learn, of course, is mainly lamrim but you can learn other Dharma, the philosophical texts. You can learn these also—as you get the opportunity, you can learn.