Preliminaries and Lamrim Meditation

Prostrations by reciting the names of the Thirty-Five Buddhas: 130,000 times.

Vajrasattva mantras: 100,000 times. This is in addition to what you have already done.

Water bowl offerings: 60,000 times.

If you are able to come to Nepal, there are students who come to the Kopan nunnery from Singapore etc., so they come and do one thousand water bowl offerings a day, so you can join them and then offer as a group. Even if many people are working doing the water bowl offerings, you can still offer together and in this way you can each count the total number of bowls offered, and in this way complete the practice faster. Also, someone can guide the practice.

In the West or at different centers they also arrange group water bowl retreats, similar to what the Kopan nunnery does, and in this way, it gets them done. Otherwise you can do alone. If you do it alone, it can be that it purifies more, because it is harder and it takes longer, so it purifies so many obscurations and collects so much merit. When it is so easy because it’s done with so many people, maybe then it’s not so much purification. One of the benefits of offering water bowls is that the mind becomes soft and actualizes bodhicitta, the wetness of bodhicitta, then we can generate loving kindness, compassion and bodhicitta. So it is mainly for that.

Arya Sanghata Sutra: Recite this once each month for your whole life.

Lamrim meditation: To gain effortful experience, meditate on the lamrim outline, repeating this three times. Then do effortless meditation.

For you, the main lamrim text to study is Geshe Sopa’s commentary on the Lamrim Chenmo. Study all the books [five volumes] three times. From this you will have a very broad understanding. When you read the text, that itself is meditation.

Meditation has two main types: analytical and fixed. So, for example, reflect on the perfect human rebirth, going through the analysis, then at the end, think how this human rebirth is so precious. Even skies filled with wish-granting jewels—not just diamonds and gold but wish-granting jewels—that alone cannot make us free from the lower realms and cannot make us free from samsara. That alone can’t make us free from lower nirvana and achieve full enlightenment. Even though we don’t have wish-granting jewels, or even silver or gold, this is nothing, even if we don’t have one dollar, we have this perfect human body.

Like Milarepa, with our perfect human body we can create the cause to not be reborn in the lower realms, so we can become free from samsara forever. With our human body we can be free from lower nirvana and achieve full enlightenment for numberless sentient beings and we can free the numberless of sentient beings from the oceans of samsaric sufferings and bring them to buddhahood, the total cessation of all the obscurations and completion of all the realizations. So this is what our perfect human body does for us, the benefits. It is most unbelievable, unbelievable, unbelievable.

So we can rejoice in our whole life, every year, every month, every week, every day, every hour, every minute and every second. We can feel great, great, great happiness, millions and billions of times more than a person who wins a soccer game, then lifts up their arms and all their veins are standing out and they are running around expressing so much excitement. So this is a million, billion times more than that. We can be happy if we realize this, if we recognize this. So this is analytical meditation. Then at the end we discover that the human body is most precious, unbelievable, unbelievable.

We have met the Lesser Vehicle teachings and on top of that we have met the Mahayana teachings, the sutra path; then on top of that we have met Mahayana tantra, the quick path to enlightenment; then on top of that we have met Highest Yoga Tantra, the quickest path to enlightenment; then on top of that we have met Lama Tsongkhapa’s perfect teachings, the stainless teachings of Buddhadharma, which Lama Tsongkhapa received from Manjushri, as guru-disciple, so keep the mind in that discovery, that this is the most precious one. Keep the mind in that for some time. So that is fixed meditation.

So our mind doesn’t change after the discovery that this is so precious. We don’t suddenly change to some other subject, we keep the mind in that, having a stable realization, so without effort, we feel strongly that this is the most precious thing. So this is just an example.

When reading the lamrim texts, relate it to your life, then it becomes a meditation, for example, on suffering. Relate it to ourselves, then we develop renunciation, inner happiness, the most satisfied mind, then when we think of suffering relating to others, we develop compassion. It helps us to develop bodhicitta and it helps us to achieve enlightenment.

Then after that do effortless meditation.