Breast Cancer

Dear one,
I was able to check regarding your health late last night. Please find below my advice. This is what came out beneficial to do now:

1) She nyin du dög puja: five times. This is to be done by Tsawa Khangtsen. This is Lama Yeshe’s Khangtsen in Sera Je. I can arrange for these pujas to be done. First, I will get an idea of the cost and let you know. Then, after it’s done, I can email you the bill. Here is a small message from me to pass on to the Khangsten, instructing them to do the pujas very well, with qualified, good monks and tulkus. I will also do the same puja for you.

2) Recite the White Umbrella mantra—a few each day.

3) It is very important for you to do Vajrapani/Hayagriva/Garuda retreat (this is one deity with aspects). If you can, do 300,000 mantras in retreat.

4) If you have pain, then it is very good to listen to the MP3 file called Recitations for Alleviating Pain. You can find a link to this audio file in the FPMT Catalogue. Scroll down to Audio Materials, then click on Sadhanas, Prayers and Practices to find Recitations for Alleviating Pain. The actual sutra is called Entering the Great City of Vaishali.

5) It is very good if you can print the Long-life Sutra twenty times or more each week (print it on yellow paper), with a strong motivation and dedication.

6) It is important to take White Tara long-life initiation.

7) On the Tibetan eighth day, try to have a painting of Tara made. Ask an artist to paint the whole painting on that day and for it to be blessed. This is extremely powerful for purification and a long life. Also, on the Tibetan eighth day, if you can, develop a number of large photos of White Tara and have them blessed by a lama on the same day. You just need to have the painting done once, but you could develop the photos on every Tibetan eighth day for some time until you get better, or do it for some months.

I have been doing prayers for you, also the Sangha in my house. It is very important to start the Vajrapani/Hayagriva/Garuda retreat soon. Of course, it is also very important to use this situation to develop bodhicitta with tonglen.

Thank you very much for the information you have sent. I am very sorry it took so long to reply. I am extremely happy that you completed the mantras and pujas I suggested last time. This is great! I hope very much to see you soon. Please do the above things to the best of your ability and, from time to time, let me know how you are doing. Please give my regards to your friend, and keep in touch to let me know how you are.

With much love and prayers...

Dear Grace,
I advise you to drink blessed water. Your friend can bless the water with Vajra Armor mantra, by blowing on water in a large container every half mala. Visualize nectar coming from the deity’s heart purifying the four things: negative karma, disease (the tumor), spirit harm, and obstacles. Visualize very strongly that all of these are purified and keep repeating the process every half mala.

At the end of each session think strongly that all your negative karma since beginningless time is completely purified. Then visualize you have received all the realizations. Think that the deity Vajra Armor is one with His Holiness the Dalai Lama and all the gurus and buddhas. Do this with mindfulness.

Drink the water in the early morning, after breakfast, in the afternoon and evening. This is the minimum. Also, bless it each time before drinking it. Drink a few tablespoons each time.  

Don´t worry; chemotherapy is not necessary. Sometimes it may work, but it draws on your energy and affects your whole body. What you should do is take on all the sufferings of numberless hell beings, who are experiencing unimaginable sufferings continuously without interruption. They have been very kind to you in many different ways, for example, when they were your mother giving you a body, education, protecting your life, and facing many hardships for you.

Take the sufferings of numberless hungry ghosts.

Take the sufferings of numberless animals.

Take the sufferings of numberless humans, asuras, suras, and intermediate state beings.

Take all their suffering and give it back to your self-cherishing thought, from where all your suffering comes. Due to your self-cherishing thought, you created the causes to experience the result of your cancer now, so take on all the sufferings of all sentient beings and think that now you will experience the sufferings of all sentient beings and they will become free of their sufferings. That way you purify your negative karma, from where the sickness arises.

Self-cherishing is the real enemy and all your problems, sicknesses, and sufferings come from self-cherishing.

Also, offer all your happiness, body, merits and possessions to all the numberless hell beings, hungry ghosts, animals, humans, asuras, suras and intermediate state beings.

By practicing in this way, cancer is bringing you to enlightenment, so you are the luckiest person in the world. Cancer is giving you the happiness of future lives, liberation and enlightenment because you are purifying all your negative karma and accumulating merits. So, you are the luckiest person in the world. Not only is the cancer giving you all the happiness of future lives, liberation and enlightenment, but also all the happiness of sentient beings, because when you reach enlightenment you bring all sentient beings to the ultimate happiness of liberation and enlightenment. The cancer is giving you all that happiness.

As His Holiness Tsenshap Serkong Rinpoche advised, and according to the teachings of thought transformation, when we encounter problems, we should think: “This prayer that I made has been accomplished and it's my greatest success in life.” When the doctor says you have cancer, think you have completed your prayer and have the greatest success in your life, that what you have been praying for has been accomplished. Otherwise, you might become lazy and not remember the Dharma. Cancer reminds you of the impermanent nature of life, and it reminds you of what happens after death—a lower rebirth. It reminds you of Dharma and what makes you be reborn in a higher realm is only Dharma. You cannot achieve this through a machine or taking tablets—there are no tablets to get a higher rebirth, no special food in the supermarket. This makes you practice Dharma very seriously, especially bodhicitta and tonglen practice.

Take all sentient beings’ suffering and cause of suffering upon yourself, in your heart, and destroy the self-cherishing thought and ego, which does not allow you to achieve enlightenment and brings all the sufferings, problems and obstacles to achieving enlightenment. Then, generate compassion and take the cause of karma and delusions upon yourself, and give away your merits and your past, present, and future happiness, all your wealth, possessions, surrounding family and children. Give not only your body and possessions, but also think about some of the people who are helping you make charity to sentient beings—imagine all your family and your wife or husband. You make charity to sentient beings by taking on their suffering and you collect limitless skies of merit. Each time you do that, think you are experiencing the suffering of all sentient beings. Each time, dedicate your body to each realm, not just to each sentient being, but to numberless hell beings and you will collect limitless skies of merit.

When you offer to the hungry ghosts, you can offer material possessions. I explained this before in an interview with our friend from Tushita, Dharamsala. For example, if you have many hats or shoes, you can offer them to numberless sentient beings in each realm. With each hat and shoe you collect limitless skies of merit, seven times numberless merits, because there are also intermediate state beings with these material possessions. Can you imagine the merits and result, up to enlightenment? You collect limitless skies of merit so many times.

Each time you do this, because of the cancer, you purify negative karma collected from beginningless rebirths so many times, and you collect limitless skies of merit so many times—within two or three minutes or even one minute of tonglen meditation. The cancer brings you to enlightenment that much quicker; it liberates you from samsara quicker. Therefore, the cancer becomes the most precious thing, all wish-fulfilling. Not only that, you liberate numberless sentient beings from oceans of samsaric sufferings, from each realm, and bring them to enlightenment. That is amazing. You become capable of doing this. All of this comes from the cancer or relationship problems or whatever problem you have—whatever your mind labels as a problem. By using that for Dharma, there is unbelievable benefit and it becomes the most wish-fulfilling gem or jewel. The most precious thing in your life is having cancer. Before it was something to abandon, but now it becomes the most important thing, most precious and wish-fulfilling. Transform problems into happiness like this.

Dear Jackie,
I spent some time checking for you and this is my advice. Do these things first, then see how the situation is. To start, this is mainly for the eye, but also should help with the cancer as well.

1. You, or someone else, should do the pacifying and increasing fire puja of Cittamani Tara. It is better to do it in the area where you live.

2. Chab-trü: Have this performed for you five times. The Rinpoche you know could do this for you. This is for purification, especially of pollution, and healing. When it is being performed, you should visualize purifying the four things (disease, spirit harm, negative karma, and defilements), and visualize your eyes becoming purified and healed.

3. Blessing with Dorje Namdrol while washing in the morning. When you do this, visualize purifying the four things (as above). I am attaching the practice.

4. Have Ven. Chodron recite 10 malas of Vajrayogini mantra without talking, and then blow with some spit into your eyes several times. Visualize the four things are purified (same as above).

After all this is done, we can check again and see how things are for you.  

My very dear one,
I am very sorry for the long delay in replying to your letter.

I checked what are the best practices you can do for your health and this is what came out very good for you to do:

1. Print the Amitayus Long-life Sutra forty times. If you go to the FPMT Catalogue you will find links to the Tibetan and English versions of the sutra. You can print either of these and photocopy it forty times on nice paper (maybe yellow-colored).

2. Make fifty long-life tsa tsas (the three long-life deities). If you are able to get the mold for this and try to do it yourself, it is best. Otherwise, you can email the nuns at my house in California and they can make them for you, and you can make an offering to contribute to that. Also, as your sister is involved with the center, she could make them for you at the tsa-tsa studio.

3. Do White Tara long-life meditation every day. You can find the practice in the FPMT Catalogue.

4. Do Red Logyönma practice. You can get this from the FPMT Education Department.

5. You need a puja done for you, called “Betraying the Death.” I will do this puja for you. You could also ask the geshe at the center if he can do it for you.

I am also making prayers for you, also the Sangha at my house are dedicating animal liberations to you and when they make long-life tsa tsas each day.

With much love and prayers...

I received and read your letter and did quite a lot of checking for your situation. It seems there are things from the side of meditation that can be done that can help your situation, but these things will take time. Therefore, I feel it is better in the immediate future to go ahead with the operation. Alongside that, what you can start to do immediately is: Medicine Buddha puja daily for the next week.

For evening practice, as ongoing, do some malas of Vajrasattva, with strong repentance.

Also, do prostrations to the Thirty-five Buddhas. Remember to have strong repentance not only for negative actions in this life but also past lives.

Then, always meditate on the lamrim, particularly on impermanence. Think life is like a dream. In the seven-point thought transformation teaching, in the section on emptiness, it says: Look at all phenomena as a dream, examine the nature of the mind that is unborn, even the remedy is free in nature, place the mind in the essence of the path, this is the basis of all. This is important to contemplate, as well in the break time (when you are not doing formal meditation). Be like an illusory person.

If you look at the different aspects of this section of the teachings, the first relates to the object of mind, the second relates to the mind that holds the object, the third relates to the person, him or herself. These three aspects you relate to as empty. The last aspect is when you see yourself as illusory in the break time.

So, this is the way to meditate on emptiness. In the break time, relate to yourself as an illusory person, while you are eating, walking, sleeping, working, when you go the bathroom, washing, shopping, dancing – if you dance. Even when you have the operation, think of yourself as illusory. When I say person – it means the “I.” Person and “I” is the same.

So, this is some advice that will help to make your life most meaningful. I will pray, also I have asked the Sangha in my house to dedicate many animal liberations for you and also the making of long-life tsa-tsas.

Please make your life most meaningful with the thought of bodhicitta and emptiness – this will take you towards enlightenment.

I heard you have been helping the center, offering service. I want to thank you very much for this.

With much love and prayers,

Lama Zopa

PS: Longer term, I think it is important to do Black Garuda practice and nyung näs – but we can leave that for a little while and check again after some time.