Death Comes at Any Time

My most dear, most precious, most kind, most wish-fulfilling one,
Thank you very much for your kind letter that you sent many eons ago. What Anila told you is correct, because without meditating on the lamrim, as it’s the main practice, if you just recite the words, you would not feel much value. But the more you meditate on lamrim, as much as you meditate on lamrim, the more you feel the value of that—more than doing the commitments and prayers, the deity prayers.

I want you to read Kyabje Pabongka Rinpoche’s incredible advice on impermanence and death, and the nature of life. It is called The Heart’s Utmost Need. It’s not that life doesn’t have that and you’re just believing life is like that. It’s not that way; it’s the nature of life. So please do this for one month; please read this text every morning.

Also read Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand three times and study it. Read it mindfully so that it becomes a meditation to actualize the path and to achieve enlightenment for sentient beings, so that you can free the numberless sentient beings from the oceans of samsaric suffering and bring them to enlightenment. That is the main purpose of our life each day, each hour, each minute, each second, and that is why we’re born as a human being this time, why we’re a human being.

In terms of effortful meditation, please follow the lamrim outline for the number of months I have indicated. Do this three times, then do effortless meditation after that.

Reading lamrim texts is the most important thing, the most beneficial thing for you and for every sentient being, which means every hell being, every hungry ghost, every animal, every human, every sura and every asura being.

Please, please, please do this. Even if you don’t feel you’re doing this for yourself, please do it for me and for all the numberless hell beings who have so much suffering, and for the numberless hungry ghosts who can’t find food or water for hundreds or thousands of years, even for ten thousand years. And for the animals, who are eaten by one another—the big ones eat the small ones, and the small ones eat the big ones—also, they are terribly ignorant, or suffering from cold and heat, or those who are near people may be tortured by them.

Preliminary practices:

Prostrations by reciting the names of the Thirty-five Buddhas: 50,000. This is to help purify the mind so that you can have realizations. Otherwise you can’t, because of so many obscurations which block change of the mind, even for the mind to become Dharma. The first thing is to actualize renunciation and bodhicitta, then the tantric path, in order to achieve enlightenment for sentient beings. So, after [reflecting on] impermanence and death, do prostrations by reciting the Thirty-five Buddhas.

You must also do 101,000 Vajrasattva mantras, not just reciting the mantras but also doing meditation. The most powerful way to do it is with the four remedy powers. At the beginning, you take refuge and generate bodhicitta. This is the power of reliance. The negative karma collected with Buddha, Dharma and Sangha is purified by taking refuge and the negative karma created with sentient beings is purified by generating bodhicitta.

Do this before reciting [the mantras], then you can start to recite, thinking that all the negativities of body, speech and mind, for example, the ten nonvirtues collected from beginningless rebirths [are purified.] The negative karma is not just killing people or something big like that; the negative karma is when your mind is not Dharma, when your mind is attached and clinging to this life.

Death comes at any time. Some beings die in the womb, or they die when they’re born, or they die as a young child, in middle age or old age. Everyone dies one day. So death can come and not only does death definitely happen, it can come at any time. Death can come at any time.

Oh, death happened already, or we think, “Oh wow, I was going to do this and that. I was going to do retreat; I was going to do this.” [Death is] harming our wishes, but our lifetime is finished. This will happen, it’s very important, so please think about it.

So when you wake up each morning, this is what you should think, “This might happen today, so I must practice Dharma.” Rather than death happening and then we are full of worry, having skies of worry and fear. That doesn’t help, so we must practice Dharma, the unbetraying Dharma.

Please do what I advise, then you can write again. Thank you very much. You are most welcome to enlightenment, and goodbye to samsara.

With much love and prayers ...