Generate the Path to Enlightenment in Your Heart

My most dear, most precious, most kind, wish-fulfilling one,
Thank you very much for your kind letter, and for expressing very clearly what you want to do. This is very positive. Also, thinking that death can happen at any time, therefore you need to practice Dharma. That’s a normal thing, but you want to achieve enlightenment before you die, which means you want enlightenment in this second, because your death could happen in the next second. 

[To attain enlightenment] we need to achieve the total cessation of gross and subtle obscurations. The gross obscurations mainly interfere with achieving liberation from samsara, and the subtle obscurations mainly interfere with achieving the state of omniscience and the completion of realizations. In order to actualize that, we need to actualize the whole path to enlightenment, the lamrim.

Buddha taught 84,000 teachings and these come in three paths: the Lesser Vehicle path, the Greater Vehicle path of sutra and the Greater Vehicle path of tantra. All of these teachings are embodied in the lamrim, the graduated path to enlightenment, which also 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, in turn, are embodied in the three principal aspects of the path to enlightenment.

Lama Tsongkhapa gave teachings on this, so it’s extremely important to learn and understand the commentaries very clearly. I’m going to explain it to you here. It’s good for me to know where you are—which country and which area—because within the FPMT, our organization, there are Dharma centers with geshes. You have to learn, so [it’s important] that you connect with a geshe.

Otherwise, if you have questions you can ask Geshe Namdak, a Westerner who studied very well at Sera Je Monastery, where there are many thousands of monks, many learned ones. He did the examinations and finished everything, and now teaches many people online. He is a qualified monk who knows philosophy.

You need to study Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand. Read it twice, doing it mindfully so that it becomes a meditation. If you don’t have a copy of that text, you should try to get one.

In terms of effortful lamrim meditation, begin with guru devotion, which is the root of the path to enlightenment. Spend four months going through the outline of this subject according to Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand. Another meditation guide you could use is The Essential Nectar.

Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand is the main commentary, but of course, you can read other texts from Lama Tsongkhapa’s lamrim. There are many other lamrim teachings that you can integrate into the Liberation outline or into The Essential Nectar outline, which is also a meditation guide.

Except for shamatha, the rest of your meditation is analytical. For example, in guru devotion section there’s analytical meditation using reasons and quotations, so at the end, when you finish, you see the guru and buddha as one.  Before, you were seeing the guru and buddha as separate, but then after all the meditation, after going through the quotations and the logic using analytical meditation, your mind sees that the guru and buddha are one. 

Keep the mind in that state for a while, so that’s the fixed meditation. It’s the same for all the rest of the lamrim meditations, except shamatha. Do effortful meditation on the lamrim outline, repeating the cycle four times in total, then do effortless meditation.

These realizations of the graduated path to enlightenment happen [gradually.] For example, if we want to go to the sixth or seventh story of a house, or even to the hundredth story, we have to go up either by using a lift or by using steps. We have to use the steps or the lift and go up gradually; we can’t just jump there. So the path to enlightenment is like that. To actualize realizations, we need to purify the defilements and obscurations, and collect merit.

In order for these realizations to happen, you will need to do these preliminary practices.

• Dorje Khadro fire puja: 50,000
• Prostrations by reciting the names of the Thirty-five Buddhas: 200,000
• Mandala offerings: 70,000, and
• Vajrasattva mantras:130,000.

It would also be very good if you could do one hundred nyung näs. Perhaps you haven’t done nyung näs before. If not, you should first join with other people, then afterwards, when you are able to do it well, when you know the practice very well, you can lead it for others. Nyung nä is a two-day retreat in which you take the eight Mahayana precepts for both days. With bodhicitta and the eight precepts you collect merit more than the sky. It’s unbelievably, unbelievably beneficial for sentient beings, for them to be free from samsara and to receive enlightenment. It’s unbelievable, unbelievable, unbelievable.

This practice helps to pacify war, famine, disease, and the dangers of earth, water and fire, all these things in the world. Actually, you need to receive a Chenrezig great initiation in order to be qualified to do the nyung nä well, correctly. Otherwise you can’t visualize yourself as Chenrezig, the Compassionate Buddha. I hope you have received this initiation.

Reciting OM MANI PADME HUM is incredibly powerful; it purifies all the defilements and negative karma collected from beginningless rebirths, and collects more than skies of merits, especially if you recite the mantra with bodhicitta, even if you recite it just one time.

There are so many prostrations to the Thirty-five Buddhas. Reciting the Thirty-five Buddhas’ names and reciting them well—not only reciting, but doing the meditation—even one time, has the power to completely purify the five heavy negative karmas of killing one’s father, killing one’s mother, killing an arhat, causing blood to flow from a buddha and causing disunity among the Sangha. These heavy karmas are totally purified because the practice contains the remedy of the four opponent powers, as long as it’s done mindfully.

Normally, if we have committed any of the five heavy negative karmas, as soon as we die we will be reborn in the lowest hot hell, where we have to experience suffering for one intermediate eon. Even if this world finishes, if our karma is not finished we will be reborn in another universe in that hell. So it’s like that. By reciting the Thirty-five Buddhas prayer one time and meditating well, our negative karma is purified. It’s unbelievably powerful, unbelievably powerful, so this is a quick way to achieve enlightenment.

We had one geshe here, Geshe Lama Konchog, who did two thousand nyung näs. Also, we have one nun here at Kopan—if you want a picture you can get it—who did more than two thousand nyung näs in Tsum, near Tibet, before coming to Kopan. She’s such a fortunate being who has brought so much benefit to sentient beings. She said she has no worries about death; she can go straight to the pure land and then after that achieve enlightenment.

I want to tell you one thing. Yes, you are right, death can come at any time, so you want to achieve enlightenment before that. But it’s not like taking tablets for enlightenment. It’s not like taking medicine or taking tablets and then you are unconscious, or receiving an injection and then you die. It’s not like that.

You have to generate the whole path to enlightenment in your heart. This is the remedy that purifies the gross and subtle defilements. If you could purify all the defilements in one second, then you could achieve enlightenment in the next second.

Actually, Buddha taught everything, and now it is up to us to practice, whether we practice correctly or not, so that’s why first we have to learn. Without knowing how to drive to Tibet, for example, or how to travel there, just entering the airplane, then in the next second arriving in Tibet, there’s no such thing. So whichever country we go to, we have to know the way, whether it’s by airplane or car or whatever, therefore we need to study the lamrim.

Your idea is correct. Yes, death can happen at any time, therefore we need to practice holy Dharma day and night, all the time. Our body, speech and mind have to be Dharma; our actions of body, speech and mind have to become Dharma. [Our actions] should not become the cause for the lower realms, the cause for samsara or for lower nirvana, therefore we need to generate bodhicitta, the root of the path to enlightenment.

By having bodhicitta, every action of our body, speech and mind becomes the cause of enlightenment, then we actualize the whole Mahayana path to enlightenment. Before that, we need to actualize renunciation of samsara, our own samsara, recognizing that it is in the nature of suffering, like a naked body sitting in a nest of thorns or in the midst of a red-hot fire, or sitting on an upturned needle in the ground. We must recognize that samsara is like that.

There’s no happiness for even one second in samsara; it’s all suffering. There’s the suffering of pain that we recognize and that animals recognize, and the suffering of change, how all the samsaric pleasures are in the nature of change. Then those two sufferings come from pervasive compounding suffering. That means our aggregates are totally under the control of delusion and karma from beginningless rebirths, and that’s why we’ve been suffering all the time, until now.

From the contaminated aggregates, which are contaminated by the seeds of disturbing thoughts and karma, so from these seeds, delusion arises, then suffering arises again and again. That’s why we need to actualize lamrim.

Thank you very much. How quickly you achieve enlightenment depends on how quickly you achieve bodhicitta, and that depends on how quickly you develop renunciation, so you need to actualize the path, starting with guru devotion.

If you can, read the Arya Sanghata Sutra twice each week, mindfully, then you’ll understand; you’ll collect unbelievable, most unbelievable, most unbelievable merits, wow, wow, wow, and that’s how you’ll achieve realizations more quickly. Through being able to control the negativities, the wrong concepts, and doing purification, then it becomes easy to achieve the realizations and enlightenment.

Thank you very, very much. You are most welcome to enlightenment and goodbye to samsara. As I mentioned earlier, if you have questions arising from Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand, you can ask Geshe Namdak at Jamyang Centre in London.

With much love and prayers ...