Lifetime Practices: Lamrim and Preliminaries

My most precious, most kind, wish-fulfilling one,
According to my observation, your deity is Heruka and Vajrayogini, so you can practice both or whichever one you have a stronger, closer feeling for. Vajrayogini is good but best is Heruka. There are different Herukas and I am referring to Heruka Body Mandala. In order to receive Heruka Body Mandala great initiation, you have to receive the Heruka Five-Deity initiation first.

Generally, Heruka is considered a very powerful deity to practice, especially during the time of degeneration. This is when the deity’s power is increased; when the deity becomes more powerful. Then, according to tantra, Heruka is more powerful. According to sutra, Medicine Buddha becomes more powerful. If you practice Heruka, then Vajrayogini comes by the way.

The main lamrim text for your study and practice is Essence of Refined Gold. Read it again and again. You can also read other lamrim texts, such as Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand or the Middle-Length Lamrim. There are many texts, but not all of them are translated into English. From reading other lamrim texts, you can use the information as a commentary to integrate into your study of Essence of Refined Gold. Study this text three times from beginning to end. You can check with Geshe Namdak at Jamyang London Buddhist Centre if there’s anything that you don’t know or understand.

In terms of effortful practice, please read my advice on how to meditate on the lamrim outline. First spend five months on correctly devoting to the virtuous friend, seeing the guru as a buddha from your side using quotations and logic. This is the root of the path to enlightenment and it brings all the success up to enlightenment. Continue until everything is well established and stable.

So the purpose of your meditation, learning the whole path, including tantra, is to achieve enlightenment for the sentient beings—for every hell being, every hungry ghost, every animal, every human, every sura and every asura being.

Continue step by step with the lamrim outline and bodhicitta, repeating it twice, then do effortless meditation.

In terms of the preliminaries:

• Refuge: 60,000.
• Tonglen: 10,000. This is for developing bodhicitta. It’s the most important practice for purification, extensive purification, as well as collecting the most merit and the quickest way to achieve enlightenment.
• Tsa tsas: 80,000. Use the three long-life deities and Maitreya Buddha, and divide between these. There’s an excellent mold, a very beautiful one, from Taiwan. The Maitreya Buddha tsa tsa comes in different sizes. There are many small ones in America and some are from Tibet. It depends on your finances which size and which ones you use.
• Prostrations while reciting the names of the Thirty-five Buddhas: 70,000.
• Guru Yoga: 60,000. Recite migtsema (five lines). This can be done within Lama Chöpa in the mornings or if you do many sessions you can use Lama Tsongkhapa Guru Yoga.
• Mandala offerings: 70,000.
• OM MANI PADME HUM: Recite this mantra as much as possible with the ultimate good heart, bodhicitta, wishing to free the numberless six-realm sentient beings from all the sufferings and bring them to enlightenment. Recite the mantra with that mind.
• Nyung nä: Do this each year, whatever you can, even one helps a lot. It’s a quick, great purification, and you collect the most extensive merit, so you’re able to quickly develop compassion, and therefore bodhicitta and go to enlightenment.

My root guru mentioned that by doing nyung näs, within sixteen lifetimes we will definitely become enlightened. In this way we will come to enlightenment and say goodbye to samsara. That means goodbye to the oceans of suffering of the hell beings, the hungry ghosts and the animals, all the problems, depression, everything, every suffering of the humans, asuras, suras, and intermediate state beings. We’re saying goodbye by practicing lamrim. This is our daily medicine.

With much love and prayers ...