Nyung nä Retreat and Tsa Tsas

• Refuge recitations: 4,000
• Prostrations by reciting the Thirty-Five Buddhas’ names: 30,000
• Vajrasattva mantras: At least 300,000
• Dorje Khadro Burning Offering mantras: 400,000
• Guhyasamaja Root Tantra text: 3,000. This is extremely profound. There isn’t a good translation in English yet, but if you are able to read Tibetan, you can do it in Tibetan. It creates unbelievable, unbelievable merits and brings quick enlightenment.

Nyung nä retreats: In your life, the most important thing is to do the two-day Chenrezig fasting retreat. It is an extremely powerful method to purify the negative karma collected from beginningless rebirths and to collect extensive merits, and in particular, to develop compassion for sentient beings. It helps us develop compassion for each sentient being, and it brings us to buddhahood. It is the quick way to be reborn in the pure land and then become enlightened soon. Generally, we are able to achieve enlightenment quickly.

It would be so good if you could do a few nyung näs every year. Many people do one hundred, many Westerners have done this, and especially Tibetans. By doing some nyung näs every year, you can reach one hundred. Then you can do five hundred, and if you finish five hundred, then you can do another five hundred. The main thing is not the number, but just to get them done well.

Tsa tsas: The deities for you are Lama Tsongkhapa, Padmasambhava, Guru Shakyamuni Buddha and the Thirty-five Buddhas. (If you do the Thirty-five Buddhas, Shakyamuni Buddha is there.) So this means you divide your time between these deities. When they are finished you can paint them and offer them to people, or if somebody is building a large stupa or statue, the tsa tsas can go inside—it can be filled up with the tsa tsas. Or you can give them to other people for their garden or for outside, or put them on a table for circumambulation, so in this way you collect extensive merit.

Also you or other people can build, inside a doorway, on a table. Make a few levels and then you can put the tsa tsas inside and decorate the outside, and on top put a large stupa or statue. In the West, we have a stupa that is six feet tall, the middle size is one and a half feet, and the smallest stupa is ten inches.

Or you can mount them on the wall, below the ceiling, then underneath you can have a line of wood and Christmas lights that are offered on the wood. That is unbelievably good, so you are offering continuously. You can even have three or four or five rows. It depends how you want them in the house. Or you could have one wall completely full of the tsa tsas, so that becomes your altar, where you prostrate.

Make 300,000 tsa tsas. You can do them slowly, slowly. The Tibetan way is to make them from clay. This is how Tibetans make them. In the West they are made from plaster. There is a cheap one, a middle cost and best quality. You can mix the best and cheap quality plaster. But you don’t have to worry; you can do this slowly. If you have plaster and if you have many molds, that makes it easier to finish a large number in a short time. You can have thirty, forty or fifty molds, so in that way you finish more quickly, because you are mixing the plaster and pouring it into the molds just once. So you can get twenty, thirty or fifty or more done at once.

To gain effortful lamrim experience, please read my advice. First study a lamrim text from beginning to end, then practice effortful meditation, by following the outline from beginning to end. Then do effortless meditation, no matter how many weeks, months or years it takes.

Your main deity is Guhyasamaja or Secret Vajrapani, whichever you feel the strongest connection or close to. You need to take the initiation before practicing the sadhana, then you can do retreat. Until you receive the initiation you can recite the mantra and visualize the deity in front of you, maybe with refuge and bodhicitta and the seven-limb practice. You can receive the lung or oral transmission of the mantra.