Practices to Purify Negative Karma

My dear one,
Your deity is the five-deity Heruka, so it is good to do that practice. Since there is a commitment after taking the initiation, at least you are reading the words, and that makes a big difference, it puts a positive imprint for quick enlightenment.

Do Vajrasattva practice every day. At least recite the short mantra 28 times or the long one 21 times, to stop the negative karma created that day from multiplying. Otherwise if you don’t purify the negative karma, it doubles each day, and after fifteen days the karma of killing a small insect becomes the same as having killed a human being.

Even if you don’t have any story of having killed, if you don’t purify the negative karmas that have been created that day, then each one multiplies and after 15 days it becomes the same as having killed one human being. Then after 18 days each negative karma collected with the body, speech and mind—and there are so many, so many, so many—increases 131,072 times. This was explained by the great enlightened being Pabongka Rinpoche in Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand.

When you die, each and every one of the negative karmas collected today becomes like the number of dust particles of the mountains. It’s unbelievably, unbelievably heavy, so there is no other way but to go to the lower realms and suffer for eons and eons. The worst lower realm rebirth is in the hells, but there are others. Who knows—you may be born as a chicken that is trapped in a cage and killed for many lifetimes, or as one of those lobsters that is boiled to death in the hotels and so forth. Usually all those fish, chickens and so forth who are killed have been butchers themselves many times in past lives, and so it goes round and round in circles.

If you do Vajrasattva practice, even just reciting the long mantra 21 times or the short mantra 28 times, and especially with the remedy of the four powers, it not only purifies today’s negative karma but also your past negative karma from this life and past lives, so there is no multiplication. Instead there is unbelievable, unbelievable profit. It makes the negative karma so much lighter. Depending on how you purify, and especially if you do the practice with bodhicitta and emptiness, that much incredible negative karma gets purified and you don’t have to experience the suffering result.

Therefore, even if you just do Vajrasattva practice for example, it is said in the teachings by Sakya Pandita that, “A wise person’s negative karma may be big, but it can easily be made small. A foolish person’s negative karma may be small, but it becomes big.” This means that somebody who knows how to do the Vajrasattva purification can make their negative karma weak, but for those who don’t know how to do this, their negative karma will become strong.

With much love and prayer...

Practices:

• 300,000: Refuge
• 300,000:  Generating the four immeasurable thoughts
• 300,000: Mandala offerings
• 400,000: Guru Yoga. Lama Tsongkhapa Guru Yoga, counting migtsema with meditation
• 100,000: Vajrasattva
• 40,000: Dorje Khadro
• 30,000: Water bowls
• 400,000: Tsa tsas - Lama Tsongkhapa,Namtose, three long-life deities. [See Rinpoche's advice on what to do with tsa tsas.]
• 10,000: Prostrations with Thirty-five Buddhas
• Two: Nyung Näs
• 11 million: OM MANI PADME HUM. This is your lifetime practice. Chant some every day and sometimes in retreat chant more. Do something every day. Finish, okay. Even you don’t finish, you try, okay. If you don’t finish, it doesn’t matter. But of course, there are so many people who finish many millions.

Effortful experience of lamrim:

• Seven months: Guru devotion
• One month: Lower path
• Four months: Middle path
• Three months: Bodhicitta
• One month: Emptiness

One month on emptiness is for effortful experience, but emptiness is something you have to meditate on every day using the Heart Sutra, the Four Analyses or even one verse or one stanza on emptiness.

After the effortful experience, try to get the effortless experience no matter how many months or years it takes. Go back through, starting from guru devotion, then the lower path, the middle path and the higher path.

After generating bodhicitta, put more emphasis on tantra—the generation and completion stage.

At least every day, for realization of the path, for enlightenment and to enlighten all sentient beings, the minimum practice is to recite a lamrim prayer and do direct meditation on the lamrim. Also, recite your own deity’s graduated path (the prayer is at the end of the long sadhana of the deity.) You must at least do these two as a minimum practice.

Your deity: Guhysamaja, Chenrezig Gyalwa Gyatso. Choose whichever you have strong feeling for as your main deity, but you can get the initiation for both.

With much love and prayer...

Recite the following:

• Vajra Armor mantra: three malas
• Most Secret Hayagriva mantra: four malas
• Chenrezig Senghe Dra (Avalokiteshvara Simhanada) mantra: three malas

Visualize, with great compassion of the guru-yidam, rays of white light nectar pouring down from the heart and entering into your body, purifying and washing down from the two lower doors all karmic delusions and negative obscurations accumulated from beginningless time. Visualize this as much as possible, without your mind being distracted.

After this, visualize all the sickness and spirit harm washing down in the form of blood and pus, snakes, frogs and scorpions. After this, generate great belief that all negativities are cleared and sicknesses are cured. All the negativities and delusions come out from the lower doors and enter into the mouth of the Lord of Death, which is wide open, nine stories down under the ground, and they become nectar. The Lord of Death closes his mouth and it is sealed tightly with a heavy, golden double vajra. It is said that if we visualize this way, it will help to increase our lifespan. So, it is good to do like this.

The main practice for you is the recitation of the above-mentioned mantras. The operation did not come out well in my mo.

In general, death is uncertain, so it is good to prepare for death all the time. The teachings, mainly on lojong, bodhicitta, giving and taking, should be integrated into a lifetime practice, combined with the five powers. Also, it is important to keep in mind that the practice of death needs to be done, combining this with the five powers. It is important to keep these practices in mind, believing that you will die now. I hope you will follow these practices.

I, by the birth name of Thubten Zopa, send this with prayer.
February 14, 2011

My very dear one,
Thank you very much for coming all the way from Japan, so we are able to meet this time.

You asked about purification practices. It came out good to recite the Arya Sanghata Sutra every day for four years. It is not necessary to finish reading the sutra every day; just read as much as you can. If you can  finish reading it every day, that would be best, but it is not necessary.

The Arya Sanghata Sutra purifies unbelievable karma—just hearing the word, the sound, immediately purifies the extreme negative karmas (Tib: tsam mä nga)—the five uninterrupted negative karmas, which are killing one’s father, mother or an arhat, drawing blood from a buddha and causing disharmony in the Sangha. If any of these karmas are collected, we are born immediately in the extreme hell realm, where there is extreme, heavy suffering for the longest time. This is the very first benefit mentioned in the Arya Sanghata Sutra.

There is an unbelievable, unbelievable, unbelievable, limitless sky of merit when we read the Arya Sanghata Sutra. It is most amazing!

Study the commentary and meditate on the Heart Sutra and also study teachings by His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Study the Lama Tsongkhapa Guru Yoga commentary and do the practice. Also study Lama Tsongkhapa’s middle lamrim from beginning to end, and meditate on the outline. Discuss this text when someone like Geshe Thubten Sherab comes to Japan, and ask questions about anything you don’t understand.

Also do Vajrasattva practice every night.

With much love and prayers...

Dear Bob,
To repay kindness, for your own purification, and to collect merit, please make a total of 90,000 Lama Tsongkhapa and long-life tsa-tsas. Also, please make a small stupa.

With much love and prayer...

My very dear Kim,
Thank you very much for your kind letter, I want to advise you to recite the Diamond Cutter Sutra seven times and, every day, perform 100 prostrations by reciting the Thirty-five Buddhas’ names. You can recite the rest of the prayer when you have finished. That is best, because every day we create so much negative karma.

It is best to do full-length prostrations if you have space in your house. This would be incredible. When you travel long distance by plane, or are sick and so forth, it is difficult to do them, otherwise you should try to do them. It is an emergency to do them because with all this negative karma, from birth and from beginningless rebirths, the terrifying lower realms can be there in any minute, any time when the breath stops.

The ultimate result is liberation and enlightenment.

With big love and prayer...