Practices for Success and for Life

My most dear, most kind, most precious wish-fulfilling one,
Regarding your financial situation and success, if you can, recite the Golden Light Sutra, for temporary [success], to help your financial situation, and ultimately for enlightenment, to bring all the sentient beings to enlightenment, the peerless happiness.

Recite the Golden Light Sutra once and the Arya Sanghata Sutra four times. After that, if you can, try to recite the Golden Light Sutra once a month. Also recite the Arya Sanghata Sutra once a month, but first recite it four times. The Golden Light Sutra is unbelievably precious; you only go toward enlightenment, then everything happens by the way. The Arya Sanghata Sutra collects the most unimaginable merit and from that, all the success happens. Without merit we cannot find a job, we cannot find money, besides not having realizations.

Please do How to Make My Lives Wish-Fulfilling: The Method to Transform a Suffering Life into Happiness (Including Enlightenment). Please do this practice every day, along with Lama Tsongkhapa Guru Yoga and Prostrations to the Thirty-five Confession Buddhas.

In the evening, do Vajrasattva practice and if possible, recite the King of Prayers at night before going to bed.

These are your daily practices. [I am also sending] life practices, what to plan for your life. Don’t worry, you don’t have to do them all now.

Regarding what can help now, you should recite the Buddha’s name and mantra, which are in the Method to Transform booklet.

Also recite two malas of Shakyamuni Buddha’s name while constantly looking at a photo or statue of the Buddha. Think nectar beams are emitted and are purifying you and all sentient beings of the negative karmas collected from beginningless time. At the end, think you become Buddha and all sentient beings become Buddha.

So this is my advice. Please make your life most meaningful with the thought of bodhicitta.

Preliminary Practices

• Prostrations by reciting the names of the Thirty-Five Confession Buddhas: 150,000 times. It's good to memorize the names; that makes it very easy.
• Arya Sanghata Sutra recitation: once a month.
• Golden Light Sutra recitation: once a month.
• Four immeasurable thoughts: 140,000 recitations. With each of the four, you collect more than skies of merit. [You pray for] sentient beings to abide in equanimity, free from anger and attachment; for sentient beings to not be separated from temporary happiness; for sentient beings to be free from samsara; for sentient beings to accomplish ultimate happiness, and within the ultimate happiness, the state of peace, freedom from samsara and peerless happiness, buddhahood.

Sometimes when you have time, you can do this in the form of a retreat, with meditation sessions. Otherwise you can do some every day and write down the number, counting like that. Why? Because you don’t have much time to practice, because you have to work.

For you, the main lamrim to read and study is The Happy Path, translated by Geshe Sopa and Jeffrey Hopkins. This is a short text, and it doesn’t mean you can’t read others; you can read other lamrim texts as well. The Happy Path is the main one you should study from beginning to end. Write down whatever you don’t understand and check with a geshe or with students who have studied well, otherwise we get misunderstanding. Study The Happy Path first, reading it three or four times from beginning to end.

You need to practice effortful meditation by following the lamrim outline for the number of months I have indicated, until you have stable realizations. Then you can do effortless meditation.

With much love and prayers ...