Read Lamrim Chenmo Mindfully

My most dear, most precious, most kind, wish-fulfilling one,
Thank you very much for your kind letter. According to my observation, your main deity is Heruka. I would like to ask, who is your teacher that you’ve been studying Dharma with? Or is it that you don’t have a teacher?

You should read Lamrim Chenmo seven times from beginning to end. Don’t read it like we do pujas or memorize prayers in the monastery, reading or reciting without thinking. That’s not really a good puja or prayer, so don’t read it like that.

Read it mindfully so that it leaves a positive imprint on the mind to understand the words and meaning and to actualize the path, in order to be free from samsara and to achieve the total cessation of obscurations and the completion of realizations. Then you are able to free the numberless sentient beings from the oceans of samsaric suffering and bring them to buddhahood, peerless happiness. So it’s very, very important. So that itself, reading the text, becomes a meditation.

There are two types of meditation: fixed and analytical. This way is analytical, but it has to be fixed on the meditation topic, without the distraction of thinking outside that. When the mind is just continuing in the meditation, that’s fixed meditation.

Since you’re very intelligent, very smart, you should be able to understand the teachings of the great Lama Tsongkhapa, who is the embodiment of Manjushri, all the buddhas’ wisdom; the embodiment of Vajrapani, all the buddhas’ power; and the embodiment of Chenrezig, all the buddhas’ compassion.

Lama Tsongkhapa, who is the crown of all the learned, highly attained ones in Tibet, wrote this text, Lamrim Chenmo, The Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment. It’s unbelievable, unbelievable.

I don’t how many there are, but there are supposed to be a few professional translations. Anyway, maybe you don’t know Tibetan, so you can study the text in English or Spanish. If you are able to learn Tibetan in the future, you can study the text in Tibetan. That’s the best, because then there’s no problem of mistranslation or anything being not exact. You don’t have that problem if you’re able to speak and read in Tibetan.

Anyway, read it in English or Spanish for now; this is fantastic. It’s like the sun shining in your life when you understand Lamrim Chenmo. It’s like the sun shining in the world; one sun in your life that dispels ignorance.

I think you’ll enjoy this text because you’re very intelligent. To learn Buddhism you need great intelligence, but that’s not enough; you also need a lot of merit. If you don’t have a lot of merit, you won’t understand Buddhism correctly even if you’re very smart. In a meaningful way, understanding lamrim is like studying the whole path to enlightenment.

Buddha descended in this world and taught this for us, the sentient beings, to free us from the oceans of samsaric suffering and bring us to enlightenment.

Basically all the 84,000 teachings of the Buddha come in the Lesser Vehicle teachings and in the Mahayana sutra and tantra teachings. These teachings are all embodied in the lamrim—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.

All these teachings by Lama Tsongkhapa are embodied in the three principal aspects of the path: renunciation, bodhicitta, and the right view.

Without renunciation—seeing that samsara, the samsaric perfections, are in the nature of suffering—none of our actions of body, speech and mind become a cause of liberation, freedom from samsara. With the realization of renunciation, everything we do will become the cause of liberation from the oceans of samsara, the continuation of which has no beginning..

Without bodhicitta, the actions of our body, speech and mind do not become the cause of enlightenment, the total cessation of suffering and the completion of realizations, in order to be able to liberate numberless sentient beings from the oceans of samsaric suffering and bring them to enlightenment. By having bodhicitta, the actions of our body, speech and mind become a cause of enlightenment, buddhahood. Then we’re able to liberate numberless sentient beings from samsara and bring them to enlightenment. It’s unbelievable; it’s the best Dharma practice.

Without realization of emptiness, our actions of body, speech and mind do not become an antidote to samsara and we cannot cease the root of samsara, the ignorance. For example, [in dependence on the aggregates] the mind merely labels “I.” Then “I” appears in the wrong way due to the imprints of ignorance, the negative imprints left on the mind from beginningless rebirths.

It appears real and doesn’t appear to be merely labeled by the mind, as it did before. We’ve totally forgotten [that it’s merely labeled] and it appears to exist from its own side. Then in the third second, the mind holds onto that as true, so that’s how we create [the real I]. This mind is ignorance, because the real I that the mind believes is not there at all; the real I doesn’t exist at all.

The I that exists is merely labeled by the mind. It’s not that there’s no I, but it’s like that; it’s so subtle. What exists is merely imputed by the mind, it exists in mere name and it’s unbelievably subtle, so it’s like it doesn’t exist. Without realizing emptiness, there’s no way to cut the root of samsara, ignorance, so it’s unbelievably, unbelievably important to realize emptiness.

The realization of these three principal aspects of the path is the foundation of tantric practice. The very root of the path to enlightenment, the cause of our success on the whole path to enlightenment is correctly devoting to the virtuous friend with thought and action. You will understand this by studying lamrim, so it’s incredible, incredible. Therefore you have to have a qualified guru who can teach you lamrim well, without mistakes.

Since you are very intelligent, I want to help you. Definitely you can easily understand [Dharma] and you’ll enjoy it so much because Buddhism is very deep, for example, deeper than the ocean, and it’s all logical. Of the religions in the world that [are concordant] with science, only Buddhism does that. As the scientists go higher and higher, and become more and more subtle, they become closer to Buddhism. That’s what the scientists see and also what His Holiness sees.

How Buddhism works is very logical. It is studied using valid reasons and it’s proven. For example, the Pramanavarttika explains how the Buddha’s teachings are pure and how the Buddha is a pure founder. There is also logic for reincarnation and so forth. Besides lamrim, if you have really great intelligence, then you can study the whole thing, but this depends on having the best translation if you don’t know Tibetan. The Pramanavarttika has four chapters.

Then there is Abhisamayalamkara (Ornament of Clear Realization), which presents all the details of the path to enlightenment, buddhahood. Then there’s Madhyamaka, the incredible teachings on the ultimate nature of the I and phenomena—wow, wow, wow—and the two truths, conventional truth and ultimate truth. It’s amazing. This is what His Holiness the Dalai Lama talks about during his interviews.

There’s the Vinaya, which sets out the moral discipline that’s needed for realizations of the path. Without moral discipline we can’t have realizations of the path, we can’t practice, so then our mind is very wild, like things taken from the roof by the wind when there’s a tornado. It’s like that, so we can’t really concentrate, we can’t control the mind.

And there’s Abhidharmakosha (Treasury of Abhidharma). You can study all these teachings; there are many commentaries by great holy beings. 

I don’t know where you are exactly, but generally we have 167 centers. [This number fluctuates.] There are many centers with resident teachers and Tibetan geshes—learned geshes who have studied and practiced all their life and now they teach others, so they’re not teaching from ignorance, not that. They have studied all their life and learned from very learned teachers, those who have lived in the practice.

The lamrim is the text that contains all the Dharma, so reading this becomes like reading all the Buddha’s teachings, because it’s the essence of all. So please study Lamrim Chenmo as much as possible.

In terms of effortful practice, please read my advice on how to meditate on the lamrim. Go through the lamrim outline once, then do effortless meditation.

Preliminary practices:

• Four immeasurable thoughts: 50,000 times.

As I said before, having realizations depends on purifying the defilements, which cause obstacles, therefore we need to develop the mind and also collect merit, the cause of the realizations. That is what the preliminary practices are for.

• Water bowl offerings: 100,000.

All these things have commentaries explaining how to do the practices. You don’t have to feel lost, not knowing how to do them, because there are all the commentaries.

According to my observation, none of the other preliminary practices came out for you. Otherwise, depending on the person, there can be 100,000 or more Vajrasattva mantras and retreat, as well as mandala offerings, prostrations to the Thirty-five Buddhas, guru yoga and so forth. I think you’re the only one that all these didn’t come out for; all these things for purifying negative karma and collecting merits.

According to my observation, what came out best for you is to do one thousand nyung näs. I don’t know if you can travel or not, but if you can, you should join the nyung näs at Vajrayogini Institute in France. I sponsor people there who do one hundred nyung näs and I’ve done this for many years. So you can join the group there.

There’s one monk, Charles, who is regarded as a bodhisattva, a holy being. He leads the nyung näs there and in many parts of France. That’s what he mainly does. He also has students who know the practice very well. You can do it in a group and once you know the practice very well, you can do it by yourself. It’s up to you whether you do it in a group or alone, so you can discuss this. One thousand nyung näs are done and it’s very common for people to do at least one hundred.

We have one great practitioner, Geshe Lama Konchog, a highly realized being, an enlightened being, who did two thousand nyung näs. And there is one nun who did more than two thousand nyung näs in the mountains at a place called Tsum, which has now been opened by the Nepalese government as a new destination for tourists. It’s very close to Tibet and there are Milarepa caves and many holy places there.

Nyung nä is an unbelievably powerful purification practice and also for collecting merits. In it there’s the mantra OM MANI PADME HUM, the prostrations to the Thirty-five Buddhas and prostrations to Chenrezig. It’s amazing, amazing. You’re also taking the eight Mahayana precepts, so if you take the eight precepts with bodhicitta or even if you take just one precept, then you collect skies of merit, good luck. It’s so good, so good, so good.

Generally, and specifically for you, generating compassion for every sentient being creates the cause to achieve enlightenment quicker. Also, by doing one nyung nä we can go to Amitabha Buddha’s pure land, then after that one life we can become enlightened. This is so good.

Since you have great intelligence you should learn Tibetan, then you can learn Dharma without a translator. Then you are learning in the best way and it’s always correct.

In answer to your question about having been rejected for being smarter and treated with an excess of severity, it’s your karma from past lives. Karma is created like that. You have high intelligence, but people can’t follow you when you go first, so then they dislike you, they put you down. That’s because you treated others like that.

Other people with very high intelligence, [in past lives] you put them down, you didn’t respect them, you didn’t look at them in a good way. Maybe you were jealous or whatever. [Your experience in this life] is the result of your past karma of having harmed others like that, so you have received this suffering because of that.

Now instead of anger, you should generate compassion for the sentient beings, understanding that they are doing this with ignorance, not knowing what a great danger it is—that they will be reborn in the lower realms, in the hell, hungry ghost or animal realms.

So as well as respecting learned ones—and not only the learned ones, not only the rich, the highly educated, the great holy beings, no question—we also need to respect the beggars, the ignorant ones, everyone. We should look at ourselves as the lowest in many ways, in realizations and generally.

I’m describing this not only from a Dharma point of view; there are other ways, so many ways to look at the ourselves as lower, as the last one, and to look at others as very high and to rejoice and show respect to all. In this way, as a result, everyone will respect us in this life and in our next lives.

Even regarding the Buddha statues, it’s like that. We should bow down to them, then in this life and in future lives others will respect us as the highest and we will achieve buddhahood as a result.

I want to help you, so you can ask more questions. You are most welcome to enlightenment, to buddhahood. Goodbye to samsara.

With much love and prayers,

Lama Zopa

P.S. Regarding taking a guru, either wait for the guru or ask the monk at your center to be your guru. If you’re not happy with that person, when different lamas or different Western Sangha come, you can check and decide.

After you devote to someone as a guru, you can’t change, thinking, “Maybe I’ll leave this one and go with someone else.” You can’t play like that; it’s fixed for your whole life. Even if that teacher reincarnates again, you have to follow them because you made a connection in their past life and you have to follow that guru, you have to regard that person as a guru, even when they’re a child.

Geshe Sengye Rinpoche, from whom I received many teachings on Most Secret Hayagriva and also other teachings and initiations, does prostrations to the reincarnation of his guru, even though he is not a monk and is young. Geshe Sengye does prostrations because he made the Dharma connection in the guru’s past life.