Requesting Ordination

My very dear Belinda,
I am very, very happy to receive your letter about your practice and your life. I am very happy that you are a librarian at your study group, and that you attended the Kopan course and enjoyed your time with good Dharma friends there. It’s good that you live in a calm, small place in Mexico and that you did a retreat with Ven. Lhundrup Damcho.

I am sorry that your father died, but the Dharma has helped you and your Dharma practice is growing. Even though great change has happened in your family, your mind is calm and wise because you practice Dharma.

I am very happy that you have the intention of doing the preliminary practices. Your preliminary practices:

• Prostrations with the practice of the Thirty-five Buddhas: 200,000
• Tsa-tsas: 50,000, divided amongst Tara, Heruka and Lama Tsongkhapa
• Dorje Khadro burning offering: 50,000
• Generating the four immeasurable thoughts (loving kindness, great compassion, joy and equanimity): 50,000

With this practice [the four immeasurable thoughts], you collect numberless merit because there are numberless sentient beings towards whom you generate each of the immeasurable thoughts. It is said in the King of Concentration Sutra that compared to offering umbrellas, banners, garlands of lights and so forth to the merit field, which has 10 million times 100 billion buddhas, the meditation on loving kindness for a little while generates more merit than that many worlds, buddhas and offerings. Each time you generate loving kindness, you collect that much merit. This is most unbelievable.

It came out best if you can become a nun in the future. After you have read one complete lamrim, then you can think about ordination. Not this year or the year after, but in 2012 if you can manage it.

Read the Golden Light Sutra a little bit each day if you can; even a few lines if you are very busy. If you can, read one or two pages. This can benefit the world and sentient beings and bring you to enlightenment. Your life only goes up.

You should meditate:

• Five months on the general graduated path of the lower capable being
• Two months on the general graduated path of the middle capable being
• Five months on the graduated path of the higher capable being
• Five months on emptiness

If you have studied the whole lamrim well, just meditate one time like this. While you are doing this, you should also do one meditation on guru devotion every day, by following the outlines in Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand. Once you have read the commentary, the other text for daily meditation is The Essential Nectar. There is no particular outline in this text and it is neither very short nor long, but very inspiring. When you have time, meditate for a little longer. If there is no time, you can do a shorter session; whatever you feel is better.

Meditate on guru devotion as much as possible every day by following the outlines until you see the guru as all buddhas, discovering this from the bottom of your heart. This should be something that is very stable; that goes on for weeks, months and years, not just for a few hours or days. For example, meditate for one week each on the eight benefits of correctly devoting [to the guru] and the eight shortcomings of not correctly devoting. Then there are the four major outlines that prove to your mind that guru is Buddha. Do this for one month, then spend two weeks on the kindness of the guru. Repeat this process until you get realizations.

For the general graduated path of the lower capable being, meditate on the perfect human rebirth up to the topic of karma. It doesn’t mean you meditate on everything in one day. Do whatever you can, and then continue the next day and so forth for five months. Then repeat the process. Do the same for the general graduated path of the middle capable being and the graduated path of the higher capable being.

After that, like the process of meditating on guru devotion, go back to the meditation on the perfect human rebirth, its usefulness and how difficult it is to find again. Try to achieve each realization up to karma.

You have to decide how to do your meditations. Depending on your work and your time, sometimes you can meditate longer, sometimes shorter, depending on your life on that particular day. You can also do meditation while you are walking, not necessarily always sitting. You can also do it outside your room.

Your main deity to achieve enlightenment quickly, to enlighten all sentient beings quickly—all the numberless hell beings, hungry ghosts, animals, humans, asuras and gods—is Cittamani Tara and Secret Chenrezig Gyalwa Gyatso. You can choose the one you have a stronger feeling towards. Get the initiation, read the commentary and do the nearing retreat. In order to receive Cittamani Tara initiation, you need another Highest Yoga Tantra initiation such as Guhyasamaja, Yamantaka or Heruka as a preliminary. This is because Cittamani Tara has the body mandala.

Thank you for your sincere practice and for benefiting the world and all sentient beings. That is the best benefit to your parents.

With much love and prayer...

My very dear one,
Thank you for your kind letter. Sorry it took a long time to answer you. I am extremely happy that you recognize that life is precious and now you don’t want to waste it. That is an extremely precious thought. If you have this, then you can practice Dharma. This is the very important foundation for listening, reflection, meditation, and having realizations on the path to enlightenment. You decided to practice Vajrasattva; that came out the best. You are purifying many eons of negative karma. That is what you do, even if you are going to die soon. Purification is needed for realizations, for your own happiness, especially ultimate happiness, and you need purification to benefit sentient beings. Even to achieve happiness in future lives, you need purification.

It is good that you are learning Tibetan. That means you will be able to read Tibetan texts and understand what they are saying. I don’t mean omniscient understanding of everything. To have general understanding, you have to have the opening of the third eye. You can read all the Tibetan texts, find out and learn all the methods, the whole path to liberation, enlightenment, from the sutras and tantras. It also gives you the opportunity to translate from Tibetan to English and English to Tibetan, especially translate the Dharma into English. You could translate for lamas who don’t speak English. In this way you can help lamas and help people. It’s true that to make Dharma practice stable it is good to practice Vajrasattva.

I am giving you general practice instructions for life, for this life, not life to life:

• Two hundred thousand: Vajrasattva
• One hundred thousand: prostrations reciting the names of the Thirty-Five Buddhas.
• There is a commentary in Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand that also has an explanation.
• Twenty thousand: refuge
• Three hundred thousand: generating the four immeasurable thoughts
• Four hundred thousand: mandala offerings. This is regarded as a very important way to accumulate merit. This is an unbelievable practice. You need so much merit for everything, to achieve the complete qualities of realization and cessation. To actualize bodhicitta needs inconceivable merits, also to realize emptiness, especially to be able to liberate sentient beings from oceans of suffering and bringing them to enlightenment.
• Thirty thousand: Samayavajra. This is a practice to purify negative karma collected with the guru.
• Six thousand: Dorje Khadro fire puja
• Thirty thousand: tsa-tsas of Guru Shakyamuni Buddha

General advice for lamrim meditation and how to develop your mind on the path:

• Guru devotion: every day. How long you spend is up to you. If you are busy you can do it for a short time; if you are not busy you can spend more time.
• Five months: Precious human rebirth up to karma
• Two months: general path of the middle capable being
• Nine months: bodhicitta
• Seven months: emptiness

These are the main meditations to do for these different amounts of time. I am not saying you can’t do other things on these days, but the main meditation is on those subjects. If you are able to do it like this, that would be unbelievable. You can use the book The Essential Nectar for daily meditations. Another one to use is the outline from Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand. You can use the commentary in that or in another lamrim, like Lama Tsongkhapa’s. This will make your life so rich and fruitful. Here, you are holding on to the path to enlightenment, not the branches, but the main trunk. If possible, do Guru Puja every day, or sometimes. You can do Lama Tsongkhapa Guru Yoga with the Foundation of All Good Qualities and the Three Principal Aspects of the Path, Calling the Guru from Afar by Pabongka Rinpoche, or Hymns of Experience of the Path to Enlightenment. You can rotate. One guru yoga that combines one lamrim is the foundation or basis to develop your mind on the path. Of course, the goal of life is to have realizations in this life. For your motivation, everything begins with bodhicitta. In daily life, while eating, walking, sleeping, or doing your job, try to remember to do everything with the ultimate good heart, bodhicitta. This makes life very worthwhile.

Your deity for the quickest enlightenment is Yamantaka or Vajrakilaya, whichever you have a stronger feeling for. Practice that as your main deity for quicker enlightenment.

It came out most beneficial to take ordination after things are stable.

With love and prayer...

My very dear Vince,
Thank you very much for your kind letter and for all your practice that you dedicated to me; it is incredible what you have been able to do.

It is very good to be ordained, but now is not the right time. It comes out for you to be ordained in six years’ time. So, you can think about how in the future it will be good to be ordained. That is according to my observation now, we can check again later. Maybe it will be possible before the six years.

You can do retreat at your place from time to time, but for longer retreat it came out more beneficial to do it in the Pyrenees in France.

Here is my advice for your practice:

Lamrim:  

• The graduated path of lower scope: three months
• The graduated path of intermediate scope: five months
• The graduated path of highest scope: bodhicitta: four months, emptiness: one month

If, after having practiced the meditations in this cycle you do not have realizations, then start again. No matter how long it takes to have stable realizations, continue. Once you have stable realizations on the lower path, then move on to the middle path, then once you have stable realizations on this path, move on to bodhicitta, until it is stable. Putting all your effort into having realizations of the lamrim is more important than tantra.

The main part of your preliminary practices is to have stable realizations. This is the main practice to do to purify defilements, collect extensive merits, and have quick realizations.

Your main practice is the lamrim and nyung nä. These are the places to put most of your effort and later, after you have realizations, you can put more effort into tantra.

See if you can do 1,000 nyung nä retreats. This would be unbelievable, and a great inspiration to others, the whole FPMT, outside the organization, and the whole world. Actually, you should do more, but I didn’t want to cause you to develop heresy, or frighten you. Just try and do what you can. Don’t worry, it doesn’t mean that you have to do them all at once, you can have break time. For example, do 50, take a break, and then do another 50. Or, if you need to, you can have a break after 20, etc.

If you are able to do nyung näs with the lamrim, then it is unbelievable. Geshe Lama Konchog did 2,000 nyung näs. There are a few lamas in Tsum who also did 2,000 nyung näs and disciples of Geshe Lama Konchog in Tsum who did 3,000.

The place where you do them depends on where you can have more experience of the lamrim. You can test that out, and you will be able to find which is a better place to practice. Another place that came out as good for you to practice is New Zealand.

I wanted to check – have I told you your main deity before?

With much love and prayers...

My very dear Anthony,
Thank you very much your kind letter. Yes, according to my divinations, it would be very good for you to be a monk. That means you have to study the vows after you become a monk and practice as much as possible, and of course this includes the lamrim. Your main focus in life should be lamrim practice, along with preliminary practices, and on top of that, tantra.

I understand you have experienced the suffering of change of samsara, the shortcomings of samsara, and the changes in relationships. If you don’t try to achieve the path, then you will be continuously reborn in samsara and will experience relationship problems endlessly. You will experience over and over again meeting someone, breaking up, all the depression, anger, and jealousy. We have experienced this countless times, from time without beginning, so if you think like this then it is very disgusting and terrifying and there is not even the slightest attraction in it. The only interest you have is to seek liberation from samsara, from all these sufferings. So, now your ex-wife is also your teacher, teaching you the suffering of samsara and helping you to achieve liberation and have detachment.

With much love and prayers...

My very dear Jennifer,
Thank you very much for your kind letter. Sorry I didn't get to reply immediately. I still remember doing Lama Chöpa in the apartment in the living room with you and your friend. My memory is you were very alert and still, and you were able to stay sitting straight even very late at night. I was surprised, so I mentioned to you maybe you could become a nun, and you said this time it was difficult, maybe in the next life.

So I said, “You never know, life can change.” What I thought was maybe you had a fixed idea of a husband or boyfriend, but maybe you would get bored or something could happen, changes happen. So, as I was saying, life can change.

So, I accept you to become a nun, you can take ordination. You're most welcome. Next year seems bad, I don't know what the obstacle is, so that means you should take ordination at the end of this year. If you are in your country, then you can request it from the geshe. That came out as good in my observations. Or, maybe, if you are in India from December 16, that is another time to take ordination. It's good that you're making some money for your future.

My advice is if the geshe accepts, you can take ordination any time and still do your job. Of course, it may not be easy doing a job and being a nun, but this depends on the person.

If I have already given you a list of preliminary practices, then continue with those and meditate on the lamrim, on the suffering of samsara, from guru devotion and perfect human rebirth, up to karma, then on the general path of the middle capable being, the general sufferings and 12 links.

When you take ordination you have to think “Now I change from an ordinary life to a nun’s life, to a nun’s lifestyle.” According to the vinaya, women can only take ordination once in their life. There is no second chance.

Then, live your life in the lamrim, this is what keeps your life strong, supports you, gives you hope, encourages you, gives you all happiness, all temporary happiness, liberation from samsara, and enlightenment.

Try to have the realization of bodhicitta, as well as the realization of renunciation. Live in the lamrim practice, based on the vows. Continue with guru devotion, the preliminary practices, purifying and accumulating merits. On this basis, then you can do some tantric practice, whatever you can.

Then, do some retreat, all based on the lamrim—some deity retreat and lamrim retreat.

With much love and prayers...

My very dear Charlotte,
It is very good for you to be a nun for sentient beings. Yes, you can do soon. You can wait for the Rinpoche I mentioned to come to your Dharma center and have the ceremony there. It would be good to request this from him beforehand. Before then, if there is time, then I can give you comegeyen, which means you can wear the robes, shave your head, and take the five precepts. This is done just before becoming a nun.

I will send you a list of practices that are best for you to do for your quickest enlightenment.

Every day, your main practice should be lamrim. The main purpose of your life should be to meditate on the lamrim, and to have lamrim realizations. Then, of course, there is the tantric path. Until you achieve guru devotion and the three principles of the path, spend more time on actualizing this and less time on tantric practice. When one has realized bodhicitta then one’s main practice is tantra, for the majority of the time.

With much love and prayers...