Training the Mind in Lamrim

My most dear, most kind, most precious, wish-fulfilling one,
According to my observations, you can use the commentary of Lama Tsongkhapa’s short lamrim, A Hymn of Experience, as your main lamrim text.

Buddha Shakyamuni taught 84,000 teachings and that includes the Lesser Vehicle path, the Great Vehicle sutra path and the Great Vehicle tantra path. This is all contained in the lamrim, which started with Atisha, who brought it to Tibet. Lama Atisha wrote Lamp for the Path to Enlightenment, which dispelled all the wrong concepts. At that time in Tibet there was so much misconception and those who practiced tantra could not practice sutra, while those who practiced sutra could not practice tantra.

After Lama Atisha wrote Lamp for the Path to Enlightenment, which is called lamrim, that dispelled all the wrong views and made Buddhism pure in Tibet. Buddhism was revived and has continued for so long, until now. Also, now it has spread to the West where there was no Buddhism before, never in the past, so the pure Buddhadharma has spread.

There are many commentaries on the lamrim, but for you, the main one is The Essence of Refined Gold, written by the Thirteenth Dalai Lama. The other lamrim that you need to study is called Lamrim Matri (the red commentary, or the quick path), but this is not translated into English yet.

Of course, you can study Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand, and there are many others, like Lama Tsongkhapa’s Great Lamrim (Lamrim Chenmo). There’s also the Middle-Length Lamrim, and the short lamrim prayer, A Hymn of Experience, etc. Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand is very good, very clear.

I was advised by my guru, Gen Jampa Wangdu whose outside aspect had realized calm abiding, lamrim, and also tantra, the Six Yogas of Naropa and so forth, in this life. He said that the clearest teaching on calm abiding (Tib: zhi nä) is in Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand, and the clearest teaching for meditation on bodhicitta is the Bodhicaryavatara (A Guide to the Bodhisattva Way of Life). He was told this by my root guru, Kyabje Trijang Rinpoche.

So you also use Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand. When you meditate on the lamrim, you can use the outlines from Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand as well as other commentaries, which can be from different lamrim texts. Study A Hymn of Experience and Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand once from beginning to the end.

For effortful meditation on the lamrim, meditate for eight months on correctly devoting to the virtuous friend by seeing the guru as a buddha, using different quotations according to the lamrim. Go around and around, using the lamrim outlines, or you can use the other meditation guide, The Essential Nectar. Go over the outlines for that number of months, so like that. The whole point is to have realizations of guru devotion, correctly devoting to the virtuous friend, so you need to have the realization of that.

After you have that realization, you’re able to actualize all the rest of the path—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, then tantra. [Guru devotion] is called the root of the path to enlightenment, so it’s very, very good [to have that realization].

Then after that do effortless meditation.

For your preliminaries:

• Four immeasurable thoughts, to develop bodhicitta: 30,000. 
• Dorje Khadro fire puja: 40,000. 
• Water bowl offerings: 130,000. You can do these water bowl offerings with a group, for instance, Kopan Nunnery does this each year and this is a very easy way to complete a lot of water bowl offerings. The nuns do this as a group retreat and people come from all over the world and do it together, working together, offering together and dedicating together, then even if not all the water bowls are done by you alone, you can still count them all. Therefore, this is an easy way to complete this practice quickly, by doing it with a group and you can count everybody’s offerings. One lama organized it this way in Tibet in a tent and people practiced in this way. Also, this can be done in your own country, at your local center. You can organize to do it with a group and together you can count all the bowls offered.
• Prostrations by reciting the names of the Thirty-five Buddhas: 60,000.
• Mandala offerings: 100,000.

From time to time, read Chanting the Names of Manjushri. This is so precious and it has unbelievable benefits, to liberate all sentient beings and bring them to enlightenment.

Each year do some nyung näs. First you can join a group then later when you come to know how to do it, you can do the nyung näs by yourself. Once you know how to do it, you can do the practice with a group or do it alone, as you like.

According to my observation, your main deity is Guhyasamaja.

Goodbye samsara. You are most welcome to enlightenment, not only for yourself, but liberating numberless sentient beings from the oceans of samsaric suffering—every hell being, every hungry ghost, every animal, every human being, every asura being, every sura being and intermediate state being—by yourself, and not only that, bringing everyone to full enlightenment.

Thank you very much.

With much love and prayers ...

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.

My most dear, most kind, most precious wish-fulfilling one,
Thank you very much for your kind letter. I was very happy to receive it.

Yes, it is excellent that you do fifteen minutes of meditation on the lamrim every day. That is very, very good, especially that it’s lamrim meditation. Anyone can recite mantras and prayers, but lamrim meditation is extremely important, to think of the meaning, to meditate on the meaning. There is analytical and fixed meditation, so lamrim meditation has both of these. It is very, very important.

As far as becoming your guru, you try and I will try. I am not qualified, but you try and I’ll try.

It doesn’t mean you abandon those others you have received teachings from as guru-disciple. It doesn’t mean that; don’t think like that. You have to follow them as guru, even if you have received OM MANI PADME HUM oral transmission or one stanza of a teaching as guru-disciple, with that recognition.

You must read The Heart of the Path. This book should help you regarding the root of the path to enlightenment, how to correctly follow the virtuous friend. That is most important to understand, then you will know how to achieve realizations and how to achieve enlightenment for sentient beings. Otherwise if you make a lot of mistakes, this is the heaviest mistake that destroys [the merit of] 100,000 million billion future lives, not only this life. You have to understand this. Correctly following the virtuous friend is the most important subject and that’s why it’s called the root of path to enlightenment; it’s depending on that.

Practices

Water bowl offerings: 5,000

Lama Tsongkhapa Guru Yoga mantras: 100,000

Diamond Cutter Sutra recitations: During your life always write this sutra. Constantly write it, whatever you can do each day—a few lines, a few pages or the whole sutra. Just continue writing. You should know the unbelievable benefits of this sutra. I have it in Tibetan, but it’s not yet translated. Maybe I will try to translate it one day.

Tonglen meditation: 100,000. You take other sentient beings suffering and give your own happiness. This is a special bodhisattva practice for quick enlightenment, in order to free the numberless sentient beings from the oceans of suffering and bring them to enlightenment quickly.

For you, the main lamrim text is Manjushri’s Words [Sacred Words of Manjushri; jam päl zhal lung, by the Fifth Dalai Lama]. This is not yet published in English, but when you see it in the future, then you can get it. That is the main lamrim text for you to study.

In the meantime, you can study Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand. Study it well from beginning to end. Anything you don’t understand you can write down and then ask a geshe or very good Western teachers who have studied the lamrim well.

To gain effortful experience, follow the lamrim outline for the length of time I have advised. Do the cycle for this number of months on these subjects three times and then do effortless meditation.

My very dear one,
Thank you very much for your inspiration to open the mind, to give freedom to yourself, the opportunity to achieve enlightenment and to free the numberless sentient beings from the oceans of samsaric sufferings and bring them to enlightenment, the total cessation of all the obscurations and completion of all the realizations.

I checked and it comes out very good for you to read Liberation in the Palm of your Hand by Pabongkha Dechen Nyingpo. There are many lamrim books: Lama Tsongkhapa’s Lamrim Chenmo, the great lamrim extensive commentary, then there is the Middle-Length Lamrim, and Lama Tsongkhapa’s shorter lamrim, the Three Principal Aspects of the Path. These texts are according to Lama Tsongkhapa’s experience

Liberation in the Palm of your Hand comes out best for you, so study it from beginning to end, using it like your bible. Really read it and live your life according to this text. Liberation in the Palm of your Hand is the main text for you to read, but there are other lamrim texts.

If possible, study Liberation in the Palm of your Hand from beginning to the end at least three times. Then meditate using as a guidebook the outline from Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand or The Essential Nectar.

There are two texts of The Essential Nectar. One has a short commentary by my teacher Geshe Rabten, and both are very good guidebooks you can use to assist with your meditation once you know the commentary and subjects from Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand.

Please read my advice on how to meditate on the lamrim and how long to spend on each section. You can do the effortful meditations, based on a certain number of months, going over the subjects like that a few times until you have stable realizations, then after that do effortless meditation.

When you are reading the lamrim, you are reading the essence of the whole Buddhadharma, and when you are meditating on the lamrim you are meditating on the essence of the whole Buddhadharma, all the 84,000 teachings of the Buddha. 

You need a special deity to free the numberless sentient beings from the oceans of samsaric sufferings and bring them to enlightenment as quickly as possible. To bring them to the ultimate happiness—the total cessation of all the obscurations and completion of all the realizations—as quickly as possible, for that we need to achieve enlightenment as quickly as possible, to be a perfect guide. For that, therefore we need to practice tantra, even though through sutra we can achieve enlightenment, according to the Prajaparamita teachings, the Mahayana teachings on sutra.

[Practicing the sutra path,] it takes three countless great eons to complete the merits of virtue and wisdom, which are the cause of dharmakaya and rupakaya. Therefore, it means that sentient beings have to suffer for a long, long time. Therefore, we need to practice tantra in order to quickly free them from the oceans of samsaric sufferings and bring them to enlightenment. And not just that, we need to practice Maha-anuttara Yoga Tantra.

There are the four levels of tantra—Kriya (Action), Charya (Performance), Yoga and Maha-anuttara Yoga Tantra. We need to practice the fourth level so that we can free the sentient beings from the oceans of samsaric sufferings as quickly as possible and bring them to enlightenment as quickly as possible. For that we need to achieve enlightenment as quickly as possible, therefore we need to practice tantra.

For you, the deity which comes out in my observation is Tara Cittamani, and the other deity is Vajrakilaya, so it depends whichever deity you feel stronger a [connection] or closer to. Take the initiation when you can, but it is good to study the lamrim from beginning to end, then you will get the extensive idea of why you should take the initiation and practice tantra. You can take Tara Cittamani initiation from other high lamas, qualified teachers. I have given the initiation a few times, but I haven’t done the Vajrakilaya retreat. To give the initiation, [the lama] needs to have completed the retreat first.

This is my present advice to you, to make your life the best, most useful life. Life is very short; it is so precious and very short, so this is a way to use it in the best way for the sentient beings.

Thank you very much. If you have something to say, you can write to me, and if not, you can try to follow this advice.

With much love and prayers ...

My most dear, most kind, most precious wish-fulfilling one,
Thank you for your emails, I have read all of them. I’m extremely happy about what you have been doing, your practice. It is double, triple than me, it is great, great!

Doing prostrations by reciting the Thirty-five Buddhas’ names, is extremely important for you, not just as a preliminary practice but as a daily practice. The eighth, ninth and tenth bhumi bodhisattvas manifest millions, zillions, trillions, many trillions of bodies and when they do prostrations, so many bodies manifest doing prostrations.

The most important thing is guru devotion. If you have finished studying the lamrim outline, then you need to do effortful meditation on guru devotion for two months. The aim is to have the realizations, no matter how long it takes; no matter however many weeks, months or years it takes. Then after that, do effortless meditation for however long it takes so that the realizations become stable. This is very effective and will help you to have strong realizations. It is very good.

One very important thing is guru devotion, so try to have the realizations by following the outline of The Essential Nectar, or whichever lamrim that you are following. When you have realization of guru devotion, without effort you see the guru is all the buddhas, and each buddha is all the gurus, so oneness. From your side that happens without effort, for weeks, months, years, stable, without effort, from your heart seeing that. It's like when the monk thinks of the monk’s coat (Tib: dagam), he sees the color and shape at the same time, not separately. The realization of guru devotion is like that. So each buddha is all the gurus and each guru is all the buddhas, one, from your heart. As you know, from guru devotion, the blessings of the guru, all the rest of the realizations come very easily.

Start the day off with the daily meditation, which includes the mantras for blessing the speech and the direct meditation on the path to enlightenment. [See the FPMT Catalogue for The Method to Transform a Suffering Life into Happiness (Including Enlightenment).]

Do the lamrim meditations on the basis of Lama Tsongkhapa Guru Yoga. There are eight benefits of Lama Tsongkhapa Guru Yoga, so it is very good to do this practice every day. Also within it there is a lamrim prayer, the Foundation of All Good Qualities, so in that way you go through the lamrim every day and that leaves imprints on your mind. This practice is very good not only for purification but also to develop wisdom.

Keep circling through the lamrim outline until you have gained stable realizations and then do effortless meditation, no matter how many weeks, months or years it takes.

What you have been doing is very good. Thank you very much and I am very, very sorry I took a long time to answer you.

Please make your life most beneficial for yourself and for all sentient beings and live your life as much as possible with a good heart. Thank you.

With much love and prayers ...

Refuge: 1,000

Prostrations by reciting the Thirty-Five Buddhas: 60,000

Vajrasattva: 100,000

Nyung nä retreat: five

OM MANI PADME HUM recitations: 600,000, or you can do one million. One million is great—wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, unbelievable, unbelievable. Then Chenrezig guides you all the time, not talking just about this life, but also at the death time Chenrezig will guide you in all the lifetimes, in the pure land and then you will become Chenrezig.

I am trying to put together several different Chenrezig prayers in a booklet, so that each day you can use a different prayer, then recite OM MANI PADME HUM and the long mantra from the nyung nä text. So that is how to recite, how to practice Chenrezig.

If you have a prayer wheel, it is good to have this, then with one hand you can use your mala and count mantras and with your right hand you can use the prayer wheel. This is what I try to do; it’s very, very good. The prayer wheel has unbelievable, unbelievable benefits, skies of benefits. One benefit is that if the prayer wheel has one billion mantras inside (on microfiche) then turning it around one time, one circle, you get the benefit of having recited one billion mantras. That’s similar to having done years of retreat, so it is unbelievable, unbelievable, unbelievable, unbelievable, unbelievable, so fortunate.

This is how to make your life most beneficial for sentient beings, in order to free every sentient being from the oceans of samsaric suffering and bring them to peerless happiness, full enlightenment. Every ant you see, you can recite OM MANI PADME HUM for them. Every single dog, every single rat, every spider; earthworms that people are giving to the fish; every deer that is hunted, every cow, every goat, every sheep that is killed in the world; the millions and millions of animals that are killed by all the people every day, as well as every mosquito, every bee and so forth; every fish that is being eaten by human beings or by other fish; every fisherman, every butcher; so like that, every sentient being. Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow! It’s unbelievable, unbelievable, unbelievable, unbelievable, unbelievable, that you are benefiting sentient beings. Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow! You are reciting every single OM MANI PADME HUM for all the sentient beings, for them to be free from the oceans of samsaric suffering and to achieve enlightenment. Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow. That is the best life, the most happy life, the best life for yourself and the best life for others. Thank you very much.

So you received this advice and practice, and that is the same as meeting me. It is so worthwhile, even if I pay you a billion dollars every day for this practice, the preliminary practices, lamrim, it would not be enough. Thank you very much.

Tsa tsas: 100,000, divided between Lama Tsongkhapa and Amitabha Buddha deities.

In order achieve realizations on lamrim, in order to achieve enlightenment to free numberless sentient beings in each realm, to free them from oceans of samsara sufferings and bring them to full emptiness, you must do effortful lamrim meditation.

After you have done a round of meditations on the graduated path of the three capable beings, then after that to have effortless realizations.

From your side, anyone from whom you have received a Dharma connection by receiving commentaries on sutra and tantra, taking great initiations and vows—anyone that you have made a Dharma connection with—that person is your guru and you are their disciple. So anyone you took any Dharma teaching from, with that decision in your heart, every guru is all the buddhas. Meditate until you are able to see that without any effort. When you think of the Buddha, then the Buddha is one with all the gurus and when you think of the gurus they are one with numberless buddhas.

Meditate on that, train the mind in that by following the outline of guru devotion, no matter how many weeks, months or years it takes, until you achieve that realization. All the other realizations of the path to enlightenment depend on having success in this realization. So all the realizations of the path of enlightenment—to be able to achieve enlightenment and to be able to enlighten all sentient beings—all depend on this realization.

Then on the same day, if you can, train your mind in the graduated path of the lower capable being. Meditate on either the whole lower path or just subject by subject until you achieve stable realizations, then move on to the next lamrim subject. [Continue] no matter how many months or years it takes, no matter how long it takes, then the mind becomes totally peaceful, totally satisfied, totally happy, and there’s no suffering, no clinging to this life.

After that, you have effortless meditation and realizations of the path of the middle capable being, no matter how many weeks, months or years it takes.

After that, meditate on the path of the higher capable being, bodhicitta, until you achieve the realization of that. Meditate on that no matter how many weeks, months or years it takes.

Sometimes you may be very busy, with no time to meditate, that may be possible, but continue as much as possible, even for a little time.

You should meditate on emptiness every day. You should do some meditation on emptiness, using the Heart Sutra or different teachings, different quotations. Quotations are very good, and when you read you should meditate on them, such as the “king of logic” of dependent arising:

The I doesn’t have true existence
Because it is dependent arising.

This is not gross, but subtle dependent arising from the Prasangika point of view. Phenomena are merely existing, in mere name, merely labeled by the mind, dependent on the valid base, therefore phenomena do not have true existence. You can meditate for however long you want to on that, then recognize the object of refutation. Recognize it is not true and realize the faults of that view of true existence. See it as empty, then the conclusion is dependent arising. So the first one shows ultimate truth and the second one shows conventional truth.

Keep circling [through the lamrim] in this way until you have gained stable realizations.