My most dear, most kind, most precious wish-fulfilling one,
Please tell your son this:

The correct way to live your life, to practice Dharma, is to practice bodhicitta. This is because you want happiness and don’t want suffering. In that case, for that to happen, first from your side you have to stop giving harm to others with your body, speech and mind. This means to stop doing anything that others do not like or that harms others, because harming others is the cause and the result is that you receive harm back from others.

The result, the accident, is because of harming others in the past, so the accident happened. Anything in our life—happiness or suffering—depends on the negative or positive karma that we created before. Every single thing depends on that.

If you want happiness, first you have to benefit others and cause happiness to others. Then as a result you will receive happiness from others—whether it is temporary happiness or ultimate happiness; freedom from samsara or ultimate happiness, the peerless happiness, buddhahood.

Now bodhicitta—before it was just yourself, how much you have the most unbearable suffering in samsara, your own samsara. Just like that, there are numberless sentient beings—numberless hell beings, numberless hungry ghosts, numberless animals, numberless humans, numberless suras, numberless asuras and numberless intermediate state beings—who have been suffering from beginningless rebirth in samsara, in those realms. They will be suffering again without end, because those who have met the Buddhadharma are few, compared with those who haven’t met the Dharma. There are numberless beings who don’t know about karma and reincarnation—wow, wow, wow.

Therefore the most important thing in the life—every day and night, every hour, every second—is on the basis of stopping harm to others and bringing happiness and benefit to sentient beings, who are numberless in each realm, and then bringing them to the peerless happiness—the total cessation of all the obscurations and completion of all the realizations. You receive all your past happiness, all your present happiness and all your future happiness, including enlightenment, from every sentient being, from everyone—from every single hell being, hungry ghost, animal, human being, sura, asura and intermediate state being.

Sentient beings are your most precious, most kind, most dear, wish-fulfilling ones, even [more precious than] Buddha, Dharma, Sangha, because by relying upon them you become free from the lower realms, free from samsara, free from abiding in lower nirvana and you are able to achieve buddhahood, the peerless happiness. Your buddhahood comes from every sentient being, therefore sentient beings are most unbelievably precious, most unbelievably precious.

Also, they have been your mother numberless times, and they have been kind in four ways from beginningless rebirth. They gave you your body, particularly the human body, which has allowed you to practice Dharma; they protected your life from hundreds of dangers every day; they bore so much hardship every day, and day and night; and the fourth kindness is they gave you education. So from beginningless rebirth every sentient being has been kind to you.

Therefore your best life is not to harm others, but only to benefit them. This is the most happy life, the most meaningful life. That’s what you should pay attention to every day, every hour, every minute. Then even reciting mantras—anything and everything you do—do it with that motivation.

So this advice is for your son and also for yourself.

To help your son, do Medicine Buddha practice if you can, not only reciting the mantra, but you also need to recite the seven Medicine Buddha’s names seven times. There is a small practice, a middle length puja and the most extensive Medicine Buddha puja, composed by the Fifth Dalai Lama. Sometimes if you can, try to do that also. Wow, that would be unbelievable. But mostly you can do the short Medicine Buddha practice (sadhana). This would be very good to practice. It takes care of your son and yourself and all sentient beings.

Thank you very much. You can pray to Medicine Buddha for your son.

Thank you very much. Please live your life with the thought of bodhicitta in everything you do. Attached is my morning motivation [The Method to Transform a Suffering Life into Happiness (Including Enlightenment)] in case you are not doing it already.

With much love and prayers...