Practices to Purify Negative Karma

Practices to Purify Negative Karma

Purifying Negative Karma
Date Posted:
January 2013

A Spanish student wrote that after 18 years of contact with the Dharma, he understood that he must purify the heavy karma collected in this life. He requested practices to purify the karma from all his negative actions and asked Rinpoche to remember him in his prayers.

Practices:

Effortful experience of lamrim:

  • Seven months: Guru devotion
  • One month: Lower path
  • Four months: Middle path
  • Three months: Bodhicitta
  • One month: Emptiness

One month on emptiness is for effortful experience, but emptiness is something you have to meditate on every day using the Heart Sutra, the Four Analyses or even one verse or one stanza on emptiness.

After the effortful experience, try to get the effortless experience no matter how many months or years it takes. Go back through, starting from guru devotion, then the lower path, the middle path and the higher path.

After generating bodhicitta, put more emphasis on tantra—the generation and completion stage.

At least every day, for realization of the path, for enlightenment and to enlighten all sentient beings, the minimum practice is to recite a lamrim prayer and do direct meditation on the lamrim. Also, recite your own deity’s graduated path (the prayer is at the end of the long sadhana of the deity.) You must at least do these two as a minimum practice.

Your deity: Guhysamaja, Chenrezig Gyalwa Gyatso. Choose whichever you have strong feeling for as your main deity, but you can get the initiation for both.

With much love and prayer...

Mantras for Purifying Negativities
Date of Advice:
February 2011
Date Posted:
January 2012

This practice advice was written in Tibetan for a monk at Kopan Monastery and translated into English by Ven. Khedup Sherpa.

Recite the following:

  • Vajra Armor mantra: three malas
  • Most Secret Hayagriva mantra: four malas
  • Chenrezig Senghe Dra (Avalokiteshvara Simhanada) mantra: three malas

Visualize, with great compassion of the guru-yidam, rays of white light nectar pouring down from the heart and entering into your body, purifying and washing down from the two lower doors all karmic delusions and negative obscurations accumulated from beginningless time. Visualize this as much as possible, without your mind being distracted.

After this, visualize all the sickness and spirit harm washing down in the form of blood and pus, snakes, frogs and scorpions. After this, generate great belief that all negativities are cleared and sicknesses are cured. All the negativities and delusions come out from the lower doors and enter into the mouth of the Lord of Death, which is wide open, nine stories down under the ground, and they become nectar. The Lord of Death closes his mouth and it is sealed tightly with a heavy, golden double vajra. It is said that if we visualize this way, it will help to increase our lifespan. So, it is good to do like this.

The main practice for you is the recitation of the above-mentioned mantras. The operation did not come out well in my mo.

In general, death is uncertain, so it is good to prepare for death all the time. The teachings, mainly on lojong, bodhicitta, giving and taking, should be integrated into a lifetime practice, combined with the five powers. Also, it is important to keep in mind that the practice of death needs to be done, combining this with the five powers. It is important to keep these practices in mind, believing that you will die now. I hope you will follow these practices.

I, by the birth name of Thubten Zopa, send this with prayer.
February 14, 2011

Practices for Purification
Date Posted:
November 2011

A Japanese student asked Rinpoche what practices to do for purification.

My very dear one,
Thank you very much for coming all the way from Japan, so we are able to meet this time.

You asked about purification practices. It came out good to recite the Arya Sanghata Sutra every day for four years. It is not necessary to finish reading the sutra every day; just read as much as you can. If you can  finish reading it every day, that would be best, but it is not necessary.

The Arya Sanghata Sutra purifies unbelievable karma—just hearing the word, the sound, immediately purifies the extreme negative karmas (Tib: tsam mä nga)—the five uninterrupted negative karmas, which are killing one’s father, mother or an arhat, drawing blood from a buddha and causing disharmony in the Sangha. If any of these karmas are collected, we are born immediately in the extreme hell realm, where there is extreme, heavy suffering for the longest time. This is the very first benefit mentioned in the Arya Sanghata Sutra.

There is an unbelievable, unbelievable, unbelievable, limitless sky of merit when we read the Arya Sanghata Sutra. It is most amazing!

Study the commentary and meditate on the Heart Sutra and also study teachings by His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Study the Lama Tsongkhapa Guru Yoga commentary and do the practice. Also study Lama Tsongkhapa’s middle lamrim from beginning to end, and meditate on the outline. Discuss this text when someone like Geshe Thubten Sherab comes to Japan, and ask questions about anything you don’t understand.

Also do Vajrasattva practice every night.

With much love and prayers...

Tsa-tsas for Purification and Merit
Date Posted:
November 2009

A student wrote to Rinpoche asking for advice on purification practices.

Dear Bob,
To repay kindness, for your own purification, and to collect merit, please make a total of 90,000 Lama Tsongkhapa and long-life tsa-tsas. Also, please make a small stupa.

With much love and prayer...

 

Benefits of Vajrasattva Practice
Date Posted:
December 2006

Rinpoche offered the following advice on the benefits of Vajrasattva practice.

Vajrasattva, painted by Nepali-Tibetan artists, Photo courtesy of FPMT.

If you want others to love you, you must first love others. If you benefit others, naturally they will benefit you. The cause and effect of karma is as simple as this. The Vajrasattva purification practice, which is more powerful than negative karma, can prevent you from experiencing the problems that negative karma would otherwise bring you. Thus, the practice of purification is one of the most important solutions to our problems and is extremely necessary, even for people who believe that we have only one life. If you don’t want relationship problems, business failures, illnesses such as cancer or AIDS, notoriety, or criticism by others, the practice of Vajrasattva is extremely important—both for those who accept the existence of reincarnation and karma, and for those who do not.

Doing Vajrasattva retreat is not simply about reciting the mantra and saying some prayers. It is about making the practice effective for your mind, making it the quickest, most powerful way to transform your mind. Experienced meditators have advised that, in general, it is more important to put your everyday life’s effort into the practice of purification. This is the way to attain spiritual realization.

Vajrasattva Recitation at Night
Before you go to bed each night, recite the Vajrasattva mantra to prevent whatever negative karma you have created that day from multiplying. If you don’t purify it in this way your negative karma will keep doubling and re-doubling day by day, week by week, month by month, and year by year up to the end of your life, and even one day’s negative karma will become as huge and heavy as a mountain—in time, even one atom of unpurified negative karma can swell to the size of the earth.

Even though you may not necessarily create particularly heavy negative karmas, since unpurified negative karma increases exponentially in this way, even one small negative action can cause you to be reborn in the lower realms and experience great suffering for many eons. And because in the lower realms you continually create more and more negative karma, it is extremely difficult to be reborn back into the upper realms, which makes it almost impossible for you to practice Dharma. Therefore you must purify your negative karma every day.

Since practicing the Vajrasattva recitation-meditation at the end of the day prevents negative karma from multiplying it is an incredibly powerful method. It makes your life very light and easy and keeps you happy and peaceful inside—in your heart and in your inner life. Furthermore, it purifies not only that day’s negative karma but also that created in this life from the time you were born and in all your previous lives as well.

Purifying negative karma makes it much easier to attain liberation and actualize the path to enlightenment. It also decreases your suffering and any obstacles that might arise. Purifying negative karma means that you won’t have to experience the many eons of suffering in the lower realms that result from not purifying even one negative karma, and you won’t have to experience again and again without end the four suffering results that arise from each unpurified negative karma.

The conclusion is that even if you have completed the preliminary of reciting 100,000 Vajrasattva mantras you can’t just stop, relax, and say, “I’ve finished my Vajrasattva preliminary practice. Now I don’t have to recite that mantra any more.” You need to keep doing the long Vajrasattva mantra at least 21 times or the short one at least 28 times a day in order to keep purifying your negative karma and prevent it from multiplying.

Diamond Cutter Sutra and Prostrations
Date Posted:
December 2006

A student wrote to Rinpoche requesting practices to do for purification.

My very dear Kim,
Thank you very much for your kind letter, I want to advise you to recite the Diamond Cutter Sutra seven times and, every day, perform 100 prostrations by reciting the Thirty-five Buddhas’ names. You can recite the rest of the prayer when you have finished. That is best, because every day we create so much negative karma.

It is best to do full-length prostrations if you have space in your house. This would be incredible. When you travel long distance by plane, or are sick and so forth, it is difficult to do them, otherwise you should try to do them. It is an emergency to do them because with all this negative karma, from birth and from beginningless rebirths, the terrifying lower realms can be there in any minute, any time when the breath stops.

The ultimate result is liberation and enlightenment.

With big love and prayer...

Pages