Deity Practices for Health and Healing

Deity Practices for Health and Healing

White Tara Practice
Date of Advice:
January 2018
Date Posted:
October 2021

Rinpoche gave this advice to a student whose breast cancer had reoccurred.

White Tara, artist unknown. Photo courtesy of FPMT.

My most dear, most kind, most precious, wish-fulfilling one,

You should do White Tara meditation every morning; get up early and do the meditation.

If you haven’t received any initiation—the lower tantras or Highest Yoga Tantra—then you can visualize White Tara in front of you. Visualize beams emanating from Tara and purifying your sickness, spirit harm, negative karma and defilements collected from beginningless rebirths. All these are purified, particularly your life obstacles.

Think that you receive nectar beams from White Tara, so all her qualities and long immortal life are received. "All her qualities" means omniscience, perfect power to benefit sentient beings, great compassion for every sentient being and undying realizations.

Feel that your body is completely filled up with those qualities, then recite the mantra 21 times.

OM TARE TUTTARE TURE MAMA AYUR PUNYE JÑANA PUSHTIM KURU YE SVAHA

Then recite one mala of:

OM TARE TUTTARE TURE SVAHA

You should do four malas each day of this mantra. Then think your body becomes not just flesh and bones; your body becomes in the nature of light, calm and clear.

Recite Nagarjuna’s method for blessing the speech—the vowels and consonants, those three mantras. If possible, recite each mantra three times or if not, recite each mantra once. If you are not familiar with these mantras, you can find them in the “Blessing the Speech” section of The Method to Transform a Suffering Life into Happiness (Including Enlightenment).

Dedicate with bodhicitta and for enlightenment. So please try this, with bodhicitta. I am also making prayers.

With much love and prayers ...

White Tara’s Long-life Nectar
Date of Advice:
June 2017
Date Posted:
July 2020

A student asked Rinpoche what they could do to help a friend and her new baby, who were both sick.

As mentioned before, the mother has a problem and [so does the] baby, so purification helps them both.

Visualize the deity [White Tara] above your friend and visualize nectar purifying both the mother and baby.  Nectar is emitted with loving compassion to them, purifying all their sickness, spirit harm, negative karma and defilements collected from beginningless rebirth. It’s like dirty water coming out from the mother and baby; so much comes out. Then nectar, like milk, gradually fills up the mother and baby.

Recite one mala of White Tara mantra.

OM TARE TUTTARE TURE MAMA AYUR PUNYE JNANA PUSHTIM KURU YE SVAHA

At the end of the mala, think they are totally filled with long-life immortal nectar.

Think they receive not only long life, but also all of White Tara's qualities, the whole path to enlightenment, method and wisdom, and at the end, they achieve dharmakaya and rupakaya—White Tara's holy body and mind.

 

 

White Tara Meditation
Date of Advice:
December 2017
Date Posted:
July 2020

Rinpoche gave this advice about White Tara practice to a student who asked if life obstacles had been removed after following previous advice.

My most dear, most kind, most precious, wish-fulfilling one,

I received your question and first you need to do White Tara retreat, 300,000 mantras, then after that you can do Vajrasattva group retreat. When you are doing the White Tara retreat you have to eat white food each day.

If you have received a great Chenrezig initiation, or a great initiation of lower tantra, you can visualize yourself as White Tara. If you haven’t received that initiation, you can visualize White Tara on your crown or in front of you.

Visualize nectar, with the loving kindness and compassion of Tara, is received by you and purifies you, like the sun shining. It purifies instantly all the sickness, spirit harm, negative karma and defilements collected from beginningless rebirths. Think you are totally purified. For half a mala you are being purified and for the other half a mala you are receiving realizations.

Then the same thing happens for all sentient beings, not only in the six realms, but all sentient beings. Think they are purified of their defilements and negative karma and receive realizations. They all become White Tara and receive all the qualities of White Tara.

In your heart visualize a lotus and moon disc, and in the center, high up, visualize all the gurus, His Holiness the Dalai Lama and all the great holy beings who benefit sentient beings. Think their life obstacles are pacified and they receive long life, immortal life. Nectar totally fills their holy bodies.

Next visualize all the Sangha, particularly those who spread the Dharma, who protect the Dharma. Think they all receive immortal life, long life.

Then all the people who do good things for others. Think their obscurations and negative karma, all those things, disease and spirit harm, are purified, and they achieve all the realizations and immortal life. Also your family.

Even the people who are involved in fishing and so forth, killing animals, creating heavy negative karma—think they are purified by the beams, like sunlight. They are totally purified and they all receive immortal nectar and long life.

Similarly, do this for all sentient beings, but mostly do it for yourself. Meditate like this in each session.

With much love and prayers

Benefits of Medicine Buddha Practice
Date of Advice:
January 2017
Date Posted:
January 2018

A student wrote that doing Medicine Buddha practice had helped him a lot. He had become vegetarian, had stopped intoxicants and a relative’s cancer had not spread. It had also helped him deal with many difficulties in his life, including bereavements.

My very dear one,
Thank you for your email. I’m very, very happy to hear how Medicine Buddha helped you to help yourself—to have less anger and to be able to stop intoxicants, and how it also affected your mother and father, and your friends. I’m very happy to hear that. Thank you a billion times, thank you.

What I want to request you to do, my big request, is for you to be able to stop drinking alcohol and taking drugs for this lifetime. It doesn’t mean one thousand years, because life can be stopped anytime—next year, next month, tomorrow or even today. In reality we can’t say; even in the next minute we could die. Death can happen anytime, life is too short, extremely short, so you don’t have to think that this is very difficult.

Stopping intoxicants will bring peace not only for this life, but it will also bring peace and happiness for many hundreds and thousands or millions of lifetimes, up to enlightenment, even for eons. You will not be reborn in the lower realms of samsara and you will always be reborn in the higher realms. Especially, you will be able to practice Dharma and you will not be separated from Dharma, from the perfect guru, and you will achieve enlightenment as quickly as possible.

If you can stop, it would be incredible. It would be an unbelievable example and an inspiration for numberless others in the USA and in the world.

This means you have a karmic connection to Medicine Buddha and by stopping alcohol and drugs you can help so many people. That is your offering to Medicine Buddha. You are able to help many people by practicing Medicine Buddha every day.

With much love and prayers ...

Vision of Tara
Date Posted:
October 2009

Rinpoche gave the following advice to a student who said she had stopped doing Tara practice and then had a vision of Tara.

My very dear Joanne,
Thank you very much for your kind letter. Even if you are not practicing Tara, regretfully, Tara has appeared to you. Some people do a retreat on one deity and then see another one. That can happen.

I just did divination and it comes out that you need to make 4,000 long life tsa-tsas for next year.

One simple way to do this is to make a mold of a small White Tara, Namgyalma, or Amitayus, with many images lined up. You can have 30, 40, 50, 60, or 70 images in one mould. That might be easier and you are able to finish them more quickly. Or you can use many molds, put them on a big table, then make plaster paste, and fill them all up.

The second thing you need to do is to print 1,000 long life sutras.

Then, you should recite the long life mantra of Namgyalma.

You need to do Chi Lu (Betraying Death) and Lagyu Tsi Gu (Hooking the Life) pujas. You can discuss these with the geshe at your center.

Also, you can read the Diamond Cutter Sutra every day; this is very good.

You need to do Namgyal Tong Cho Puja (1,000 offerings to Namgyalma). You can ask the monasteries to do this for you (like Sera Je Bati Khamtsen). This is my khamtsen at Sera Je, and you can ask them to do it for you. You will need to make an offering for the puja, it should not be very much, for the torma offering, tea offering to the monks, etc. You can request the bill be sent to you.

All these pujas are for your long life for next year. If you can, do them before the start of the Tibetan new year.

So, it is possible that Tara wants to help you. The cause is that you have a karmic connection with Tara and she wants to help you and save your life because you have a good heart and think of others. If you are thinking of others and practicing bodhicitta, Tara is happy and can appear to you.

With much love and prayers...

Medicine Buddha Puja
Date Posted:
October 2009

Rinpoche gave the following advice on the importance of performing Medicine Buddha puja at a Dharma center.

The Dharma center should really emphasize that each day it does Medicine Buddha puja, dedicated to each person who comes to its centers, for all the sick people whose names have been received, people who are dying and dead, all the people who have requested for prayers, as well as all sentient beings.

This will benefit all the FPMT projects, for their quickest success, fulfill His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s wishes immediately, benefit particularly the Maitreya Project and the projects in Tibet, each center’s projects, particularly the Dharma center’s, the 100,000 projects, the temple, the hospice, and all the rest of the projects.

Medicine Buddha puja is excellent to prevent and help with natural disasters involving fire, wind, water, and air, including tornadoes, hurricanes, and earthquakes. It also helps with world peace, stopping war and famine, disease and torture, poverty and sickness. It increases happiness in the area of the center, also peace in the United States, and the rest of the world.

Even if there are other events taking place in the center, no matter what, Medicine Buddha puja should be done, and you should try to develop it more in the future. The idea is that everyone can participate. Anyone who would like to experience peace or wonders what to do for peace can join in. It should be advertised well, even for non-Buddhists, who know someone who has died, or is sick, even for people who have relationship problems, family problems, job problems. This is what the center should do, and how it should be. You should write about it in the center brochure and advertise it like that.

When people come to the center, then, when you give them the welcome brochure, you should really emphasize the Medicine Buddha puja. This will benefit people now; this is what can help people.

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