My very dear Manu,
Sorry I did not recollect clearly your complete name; I’m very sorry about that.

I am extremely happy to hear that you have stopped drinking alcohol (chang). Remember that each time a strong wish or greed to drink chang arises, without delay think that this means you are giving up your most precious human life, which has eight freedoms and ten richnesses.

This human life is most precious, like the sky filled with numberless wish-fulfilling jewels, but with the wish-granting jewels alone all you can achieve is material enjoyment. You can only achieve that; you can’t stop rebirth in the lower realms or achieve a higher rebirth, and you can’t be born with the good body of a happy migrator being. You can't be liberated from the oceans of samsaric suffering and its cause, delusion, and you can't achieve ultimate happiness, liberation, nirvana. You can’t be free from the subtle defilements, the subtle negative imprints of delusions, and you can’t achieve great compassion for sentient beings. That means you can't achieve full enlightenment, even if you won that many wish-granting jewels.

Milarepa, for example, totally renounced this life—he did not have even one rupee, one dollar or one jewel, but he had a human body, with the opportunity to practice Dharma. He practiced Dharma and achieved the highest peerless happiness, enlightenment, in that very lifetime, in a brief lifetime of degenerate time, and he has already enlightened numberless sentient beings.

Your body is the same, having the opportunity to practice Dharma, like Milarepa. So you can see how this human body is most, most, most wish-fulfilling and precious, so when the strong greed arises to drink chang, that means you are giving up this most precious wish-fulfilling human life.

With much love and prayers...