Student's Letter

I have a muscular illness that is extremely rare, resulting from years of taking the prescription medication called Lipitor at high dosages of 40 mg per day for over five years; and I have a neurological illness called Guillain-Barré, which is an extremely rare reaction whereby my central nervous system thinks that it is under attack from something in my body, but there is nothing really in my body that is attacking my central nervous system.

I have read your writings on illness (and other topics) in your Advice Book and elsewhere; I do see this illness as a great opportunity to purify my negative karma, and further develop a greater depth of compassion.

My illness has made formal practice quite difficult. I am on a form of sick leave from my work as a professor, and I shall retire July 1, 2008 at 61. I wish I could donate the $7 million to $25 million for part of the great Maitreya Statue, and will do so if somehow such money comes my way. This is a promise to you, and I have visualized such an offering in my practice and daily thoughts for a couple of years now.

Rinpoche’s first reply

My very dear one,
I am very sorry for the long delay in replying to your letter. I have checked regarding your health, and some Tibetan medicines came out as very beneficial for you to take:

Take three Hayagriva Torma pills. You can space these out over a little time. These pills are from Lama Yeshe’s retreat and are extremely rare and blessed.

Take four Khungna pills a day for two months.

Then, it comes out very beneficial for Geshe-la to recite the Vaishali Sutra eight times for you. The best is if he recites it and you listen to it as he is reciting. Then, generally, it comes out very beneficial for you to listen to this. I have recorded this and it is on the website, so you can download it and listen to it whenever you can. [Find links to Recitations for Alleviating Pain, in the FPMT Catalogue. This MP3  is an audio recording of Rinpoche reciting the Sutra for Entering the City of Vaishali and other prayers and mantras.]  

When Geshe-la recites this for you, you need to be in front of him, not a long distance away. This doesn’t mean nose to nose; it doesn’t have to be that close. So, please request this of Geshe-la. You can say that I asked.

There is one precious pill that is called something like Rinchen Rilnag (it is a black precious pill. We are not 100 per cent about the name, and I am trying to get this clear). I don’t have any of these, but I am going to try and find them. When I do, it comes out very beneficial for you to take four in one week for four weeks. When you take it you need to have two days’ break between pills.

You need to wear a protection called “Protection for Fearlessness.” I will send this to you.

There is a puja that you need to have done, by Tsawa Khamtsen in Sera Je Monastery; the puja is called Gyabshi. My assistant will arrange this for you if that is OK, and then send you the bill after the monks have done the puja.

However, the most beneficial thing is to use your health situation, your sickness, to develop bodhicitta. This means to use your sickness to achieve enlightenment, not only to overcome samsara, but to achieve liberation and to cease the oceans of samsaric sufferings. Use your sickness to achieve enlightenment and to liberate numberless sentient beings from the oceans of samsara’s sufferings by enlightening all sentient beings.

Here, you can see how your sickness is so precious, not only can it liberate you from all your sufferings, but it can cease all sentient beings’ sufferings and bring them to enlightenment, which is the highest happiness to achieve. It is an unbelievable, most precious, great thing, like a wish-granting jewel, even greater than a wish-granting jewel, as a wish-granting jewel fulfills only material needs.

Please try to use your sickness in this way, as much as possible. When you do this, then with each taking (tonglen) there is unbelievable purification. So many lifetimes of negative karma are purified and you develop strong compassion. Also, you collect skies of merit, and this brings you closer to enlightenment. It is the same thing each time you give (in tonglen) and brings you closer to enlightenment.

You can chant this verse from the Guru Puja, this meditation, and tonglen prayer:

tonglen: Meditation on Taking and Giving

Lama Chöpa, Verse 95:

And thus, venerable, compassionate gurus,
I seek your blessings that all karmic debts, obstacles,
and sufferings of mother beings
May without exception ripen upon me right now,
And that I may give my happiness and virtue to others
And, thereby, invest all beings in bliss.

Actually, this is the best Dharma gift, the best gift, the best protection from delusion, the best protection from the terrifying lower realms, where there is so much unbelievable suffering. In doing this meditation you take on all the sufferings of all mother sentient beings, as well as all one’s own sufferings. Then, you let all sentient beings have the state of no-death, enlightenment, the cessation of all sufferings, all happiness, including enlightenment, by having all your merit ripen on all sentient beings.

This practice should be entered into the Olympics, and if you win, then at the time of death you go to the pure land instead of being reborn in the impure world, where we are now, or the lower realms. This would be the best Olympic game. Dying with tonglen (bodhicitta) is the best death and best Olympic game.

Thank you very much for your big heart, and for your donation to the Maitreya Project. Thank you very much; this creates the cause. But you can visualize trillions, zillions, or millions of dollars; there is no limit in visualization. The more you visualize, the more merit you create.

When you make offerings, you can visualize as many as possible. Doing this has great benefits. I’m sorry to say this, it looks like I’m too greedy, but when you visualize offerings there is no reason to limit the amount. You can offer trillions and zillions. You can visualize the whole sky filled with offerings, and then you receive that benefit. This is the same within one’s sadhana practice. There are so many visualized offerings, such as precious elephants, precious horses, kings, queens, etc, so, here, you can fill the whole sky with offerings.

For instance, the actual mandala offering is just a small container with grain and seeds, but you visualize that as an entire universe of offerings, and this creates unbelievable merit. Every time you visualize the offerings, you create the same merit as having actually offered them.

The logic for this is from the past, when Buddha was in India. The Buddha came through on his alms round, and there were three children playing in the sand. Because the Buddha was very tall, the three children stood on each other’s shoulders so the top child could reach the Buddha’s begging bowl. The top boy then offered a handful of sand, visualized as gold, in the Buddha’s bowl. Due to this karma, in his next life the boy was born as King Ashoka, who built many monasteries and offered food in the monasteries to the sangha, and who also built 10 million stupas in one day. This merit was created just by visualizing the offering, and helped so many sentient beings and sangha all over the world. This was just because the child offered a handful of sand but visualized gold.

So, you are very wise to already be making visualized offerings. Because it doesn’t cost anything to visualize, you can offer trillions and zillions of dollars or gold, filling the whole sky. It doesn’t cost you anything but you achieve the same merit as having actually offered that much.

Thank you very much for doing this. You are the first person I have heard about making visualizations to help the Maitreya Project. Now I give you the job of offering trillions and zillions, like the story of King Ashoka .

With much love and prayers,

Lama Zopa

PS I will also send you some more information on the benefits of offerings.

Rinpoche’s second reply

My very dear one,

Regarding the story about the Buddha and the children who offered sand visualized as gold, you can see how this one visualized offering benefited so many sentient beings and the teachings of Buddha. This can definitely bring enlightenment, because Buddha has inconceivable qualities, and each time that you make offerings, whatever it is, even one grain of rice, a tiny flower, etc, as long as this is an offering to Buddha, or who you believe to be Buddha, then the result is beyond our conception. The benefits are unbelievable, unfathomable, limitless, and inconceivable.

For example, it is mentioned in the Sutra Heap of Flowers:

However much samsaric enjoyment one has experienced since beginningless rebirth
As well as in this life, and all that is to be experienced in the future
You will receive all these benefits, and on top of that liberation from samsara,
Including achieving all the realizations of the five paths, and within each path all the many details, up to liberation from all the sufferings and their causes
Just by offering one grain of rice or a single tiny flower to the Buddha
It doesn’t stop there; on top of that you achieve all the benefits up to enlightenment
The whole path, and bhumis, cessation from not only the gross defilements
But also the subtle defilements, everything.

It is also mentioned:

Due to the power of the holy object, even if your motivation is black (non-virtuous, such as attachment and clinging to this life),
Just by the action of making offerings, circumambulation, prostrations, etc
To the holy object, such as a statue, stupa, or scripture (this is not only referring to Buddha)
This immediately becomes the cause of your enlightenment, besides liberation from samsara.

This is also explained in the lamrim. It doesn’t stop there; making an offering to a statue, stupa, or scripture liberates numberless sentient beings in each of the six realms and, on top of that, brings them to full enlightenment. Now you can see that your tiny offering of a small flower or grain of rice that is offered to the Buddha (statue, stupa, or scripture) is how you can bring all sentient beings to enlightenment.

Can you imagine the benefits? It is unbelievable, unbelievable, unbelievable, unbelievable, unbelievable, unbelievable, unbelievable, unbelievable. You can enjoy the result your whole life even from just one tiny offering. From that one offering you will receive all happiness for your whole life, day and night, even when you are day-dreaming, walking, or doing poo poo.

It is also mentioned:

Even if you don’t make an offering, just from merely seeing a statue or picture of Buddha
You collect numberless, greater merits than from having made hundreds of offerings of divine food and divine clothes every day, to as many self conquerors (arhats) of the ten directions as there are atoms in the universe. How many self conquerors? As many as there are atoms in the universe.
And for how long do you make the offerings? For one eon.
The result is unbelievable, because just merely seeing a statue of the Buddha
Brings even greater, numberless merits than if you make offerings of flowers, incense, and so forth.

It is explained by Buddha in the Sutra of the Mudra of Developing the Power of Devotion:

The minute you see a holy object you create infinite merits,
So there is no question if you actually make prostrations,
Offerings, and so forth: you create far greater merit.

In the White Lotus Sutra it says:

Even making just one sound, or a cymbal offering
Even offering just one single flower
To the form of one who has gone to bliss (Buddha) on a stone wall,
Even if they make the offering with an angry attitude
Those living beings will gradually see ten million buddhas.

Anyone who puts their palms together completely,
Or with one palm, or just one time bows down in respect
To a stupa which contains relics, even with a distracted mind (without virtue)
Verbally saying “I prostrate to the Buddha” just one or a few times –
All those beings will achieve supreme enlightenment.

Now you can understand the reason to build the Maitreya statue so big, so that many people will be able to see it and receive the benefits. Even they don’t do any practice, such as circumambulating or making offerings, even if they come to see the statue as a tourist, even if they are not Buddhist, there are incredible benefits. They receive skies of benefits that they will enjoy all the way up to enlightenment. The seed of enlightenment is planted in their mental continuum the minute they see the statue, and the minute they see the statue there is unbelievable purification.

It is the same in your house. If you have many thangkas, statues, or pictures of Buddha, every time you see them, each time you open your eyes, there is unbelievable purification, and it causes you to see ten million buddhas in the near future, to achieve the whole path to enlightenment, and to be able to enlighten all sentient beings.

In my house I have filled up the walls with so many pictures of buddhas and so many holy objects. However many holy objects are on the wall, they all create the highest good luck – one’s enlightenment.

Pabongka Rinpoche mentions that with every photo of Buddha you see, you create the highest good luck and merit, and if you think “guru” then you get the highest, greatest merit. When you see a statue of Buddha or visualize a Buddha and you think “guru,” you collect inconceivable merits, much more merit than having made offerings to numberless buddhas, Dharma, Sangha, statues, stupas and scriptures of all the directions, because the guru is the highest, most powerful object.

In Buddha’s teachings from the Kangyur, Advice for Lotu Nangpa, it says:

As the Tathagatha has limitless enlightened qualities.
So making offerings to the Tathagatha is
Limitless, infinite, inconceivable, without comparison, numberless, unimaginable and
inexpressible.

In the Manjugosha Root Tantra, it is mentioned by Buddha:

The inexhaustible, extremely heavy negative karma collected for ten million eons
Gets purified in that moment that one
Merely sees a drawing (of Buddha) on this earth.

Buddha said that, therefore, the drawing done on a cloth is very meaningful, because merely from seeing that you can be purified. This also refers to paintings, etc.

It is also mentioned:

However much merit the practitioner of mantra collects
Over ten million eons by having made offerings to the Buddha
You create the same merit as this
By having made the drawing (of Buddha) on cloth on this earth.

You can create the same amount of merit from making offerings for ten million eons to the Buddha by making a thangka or painting of Buddha.

It is also mentioned:

If one draws the holy body on cloth
One receives purification of defilements and negative karma
Quick attainments and infinite benefits

This is explaining how if one uses a thangka or painting of Buddha for meditation, then one will have quick attainments; one will receive so much purification and be able to collect merits.

If one does tantric practice one must have a thangka or drawing of the deity
Make offerings to it, and look at it, and then one will have quick attainments.

However much merit one collects for ten million eons
From having made offerings to the Buddha by the practice of mantra,
By having done a drawing on cloth in this world, one will achieve the same merit
As from having made offerings and praise to as many Buddhas, self conquerors,
bodhisattvas, hearers, listeners (arhats) in the world
As there are sand grains in the Pacific Ocean
(Offering praises not just once, but so many times every day)
Human beings will achieve exactly all those merits
From just merely seeing a drawing done on cloth.

If you put a drawing in front of you, every single mantra will be achieved.

One must make holy bodies drawn on cloth
If you do then you purify negative karma
And achieve quick attainments and infinite benefits.

What I am trying to tell you here is that it is not only for you, but even for the ants. Just seeing the image of Buddha, such as the Maitreya statue, is unbelievably powerful.

I am very happy to hear that you are doing offering practice and took interest, and I wanted to explain some of the benefits of just merely seeing a statue of Buddha, how it is unbelievably beneficial.

With much love and prayers...