According to my divinations, it comes out best for you to work for whichever guru you have a Dharma connection with. Hard work is best. You have to purify not only this negative karma, but also many other negative karmas. If you know how to serve your guru correctly, this is a unique way to purify negative karma and collect a lot of merit, and it is also the quickest way to achieve realizations, all the way up to enlightenment. This is how Milarepa and the lineage lamas achieved their realizations. Serving the guru contains all the other preliminary practices. This means that the other preliminary practices are not separate but included in service. This is why it is unique.

Please understand that this advice is not only for this life’s negative karma, but for numberless lifetimes in the past. We must purify all of our negative karma in order to have realizations and to reach enlightenment. But it doesn’t stop there. Our main aim in performing purification practice is to enlighten all sentient beings. This means we are doing purification practices to help others reach enlightenment.

You should study explanations of the benefits of making holy objects. There are so many benefits. Making tsa-tsas is also one of the nine preliminary practices. The holy beings who benefited so many people in Tibet, Lama Atisha and Lama Tsongkhapa, as well as the Kadampa geshes, made tsa-tsas between retreat sessions. They became enlightened not so much from retreat, but from daily practice.

This will not be a burden for you. You will be excited and enjoy doing it very much. The more you see the benefits, the more you will learn. Thank you very much for doing this. I appreciate your change of attitude and your determination to purify your karma. I’m sure all the buddhas and bodhisattvas are happy.