Lama Zopa Rinpoche teaching at Amitabha Buddhist Centre in front of the new Chenrezig statue, Singapore, March 2016. Photo by Ven. Lobsang Sherab.

A student wrote Lama Zopa Rinpoche: “I have suffered from a torturing mental illness for eight years. I have seen doctors and even counselors, but nothing helps. I’m completely unable to control my mind to think any positive thing.”

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

I am very sorry you have this. I am also very sorry for the delay in replying to your email.

If you really want to listen to me, then do this attached practice every day. It shows the meaning of life and how to transform life – like iron into gold, like kaka into gold, like poison into medicine. This is the best medicine for the mind and through that, cures all the physical problems.

I am also doing some practices specifically for you.

Have you met Tibetan Buddhism? Are you familiar with it? I checked and you should recite the Compassion Buddha (Chenrezig) mantra – OM MANI PADME HUM. Here are some links that have some of the benefits of OM MANI PADME HUM. You can read the benefits.

Teachings from the Mani Retreat

Chenrezig Mantra (Audio and Unedited Transcripts) [particularly, the chapters “Benefits of OM MANI PADME HUM” and “Benefits of OM MANI PADME HUM (con’t)”]

I will be producing one book in English and Tibetan that has different prayers to recite every day to Chenrezig when you recite the mantra. So you can get that when it is finished, but in the meantime, do this.

Reciting OM MANI PADME HUM purifies negative karma – all the obscurations – collected from beginningless rebirths. It is unbelievable. Even by reciting the mantra one time, a fully ordained monk who has broken the four root vows (to not have sexual intercourse, steal what belongs to others, kill a human being, or tell lies that he has realizations while he doesn’t have them) is purified. Just reciting OM MANI PADME HUM purifies the five heavy negative karmas (it saves from being born in the lower realms) of even having killed this life’s parents; caused blood to flow from a buddha; killed an arhat, who is free from samsara, who has removed the causes of samsara – delusion and karma; and caused disunity among the Sangha. If somebody commits all of these five heavy negative karmas without break (or even just one of these), the ripening of all other negative karmas get delayed and then immediately as soon as death happens, that person is reborn in the eighth hot hell of unbearable suffering, where one’s body is in the shape of a rock, but on fire, and the only way you can tell it is a sentient being is by hearing the screaming. This heaviest suffering lasts one intermediate eon, but even if this world becomes empty, there are numberless other universes and so there are other universes’ hell realms where you get reborn into until the karma is finished. This gets purified not only by reciting this mantra, but even just by seeing the syllables OM MANI PADME HUM – it is so powerful – wow, wow, wow!

The 10 non-virtuous actions also easily get purified by reciting this mantra. That means we are unbelievably, most unbelievably fortunate to be able to recite OM MANI PADME HUM – wow, wow, wow, wow, wow!

Mani stone at Rinpoche’s house at Buddha Amitabha Pure Land, Washington, US. Photo by Chris Majors.

Even to recite it without bodhichitta, which is the purest motivation, the ultimate good heart, even without that, if you recite this mantra, you collect unbelievable good luck, more than the drops of water in the Pacific Ocean. (Good luck is something that comes from the mind. There is no good luck from the outside, existing without the mind, even though this is what normal people believe – that good luck is something that really exists by itself, does not comes from the mind, is not created by the mind.) You collect merit, the cause of happiness and success, and not just the happiness of this life, but the happiness of future lives: good rebirth as a deva or human, or rebirth in a pure land. It unbelievable, unbelievable! Also, ultimate happiness – total liberation from oceans of samsaric suffering and their causes – wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow!

This means forever, not just for a few days, a few years and then come back to suffering realms, samsara – it’s not like that. Here you can achieve full enlightenment; it plants the seed of enlightenment.

Enlightenment is a word commonly used by Buddhist people and non-Buddhists as well. It means “buddhahood,” or in Tibetan, the word is sangye – the total cessation of all the gross and subtle obscurations and the completion of all the realizations. That means there is no suffering at all; so that’s the first thing you achieve.

You collect good luck and merit, more than the number of sand grains in the Pacific Ocean, more than the numbers of drops of water when there is rain.

If you recite OM MANI PADME HUM even one time with the purest motivation, the ultimate good heart, bodhichitta, the precious thought of enlightenment, the thought to free the numberless sentient beings from the oceans of samsaric suffering and to bring them to full enlightenment – wishing to achieve buddhahood, the cessation of all the obscurations and the completion of all the realizations – oneself, you collect merit more than the sky. To recite one mala of OM MANI PADME HUM – wow, wow, wow! With each mantra you collect more merit than the sky! Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow! You should feel so unbelievably lucky with the opportunity you have.

I want to send you a picture of Chenrezig so you can look at it when you recite. When you get the photo, if it has no brocade, you can put two-colored yellow cloth around the borders and then frame it. The two-colored cloth is like offering dress to the holy object. Also, it looks very beautiful.

Thank you very much, thank you so much. I think you should know that what you are experiencing is due to your past karma, having harmed others, and things like that. That is the main cause. There is an outside spirit influencing your mind, making you think this and that harms you. You don’t have to listen. Only listen to worthwhile things that don’t harm you and aren’t harmful to others. Only listen if what you are hearing is for the peace and happiness of others. So you have to check whether it’s worthwhile or not. If it is harmful, then don’t do it, don’t trust it. You have to check. Otherwise, if you do whatever your mind thinks, then it can be very dangerous and you could commit suicide. That is dangerous. Many people’s minds are influenced by spirits, due to past negative karma done with delusion – ignorance, anger, attachment and so forth.

The very wrong concept, ignorance – holding the “I” as truly existent, existing from its own side, or existing by nature, or, in ordinary language, as “real,” as it appears – is a total hallucination. It is not that there is no “I” there. There is “I,” but it is on the merely labeled valid aggregates, which are the basis to be labeled “I.” “I” is what is merely labeled relating to the aggregates by the valid mind. That’s all; that’s reality. But for us ordinary people who haven’t developed the mind in shunyata, emptiness, it looks like this “I” is what really exists. It exists in mere name; it’s so subtle, like it doesn’t exist for our mind. The “I,” which is a total hallucination, like a dream, it never exists anywhere, even for one second since beginningless time as it has never been real. When this hallucination appears, we believe it really exists and that’s why hell beings, hungry ghost, animals, human beings, asuras, suras suffer in the six realms of samsara.

Thank you very much. I’m happy you sent what you think, the difficulties you have, as it gives me a chance to be able to talk to you.

Thank you very much.

With much love and prayers,

Lama Zopa

Scribed by Ven. Holly Ansett, India, January 2016. Edited for inclusion on FPMT.org.

Learn more about Lama Zopa Rinpoche, spiritual director of the Foundation for the Preservation of Mahayana Tradition (FPMT), and Rinpoche’s vision for a better world. Visit FPMT.org and sign up to receive news and updates.