Strengthening Your Practice

Welcome everybody to the Medicine Buddha practice.
Before we do the actual sadhana, I’d like to just say a few words about how to increase our practice.
This is a teaching I received from His Holiness, the 42nd Sakya Trizen, and he calls it multiples. I would call it skillful means; skillful ways of practicing which increase the power of your practice.
As we know, we have our precious human rebirth, which requires 18 qualifications in order to call it a precious human rebirth, and we want to take advantage of that.
We have no guarantee that we will receive a precious human rebirth in the future unless we create the causes and the conditions for it.
We also know that death is certain and the time of death is uncertain. All of that means we want to not only practice now, but we want to practice skillfully. There are certain skillful means that we can use which increase the power and the result of our practice.
The first one is called constancy.
In other words, to practice continuously in an uninterrupted fashion. That means to do the practice every day. If you do a practice every day, it’s going to have much more power than if you just do it once in a while.
For example, if you receive an empowerment, it’s a really good idea if you can do the sadhana for that empowerment from that day on, every single day. For example, after an empowerment, I have done that practice every single day since 1986 without a break. So, how long is that? That’s like 40 years. To do a practice with that kind of continuity really brings a result that’s greater.
The second skillful means is called resolve. That means to do your practice with a very strong motivation, a very strong intention. We know that motivation determines the result of the practice, but we want to set our motivation in a very deliberate sort of way. Not in a casual way, but with a very strong intention that increases the power of the practice and the power of the result.
The third one is called powerful antidotes. What we want to do is we want to identify our strongest obscurations and apply the antidote to destroy the affliction. For example, if our affliction is anger, we want to apply patience. If it’s stinginess, we want to apply generosity and so on. We want to really look at ourselves and see where we need to do the powerful antidote application for whatever afflictions we are entertaining.
The fourth skillful means is called the object of qualities. Whatever object we have for our practice, there are certain objects which contain more powerful results. For example, if the object is the Buddha or the Three Jewels, if we make offerings to them, that contains a certain kind of extra power, so that’s called the field of qualities.
The field of kindness is our parents. Because we have a strong karmic connection with our parents, any action that we do towards our parents, whether it is positive or negative, contains a stronger karmic result. So, that is called the field of kindness.
And then, there is what’s called the field of suffering. That field refers to sentient beings who are sick or who are needy. For example if we do our Medicine Buddha practice for somebody who is sick, that contains more power, a more powerful result.
Then the fifth one is called the practice at holy places. If we are at holy places, practices done there carry more power. One time when I was in Kathmandu, I went to a person’s apartment and he had a window which faced the great stupa. He set up his prostration board so that he was doing prostrations towards the direction of the stupa itself. That kind of action carries more power, more result.
Another skillful means is to do a practice on special days or special times. For example, now we’re in the month of Saga Dawa, which is a holy month. Practices done during this month have meritorious results which are multiplied many times. Or there are special days. That’s why we do the Medicine Buddha practice on the Medicine Buddha Day, so it has an extra result for us.
And then another is one which His Holiness called complete action. In the beginning, the preliminary action is to have the correct motivation. In our case, it would be to attain enlightenment for the sake of all beings.
The main part of the practice, whatever you are doing, you want to do that with full concentration as much as you can, to be really focused. Don’t allow any distractions to come in. Do your practice, your main practice, with concentration.
The final conclusion, of course, is to dedicate the merit, which means to share all the positive energy, the merit that we’ve created by our practice for the benefit of all sentient beings. In other words, we give it away. By giving it away, you don’t lose it, you increase it.
Skillful means is to not do fragmented practices. A complete practice, which I just described, has more power than a fragmented practice that only has some of those parts. Also, if you do what His Holiness calls accidental good deeds, if you accidentally do something good, that’s fine, but it’s not as powerful as if you do a complete action.
And then finally, we want to seal all of this. All of our practices should be sealed with joy. Joyful enthusiasm, as we know, is one of the perfections. That joy empowers the practice in a way that it wouldn’t be empowered if we were just doing it out of obligation or rote or without really thinking about it too much. Joyful enthusiasm, is a very powerful boost to our practice.
These are some of what His Holiness calls multiples or skillful means that we can use to maximize the result of our practice during our precious human rebirth.