Lama Zopa Rinpoche

window], the negative karma of all those small insects is purified. Of course, that doesn’t
mean you should drive over rabbits or dogs or children! As a policeman drags you to prison
you can’t really tell him you did it because you have a mantra in the car! I suspect that would
be inadmissible in a court case.
One of the most important things to do when a person or animal dies is to put the
Namgyälma mantra on the body for little while. Then, definitely, a hundred percent, their
consciousness will not go to the lower realms but will have a higher rebirth instead. This is
very important to keep in mind when a person or animal dies. Even when you yourself die,
you can ask your friends to do that. That is very beneficial.
At the Aptos house in America 25 we have a big, well-decorated board with different size
mantras carved on it that we place in the ocean. We put a tent on the beach and have lunch
or tea while the board is in the water. In that way we bless the Pacific Ocean. When we place
it in the ocean and recite OM MANI PADME HUM it not only blesses the water but it
purifies all the numberless sentient beings living in the water, the ones as large as a
mountain, like the whales, and the ones so small that you can only see them through a
microscope. Likewise, all the people playing in the waves, riding surfboards, get the same
benefit. All their negative karma and defilements are purified and they get a higher rebirth
and the possibility to meet the Dharma again and, because of that, to develop their minds
and achieve enlightenment. Before we only did this occasionally but now we try to do it at
least once a week.
We also liberate fish that are caught for supermarkets. The people at the Aptos house and in
Washington 26 do that quite often. They have probably liberated over a thousand already. We
also buy worms that are sold live as bait for fishermen and liberate them. There are several
hundred in one container, waiting for a hook to be pushed through them and to be then
thrown in the water to catch the fish. So in Washington and Aptos every two weeks we buy
several containers and take them around the stupa. We don’t have a large stupa in
Washington yet so we take them around the small stupas and relics and statues. There are
many pictures of deities, statues and tsa-tsas. In Aptos we have a stupa behind the house, so
we take them around that and recite mantras, as I have advised.
After I saw two ants’ nests near the house in Washington we made charity to them using a
text I have, and we also did sur practice for them every night. I recited the Namgyälma and
many other mantras and sprinkled a little bit of almost-dry tsampa powder over the ants’
nests and they came to eat it. In that way we made charity to the ants.
We found only two nests while I was there, but after I left, Venerable Tharchin from
Nalanda Monastery in France found seven besides mine. He was studying philosophy but
had a lot of lung, wind disease, so he went to Washington to make many water, light and
flower offerings. I told him to recite mantras and bless the tsampa and put it on the nests.
He does this every week. Even in such small ways we try to help sentient beings as much as
we can. This is not only to fill their stomachs but also to purify their minds. That is the
whole point, and it gives them the possibility of meeting the Dharma in future lives.
It’s very interesting about ants. I have found that if we put honey or sugar down especially
for them, which they would normally eat, if the karma is not there, they don’t come.
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