In Vajrayana, we tend to admire the yogis who spent their lives in retreat, maybe even in caves in the mountains. And the most admired yogi of all is possibly Milarepa. Going in a single life from a worse situation than we probably consider ourselves to be in to full enlightenment—so, if he could do it, so can we.

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Having made that resolution, we then look at his renunciation and dedication, and even though we may have less baggage (most of us will not have killed anyone, let alone a dozen people) and better conditions (most of us will already have some practice and connections with a teacher or centre) to start with, we find ourselves lacking. Most people we know, including ourselves, do not measure up too well against Milarepa.

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And if we are being honest and consider meeting him during his later years, we would probably have some of his spontaneous songs hurled at us, telling us how we are going about everything the wrong way and have no more hope of realisation than a butter lamp has to self-ignite in the middle of a blizzard.

So we may think, well, maybe I need to gather more conditions to practise like that later. And that "later" can be projected a few years into the future, a few decades, or even a few lifetimes.

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But practising like that is a one-day project. As in, "One day I'm going to do retreat in a cave."

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And of course, if you are diligent in preparing conditions for later, you may reach that "one day" eventually.

A renunciation mind like that of Milarepa is extremely difficult to come by and, as such, extremely rare. But that is not a thing of the 21st century only, either. Even at Milarepa's time, he was not part of the mainstream. He was an exception—rare and special.

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And there are other role models in our lineage, other highly revered ancestors. Milarepa's teacher, Marpa, was a householder. He had a family and, on the surface of it, what we might consider a normal life. Yet he spent many years away from that normal life to study and practise with his teachers. Gampopa was a monk and a scholar—a different kind of total commitment to the Dharma, of dedicating a whole life to practice.

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While somewhat less daunting than Milarepa's feats, those lives' blueprints are not much more realistic for most of us. Especially if we are not young anymore. If we have already settled into a web of worldly commitments and expectations, it becomes exceedingly difficult to do something like that.

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That is not to say we should not aspire to a practice like theirs. On the contrary. We just need to be careful not to confuse aspiration with planning, and then let ourselves be discouraged because we cannot ever seem to get any closer to the desired goal.

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Making wishes and aspirations is one of the most powerful practices we can do. And we can do them anytime and anywhere. For most of us, they are realistically the only thing we can do. Even though we want to help sentient beings, and we want to do it now, as long as we are deluded ourselves, we will not know up from down when it comes to helping. So we make aspirations. For Amitabha, after twelve billion times of making wishes, the Western Pure Land manifested. At the beginning, he also thought he could not do anything to help.

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That is not to say that if you really have conditions to practise like Marpa, Milarepa, or Gampopa, you should not. On the contrary. If you can, please do. But if you cannot, do not allow that to become an obstacle to doing right now what you can do.

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Aspirations like that are a bit like a piggy bank. You accumulate them over a long time, not really seeing any results, until, at some point, the piggy bank gets opened up and you find that you have accumulated a fortune. As we have seen in the example of Amitabha, this can take some time, though. And since we are still impatient to help, we look for something to accelerate the process. And if possible, something that we can do in our life as it is right now, and not some future monastic or cave-yogi existence.

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The good news is: it is very possible. And it is not of the kind where we have to cut off arms and legs to feed hungry cats, either. Or pluck out our eyeballs at the request of blind beggars.

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The essence of the practice is to familiarise ourselves with our innate enlightened nature. In Tibetan, the word for meditation, gom, means just that: to get used to, to familiarise. To that end, we practise with enlightened aspects, yidams—generating ourselves as yidams as well as merging with those we meditate on in front of us—again and again, until we gain what we call realisation.

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In formal practice, that familiarisation is wrapped in a lot of beneficial recitation and prayers, which are meant as a support. Those practices can take a lot of time and can become tedious to the point where we are just going through the motions of reciting the texts by rote without much mental engagement or inspiration. This is often aggravated by even calling the practices puja, which means ritual, instead of sadhana, which means recitation and meditation practice.

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And it can also be made worse by our tendency to collect empowerments and then get bogged down by having to fulfil dozens of practice commitments every day. "I hardly have time for my main practice because I need about two hours every day to go through all the commitments I have received." This is something of a problem for many students. And this can grow into an obstacle just as big as the notion that only practice like Marpa, Milarepa, or Gampopa is really worthwhile, and that we cannot really do anything until we have those kinds of conditions.

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But in most cases, those commitments can be fulfilled in the context of your main practice without spending hours on them every day. All yidams, gurus, and protectors are of the same nature—enlightenment. When you do your main practice, during the generation phase, briefly generate (remember) all the yidams you have a commitment to do a certain minimum practice for, and dissolve them into the main yidam's front visualisation. And during the dissolution, also remember that as you become one with the main yidam, you are also one with all the others. That should cover your obligations for most casually acquired commitments from public empowerments. (If you have more elaborate commitments, of course better check with the teacher who gave you the transmissions.)

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And even if you have not found your main practice yet, you can rotate through the yidams you have received in this way, spending significantly more time and focus on one of them at a time. That will make it much easier to develop or recognize a connection with one or a few of them, which is the best way to find out which ones are "your" yidams.

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But what if you cannot even do that much? How can you still practise in this life instead of postponing it to "one day"?

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The yidam we are practising, and more specifically, our own inseparability with that enlightened aspect, is the essence of the practice. So if we recite a sadhana by rote without mental engagement, the effect is going to be very limited, no matter how many times we do it. But if we can remember we are the yidam throughout the day, remember that the appearances around us are the yidam, we are truly practising even if we never chant a word of the sadhana.

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> Waking up, generate yourself as your yidam and remind yourself of your aspirations.
>Throughout your day, remember that self-generation and aspirations as often as you can.
> When you walk, you put another one over your right shoulder, and you are circumambulating.
> When you eat, you are automatically offering food to your yidam. (You can put another generation of your yidam in your throat to make it clearer if you like.)
> You can constantly offer all sense-impressions in the same way.

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Whenever you notice anything in your mind, speech, or actions that you consider "negative," you can immediately confess and let go, as the recipient of the confession is always there.

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When you lie down at night, you dedicate the merit accumulated during the day and dissolve the generation. As you fall asleep, you rest in awareness either of the root syllable or of emptiness, and with that, even your dreams and sleep can become practice.

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And the next morning, you wake up with the mantra and immediately begin again.

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This method (and these are only a few examples of what is possible) takes only a few minutes every day and yet, if you can make it a long-term habit, it is infinitely more effective than hours and hours of recitation without mental engagement.

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A final element to cultivate, one that also does not take any time at all but can be applied throughout your day, is another part of what is called the seven-branch offering. We have already seen offering (the second branch), regretting (the third), and dedication (the seventh) in the list above, and we can add the fourth in as well: rejoicing.

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I am emphasizing it because it is something that does not even need the self-generation in order to work. And it is an extremely powerful catalyst of karmic transformation.

Most of us have a very strong habit of reacting to positive actions or experiences of others with anything from scorn to envy. We see someone do something positive, and we think, "What a show-off!" We see someone receiving a reward, and we think, "They probably cheated to get that," or "If they get that, I should get it ten times over."

Those mental habits keep us stuck in a trap of negative experience and severely limit our development. If we can turn them around into rejoicing, we not only break out of that habitual trap, we also receive the same merit of those we are rejoicing in.

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And if we ever want to practise like Marpa, Milarepa, or Gampopa, we cannot afford to ignore even the tiniest scrap of merit.

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So, if you can only put some of this into practice, you may want to choose aspiration and rejoicing. (Do not forget dedicating, though, to make sure the piggy bank fills up and stays filled.)

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May all your aspirations be fulfilled and may your accumulations become limitless!