Apr 2, 2012

(By Tsem Rinpoche)

Dear students and friends,

This is another transcript done on one of the Dharma talk I gave several years ago. In this talk, I explain the benefits of doing purification practice through Vajrasattva’s practice and prostrations. I am sure this talk will benefit those who wish to start this practice.

Vajrasattva and prostration practice is very important and when done well, it is effective in purifying our negative karma. If our negative karma is purified, then many of our wishes will arise spontaneously with much less obstacles. We will feel harmony, peace and happiness within our minds. This is one of the integral practices prior to engaging in higher practices of Tantra. Please study these teachings well and I know it will benefit so much. Good luck and good practice to you.

Watch the video or read the transcript and learn how this practice can help you purify negative karma, and to collect a vast amount of merit to help us in our spiritual practice.

Tsem Rinpoche

Vajrasattva and Prostrations

Transcript: Vajrasattva and Prostrations by Tsem Rinpoche

Notes: Begins with prayers, not transcribed.

[Part 1]

We the sentient beings are without a guide and are endlessly coming around, going down into the lowest, how do you say it, existence of samsara, again coming to highest existence of samsara, and again going down to the lowest, highest, then in between, going back and forth ceaselessly without end from time beginningless.

Beings, they are without a guide, without a protector, and they have not been seen by the precious Buddhas of the past. Feeling the great motivation of pity and compassion for them, one develops the motivation to become a fully enlightened Being. In order to become a fully enlightened Being, I will listen to the holy Dharma. For this reason I have come to this discourse. For this reason I will listen to the Dharma. Therefore the speaker and the listener have developed the motivation that “I may become a holy enlightened Being, a fully enlightened Being, a fully enlightened conqueror like Shakyamuni, in order to free all sentient beings from the six realms of samsara.”

Today I have asked my friends to go downtown actually to get some things Xerox’d for all of you. It is very hard to describe or talk about a teaching when you have no reference. So I have asked them to Xerox some texts for all of you. If you didn’t…get it then we’ll use this text for learning the Vajrasattva. Also along with that we are going to do prostrations and we have Xerox’d another text we are going to follow so you’ll have a guide.

Also I have Xerox’d a short article by His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama:

Broadly speaking there are two types of happiness and suffering, mental and physical, and of the two, I believe that mental suffering and happiness are the more acute. Hence, I stress the training of the mind to endure suffering and attain a more lasting state of happiness. However, I also have a more general and concrete idea of happiness: a combination of inner peace, economic development, and, above all, world peace. To achieve such goals I feel it is necessary to develop a sense of universal responsibility, a deep concern for all irrespective of creed, colour, sex, or nationality.

So it’s just a few pages of this very special article on the value of religious practice in the modern day written by His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama himself. So I will present each of you with this…the one by his Holiness, and the prostration one and then the Vajrasattva one.

I want to teach you all a very simple and easy method of calming down the mind temporarily by using the wind and energy channels in your body that are prevalent and existent in all of us. It is very easy to explain because in the Chinese tradition we believe in the chi energy. And the chi energy can only run through the nerve meridian of our body. Buddha described 72,000 psychic channels. 72,000 psychic channels that run through our body and if we condense that it comes down to three main psychic channels. So actually there are three main psychic channels in our body that run through every single being.

And if the psychic channels become blocked – the winds going back and forth – if they become blocked, we can have mental disturbances, we can have feelings of anxiety, we have a feeling of not being able to make up our mind, or a lot of anger or a lot of…kasa…desire. These will come. Actually the real cause of desire, and anger, and impatience and all that is the delusions. But the delusions needs an extension or need a vehicle to work through. The vehicle that they work through is our body, naturally.

So by purifying our karma by Vajrasattva’s practice, simultaneously we can do an easy meditation on the winds. If we do this together it will calm our minds down, it will take our stress away. Also it’ll bring attention and it’ll focus your attention because it will temporarily bring the wind energy into balance. It is very, very powerful.

There is two ways of doing it. There’s the ordinary general way for the general public and then there’s a tantric way. The tantric way can only be visualized by someone who has one of the highest yoga tantric initiations…I’m sorry, any of the four classes of tantra: Charya, Yoga, Kriya, and Maha Anuttara yoga tantra. Four types of initiations: Kriya, Charya, Yoga, Maha Anuttara yoga tantras. So the Maha anutara yoga tantras are the highest of the tantras. In any case, any of the tantric initiations that you have will qualify you to do it on a tantric basis. But in general, for general people, we can do it in a general way.

Which is you visualize from the point here, from your crown, down, all the way down running along your spine. So if you have spine here – of course you have spine here – the spine here, running along is a psychic channel going straight down. Slightly like a straw, very straight, very fine, and at the same time very strong. And you visualize it well, going from here down. And as I said it goes past your navel and it goes all the way down. You don’t have to visualize it below your navel. At this point it is not necessary. At the same time don’t think, “Oh there is a hole there and it is going out” or anything, it’s not necessary. Your butt blocks it from going out, so don’t worry about it. It’s not just hanging out there.

Therefore, along with this, you have two more meridians…[Tibetan between 10:36 to 10:40] Then you have two subsidiary or two other psychic points…two psychic veins or nerves that go through. They start from the right nostril…kasa…left nostril and right nostril. The opening is the left and right nostrils, and then it goes around like this, and it goes up, and it goes around your crown and it comes down on the left and right side of the central channel, going down like that. Then when it gets down to the central channel all the way down to below your navel, it connects with the central channel.

Then you are having three channels. This channel is the main psychic channel, then you have the two left and right psychic channels. These are the three main channels. We say rtsa dbu ma, rtsa rkyang ma, rtsa ro ma. The three main channels which is very important to meditate on and it’s very important to use. And you can use your body’s psychic winds and energies to calm your mind down, to bring it down to peace and also to bring it down to – how to say – to temporarily settle it down…settle it down, like water that has been churned back and forth, when it settles down, when the wind settles down.

So whether you feel some kind of unhappiness or anxiety, or you feel something uncomfortable or anything like that, it is because of the winds going out of balance.

[Rinpoche addresses attendants until 13:11] Okay now we have the main channel. Now the main channel is the red one, as I have written. This is the main psychic channel which starts here at the crown chakra, going all the way down to the throat chakra, the heart chakra, the navel chakra, and it goes all the way down to the solar plexus. The one that goes down to the solar plexus you do not need to visualize at this time. Actually it goes all the way down and curves down to your secret organ, to the opening of your secret organ and it is sealed so nothing can go out, nothing can go in. So it starts here at the crown chakra, it goes all the way down, straight down to one’s secret organ, at the opening of the secret organ there. And it’s sealed and closed off there, so you don’t have to worry about the lower parts below that. At this point there’s not a necessity to visualize that.

Then the right channel starts at the right nose, the opening, and it goes up and follows along the curve of your head, and it umbrellas down like that, so it’s like an umbrella curving back, but it follows the main one side by side. It follows it down here to the point just below your navel where it joins with the central channel. Then of course your right nostril, same. It starts off at your right nostril and it goes down. So the central channel is like that, slightly thicker, slightly bigger. And the left and right channels are slightly thinner, but they run parallel to each other. There is the central, right, and left going straight down. Now the right and left ones have originated at your nostril openings, going along here and then going down to your crown and then bending gracefully. It doesn’t bend like a straw or anything but it bends gracefully like a neon light, joining the central channel going all the way down. Going all the way down so it reaches just below your navel – just below your navel area, before your solar plexus – the right and left join with the central channel like so. But it runs down parallel with it until it gets to the end where it joins. Is that understood? So that’s very important. And then…[Rinpoche addresses attendant: thank you]

And the size of the central channel is about the diameter of your little pinky, one’s own pinky. So if you are a little bit skinny, your pinky’s going to be skinny so you visualize that. If you are a little heavy, well you know the size of your pinky, so same size, it will balance out. If you are lucky like me, not fat or thin, then it’s perfect. We all have our delusions. My delusion is that I am thin. Today someone has again sabotaged my diet. Someone has sent up a blueberry cheesecake. And I did not pray for that person, I don’t know who it was.

Now, you should do…we will do the ordinary breathing. First, you close off your right nostril with your ring finger, alright? You close off your right nostril with your ring finger and you breathe in through your left nostril. You breathe in like the size of barley grain. A grain is thin on either side and thick in the center. So the breathing should be like that, soft in the beginning and towards the middle of the breathing it gets a little thicker, stronger and then tapers off again. So the breathing should be…oh, we’re not going there. Breathe in and then you visualize through your left nostril – the first psychic channel – that the air has gone in and is going up and circulating down, all the way down. It is circulating down all the way and it goes in…it passes the central channel and it comes up the left channel, goes down, and it comes up the right channel and expels through your right nostril. Then you do this three times. In the left, it goes down, connects and it pushes out against the right. Three times you should do that. And the way you breathe is not heavy or soft. It’s soft, it gets a little stronger, and then it immediately gets soft again. So it will be [demonstrating the breathing]…out – long, deep, soft regulated breaths.

Breathe completely in and breathe completely out, expelling…expelling all the delusions and negative energy completely out.

Then you cover your left nostril and you do your right. And you breathe in through your right – same – and you expel through your left. First it’s left and now it’s right, the second round. [demonstrating the breathing]

Now through both nostrils, you breathe in and then you breathe out. Then…same like a barley…a barley. So a barley seed is something like this, right? Like a rice? So this is thin, this is thin, this is thicker – the breathing is the same as like that, alright? Concentrate fully on the passage of the air going through your channels. Concentrate well, don’t look here and don’t look there, concentrate very well, letting your mind become one with the movement of the air energy. Don’t think about your neighbor, don’t think about anything else. Do not regard your channels as physical, made of flesh and blood. Remember you are visualizing yourself in the pure aspect – oh, not that one – you visualize your channels in the nature of light and in the nature of rainbows. Very strong. It’s present, it’s there, but it is not like it’s hard or made of flesh and blood. That’s very important.

Then in a normal situation, then you breathe through both. You breathe through both and then the air goes down, comes back up and you expel it three times [demonstrating the breathing]. It should not be fast, I’m just doing it fast to finish it because we’re on tape. So you go up, in and you bring it out. You bring it in and you bring it out; you bring it in and then you bring it out. Three times. So first, left go in, come out of the right. Left go in, come out of the right, left go in come out of the right. Again, right go in, come out of the left, right go in, come out of the left, three times. And then go in both simultaneously and come out simultaneously.

If you do this three times you will feel an immediate change. Do some of you feel something? A little calmer, a little warmer? I know when I do this breath meditation…uhh this breath exercise, just right now I feel already calmer. In fact if your hands are shaking or you’re a little bit nervous or have stage fright, immediately you will see your hands calm down. Immediately. So you can do this any time, at work, before you med…preferably what it’s used for is to do it before meditation, it’s to calm your mind down, to expel all the thoughts of worldly life and problems and all that. Temporarily to settle it down so you can focus on your meditation.

Now if you are doing a tantric practice, then you can visualize yourself as any deity. If you have the Maha Anuttara yoga tantra deities or any of them, you can visualize yourself as Avalokiteshvara, you can visualize yourself Manjushri, Vajrayogini, Heruka – it doesn’t matter – with the same psychic channels. Then when you visualize yourself as a deity and you do this practice you will be able to generate great bliss. Great, great, great bliss. If you hold it and you do it well, you will feel from your navel area a great bliss originating and pervading your body. The more you do it, the more you exercise it, the more you do it, you will be able to generate great bliss, undefiled bliss, within your body. It’s one of the best ways.

Then, “This exercise is very helpful for generating blissful energy within your nervous system. The experience of bliss is an integral part of the method of tantric yoga, and thus, this exercise is also helpful for your tantric practice. It is this blissful energy, which is in fact your mind – and it is your mind, not somebody else’s – that transforms into the lotus seat and the syllable HUM when you go on to practice the rest of the sadhana.” Therefore make sure that by the end of your init…this is called the vase meditation – a vase, V A S E – you should feel calm and blissful.

After your vase meditation you should feel calm, you should feel very blissful. What happens is this: for the ordinary one I have just described to you, it is very simple and very easy. You will calm down immediately. Then the next one is when you do it in a tantric way. When the air pushes out in the ordinary way – you should visualize tantric and ordinary, both – when you push the air out you should visualize that all your energy, all your negative energy, your negative impressions, your desires, your attachments are pushed out beyond. When you blow it out, it gets completely pushed out. Lama Yeshe says that it is pushed out out of the gravitational field. But I’ll have to visualize a rocket going out, so I just visualize it going out, and it’s out of my body, it’s completely free. You have to visualize that quite well. Then if you’re visualizing yourself as a deity what happens is, when the air on the third try…when you bring both airs down the third time, the third round, when you bring both airs down, it goes down completely through the right and left nostrils. And it joins at the bottom at the point where the three psychic channels join. You tighten your inner pelvic muscles…“and draw energy up from the lower chakra through the central channel to the navel chakra, where it meets and mixes with the air energy from above. Hold your breath and concentrate on the blissful energy you can feel at this point. This is important. As soon as you no longer feel comfortable, exhale naturally through your nostrils, but visualize that instead of going out, the air you have been holding goes up and dissolves inside the central channel. Do this three times.”

So what happens is you bring the air down, it goes up, around, goes around like this and it goes down your left and right channels, and it goes down all the way to the point where it meets with the central channel. And then the airs down there, immediately you squeeze your pelvic muscles – the whole pelvic muscles, you squeeze – and then you bring the air up to the point – you visualize the air – you bring it up to the point of your navel. And then you hold it there as long as you can hold your breath. And you experience great bliss. You feel it, you feel great, excellent bliss, the bliss pervading your body completely. It is from these three psychic channels that from all your negative energy can be expelled. If you do this, then you do this once, you do it twice, you do it three times, one days, two days, pretty soon, the bliss that we feel…kasa…something like during intercourse, at the climax, is the kind of bliss that we will feel with this meditation. But it is undefiled, it is not dependent on a consort, it is not dependent on a partner, it is not dependent on attachment, it is not dependent on actual act. It is dependent on the actual meditation.

When you do that and you feel great bliss, it is not the type of defiled bliss you have during that act. It’s quite different. The only way we can describe it in this world is something like that, not at all like it. When you feel that, all other stresses, all other bad feelings, all other negative energy, all other kind of unhappy energy immediately gets expelled. Your whole body pervades in great bliss, great happiness. So if someone comes up and says something negative or does something to you, it doesn’t bother you at all. It doesn’t bother you not because you are in meditation, it doesn’t bother you not because you don’t perceive it, it doesn’t bother you not because you are totally unaware. It doesn’t bother you because your winds, your negative winds have been expelled. It’s been expelled, you perceive, you see, you are detached, you’re unattached, temporarily you free yourself from that attachment of I, the ego. So for that time, in meditation, you feel great bliss. If you do this every day, spontaneously you can gain this great bliss within you.

So you visualize [the air] both going into both nostrils, going down and then immediately it joins at the bottom. And then you tighten your pelvic muscles and you bring the air up to the point of your navel chakra. When it comes down to your navel chakra, here immediately you hold it and you generate bliss. You feel great bliss through your whole body. Immediately, pervading. And at this time you visualize yourself as the form of the deity without the divine pride. So if you visualize yourself as Vajrayogini, you visualize yourself without the divine pride because Vajrayogini does not have delusions. This meditation is to dispel delusions. She cannot have delusions. But physically you can visualize yourself as Vajrayogini without the divine pride.

Some of us may look like Buddha, doesn’t mean we are Buddha. Some of us may look like the Dalai Lama but we are not the Dalai Lama. So like that, we visualize ourselves in the form of the deity and we hold the winds there as long as we can hold our breath and generate that bliss.

And then we exhale. When you exhale you shouldn’t think that the wind has left your breath, your nostrils. You should think that the wind has dissolved into your central channel and the great bliss is pervading, completely pervading. At first it’s visualization. At first it’s imagination and visualization. With time, it becomes a reality. You will be able to feel the great bliss. Even if the great bliss is just for a few seconds, you will be able to feel it. You feel like there are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and thousands and millions of ants crawling all over your body, but not the type that you feel itchy and you to want to get out Raid or something. But the kind of happiness that is just tickling almost – not exactly tickling, it’s indescribable – very, very blissful and very happy feeling. Therefore all the other kinds of negative thoughts and anxieties and stress is completely out. And all the channels become completely clear. So that is for a person who has Anuttara yoga tantra. You can do it by Vajrayogini, you can do it by Heruka, you can visualize Vajrabhairava, Yamantaka. You can do it by Je Rinpoche’s practice – Je Rinpoche with initiation, of course – or Avalokitesvara. But for the normal person like us, if we just do the first breathing it will be good enough because whether you believe the psychic channels are there or not, they are there. So even by breathing and doing it, it will have some small effect, but actually visualizing and doing it will very powerful. Very, very powerful.

So hold your right nostril and breathe in, deeply, slowly and then thicker. And release from your right, completely out. Breathe in…out. Breathe in, left. Seal your right nostril completely so that only you are breathing through your left. Then seal your left completely and breathe throughout your right. Then keep your left sealed and breathe in through your right. Seal your right, breathe out through your left. Then breathe in both nostrils and breathe out.

I feel quite calm already, actually. If you are doing it in the tantric method, visualize yourself as the deity without the divine pride of being the actual deity. Hold the breath at the bottom of your solar plexus and bring it up to your navel and then squeeze the pelvic area up and hold the breath at your navel chakra…until you run out of breath. And release the breath but don’t see the air go out but see it dissolving into your central channel. And make sure you focus on the three psychic channels in your body and the air going in, and going up and coming down. Visualize the air. Don’t look out, don’t look left and right and don’t worry about it. Don’t concentrate on anything else.

Visualize and start activating and using that central channel. If you use the central channel and the left and right channels, you will be able to activate the wind energy that dispels desire, and ignorance and hatred, and temporarily calm your mind down. The more advanced you can become in this meditation, the calmer you will become and then even if you become very excited, the minute you do this meditation you will be able to calm down immediately through practice.

And then afterwards you should visualize yourself and you should think that you are very calm, you have settled down, which actually will happen. And then in the tantric form, you visualize yourself as having great bliss and you generate that great bliss constantly.

If you do this meditation well it will benefit your body, it will benefit your chi energy, it will benefit your whole body. It is specifically used before meditation, before prayers, to expel all the thoughts of the day, expel all the negative energy and expel all the things that we usually think about. Then you can use this during the day, of course. It’s a little bit of cheating but it is okay, you can use this during the day but especially prior to your meditation. It is called the nine breath-round vase meditation. The nine rounds of your breath: three left, three right and three both. That will be very, very excellent. “Visualizing the energy dissolving within the central channel when you exhale is an essential aspect of the practice of kundalini yoga. Therefore, it is important to do this and not feel that you are losing the energy at that time.” Don’t flush the energy out if you are doing it the tantric way.

“When you have finished the nine rounds of the vase meditation, you can then go on to the actual yoga method.” Then you can start your meditation on deity practices or whatever. This is a very, very simple practice that will help calm your winds.

Then there’s another special practice that is not written down, it is not allowed to be written down. It has the seal of the dakinis or the female tantric practitioners, the enlightened ones. It has the seal. This can only be taught on a one-to-one basis from your teacher to your disciple.

There’s a method of doing another wind meditation that is very secret. It cannot be written down or revealed in public. It must be received from your Guru. You must make sure the person is your Guru. It cannot be just a monk or someone that you like, but it has to be your Guru. If you receive that from your Guru and you do the meditation, it is another further power to calm the mind down. Calm the whole body down completely. And through doing that over and over and over again, one can expel, one can release anger, one can calm down the anger.

I received this lineage from His Eminence the great healing lama Jetsun Nyima Rinpoche, who was at Gaden Jangtse monastery who taught me this last year. I have sworn to him that I will only teach it to very, very serious practitioners who will keep it secret, who will do the practice every single day. If it’s done secretly and done every single day, you will be able to expel the anger that comes from an unsettled mind. Not malice and hatred. But if you do a lot of anger…if you do a lot of anger, it can become malice or become hatred, it can become hate. So actually it dispels the anger, it dispels completely this angry feeling from your body if you do it every day. It’s a different type of meditation; it’s a specific body yoga with a meditation. It’s very short and it’s very easy but it cannot be taught in public.

So for now if you do the three…nine round-breath meditation, the vase meditation with the breath, it will be good enough for most of you in general. This does not entail any commitments. It does not entail any danger. The other one, if it’s revealed to the wrong disciple, there’s a danger of receiving punishments from the dakinis, the female practitioners. Very, very powerful. So it cannot be revealed to any Tom, Dick or Harry. It must be revealed to someone after they have been examined, the person is checked, the person is stable, the person has refuge and Bodhicitta and is doing his practices well. So that’s very, very important. Again it’s a very, very powerful practice revealed by the dakinis, the female practitioners, the female goddesses or we can say angels in English.

So today we have gathered to learn especially the purification of Vajrasattva and how to do prostrations. We’ll talk about it.

Number one: A prerequisite or preliminary to any practice, one must have refuge. One who does not have refuge, one who does not have confidence in the Three Jewels, how can any practice have full effect? If we do not have confidence in the doctor and we are very ill, and we go to the doctor for instruction, we are half listening, we are half not listening, we are half thinking we will do and half thinking we won’t do it – no matter how excellent the doctor is, if we do not have full confidence in the doctor and his medicines and his hospital, his nurses, how do we expect to get well? In fact we might go home and ignore his advice altogether. So it is very, very important. This one is not just for one life or one’s body. This is especially for gaining enlightenment. So, preliminary to any practice, one must have great refuge. One must have strong refuge from the heart, regardless of what happens to you, negative or positive.

Whether it is negative things that happen, you realize that it is the result of your karma. And you must do something about that karma. You must purify that karma. You must purify it; you must get rid of it. Whether you get rid of that karma, whether you purify it, whether you lessen the effects of the karma, is totally in your hands. Totally in your hands. If you do the activities that lessen the karma you can expect less anxiety, less problems, less health problems, less accidents. Even if you are being afflicted by spirits and demons, less affliction. The only way you can have physical [and] mental problems, the only way is, that if you have the karma for it. If you do not purify the karma, expect those to come again and again and again and again. Because since you have the root, no matter how you take off the head, like a weed, the weed will grow again, the weed will grow again, again. You pull it off, it grows again. You pull it off, it grows again. So as long as you keep your karma and you do nothing about it, and you do nothing to purify, expect a lot of things to happen. Expect a lot of problems, expect a lot of anxieties. Expect a lot of unhappiness. Expect a lot of physical and mental problems to come again and again. You have to expect it because we have created the karma for it. The karma is there. It is just a matter of time before it is generated.

For example, it says in the Dorje Gyän…Dorje Gyän Gyi pecha…Dorje Gyän Gyi scripture, Vajra Ornament, it states even… “if you are always unconscious and careless, even small negativities cause great damage to your body, speech, and mind, just as the venom of a poisonous snake will spread rapidly throughout your body, getting worse and worse every day, endangering your life.” Then the great enlightened Being, His Eminence the great Pabongka Dorje Nyingpo, Kyabje Pabongka Dorje Chang, Vajradhara Pabongka Rinpoche “said that if you have killed even a tiny insect and have not purified that negativity by the end of the day with a practice such as the Vajrasattva purification, the weight of that karma will have doubled by the next day. On the third day it will have doubled again, and by fifteen days will have become as heavy as the karma of killing a human being.”

So even if you have killed a small ant, a small insect, it will double again, double two, four, eight, sixteen. So at the end of fifteen days, it is estimated that that karma has become the force as if you had killed a human being. So imagine if you have killed a human being, the weight of that karma and how it will come back to you. So even killing small insects and small animals, if you leave it and you do not purify that negative karma, it will increase so much as if you had killed a human being. Then it will increase more and more and more as if you had killed your own parents. As if you had killed an Arhat. As if you had killed the Buddha himself. You will incur that type of karma. It will increase and increase.

Like when you take a snowball and you throw it off the top of a snow mountain. As the snowball gains force and momentum, it increases and gets bigger and bigger. By the time it gets down, it will be an avalanche that destroys the village below. Whereas when it started in the beginning, it was just a small snowball, harmless. Even if you threw it at you, nearby, it doesn’t harm you. It’s fun actually, it’s refreshing. But when you throw it down the mountain and it gathers momentum and it gathers more snow, how does it become at the bottom of the mountain? Your karma is like that. It will increase day by day. So don’t think, “Oh, I just committed a small little karma. Oh, I did something small, it’s just all small things.” Yes, it’s small when you started it but it will increase, it will gather momentum, and when it takes full effect, you will have a lot of problems, you will have a lot of sufferings. Lots and lots and lots and lots of suffering and lots of problems.

So therefore, problems cannot come on their own. Problems cannot come by itself, problems are not given to us by a god or a deity. Problems are created by ourselves. The samsara that we are living in is not a physical place; the samsara we are living in is a mental state of mind. Samsara is a mental state of mind created by your delusions. So as long as you keep onto your delusions, as long as you keep holding onto your delusions, expect more problems. Expect a short life, expect more health problems, expect anxieties, expect problems, unhappiness, everything expect. And now that you have a little problem, expect a lot more in the future because if we look at ourselves honestly, how much Dharma practice do we actually do? How much purification practice do we actually do? What are the preventative practices that we actually do to prevent these problems from arising? From coming? From morning to night, how are we overwhelmed just mentally – forget physically – with anxiety and problems, and worries? How much? How much have they increased with time? How much have they increased as life goes on? Those are created by one’s own karma. There is no creator; there is no one that gives it to you.

But that karma is impermanent. That karma can be changed; that karma can become purified. Definitely can become purified. And again Buddha was very kind in teaching us the methods and how to purify our karma through spiritual methods. Then it says in the Dorje Gyän Sutra…“Here I am talking about just one small negative karma, but every day we accumulate many, many negative karmas of body, speech, and mind. The weight of each tiny negative karma created each day multiplies over and over again, becoming unimaginably heavy. And there’s no question that every day, besides those small negative karmas, we also create many gross negativities,” very heavy ones, “thus we have accumulated many heavy negative karmas in this life, and in all our beginningless previous lives as well. If you contemplate the continuous multiplication of all these karma it is unimaginably unimaginable!”

“The Dorje Gyän states that if you recite the hundred-syllable Vajrasattva mantra twenty-one times every day, negative karmas are prevented from multiplying…”

[tape gap at 43:53 to 43:56]

…Find the four opponent powers very strongly, take refuge very strongly, you will be able to purify the karma completely. If you take it halfway, you will be able to do it halfway. If you don’t do anything, you just don’t think and recite the mantra, you will be able to block the karma on that day. So therefore if you killed an insect on that day, by accident of course, tomorrow it will not double. The effect of that karma will be the same as killing an insect, even after a hundred years, even after a hundred days, even after a hundred months. Whatever the time span, the karma will be blocked, it will be stopped from increasing. So if we do the Vajrasattva mantra every single day, twenty-one times a day, every single day without stop, every day just twenty-one times, it will block the negativities that you have collected that day from multiplying.

Now if you on top of that apply the four opponent powers, you have sincere regret and take refuge deeply from the heart, and do your best not to do that action again, by the sincerity of your practice and also by the power of your practice and the strength of your four opponent powers, you can also root out that karma that you have collected that day, for those karmas you have collected. Completely root out. Therefore if you root out that karma, you cannot suffer any effects. The effects will not come. In fact if you do the Vajrasattva practice well and you collect one hundred thousand of this mantra – if you do one hundred thousand times, which is minimal, very minimal – if you do one hundred thousand, you will see many things in your life change. Automatically. Why do they change? It is because the karma that has created negative things to happen has been purified or nullified, or lessened. Nullified, purified or lessened, or completely eradicated.

Therefore if you eradicate that negative karma, if you eradicate it, the karma is finished. It is purified. As I said, if you are meant to have an accident in your next week, by doing the purification practice of Vajrasattva, you can perhaps lessen the effects of that accident. Instead of breaking both arms and the leg in the accident, you break just one finger perhaps.

If you further apply the four opponent powers and practice Vajrasattva well and take refuge completely in Vajrasattva, take complete faith and confidence in Vajrasattva…and when you take faith, refuge and confidence, it doesn’t mean just believing in him. It also means the commitments of refuge, which is the ten non-virtues to be avoided. That’s very important. So when you do that, definitely day by day by day you will lessen the karma and eventually purify it. And maybe if you purify it completely, instead of having an actual accident, you will suffer the accident in a dream. So in a dream you have a very terrifying, very scary dream that you got into an accident, you broke your arms and legs and it’s all blood everywhere and you feel a lot of anxiety. The karma is purified. You do not have to suffer it physically; mentally, you have suffered it. It has lessened the effect of the karma.

So Vajrasattva is very, very important. Vajrasattva is essential. It’s one of the four main preliminary practices. We have a tradition of four, five, and seven, eight. So the four basic ones will be prostration, Vajrasattva, Guru Yoga, Refuge. No…Guru Yoga. Water offerings are extra. It will be…because I usually think of the long one. So it will be prostrations…oh how simple, prostration, mandala, Vajrasattva and refuge. Reciting the refuge formula with the meditation one hundred thousand times. That is the basic preliminary practice. Myself, I add in the water offerings which in other traditions are there. So we’re making it simple by mandala, Vajrasattva, refuge and prostrations. That is the four basic preliminaries.

On top of that, in order to destroy miserliness, increase wealth of spiritual and material, one hundred thousand water offerings is also included. Which we will talk about tomorrow. So one should try to, every day, try to fulfil this. We may be too busy, we may not be able to have the time to do it, but we should actually try our best to fulfil the four preliminaries.

For example in my house, out of the four monks here, then this monk here has already finished one of his preliminaries. Last year, 1996, he has done one hundred thousand prostrations. He has excused himself from the monastery, and asked the disciplinarian and the abbot to excuse him from the pujas and prayers and he has stayed at home. This first monk had done 2500 prostrations per day. And he has finished one hundred thousand prostrations within…[speaks in Tibetan] He completed it in three months by doing it every single day.

So it is a prayer in every…in our life that in fact we can perform these prostrations in Bodhgaya itself. So in Bodhgaya where actually Lord Buddha has manifested enlightenment would be the most powerful place on the earth for us. But even better than Bodhgaya would be prostrating to our Gurus or a hair of our Guru or the nail of our Guru, or a picture or form of our Guru or to our Guru.

When I used to serve His Holiness Kyabje Zong Rinpoche in America, I served him for six months while we received teachings every single day, by giving…offering food to Rinpoche. I was the cook for breakfast and lunch…no, breakfast and dinner. Lunch I used to have to go to work. Cleaning, washing, lots of work – so I used to do a lot of work for Kyabje Zong Rinpoche. But I remember I used to get to bed around 2-3am every day at the Buddhist center that I lived in with my teacher. So every day I’d get to bed around 2 or 3am in the morning, and wake up at 4-5 again to prepare breakfast. Because it was Rinpoche, his attendant, my teacher, and then Rinpoche’s three students, the translator and his uncle. There was a total of seven people that I had to make breakfast for alone, every single day at the Dharma center that I lived for seven years. And I’d would get up early in the morning, make the breakfast, prepare it. Make sure it’s hot. Tea. Some people wanted coffee, some German people were there.

Every single day for six months I get up, prepared seven trays, bring it up, prostrate to Kyabje Zong Rinpoche, offer up the food to him, and then go down and then offer the food to the other people, and then afterwards, I’d go up, collected His Holiness Zong Rinpoche’s tray, eat the scraps that are left, drink the tea that is left to get the blessings of my Guru, and then collect all the other food, bring it back, clean all the trays, wash all the dishes, put everything away, sweep up, clean up, and then prepare things for lunch, for the next person and the next shift. Then immediately go to work. So my day would start around 4:30 or 5 to prepare breakfast for seven people a day. Then I would go to work, work all day, come back from work around 4 or 5. Immediately. Luckily my work was nearby, so I’d come back immediately and start dinner…start dinner for seven people. Make dinner, prepare, prepare all the trays, the salad, everything prepare, go upstairs, bring it to His Holiness Kyabje Zong Rinpoche, make three prostrations, offer it to Rinpoche, then bring it to his attendants and bring it to the entourage there at the center where I was at. Then after they finished dinner I’d go back up, bring Rinpoche’s dinner back down and eat all the scraps that he had, and finish up all the scraps and then clean off the plates and put everything there. Then we attended teachings at 7:30. The teachings finished around 11:30, 12 o’clock. Every single day except for I think it was Monday or something like that. We had one day off a week.

Every single day for six months we persevered to get teachings like that. Never complaining. And I didn’t miss a day of it. I didn’t fall asleep once and I cancelled all my extra-curricular affairs: going to discos, going to lunch, going to dinner, going to see friends, going to see my girlfriend, going to see my other friends, going everywhere. Everything was completely cancelled. In fact the year that Rinpoche was there I didn’t go to a disco at all, the whole year. No discos, no parties. So that whole year I devoted myself to Rinpoche, and I was very lucky. And then we go for teachings, starts around 7:30 and finish around 11, or 11:30 if we’re lucky.

And with Rinpoche, you don’t dare get up and go to the bathroom or wiggle around or move around or look tired or fall asleep because if you did, Rinpoche was a very, very wrathful teacher. He is not soft and gentle like me. Very, very, very wrathful one. When Rinpoche becomes wrathful, you are in the presence of Vajrapani himself. You will not want to be there. Very wrathful. Rinpoche is renowned for being a wrathful master. He would beat people and people will become healed. If there was a spirit possession he would scream and shout at that person. The minute he screams and shout, the possession will end. No more spirits.

I remember one time Rinpoche was sitting doing a puja in his room, in his house with his monks. One lady was brought in. As soon as she was brought into the yard of Rinpoche’s house, she took possession. Just crazy. She had been taking possession for years. She took possession and screamed and jumped and yelled. Rinpoche came out, sat on a chair, asked for a chair, sat and recited his mantra. And then he screamed at her in Tibetan, I mean literally screamed. And he said, “Who are you and what do you want? From today on, don’t come here. Get out.” The minute he said that, the woman collapsed. Immediately she collapsed, from that day on she never took possession again. Ever.

And then there was another time where Rinpoche had an uncle in the monastery and he had an uncle and then the uncle was quite good, but the uncle had a friend that was…is an older monk but quite, he had a friend that was another older monk that was quite mischievous. Not the type that really does the meditations and prayers but he runs around creating mischief in the monastery. So one day they had done some funny mischief and Rinpoche had found out about it. Rinpoche was quite, quite upset, and so he called both of the monks over. The one that created the mischief was not the uncle but the uncle’s friend. But Rinpoche called both the monks over to his house, brought the innocent uncle inside, locked the door, opened all the curtains and then his friend was standing outside and peaking through the windows to see what he was going to get. Rinpoche beat his old uncle silly. Just beat him and hit him, screamed at him, beat him and hit him and screamed. Naturally his other friend had nowhere to run away to. He was trembling in the window looking in saying, “Oh, I’m next.” Then as soon as the beating was done, Rinpoche sent the old monk out and the other guy thought, “Oh, now I’m going to get it.” But he didn’t. Rinpoche sent him off. After that, exactly the next day, the mischievous monk died and the one that Rinpoche beat lived. So Rinpoche had manifested his powers to physically beat the person to save them from actual death, from the ripening of the karma.

So when the master is compassionate, when the master has the power achieved through meditation, he can show his power wrathfully, he can show his power peacefully. He can show his power mildly or forcefully. Whatever it is, it will be motivated by compassion. That monk lived, quite healthy and quite well. Like that Rinpoche manifested powers many times.

Even one small time, one small example was nearby we have a carpet factory – rum da. Over there they had just put on the roof, the cement roof, so if it rained that day everything would just come right in. So it was during the monsoon season, they can see the clouds gathering, about to rain. They all ran to Rinpoche immediately, Kyabje Zong Rinpoche and they requested him to stop the rain. So Rinpoche just went outside, took some rice, blew on it, threw it in the air. In front of all of us, we could see the clouds dispersing. Completely dispersing. It didn’t rain that day.

This is done by very, very attained meditation masters. Very, very attained who can actually control the four elements in their bodies. Therefore as the elements are the same as the outer elements, they can control the outer elements in their body. So these are no jokes. These are things that we have witnessed, these are things that we have seen, over and over again.

There is no doubt in my mind regarding reincarnation. There is no doubt in my mind regarding the powers we can achieve though meditation. There is no doubt in my mind that we can achieve bodhicitta. There is not doubt that we can achieve shunyata. Maybe these are intellectual concepts for us now and things we have heard for the first time or two times or three times but they are there. They really do exist. You cannot negate them on the fact that you cannot perceive it directly. A hundred years ago the world was considered flat. If you said it’s round, it’s heretical and you will be burned at the stake, you will be ostracized, because the power of the senses were limited at that time. Now we know it’s round. Now, another hundred years, how do we know what science and people will discover that we cannot see now? Definitely everything Buddha says will come, will fruition into the truth. Definitely Buddha is omniscient and he will only speak the truth and perceive the truth. In any case we have digressed.

Now if you do these purification practices, if you do it well with devotion and regularly, then definitely you will be able to eliminate all the negative karma that you have. As you eliminate negative karma that you have, you will find that negativities in your mind – doubt, anger, hatred, all your delusions – will start to relax, will completely start to relax. In fact, if you do this practice well and excellently, you will be able to have visions of the Buddha. You will be able to see him directly, just like a veil being removed from you. Also if you do these practices excellently and well, you will be able to obtain clairvoyant power. You will be able to read other people’s minds. You will be able to perceive what people are thinking and seeing, and also you will be able to see other phenomenon such as spirits, and demons and beings and gods that other people do not ordinarily see. There are definitely people who perceive and see these things. Definitely it’s there. It’s been described to a T, perfectly, how it is like that, like that, like that, like that, like that, like that…perfectly in the scriptures. Obviously someone has to have seen it to describe it so well, in perfect detail. In any case, Vajrasattva is a very powerful practice, very excellent practice.

Before Vajrasattva himself was enlightened, he prayed all the time, all the time he prayed, “Whoever hears me… [end of disc]

[Part 2]

It says, “When he vowed to achieve enlightenment for the sake of all beings, he made this wish: “When I become a fully enlightened Buddha, may all beings be purified of their obscurations, their ignorance and their negative actions simply by hearing my name, seeing my form, thinking of me, or reciting the mantra that contains my name.” Regret alone is not…”…kasa…that was his particular vows, this particular Buddha’s vow. Of course this Buddha can confer long life, health, excellence, wealth, bodhicitta, realization, shunyata and full enlightenment. Of course Vajrasattva Buddha has that ability and power. There is no doubt, but his speciality would be purification. His speciality. So any meditation, any kind of prayers, any kind of…anything directed towards Vajrasattva will have the immediate power of purifying negative karma due to the vow that Vajrasattva had made before he became a Buddha. Therefore that vow has fruitioned when he became a fully enlightened Being. Therefore he has the ability and power. Vajrasattva is a very simple and easy Buddha to meditate on. He is the purification power, the purificatory power and the great compassion for sentient beings that suffer in samsara. His great compassion, wanting to do something for sentient beings, comes in the form of a purification energy.

He takes on the form of a white Buddha, one face and two arms and two eyes. Then he is holding a beautiful five-pronged golden vajra representing…and a silver…a beautiful silver…kasa…bell. The vajra is called ‘dorje’ in Tibetan and the bell is called ‘drigu’. So vajra and bell, he is holding.

So Vajrasattva holding the vajra and bell represents his adamantine essence or his adamantine mind, or what he is – he has full compassion. The vajra represents complete compassion, complete bodhicitta. Then the bell represents emptiness.

Why does it represent emptiness? When you hit the bell, you can perceive and hear sounds. Where does the sound come from and where does the sound go? It is independent of inherent existence. Think about it. If you say the sound came from this, by hitting it, when we take it apart, is the sound here? Is the sound here? Is the sound here? Is the sound here? When we think about it, where does the sound come from? It is inherently…it is free of inherent existence, or that it exists independently. But that is a very tough subject. We leave it for now.

The bell represents emptiness, it represent shunyata, or it represent Vajrasattva’s realization that all phenomenon, the realization of the reality of all phenomenon. Therefore he is free from samsara. He is out of samsara. By him holding the bell, representing that he is completely free of samsara. And not only free like an Arhat. He also has great compassion, that he will work for the sake of sentient beings. So he holds the vajra to his heart level like so. Very gracefully and then he holds the bell at his hips and he’s slightly bent like that. Slightly bent.

His legs are in a vajra posture, full vajra posture, representing that his meditation is completely fulfilled. He has the union of no more learning, completely fulfilled. His body is white, like a great snow mountain and a hundred thousand suns reflecting the light of a snow mountain, and that reflection is the color of his beautiful, glorious and very, very excellent body. He is about 16 years old, he is about 16 years old in form. He has the form of a 16 year old youth. Very beautiful and very gentle.

He wears six ornaments presenting the Six Paramitas, the Six Paramitas. So he wears the crown, the earrings, the armlets, and the bracelets, and he wears the necklace, and he wears the anklets.

Then he wears the beautiful clothes of a young Indian prince with a scarf gracefully bedecking his body, going around his…kasa…shoulder, coming down between the crook of his arm and then flowing out very beautifully. He is white in color, sits in full vajra posture on a white moon, and on a lotus. On a beautiful lotus, white. And he is glorious, he’s smiling, he is very happy and he is very, very forgiving. Very, very forgiving. So we visualize this beautiful Vajrasattva on our heads, on our heads.

At this time, even if you are doing one of the highest yoga tantras, you should not visualize yourself in the form of a deity. It is very inauspicious because deities do not have delusions and negative karma to purify. If you are doing it according to the highest yoga tantra, then Vajrasattva will have a consort but for our purposes, he is without a consort – solitary. With or without, it’s the same.

So in this case he is solitary, white, and glorious in color, very beautiful. Resting on your head, of you in your ordinary body, with a vajra and bell like so, smiling.

Then we exercise the four opponent powers. First we must take refuge. We must have great fear and we must have great fear on the basis of knowing the consequences of our negative karma. All the negative karma that we have collected since beginningless time up till now. Even from morning to night, how much negative karma have we performed, have we done, on the basis of the ten non-virtues? How many times have we shouted at someone, how many times have we said negative things? How many times have we avoided helping? How many times have we been selfish? How many times have we selfishly said something harsh to someone? How many times have we killed an animal without knowing it, by accident? An insect? How many times have we actually beat someone? How many times have we hurt someone? How many times have we done that in the activities and that negative karma is increasing day by day and day by day, becoming the size of a mountain that will overwhelm and crush you with suffering and problems? So, knowing and fearing that this karma will come, and also knowing that you have so much suffering and problems now, one wishes to purify oneself of the sufferings. One wishes to get out of suffering. One wishes to get out of the sufferings immediately. And the only place we can get out is by taking refuge in the Three Jewels, in this case Buddha Vajrasattva, the holy Dharma, and the holy Sangha.

The Buddha Vajrasattva is inseparable from our root Guru. At this point you would use this text that I have picked out today, which is very short and very easy to do…and here’s a photo of Vajrasattva, white in color also, a line drawing.

So at first, you visualize Vajrasattva above you and you take refuge: “I and all sentient beings, until we achieve enlightenment, go for refuge to the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha.” Three times. Not only from your mouth recite but from your heart. Knowing that they are the real beings that can take us out of suffering and our problems, we take refuge.

After that we generate bodhicitta. “I will not purify my negative karma only for myself, but I wish to purify my negative karma in order that I may become a fully enlightened Being, that I may purify my negative karma, that I may be able to practice the Dharma, understand the Dharma, see the Dharma and gain the results of Dharma so that I may become a fully enlightened Being in order that I may bring all beings to full enlightenment. For this reason I will do Vajrasattva practice.” Not thinking, “Oh, I have money problems. If I do Vajrasattva, I get freedom from money.” Yes, you will be freedom from money problems, no doubt. “Oh I will do Vajrasattva because I am very sick. Therefore I want to have healing. I want to be free from my sickness.” Yes, you will be free of your sickness regardless because you will purify the negativity that creates your sickness, that harms you. Yes, you will be free from anxieties and fears. You will definitely be free, without having to think about it, without having to meditate on it. That is a side benefit, those are the side benefits. Side.

If we go to A&W and order a hamburger, we don’t have to worry about the ketchup and the salt and pepper. It comes automatically. We think about what we want to order and it comes automatically. When we order a root beer, are we going to get a straw or not? It comes automatically. Definitely you will get a straw. How will you suck through it without a straw? Not possible, right? So definitely these are side benefits. It will come.

So without having to think that one should purify one’s negative karma because one has so much obstructions to becoming a fully enlightened Being. In order to become a fully enlightened Being one has so much problems and anxieties, lack of time, lack of knowledge, lots of ignorance – heavy, heavy ignorance – the wish to go out to waste our time, the wish to crawl back into our delusional states. The wish to go back to our suffering state. The wish to continue doing negative actions, having a lot of doubts about our teachers, having a lot of doubts about the Buddha. Even when we’ve identified clearly that there’s enlightenment, there’s the cessation of suffering, there’s a future life and the next life, again we think, “Is there a next life, is there not a future life? Is there? Oh is that right? It’s not right.” It’s right but your doubts arise from your own negative karma. As soon as the negative karma is cleared, by years and years of practice, diligent practice, you will see your mind free of doubts. You will see…some of us, when we see our teachers, immediately think negative things. We think very bad things. Even if the teacher has not done anything, we think negative things. Even if he has done something, we misinterpret it. Even if he has done something well, we still get very negative thoughts. These negative thoughts come down upon us spontaneously, without wanting it, without thinking it. They arise automatically. Why? Because the causes for them to arise are there – our delusions, our negative karma – it’s there.

So even when these arise, we should not be hard with ourselves, we should not be difficult and think, “Oh I am such a bad person. I am going to go to hell.” Look at it, be detached and realize this is a state a mind that you are living in. That is why you suffer. That is the state of mind that you are in and there is no way to get out except by purifying the karma. When we sit there and we think and we examine ourselves and we see someone, immediately negative things happen. Immediately we see them in this kind of light, in this kind of position, in this kind of appearance, this kind of disposition, immediately, without having to be told. Usually when we see someone, when we see a situation, we see their negative sides first. Usually when we see our Guru, spontaneously we think negative things. Spontaneously we pinpoint and see and point out – whether he has it or not – that negative point and we focus on that. That is the result of our negative karma, our negative mental energy. That is the result of having a hateful mind. That is the result of having a negative mind for so many lifetimes, and creating negative energy, negative karma of the body, speech and mind. Well it comes back to us.

Even when we meet the perfect Guru we will see something imperfect. Just like when Lord Buddha manifested, so many beings saw him as imperfect. His own cousin Devadatta, although Buddha manifested so many miraculous powers and showed his Enlightenment perfectly, still his own cousin Devadatta could not perceive the Buddha as perfect and only saw fault. It is well-recorded. It is not because the Buddha has faults; it is because Devadatta had such powerful obscurations that he could not see the Buddha in a perfect light. So if the fully enlightened Buddha manifested in that form and people still saw wrong things and negative things, how about us? How about us? How much negativities do we have?

How much negativities do we see?

In 1976 when I was in the United States – I can’t remember how old I was, nine or ten or whatever – His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama had come to the United States for the first time in 1976 and he visited the Mongolian monasteries where I was living in. I was living in a Mongolian community there of over a thousand Mongolian families, and they have three huge Mongolian temples. Huge and very nice ones. And each temple, they had His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s throne. So he would visit each of the temples. The last one was Tashi Lhunpo Temple…or Tashi Lhunpo actually was the main temple. They had sent out…they had big land around the temple and they had put out a huge canopy, a very huge tent. At the front they had His Holiness’s throne and we would all sit on chairs and receive teachings from His Holiness.

And I remember people telling me…nearby, there was one old Mongolian man who sat nearby us and when His Holiness walked in and sat on the throne, the man could not see him. He wasn’t…I mean he’s not a crazy man, he’s not a fanatical man. He’s a normal, down-to-earth kind of gentleman. We’ve known him for a long time. He cannot see His Holiness the Dalai Lama. We’re all standing with our heads bowed and we’re all crying tears of happiness, and he kept saying, “Oh, where’s His Holiness? Where’s His Holiness the Dalai Lama? Has he come?” We thought it was not the time to joke, you know it’s not very funny. He literally could not see His Holiness. During the whole teachings – it was about an hour and a half to two hours – he could not see His Holiness. He saw an empty throne. And not even the sound. This was when I was there, he could not see at all. And believe me, he’s not blind or crazy, he doesn’t have wind in his head…what is that, to fung or something you call it? He doesn’t have that, right? He actually could not see His Holiness. Then he was very depressed, very sad. He had gone through World War I, he had gone through World War II. He escaped from Germany to America, and he had been practicing Buddhism for a long, long time. I mean, you know, the normal practice that a lay person does, the prayers and all that. And every dream of a Mongolian is to see His Holiness once, to see the ‘golden face’ as they say in Mongolian. To see the face of His Holiness the Dalai Lama once and then you can die in peace. This is the saying that we have in the Mongolian tradition. And for him not to see it, it was very devastating.

So he went to the nearby temple to visit with the monks there and asked them. Through divination they found out that he had very strong obscurations. Very, very strong, very, very powerful obscurations. And they taught him some methods to purify. They did some rituals to purify. And His Holiness from America went to Canada. So the man very much did the rituals, did the prayers to purify himself. Then there was another audience especially for the Mongolians up in Canada. When this man went with a group, for the first time he could see His Holiness’s face. When His Holiness walked in and sat on the throne, the man could see it. He was in tears. He couldn’t stop crying. He was overwhelmed with emotion. It was the first time he could see His Holiness. Literally could see His Holiness.

These things, these phenomenon do exist. They are there. Even a perfectly enlightened Being could be in front of us and we will see them imperfect. We will see them as dirty. We will see them as normal. We will see them as having problems and difficulties like us because of our own negative karma. It is like someone who is a thief, who knows another thief. If you are going to steal an item, you‘re afraid someone else is going to steal the item. You have that innate fear, as a rough example. Like that, when your obscurations are not cleared and your negative karma is very strong, you will not be able to see highly enlightened Beings. And if you see them you will see them as unenlightened, ordinary, simple, with their problems and their difficulties. Whether they have it or not you definitely will perceive them.

So Vajrasattva is very powerful for purifying this negative kind of karma that arises for us to doubt the Dharma. When we doubt the Dharma, when we doubt our teacher, when we doubt the power of the Dharma, it will be very difficult to practice. If we don’t practice, we sink deeper into delusion, delusional acts and negative karma. We sink deeper and deeper and deeper. And that is instinct. It’s because we’ve been collecting the karma for such a long time. That is why it is so easy for us – negative karma and negative actions – that’s why it’s so easy for us to do negative actions. That is why from the time we were born up till now, we have been beaten and scolded, and beaten and scolded, and punished and grounded by our parents for doing negative things. Always. We are not weak. No child doesn’t get a scolding or a beating from the parents for doing something negative. Why is that so innate? Why doesn’t a child get born and then immediately does good things? Why does it always have to be bad? Think about it. Why does a child have to be scolded all the time? Because he has innately, for hundreds and thousands of years, doing negative things, doing negative karma. Overwhelmed by delusions. So the minute he’s born, there is his delusions. He starts all over again. He starts doing negative things again by instinct, naturally. He wants to do it again and again and again. It’s very easy. That’s why we scold our children. That’s why we tame them, we watch them not to do negative things. Because the instincts are innate in all of us.

Therefore Vajrasattva practice is very powerful for destroying this instinct, very powerful for purifying the negative karma of the mind, the body and the speech. That we lessen our negative actions, we purify our negative karma that we already collected that will result in suffering. And we will purify our delusions with time.

Therefore when we purify our negative karma, when we have less obscurations, less doubt will arise. Less stupidity will arise. Ignorance will lessen. When ignorance lessens, stupidity goes down and the very obstacles for us to practice Dharma goes down, we will be able to practice the Dharma. People who are purified will read a Dharma scripture, will understand immediately. Some people you can read it to them a hundred times and nothing happens. It is the obscuration of their minds. But again, do not lose hope, it is impermanent. It can be purified; it is impermanent. It is a phenomenon that is impermanent. With constant application of Vajrasattva’s nectar-like mantra and prayer and meditation, one can purify the negative karma that creates doubt, laziness, that creates – how do you say it – the negative instincts, the delusions, one can definitely purify. In fact if one wants to do Dharma practice seriously, one should engage in the practice of Vajrasattva. If you engage in the practice of Vajrasattva, combined with the four opponent powers, of course then one will see your life change. Definitely. The negativities will lessen, one’s doubts will lessen. When one studies the Dharma we understand very quickly. And when one practices, the results come very quickly. Also anxieties become less. Things that have not been going our way will start going our way. Why? Because the karma for things to go negatively is being lessened, is being purified. Just like when you have a very dirty window and you wipe it once, you can see something. You wipe it again, you can see more. You wipe it again and you can see much more. After a few wipes, more and more you can see clearer and clearer and clearer and clearer. How much you wipe, the pressure you put, and also how much you apply that will be how much you can see through the window and how fast it becomes clean.

So Vajrasattva is excellent in purifying negative karma. If you have doubts about the Dharma or you are lazy or when you do Dharma you get sleepy, it is all a sign of negativities from previous lives coming to block your Dharma practice. Because if your Dharma practice is successful, Mara or the devils will lose.

Your negative karma will lose. Your sufferings will lose. Naturally karma is so strong, it is not going to lose that easily so you apply something so powerful such as Vajrasattva. Very, very powerful.

So you visualize him smiling, radiant, and what will make him even more powerful is that he is the radiant energy of all the Buddhas‘ purification powers. All the Buddhas of the ten directions – Manjushri, Guan Yin, Vajrapani – all the Buddhas’ purification powers manifesting in the form of Vajrasattva who is indivisible, who is inseparable from our root Guru, from our own teacher. Then we visualize him on top of our heads, very beautiful. You don’t have to visualize him the size of your body. You might think, “Oh, it’s quite heavy or something.” You can visualize him the size of your hand or the size of your thumb. Whatever his size, we have this conception that bigger is better. Wrong. Vajrasattva, big or small, is very powerful. Vajrasattva is Vajrasattva. There is no difference how you visualize, alright? If you want to visualize him very big, it’s okay. After a while I think he gets a little bit heavy. In any case, very important to visualize him well, three dimensional, the nature of rainbow light. White, graceful and beautiful. White not just like a piece of paper but the kind of white like a snow mountain and hundreds of suns. The reflection of hundreds of suns, and the reflection coming off the mountain is the color of his body, blazing like a polished mirror, hundreds and hundreds of polished mirrors. When we put a reflection of the sun in there, how bright and white is it, that type of white, that type of purity. Very clean and very light and very smiling and very happy, sitting on top of your head, who is indivisible from your Guru.

So one should apply the four opponent powers which is the first one is regret. Regret will be based upon fear of the results that one has committed negative karma, one has committed in previous lives and now. And also your broken vows. For monks, the Pratimoksha vows, the self-liberation vows for lay people, the vows of the ten non-virtues to be avoided. Any vows, any of those that you have broken. Number two, your bodhicitta vows. Number three, your tantric vows.

It is said by Vajrasattva practice, by Vajrasattva’s meditation, you can purify even root downfalls of the tantric vows, which is very difficult to purify. If you can purify the root downfalls of the tantric vows, definitely the lower vows such as the ten non-virtuous acts that we should avoid, will be purified. Definitely will be purified. It will purify your broken commitments. If you have made a promise to your teacher, if you have made a promise to the Buddha, you have sworn an oath or you have broken some commitment – if you leave it there the broken commitment definitely will come back to you in the form of karma, by the power of your karma. So if you visualize and take refuge in the great Buddha Vajrasattva, definitely you will be able to purify that negative karma that is accrued. And that is…in fact don’t leave it there – “Oh, it’s just a small little thing” – that is increasing day by day by day by day by day by day. It is very scary actually.

From the fear that the karma will come back and block your spiritual realizations, and block your spiritual practice, one out of fear takes refuge and one has regret and confesses up to the great Buddha Vajrasattva. And then after one confesses one’s negativities to the Bodhisattva Vajrasattva – the Buddha Vajrasattva, same – and then one promises not to do that action again. If you cannot promise for a long time, at least promise one day, one day at a time. Take one day at a time. Say to Vajrasattva,, “From today until tomorrow night…from tonight until tomorrow night, for 24 hours I will not lie.” And then you do that and you train yourself. If you can take it for a week, you take it for a week. If you can take it for a month, you take it for a month. If you can take it for life, you take it for life. But I think, in my case, I try to take it hourly. So I think, “Oh, I won’t do that for the next hour.” But it’s okay. Even if you start out a little bit, it will increase because it’s just training your mind. You train. You train yourself again and again and again. You promise not to do it again.

And then purification practices. Opposite practices, which is what we are doing now, a purification practice. So it will be very effective to apply the four opponent powers for Vajrasattva. And Vajrasattva is a very, very powerful practice. No one should be without it, no one. Sounds like a commercial. Anyways, one should definitely – and I didn’t mean it to sound like a commercial but it did, but anyways – you should not be without Vajrasattva. You should definitely, definitely have Vajrasattva because it will be a very powerful force in purifying the negative karmas that you have committed today, yesterday, the day before, which is multiplying again and again. It will purify the negative karma that obscures you from understanding Dharma and practicing the Dharma. It will definitely do it. And the more you do Vajrasattva, the more you concentrate, the better and better and the better and the better it becomes. And also the clearer and clearer your mind becomes, the more and more and more clearer. You will be able to deal with your problems and your anxiety and delusions much, much better. And you will see your physical condition change. And also you will see your speech become more gentler and kinder, and nicer.

And also, those are the side benefits. In fact as you clear the delusions more and more and more, the realizations of Dharma become easier and easier, and faster and much, much, much, much better. And one should visualize Vajrasattva in that way. And His Eminence the great Lama Thubten Yeshe Rinpoche, who was the Guru of Zopa Rinpoche, was a great advocate of the Vajrasattva practice. Very, very great advocate. Lama Yeshe is a fully enlightened Being actually. Fully enlightened. He wrote this book, The Tantric Path of Purification: Becoming Vajrasattva. So he was a great advocate of it. In fact, all the great lamas are advocates and this is not a practice of just the Gelugpa. It is not just the practice of one sect. It is the practice of all the four sects. Sakya, Nyingma, Kagyu and Gelug. All the four sects practice Vajrasattva. The visualizations are the same, the thinking is the same, the effect is the same. So when we see that Vajrasattva is practiced by all four sects, we can see his immediacy or his importance or how much his practice is stressed. So it is very, very important that we engage in Vajrasattva practice. Even every day, if we just do twenty-one recitations, we should do it well with the correct visualization and we should engage in trying to do…you can do more than twenty-one of course. We should try to engage and try to do more, and try to fulfill one hundred thousand.

When you are doing a Vajrasattva practice intensely and well, you will get signs. Some of the signs will be…immediate signs will be that your mind becomes clearer. You can deal with your problems more. Even sicknesses that have been bothering you for a long time become easier to deal with. Also when you take medicine, it takes effect. Things like that. Even your financial situation will clear, definitely, definitely, because the karma is cleared. It’s very logical. In any case, then when you do Vajrasattva daily, it will block the karma. So if you have killed an ant by accident, it will remain the karma of killing an ant. It will not increase to the size of killing a Buddha. [Otherwise] it will double every single day. So it’s very, very dangerous to leave the karma there and to think, “Oh, that’s small.” It will increase. So the best…the best Vajrasattva is not to do the karma in the beginning. But since we are so filled with delusions and overwhelmed with delusions and propelled by delusions, we are forced into doing the act, whether we like it or not, and regret it later. So Vajrasattva is excellent in stopping it from doubling and by the force of the four opponent powers, one will be able to actually purify the negative karma. One does not have to suffer it.

So Vajrasattva we should try to do a hundred thousand minimum. That is not the most. Do not think, “Oh! A hundred thousand!” It’s nothing compared with the benefits you get. It’s nothing. It’s excellent practice and one should actually engage in it daily. And that’s why I’ve Xerox’d this text and I thank the people involved in getting this text together and Xerox-ing it for us. It was a lot of work.

So, number one, we take refuge. Number two, we generate bodhicitta. Bodhicitta or the special enlightened motive, the wish to become enlightened for the sake of all sentient beings. After that we visualize Guru Vajrasattva. Guru is our root Guru and Vajrasattva who is…kasa…indivisible. On my crown, on a lotus and moon seat sits Vajrasattva who has a white colored body, one face and two hands, holds a vajra and bell, adorned with silks and various jeweled ornaments. He sits in a vajra posture, just as I have described.

So you visualize that clearly on top of your head as best you can. Even if you can’t visualize it well, you visualize a white form there and believe that it’s Vajrasattva. A white blob or whatever, you know. The Blob. Anyway you can visualize whatever you like there. But try to make it clear. Focus on one eye, focus on one eyebrow. Focus on one eyelash. Go back to his nose, then go back to his other eye. Visualize his crown. And increase that and get better and better and better and better and better. Like I said, we have the power of visualization. We visualize things that we like. In my case cheesecake,perfectly. Just perfectly we can visualize wonderfully without, even I don’t even have to close my eyes! I can see it perfectly. And I can see the store that it comes from, the display counter that it comes from, how it is displayed and the person cutting the cake. Without even closing my eyes I can visualize it perfectly. And even better, spaghetti – spontaneously. I don’t even have to do any more visualizations any more. It just comes spontaneously. The noodles, how they are placed and then the sauce and how people fork. I’m getting hungry again. But anyway, perfectly I can visualize spaghetti because it’s just a matter of training. Why don’t I just transform that spaghetti into Vajrasattva spaghetti? Better, eh? Nice Vajrasattva spaghetti. We transform it. So if we can do that, we can do that, definitely, alright?

And some of us we know, as I told you yesterday, we see a nice girl running down the street and we see her once…we never have to see her again, we can visualize her for the next fifteen years perfectly. And the visualization gets better and better and better and better. Perfectly. No problem. Then when we go to the bank and we want to take a couple million dollars out, perfect visualization. Or we want a particular car we want to buy, we can visualize it perfectly: the steering wheel, the front, and how it’s shaped, the color, the door, how we are going to go and touch the door, the sleekness and open it, and sit in there and smell the beautiful leather. We can visualize it perfectly and wonderfully. Wonderfully. So why can’t we visualize Vajrasattva wonderfully? We definitely can. We know that we have the ability to visualize because we can visualize other things. It would be more worthwhile to visualize Vajrasattva than a car, than a girlfriend or boyfriend, spaghetti, or cheesecake. It would be definitely more because they don’t have the power to help us anyway. They only have the power to increase our delusions. To increase them. Whereas Vajrasattva has the power to decrease our delusions. So it will be more worthwhile to visualize him.

Then you request Vajrasattva – again according to the Buddhist tradition, there is nothing to be taught or done unless you request. “Oh blessed one, Vajrasattva, please cleanse and purify the negativities, obstructions and degenerate commitments of myself and all other living beings” – then Vajrasattva is very pleased by your request.

On a moon at his heart is the HUM surrounded by the hundred letters of the mantra. From these, a stream of white nectar descends and enters through the crown of my head. My whole body is filled with a stream of exalted wisdom nectar. All the negativities and obstructions of the three doors are cleansed and I become completely purified. How simple. Again he is there and from his beautiful white body, white rays of light come down and completely invade our body.

Then from the lower organs, as I taught you yesterday, from the lower organs of your anus, then black lights, dark putrid lights…kasa…scorpions and snakes, so your sickness, your anger, delusions, your bad…

[tape gap at 1:31:04 to 1:31:05]

In Tibetan, we say OM BENZASATTO but here maybe you say OM VAJRASATTO, same. BENZA or VAJRA is the same word; Tibetans cannot say VAJRA so they say BENZA. BENZA means the same as VAJRA. So OM VAJRASATTO SAMAYA MANU PALAYA / VAJRASATTO TENO PATITA / DIDRO MAY BHAWA / SUTO KAYO MAY BHAWA / SUPO KAYO MAY BHAWA / ANU RAKTO MAY BHAWA / SARWA SIDDHI ME PAR YATSA / SARWA KARMA SUT TSA ME / TISHTAM SHRIYAM KURU HUM / HA HA HA HA HO / BHAGAWAN SARWA TATAGATA / VAJRA MA MAY MUN TSA / VAJRA BHAWA MAHA SAMAYA SATTO / AH HUM PHET.

OM VAJRASATTO SAMAYA MANU PALAYA / VAJRASATTO TENO PATITA / DIDRO MAY BHAWA / SUTO KAYO MAY BHAWA / SUPO KAYO MAY BHAWA / ANU RAKTO MAY BHAWA / SARWA SIDDHI ME PAR YATSA / SARWA KARMA SUT TSA ME / TISHTAM SHRIYAM KURU HUM / HA HA HA HA HO / BHAGAWAN SARWA TATAGATA / VAJRA MA MAY MUN TSA / VAJRA BHAWA MAHA SAMAYA SATTO / AH HUM PHET.

OM VAJRASATTO SAMAYA MANU PALAYA / VAJRASATTO TENO PATITA / DIDRO MAY BHAWA / SUTO KAYO MAY BHAWA / SUPO KAYO MAY BHAWA / ANU RAKTO MAY BHAWA / SARWA SIDDHI ME PAR YATSA / SARWA KARMA SUT TSA ME / TISHTAM SHRIYAM KURU HUM / HA HA HA HA HO / BHAGAWAN SARWA TATAGATA / VAJRA MA MAY MUN TSA / VAJRA BHAWA MAHA SAMAYA SATTO / AH HUM PHET.

You are thinking, “Oh my goodness, what a long, big, complicated and disastrous mantra. How am I going to memorize this? I can barely memorize the mantras that I have!” But I tell you, this mantra has very special energy. You recite it a few days, it comes into memory immediately. Immediately it comes into memory. It is very, very wonderful. It will be one of the easiest mantras to memorize. You just test with time. It’s incredible. And once you do it twenty one times, again holding the mala, here on your index finger in front of your heart, and visualize the powerful…why are you doing the mantra? Visualize Vajrasattva purifying your body. OM VAJRASATTO SAMAYA MANU PALAYA / VAJRASATTO TENO PATITA / DIDRO MAY BHAWA / SUTO KAYO MAY BHAWA / SUPO KAYO MAY BHAWA / ANU RAKTO MAY BHAWA / SARWA SIDDHI ME PAR YATSA / SARWA KARMA SUT TSA ME / TISHTAM SHRIYAM KURU HUM / HA HA HA HA HO / BHAGAWAN SARWA TATAGATA / VAJRA MA MAY MUN TSA / VAJRA BHAWA MAHA SAMAYA SATTO / AH HUM PHET.

One.

OM VAJRASATTO SAMAYA MANU PALAYA / VAJRASATTO TENO PATITA / DIDRO MAY BHAWA / SUTO KAYO MAY BHAWA / SUPO KAYO MAY BHAWA / ANU RAKTO MAY BHAWA / SARWA SIDDHI ME PAR YATSA / SARWA KARMA SUT TSA ME / TISHTAM SHRIYAM KURU HUM / HA HA HA HA HO / BHAGAWAN SARWA TATAGATA / VAJRA MA MAY MUN TSA / VAJRA BHAWA MAHA SAMAYA SATTO / AH HUM PHET. It becomes very easy actually. After a while, when you do it a week, two weeks, it becomes very easy.

In fact it becomes second nature, and you don’t have to watch your mouth any more. You don’t have to focus on the mantra coming out of your mouth one bit. It’ll just come out of your mouth and you just do the visualization. In fact it is very, very nice. You visualize yourself in front of a beautiful white lights, wonderful white lights. And for the ladies, you can think it is my prince in white shining armor sitting up there. Very, very nice. And then for the guys they can think, “It’s my favorite sponsor and he’s going to give me a lot of money”, purification money like that, right?

OM VAJRASATTO SAMAYA MANU PALAYA / VAJRASATTO TENO PATITA / DIDRO MAY BHAWA / SUTO KAYO MAY BHAWA / SUPO KAYO MAY BHAWA / ANU RAKTO MAY BHAWA / SARWA SIDDHI ME PAR YATSA / SARWA KARMA SUT TSA ME / TISHTAM SHRIYAM KURU HUM / HA HA HA HA HO / BHAGAWAN SARWA TATAGATA / VAJRA MA MAY MUN TSA / VAJRA BHAWA MAHA SAMAYA SATTO / AH HUM PHET.

OM VAJRASATTO SAMAYA MANU PALAYA / VAJRASATTO TENO PATITA / DIDRO MAY BHAWA / SUTO KAYO MAY BHAWA / SUPO KAYO MAY BHAWA / ANU RAKTO MAY BHAWA / SARWA SIDDHI ME PAR YATSA / SARWA KARMA SUT TSA ME / TISHTAM SHRIYAM KURU HUM / HA HA HA HA HO / BHAGAWAN SARWA TATAGATA / VAJRA MA MAY MUN TSA / VAJRA BHAWA MAHA SAMAYA SATTO / AH HUM PHET.

It becomes easier and easier and easier and easier, and faster and faster and faster. This is nothing. You should see the long mantra of the 1000-Arm Avalokitesvara. You should see the Dukkar mantra. You should see Ushnivijaya mantra. Pages. You should see the mantra of Heruka. Pages and pages and pages. This is nothing. When I saw Heruka’s mantra I almost fell off my chair. It was unbelievable. I was thinking, “Oh my god…” You cannot recite it on one breath. It takes two or three breaths. It’s pages. [Rinpoche addresses attendants in Tibetan] Oh my god, there is this one deity called Ushnivijaya or Namgyalma.1 The mantra is pages and pages. You are going, “Buda buda budi budi muni muni” and going on and on and on and on and on. That’s just one! You go, “One and aiyoh!” Can you imagine reciting 100,000? You finish in 15 years! You’re thinking, “Aiyoh!” I thought to myself, “May I never – bad thoughts, I know – collect the karma that I have to pray to this Buddha,” I was thinking because I’d have to recite that long three-paged mantra. I was thinking, “Aiyoh”, you know? Imagine reciting that one, “Ommmm blah blah blah”…by the time the other guy has finished three or four rounds, you just did one! That’s how long the mantra is. Actually quite, quite long. [Rinpoche addresses attendants in Tibetan between 1:35:39 to 1:35:44] Listen, they will recite the Namgyalma for you. [group recitation by monks]

You can go out to the restaurant and come back and it’s still not finished.

That’s one! Imagine doing that 21 times a day! You can skip work and everything else. Imagine doing that 100,000 times. Oh my goodness, I was thinking to myself, “May I never ever get that deity,” isn’t that terrible? But that’s one. But then it’s wonderful because they’re so compassionate. So that condenses into a very short mantra OM DROOM SOHA. That’s it. So if you want to condense it, you say, “OM DROOM SOHA”.

So guess which one I do every day? OM DROOM SOHA, OM DROOM SOHA, OM DROOM SOHA, OM DROOM SOHA, OM DROOM SOHA, OM DROOM SOHA, OM DROOM SOHA, OM DROOM SOHA…that’s it. Actually that’s the long mantra of the goddess Namgyalma, the goddess of long life. That is a very long one.

So comparatively, this one to that, this one is just cake, it’s just cheesecake. It’s very easy, isn’t it? So one should be very happy that I am not teaching you the Namgyalma, in one way – don’t be too happy – alright? So if you guys don’t do this well, then I am going to request Zopa Rinpoche, His Eminence, to give you the initiation of Namgyalma and give you the lung and practice and make you do it every day, right? Blackmail. But you do this one well. It’s very easy, actually.

OM VAJRASATTO SAMAYA MANU PALAYA / VAJRASATTO TENO PATITA / DIDRO MAY BHAWA / SUTO KAYO MAY BHAWA / SUPO KAYO MAY BHAWA / ANU RAKTO MAY BHAWA / SARWA SIDDHI ME PAR YATSA / SARWA KARMA SUT TSA ME / TISHTAM SHRIYAM KURU HUM / HA HA HA HA HO / BHAGAWAN SARWA TATAGATA / VAJRA MA MAY MUN TSA / VAJRA BHAWA MAHA SAMAYA SATTO / AH HUM PHET.

How easy! It’s very simple, actually. And even if you do it a little bit wrong, or you do it with an American accent, or you do it with a Chinese accent or you do it with a Chinese-American accent, or you do it with no accent…it doesn’t matter. It’s the faith in Vajrasattva. But try to do it as accurately as you can. Even if you make a mistake, there’s no problemI. It’ll be very nice, it’ll be excellent. It is the power of the mantra. It itself has power so it doesn’t…even if you make some mistakes and your pronunciation is not right, don’t worry about it. Don’t think, “Oh, no effect!” and then you concentrate on “no effect, no effect” and you forget about the visualization…then, again, more anxiety, more delusions, more problems. Then you throw your mala away, you rip this page and you say, “No more Vajrasattva.” No, actually, no. In fact that very worry is another delusion, another obstacle coming up to stop you from the practice.

So you should do this practice and you should engage and try to finish 100,00. And you do it every single day, how lovely that would be. How lovely. Even one mala. Then when you have free time…you should do at least twenty-one of the long one and then – I shouldn’t teach you this but I will let you have it – you can even recite the Vajrasattva short one: OM BENZA SATTO HUM. OM VAJRA SATTO HUM, OM VAJRA SATTO HUM, OM VAJRA SATTO HUM. But you should recite the long one 21 times and then do the Vajrasattva short one. That is the minimum, 21. But when you do the actual long retreat, you should do the long mantra 100,000 times.

So the more effort you put towards purification, the more benefit you will get. The less you put toward it, the less benefit you will get. It depends on your motivation. So don’t think, “Oh, I’ll just do the short one and everything is going to be okay.” Well, that is your choice but there’s a long one and there’s a short one. And if we are physically able to do the long one, we should do the long one. There’s no two ways about it. You want purification, you will get it. And if you have purification, you will lessen your negative karma. When you lessen and purify your negative karma, all your delusions become less. Your delusions become groundless. You can get rid of your delusions, which is the root of all suffering. Very easy and then when you study the Dharma, when you do anything related to the Dharma, it becomes very easy, very fast. And also any other pursuits you have in your worldly life becomes very fast and very easy. Oh definitely. Definitely.

Then you recite that and visualize all Vajrasattva coming down and purifying yourself. Then after that you make a prayer of confession and resolve. After reciting the mantra 21 times, you recite, “Out of unknowing and confusion, I have transgressed my broken commitments. Oh Guru, protector, please protect me. Principal holder of the vajra, to you whose nature is great compassion, Lord of all beings, I go for refuge.”

Then Vajrasattva, being very pleased, you visualize him replying to you: “Dear one, all your negativities, obstructions, and degenerated commitments are cleansed and purified.” You visualize Vajrasattva saying that because he will say that to you. You visualize it well, you do it well, one day you will actually hear the voice. Definitely hear it. And if you are very lucky, it will sound like mine! Alright?

So after that you do absorption. Having said this, “he dissolves into me and my three doors become inseparable from the body, speech and mind of Vajrasattva.” What is the three doors? Three doors of the body, speech, and mind. So very nice. Then we visualize Vajrasattva dissolving, completely blessing us. And again under us, Yama goes to sleep. The seven levels of the ground closes, and a double vajra is sealed on top and you are sitting on top. Again, long life, your life is extended. And then you are completely purified. You visualize your body as white and bright and all your nervous system, all your channels, everything, everything is bright and shiny. And you think of yourself as very light and very bright, very wonderful. Alright?

Then afterwards you dedicate it. “By this virtue may I quickly become Guru Vajrasattva and then lead every being, without exception, to that state. Through the blessings of the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, the truth of actions and effects, and by the power of my pure superior intention”, what is your pure superior intention? To become a fully enlightened Being for all…for the sake of…to become a fully enlightened Buddha, to free all sentient beings from suffering. That is the superior intention: bodhicitta, bodhimind. “May all my prayers be fulfilled.”

And that is your Vajrasattva practice. Easy. I mean there’s a much more complicated practice that I found in the other book but I decided to put that away. Because if it is too long… I know you have a lot of other practices and commitments, but this one, you should not think, “Oh, I am forced to by my teacher. I have been blackmailed by my teacher. I have to do it or my teacher’s going to be angry.” That’s not the motivation. The motivation is you want less suffering. You want to have less obstacles. You have been given one of the most powerful methods for purifying broken commitments, negative karma, and therefore to reduce one’s suffering. If one does this mantra and this visualization well – one does this practice well – one will definitely see a big, fat, huge difference in one’s life. Physically, mentally and in one’s surroundings and the way people react with you. It will completely change.

One should completely devote oneself to Vajrasattva practice and at least, recite it 21 times a day to stop the negative actions you have collected on that day from doubling and increasing. So if we can recite it at least 21 times a day, isn’t that wonderful? And if possible, recite it just before we go to sleep at the end of the day, because all the negative karma collected by that day will be nullified and it will be stopped from increasing. The stronger you apply the four opponent powers, the stronger the effect of Vajrasattva will be.

How effective is not dependent on Vajrasattva. I have a little organizer and it has about 30 or 40 features on it. I only know one feature. But that’s my fault. It has a lot of things. I could put notes in it, I can put world time and etc., etc. – I can put lots of things in it, but I don’t know how to operate it. So because I don’t know how to operate it, it just has one or two functions for me. Like that Vajrasattva has a lot of functions, has a lot of power to purify your negative karma. The more you do it, the more functions you will see in it and the clearer you become.

So if you want freedom from deluded states, if you want freedom from your current suffering state, and the suffering states that will come in the future, you practice Vajrasattva. You take refuge. And make sure that you realize that Vajrasattva is all the Buddhas’ and bodhisattvas’ and deities’ energy of purification, coming in the form of this deity. And realize again that he is no other but your root Guru, your root teacher. Inseparable. And if you take refuge, have the four opponent powers and do the practice, and this mantra – such a short, easy practice – you will definitely see a difference. There is no doubt about it. You will definitely see a difference in your life. And don’t stop at 21. If you increase it once…even if some of you want to take Vajrasattva as your main practice and your main deity, fabulous. Wonderful. They sell the statues of this deity at the Bodhi Bookstore on Petaling Street. You can get it easy. You can get the photos easy. Very easy. And one should…if you take this practice solely, oh it would be excellent, excellent. But if you cannot take it solely or you have other practices, you take it together. No problem.

A Buddha is a Buddha. If you put Vajrasattva together with Tara and Je Rinpoche, don’t think when you go out of the room, they start fighting with each other: “I came here first, what are you doing here? What do you want?” And they fight over the offerings and they punch each other. Je Rinpoche takes his sword and cuts off Vajrasattva’s head. Vajrasattva takes his bell and slaps Tara. Tara takes her lotus and strangles Je Rinpoche. Then when you come back in the room, they all sit nicely again. No, it’s not like that, you know. Tara and Je Rinpoche, all the deities will not have any conflict with each other. They all love each other. The minute you leave the room, they kiss each other, they hug each other, they love each other, and they thank each other for coming and joining. When another deity shows up, they think to themselves, “The more the merrier”. So there is no problems, no conflicts. And how you put the deities, higher or lower, no problem. Don’t think, “Oh god, I got Tara, now where am I going to put Vajrasattva? Is it okay to put Vajrasattva…” Of course it’s okay, one Buddha loves another Buddha. Why? Because they have purified themselves of all the defilements that fuel negative energy, to have negative delusions. So if they are free of negative delusions, therefore they cannot have delusions. Therefore if you put them together, they feel joy. In fact, they just…it’s them. Vajrasattva is Buddha, Buddha is Vajrasattva. Inseparable. They are one in energy, so even if you have a hundred statues on your altar, no problem. And don’t think, “Oh, I have one set of offerings and one joss stick. I need to get one for each one.” No, they will share it. Believe me they will share it. There is no problem there.

So one should engage in the Vajrasattva practice. It is very, very important. It is very, very powerful. Alright? We have finished Vajrasattva.

Then, we do prostrations. And let’s see this book, the second one that I have given you. In the middle of the page it says prostration. Prostration can be practiced to the object of refuge or as part of the Guru Yoga. It is one of the best methods for purifying the seeds of unskillful karma, particularly of physical karma. It is effective against karmic obstacles, afflictions, and especially counteracts pride. So if you do prostrations it will destroy ego, it will destroy pride.

Then the meaning of Tibetan term “chak tsal”, or the word for prostration is “ chak tsal”, it means “requesting a hand”. Requesting whose hand? Not your girlfriend’s; requesting Buddha’s hand. His virtuous qualities of the body, speech, and mind. You are requesting his body, his speech and mind. There are two methods of prostrations involving either three or four centers.

In one, we touch the crown of the head, the forehead, the neck and the chest; in the other, simply the crown, neck and chest are touched. This is also considered sufficient. If we do prostrations by touching the three points, then the crown symbolizes our desire to attain the Buddha’s body, the neck his speech, and the chest his mind. To obtain these three we must master wisdom and means both inseparably and united. As we touch the three centers, our hands symbolize this: there are different ways of joining the palms but in the Mahayana tradition the thumbs are tucked in, in the gem-holding gesture.

We may prostrate either by placing only the knees, forehead and palms on the ground, or by making full prostrations in which the whole body touches the ground and the arms are outstretched. If there is sufficient space, it is always better to perform full prostrations, in which case it is important to rise quickly. The correct time to rest when making prostrations is after rising and not when one is on the ground. As in all things, we should take care and follow the proper procedures because the consequences of knowing a rule yet transgressing it are serious. In this case to rest on the ground out of laziness may result in an unfortunate rebirth. On rising, the palms should be flat on the ground. Using the knuckles…using the knuckles as a means of support shows disrespect towards the object of prostration because it is lazy and may result in rebirth as an animal with hooves.

Prostrations, if practiced incorrectly, are harmful just as food which is meant for our nourishment, if wrongly used, can be the cause of death. The performance of full prostrations is more beneficial since the merit accumulated equals the atoms in the earth beneath the outstretched body. So if you are tall, if you are fat, if you’re huge, you collect more merit so you should rejoice. If they are done correctly, with the proper intention, then the merit acquired may result in rebirth as a chakravartin king. In Manjushri’s Decree, the Sutra, taught by the Buddha to Manjushri himself, the benefit of skilful prostrations and the bad effects of unskilful ones are discussed in great detail.

Since prostrations are a powerful means of creating merit, we may infer that our failure to enjoy their potential effect is caused either by our incorrect practice or by strong manifestation of afflictions which counteract the seeds of skillful karma. In the sutra given by the Buddha to Manjushri directly, he mentions hatred as being the most destructive of all the afflictions because it annihilates all skilful karma that has been accumulated. When making prostrations one should recite the Triskandhadharmasutra [English: Three Heaps Sutra], a form of confession that mentions the name of the 35 Tathagatas and the ways in which we transgress the Buddha’s teachings. This is the names of 35 particular Buddhas, especially Buddha Shakyamuni. When recited in conjunction with prostrations, it is a very powerful purification method.

But let’s not learn that sutra. It is not necessary.

When you do your prostrations you can recite “NAMO GURU BEH, NAMO BUDDHA YA, NAMO DHARMA YA, NAMO SANGHA YAH”. The refuge formula. While you are reciting…while you are doing the prostrations, if you recite the refuge formula and take refuge constantly, you’ll be fulfilling two preliminaries at once. You will have fulfilled the refuge preliminary of 100,000 and the prostration preliminary of 100,000 simultaneously. Or you can do Vajrasattva’s mantra while you are prostrating. Or you can recite any mantras: OM MANI PADME HUM, OM AH RA PATSA NA DHI, OM TARE TUTTARE TURE SOHA, MIG MEY TZE WEY TER CHEN CHENREZIG, DRIMEY KHYEN PEY WANG PO JAMPALYANG, DU PUNG MA LU JOM ZEY SANG WEY DAG, GANGCHEN KHEY PEY TSUG CHEN TSONGKHAPA, LOBSANG DRAG PEY SHAB LA SOL WA DEB, OM AH GURU BENZA DHARA SUMATI KIRTI SIDDHI HUNG HUNG, OM VAJRAPANI HUM, OM VAJRAPANI HUM…any mantra that you want. Best is, since prostration is a purification practice, to recite any of the purificatory mantras, purification mantras such as Vajrasattva, even if you can do the short Vajrasattva while you are prostrating, OM VAJRASATTVA HUM. Better to do the long, more beneficial. Or refuge. Any one that you like.

It is wise to begin…when making…kasa…it takes about 40 prostrations to complete one recitation [of the Three Heaps Sutra], at which one begins again. The body makes the physical movements, while repeating the Sutra we make prostrations of speech, and our deep respect towards the object of refuge constitutes mental prostration. If we practice in this way, we make prostrations to all three doors and not merely with the body. It is wise to begin with 50 prostrations, gradually increasing to 100, then to 150 and so forth. Otherwise the only result will be exhaustion which is not the intended purpose.

I know all the great masters, no matter how highly realized, take prostrations as one of their main paths. My root Guru, His Eminence Jetsun Jampa Yeshe Kensur Rinpoche wakes up at 3:30am in the morning and he does his meditations until six. Has his breakfast. After breakfast – a simple, light breakfast – he does his prayers again until 10 and meditations until 10. At 10 he gives audiences to people, whoever wants to see him to consult him for divinations or for advice, whatever, until around lunch. After lunch he takes a short nap because he wakes up very early, about 40 minutes to an hour depending on how heavy his schedule was in the morning. After all afternoon he teaches over 500-600 monks daily giving them classes. So all afternoon he teaches till the evening until dinner. After dinner he goes up, does his prayers until 8 o’clock. At 8 o’clock he goes for circumambulation around the whole monastery, which is quite a long walk, and he circumambulates around the monastery, circumambulating around hundreds of stupas, hundreds of images of Buddha and Je Tsongkhapa and Tara, and all the holy lamas, and all the holy Gurus, and Trijang Rinpoche’s house, Zong Rinpoche’s house, Para Rinpoche’s house, also Serkong Rinpoche’s house and also the Dalai Lama’s residence and the Buddha statues in. So he circumambulates around and around. It’s quite a long walk. Some of us have been to the monastery so you understand the vastness and greatness. Our monastery has about 2,000 monks. So it is quite a huge, huge monastery where we reside. So Rinpoche circumambulates around that for about 45 minutes, then comes back and then he does prostrations for a half hour straight. Every single…full length prostrations, until 10pm and then he goes to sleep in the lion posture. Then he wakes up at 3:30am every single day.

So Rinpoche, being a very highly realized master, Rinpoche has done a three-year retreat in which he has recited over 100,000,000 Manjushri mantras. 100,000,000. Not 1,000,000; 100,000,000. So such a great master such as Rinpoche who has recited 100,000,000…forget 100,000,000! We’re lucky if we recite 100 in a week. Rinpoche has recited…in the fire puja, he has done over 100,000. It took him one and a half months to do. And his arms were swollen from doing the fire pujas to complete his retreat. So there’s no doubt that His Eminence Jetsum Jampa Yeshe is a fully enlightened Being. Fully enlightened, indivisible from Manjushri. Sometimes, from his mouth, he slips and tells me some dreams he has and he stops half way, but I have seen by his activities that he is fully enlightened Being actually. So even a fully enlightened Being, such an advanced being like Rinpoche, does prostrations.

What need do we need to say, what need do we have to say more for people like me, cheesecake Rinpoche, spaghetti Rinpoche? Definitely we have to do prostrations to purify. Definitely. So highly enlightened Beings like that teach it and explain it. We should definitely do it. His Holiness the great Avalokiteshvara Gyalwa Tenzin Gyaltso, the Dalai Lama, does prostrations every single day. I saw a picture of what he does from morning to night and also I saw the prostrations and prayers and what kinds of meditations he does. I read about it in his biography. Every single day, not one day passes by where His Holiness the Dalai Lama does not do prostrations. He is an enlightened Being. He is not doing prostrations because he is purifying anything. He is giving us an example of what we should do. He does prostrations every single day and mandala offerings and Vajrasattva and purification practices, and his regular meditation and teaches. And meditates and sees people all day long and all night long. Every single day. There’s not one day passes that these great beings do not prostrate to the Buddhas.

Prostration is one of the best ways for destroying one’s pride. Prostration is one of the best ways for to purify the negative karma associated with the body. In fact when all medicine fails, when medical treatment fails, in Tibet the high lamas would do divination and they will make their students do a 100,00 prostrations. Upon completion, they are well. Many times. Many, many times. Because you purify the negativities of your body. Therefore you will get freedom of bodily problems. Definitely. So if one cannot a 100,000, one should try to do at least 21 a day. Seven a day. Three a day. Minimum three a day.

Upon waking, immediately do three prostrations to your Guru, and your altar, the Buddha, Dharma and sangha with refuge. Before you go to sleep the last action you should do is three prostrations. The last action. The last action should not be putting toner on your face but the last action should be three prostrations before you go to sleep. The first action you wake up in the morning is not to see if your husband came home from his late night, or to see if your wife has come home. That’s not should be your first action. Or we wake up, we go, “Coffee!” Or wake up, “Coffee!” Or we wake up, “Bank!” Or wake up, “How much money do I have?” Not like that. The minute we wake up, prostration. Three prostrations to the three Jewels. And you start off your day with Dharma. Before you go to sleep, after toner, three prostrations. Immediately. Immediately you do three prostrations and go to sleep so your last actions was a Dharma action.

And in between, as much as you can, when you meet your teacher, when you go greet your teacher, three prostrations immediately. If you have difficulties and you have problems doing prostrations in front of people or to your teacher, it shows very strong pride, it shows very strong ego. Very, very strong. If you have health problems or you have some kind of problems you cannot, a prostration can be just holding your hands and bowing to your teacher. That is a prostration. It’s a mental state. Not prostrating to your teacher upon seeing him and upon leaving, before teachings and after teachings, is a sign of very heavy, very strong ego. And not destroying the ego will keep you in samsara. It’s very easy. So you are destroying ego, you are destroying pride by showing prostrations and respect to your teacher.

If you don’t respect the teacher who gives you Dharma, who will you respect? So prostrations to the Three Jewels, prostrations to your teacher is very powerful. To a correct object of refuge.

But you should never prostrate to a spirit and demons, and you should never ever prostrate to ordinary gods. Never. Because once you prostrate to them your refuge vows degenerate. Degenerate. If your best friend is the great Prime Minister Dr. Mahathir, you need to make friends with the local police. You need to make friends with the local magistrates. If they make any problems, you just show Mahathir and you shaking hands, and soon they say hello. They completely calm down. So if you have made friends with the Prime Minister of samsara, Buddha, you need to make friends with the small, small little ministers that run around, the spirits and demons and the people who run around as oracles, “I’m this, I’m Quan Yin, I’m Buddha, I’m he, I’m her, I know everything”? Don’t need to make friends with them, useless.

So prostration…by prostrating with the correct attitude, thinking about the qualities of Buddha, one is prostrating from the mind. Thinking about Dharma subjects, one is prostrating from the mind. By actually doing the physical prostration, one is…kasa…purifying the negativities of the body. By actually reciting Vajrasattva’s mantra or refuge, one is purifying the speech. So by prostrating you are purifying your body, your speech and your mind, simultaneously…and collecting the potential to achieve the body, the speech and mind of the Buddha. And the object should be a Buddha. You don’t have to be in front of the altar. When you’re travelling, you’re in a hotel or whatever, you can visualize your Guru or you can visualize the Buddha there and prostrate to them. No problem. No problem. So prostration is the faith. And remember that only the Buddha can free you from negative states of mind and suffering. [end of disc]

[Part 3]

There are two types of prostrations: a long length prostration and then the short. If you’re engaging in a prostration retreat, one should do the long one. If you are doing it when you meet your Guru and your teachers, you can do the short one.

So doing prostrations correctly can purify a lot of negative karma associated with the body, lots of negative karma associated with the body. And one can also purify along with that negative states…negative karma associated with the speech and the mind. Definitely. The object is a fully enlightened Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha. So before you see your teacher, immediately you should prostrate. After you leave, when you finish, you should prostrate, a correct student. But if you get close with your teacher, the minute you see him, the minute he comes out of the bathroom, “Oh, prostrate.” Or the minute he walks out to the kitchen, “Oh, prostate”…not necessary. You can always prostrate even in your mind.

Respect for your teacher is prostration. You don’t have to get fanatical, you know, the minute you see him you prostrate. It becomes crazy! You go out on the street, you go shopping, you go to Jaya Jusco and your teacher goes in, you come out, and the minute you see him, you prostrate. That’s crazy. Don’t need to do like that, don’t need to get fanatical about it, you know. No need to do that. Or you teacher runs in the room, the minute he comes out you prostrate again. No.

And also you should do it with wisdom. If you are among people who don’t accept it and see it as funny or whatever – not out of pride, you don’t need to do it – you prostrate from your mind. Not to make a spectacle of yourself, not that you don’t need believe in your Guru, not because you don’t have faith. You don’t make a spectacle to protect other people’s minds. It’s very important for us to protect other people’s minds. The foundation, the root of Dharma practice is protecting other people’s minds. People may make unnecessary demands of us and make us do this and that. If we can fulfil it why not? If it makes them happy that’s Dharma. Drikung Rinpoche said to me that Dharma is very simple. If the other person is happy and you caused that, that’s Dharma. It’s Dharma.

So let’s, for example, say if we wear our hair in a certain way and it bothers people, and they tell us again and again, and there is simply nothing wrong with it, let’s wear it another way. If it makes them happy that’s Dharma. Let’s not hold onto our pride. Let’s not hold onto our ego. Let’s offend other people as less as possible.

Not because we are wrong, but because they are at a level of practice that is quite different. And the less we can create unhappiness in other people’s minds, the less we create the karma for us to be unhappy. So we should swallow our pride and we should actually protect other people’s minds. If they have a particular request, if they ask us to do a certain thing or certain things bother them, never mind. Every time you say “I’m sorry,” you are getting closer to enlightenment. Every time you please another person and you protect another person, you are becoming enlightened. You will become enlightened on the basis of all sentient beings. If there are a 100 sentient beings in samsara, you cannot please 99 and not please one and become enlightened. You have to become enlightened on the basis of ALL sentient beings. If you become enlightened on the basis of sentient beings, now you should collect the karma in order to protect their minds. If they request you to do something and you cannot, you say it nicely. But one should not haughtily and rudely say, “I won’t do this, I won’t do that, I won’t do that, I won’t do this” because one has pride and one has ego, because the name of the game here is to get rid of pride and ego. So if you are doing it out of pride and ego it’s a Catch-22 situation. One should actually try to protect other people’s minds as much as possible.

What do you mean by protecting their mind? Not offending them, as much as possible. That is Dharma practice in your daily lives. So if someone does something you don’t like, if you need to criticize, if you need to say something, say it in a nice, honest way. Don’t criticize them, don’t say they are below you. Don’t say they are lower than you. Don’t say that their qualities are below you. Maybe it is, but you don’t have to tell them. Like I said if someone is ugly, you don’t go up to them and say, “Hey, you are ugly.” You are inviting trouble. You are not protecting their minds. If they are making some mistakes, if it is your position and right to correct them, say it in a nice, polite and kind way. And if it is not going to work at that time, don’t say it at that time. Wait for the right time. But make sure it will benefit. And if the other person argues, protect their mind. Say it in a different way. Say, “Okay, I understand. Never mind. Okay, we do it your way.” But in your heart you wait for another time to help them. Protecting another person’s mind is very, very important. It is Dharma practice in action. If we do lot of prayers and mantras and have a lot of statues, we have big altars but we don’t protect other people’s minds, what is the use? Not everybody can be up to par or do the things that we like. Or do the things that we like to do. Or do the things the way we like to do it, or up to our standards, but if we criticize them we are not protecting their minds. We may criticize them. If we are their boss, of course we have to say something but the way of saying should be kind without hurting the other person, without creating arguments and problems. It is very, very important. When we go out and we want to say something to someone, the way we say it should protect their minds.

What do we mean by protecting their minds? By not by helping not to offend them. Not to say things that hurt them, that are damaging. It is very, very important to protect their minds. Even if someone says, “Oh Dharma’s very bad” and you want to argue back and say, “No, Dharma’s very good,” never mind. You say, “Oh, okay.” You just leave it. You don’t say, “Okay, that the Dharma is wrong”, you are saying, “Okay, we’ll leave it for now.” And you don’t have to make a statement. Say “okay” to protect their mind. Protecting other people’s minds is a very powerful Dharma practice. If we can do that daily, we can do that all the time, we are becoming better and better and better and better. So that’s very important and we can lessen a lot of negative karma by protecting other people’s minds, not saying things that offend them. Even if we do certain things that are not wrong and it offends them, let’s stop doing it. Because I am one and they are many, so let’s just do it to make them happy. What’s the big deal? Our purpose here is to make them happy. A Buddha has compassion. He will do everything he can to help other beings. We should also emulate that. That is a quality that we admire. That’s why we put the Buddhas on our altar and study what they have to say. How can we emulate someone that is below us or the same as us? We are emulating the very qualities that we want to achieve. The only way to achieve it is not to say it is wonderful, it’s fabulous but to put it into practice, actually. Put it into practice so all day long we should watch our three doors, we should watch what we say from our speech. We should see what we say from our mind and we see what our body action is. Do we walk in a way that is very offensive? Do we dress in a way that is very offensive? Do we talk in a way that is very offensive? Do we criticize people in a way that is very offensive? If it is, we must stop.

We must face up to our ego and face up to ourselves, and stop and lessen it. That is Dharma practice. That is the essence. There is no other greater Dharma practice than that. It is to be compassionate. So don’t pray for compassion, don’t wish for compassion, don’t make offerings to compassion, prostrate to compassion, and keep compassion deities if you don’t actually train yourself in compassion. The actual practice is to train yourself in compassion. Then compassion will arise.

If you don’t train and you wish for it, pray for it, ask for it, supplicate for it, how will it ever come? You practice compassion by protecting other people’s minds, their body, their speech and mind. Whatever offends the majority, you stop. Whatever bothers them. It doesn’t mean you are wrong. It doesn’t mean you are not doing it right. It doesn’t mean you are below them. It doesn’t mean any of that. It means that in fact you are generating a broader spectrum of thinking, a greater mind, a more compassionate mind. Protect other people’s minds. Protect. And realize that they are suffering, they are overwhelmed with delusions and problems, and they have a lot of karma. And they have to deal with their karma. At least you have the Dharma. They don’t.

So being a Dharma practitioner we have to have a little more dignity than the next person or the next chap, isn’t it? We have to have a little more dignity. We have to have a little more presence because we know the Dharma and we know how suffering arises. If we are a Dharma practitioner and our mouth, our minds and our hearts don’t change, and our body actions don’t change, what kind of Dharma practitioner is that? Where are we going? A Dharma practitioner should not be what he wears, should not be the temple he goes to, the altar how beautiful it is, and how many practices or how much knowledge or what his library is. Or what Gurus he knows. A Dharma practitioner’s main quality that stands out should be the kindness, the change. That should be it. The person is kind, the person is improving. Even if the person is very, very weird and strange, and fierce and wrathful and evil; over time, when they change, that is Dharma practice.

And we all must change, for the sake of ourselves. If we don’t change, we will invite further suffering, obviously, because of karma and its effect, so we must change on a daily basis. And we almost have is almost have no choice but to change. We have no choice but to make a transformation. We should, and we should apply it immediately to protect other people. Protect other people. Even the way we act, the way we walk, the way we appear to people…

When I was younger, the way I walked my teacher said it looks very haughty. I was thinking, “I am not trying to be haughty,” but I didn’t answer back. Geshe-la used to say to me, “When you walk, walk more humbly. Don’t walk so haughtily because it offends people’s minds. You are not protecting their minds.” And I thought, “Yes, he’s right. Yes, he’s right.” So these days when I walk, I try not to swing my arms and my big butt around as much as I used to. But it’s correct, it’s offending other…because I didn’t mean it, but that’s not the point.

The point is you modify yourself – body, speech and mind – as much as possible, as a sign of your Dharma knowledge and training. Don’t advertise for Dharma knowledge you have. Show it by your actions, show it by your transformation, show it by how you change, show it by… from point A to point B to point C, from the first year to the second year to the third year of your Dharma practice, how you have changed without having to speak it, without having to show it. People will recognize it. People are not stupid. That’s how you will be a great patron of Dharma. That’s how you will spread the Dharma. That’s how you will become a great practitioner. That’s how you will engage and get the blessings of the Buddhas and the Dharma and the Sangha. That’s how you know you have understood the Dharma, when your behavior has been modified and changed to suit the needs of others, to suit the needs of other beings. That is the purpose of Dharma, to suit other beings, not because you are weak but because you are actually stronger. Think about that. Think about how we act and how we react to people. That is Dharma practice.

If we don’t do that, prostrations, Vajrasattva, all of that is out the window. They are useless. That and Vajrasattva, refuge and Je Rinpoche will have a lot of effect. It will be a combination effect. Like when we put a detergent, we wipe it and then we clean it, it will be a combination effect. And definitely you will see things change in your life. It is very important to protect other people’s minds. That should be it.

Whenever I associate with others, I think to myself as the lowest among all and hold others to be supreme from the depth of my heart.

When others other of jealousy treat me with abuse, slander and so on, may I suffer defeat and offer victory to others.

Eight Verses of Training the Mind. That was taught to us by His Holiness the Dalai Lama the first time I met His Holiness when I was 11. So I used to recite that every single day of my life. And that was my attempted main practice and that was the main practice His Holiness would do.

Whenever I associate with others may I think of myself as the lowest among all.

When others treat me out of jealousy with abuse, slander, and so on, may I suffer the defeat and offer the victory to others.

When one whom I have placed great hope in hurts me, may I view him as a supreme Guru.

And on and on, the Eight Verses. That is Dharma practice. Without that, what is the use of the mantras? What’s the use of pujas? What’s the use of your malas? What’s the use if your mala is amber or if it’s crystal or if it’s jade? What’s the use if it is made of solid gold and it’s from solid ivory? What’s the use if you know all the names of the deities? What’s the use that you belong to a center and you have life membership? What’s the use if your altar contains 500 statues and they are all antique? What’s the use if you know all the mantras perfectly and well? What’s the use if you have a huge Dharma library? What’s the use if you can recite all the texts from memory perfectly and wonderfully to people? Do you think that’s Dharma practice? Do you think that’s going to change your life? Do you think that people will be impressed by that? The silly people, in the beginning, will be impressed but in the end people will run away and see you as a hypocrite. Dharma practice is not that: it is not the altars, it is not your mala, it is not the mantras, it is not the books you have, it is not knowledge. It is not reciting the names of the deities. It is not that.

Dharma practice is the transformation of the mind. Modifying one’s behavior on the basis of transforming one’s mind and becoming a gentler and kinder person. Not once, not twice, all the time continuously. Not when you are only around the Gurus, not only when you are in the monastery. Not only when you are being scolded or told or watched. Always. You are always you are watched by the Buddhas and your protectors. And always being watched by your karma. There is no escape from that. You can’t be in your room and do something else. You can’t be in your office and do something else, and think no one’s watching you and you can get away with it. You can’t get away from karma and the omniscient wisdom eye of the Three Jewels.

If you do good things, whether people are watching or not, when you actually face your altar and you can face it with dignity. You can’t get away from karma. Whether you are being watched or not one’s actions should accord with Dharma. It will benefit oneself. Modify one’s behavior. Modify one’s dress. Modify one’s appearance. Modify one’s behavior. Modify one’s speech. Modify one’s desires.

And through modification of these, one will eventually be able to lessen the delusions and root them out with the practice of Vajrasattva purification. With the practice of refuge, with the practice of Je Rinpoche, and meditation and studying the Dharma.

And one may be very enthusiastic in studying the Dharma and doing the Dharma in the beginning but after a while we find it wanes. It wanes because we don’t make effort towards study. It wanes and gets less because we don’t read it, and we don’t think about and contemplate on it. With anything in life, when we don’t focus and contemplate on it, it wanes. The interest disappears. It disappears or remains strong on the basis of you contemplating, thinking about it and reading about it and studying about it. You have all the books and materials available. You have the intelligence, and the language to read and understand it. Why not take full advantage of that? Don’t let the books rot in the corner collecting dust, decaying away, turning yellow. Take the books, use it. Read it, study it.

How can you get enlightened without knowing the methods? How can you sit there and make money and go to work and have a wonderful family and eat and sleep and not worry about death, which is inevitable? How stupid and how silly you do not worry about death. How stupid and silly you don’t worry about your next life which is longer than this current life. How can we be attached to all the things of this life which we are going to have to leave behind very soon? It is stupidity.

And I am sorry to use that language, please forgive me, it is pure stupidity that we focus and attract all our energy and attention to this life. One should not be embarrassed to practice Dharma. One should not be embarrassed to pray. One should not be embarrassed to do meditation and study the Dharma. One should not be embarrassed at these things. One should be proud of it. One should be embarrassed to be attached to money, to be embarrassed to be attached to one’s mate, to be embarrassed to be attached to S-E-X, and drinking and partying and discoing because those are the ones that are going to bring you suffering. Even if your worldly friends scorn you and say, “Those are good things and why are you becoming a religious fanatic?”, you forgive them because it is their ignorance speaking. At the time of death none of these things are going to be able to help you. None of your friends are going to be able to help you. Who cares what they say? Who cares what they think? Of course you don’t say, “Who cares what you think?”, protect their minds. Say, “Oh, thank you, thank you.” One should be embarrassed of negative activities, not embarrassed of Dharma practice and Dharma studies, and Dharma reading and applying.

One should not be embarrassed because one does not lie, and one should not be embarrassed that one is modifying and changing and transforming. One should not be embarrassed of that. There’s no reason to. One should be embarrassed that one is not modifying, one has a big mouth, one fights and argues and hurts people. One that is cruel and mean, haughty and full of ego and pride. You should be embarrassed of that. One should be embarrassed to go to a disco. One should be embarrassed to go out for a drink. One should be embarrassed to get drunk, and do drugs and smoke. You should be embarrassed of those things. Those are things that are embarrassing because they create harm for your body, and your mind, and your speech. Those are the embarrassing…one should be embarrassed when one is excited to go to the office and sit there and make a lot of money. You should be embarrassed of that. That is embarrassing because you are going deeper into samsara. Those are the real things you should be embarrassed of, not Dharma practice, not Dharma reading. You…there is not a time when you enter Dharma: “Oh when I’m a certain age, I will do Dharma.” How do you know you will live to a certain age? Everyone needs Dharma. Everyone wants happiness and everyone wants to escape. There is no time when you should or should not start. The time is immediate. The place is now…kasa…the time is now. Immediate. The place is here and now.

You are going to die. You are going to pass away. You are going to drop dead. Your body is going to rot away and your body is going to take a new life. Realize that. See that. Don’t be intellectual about it. It’s going to happen to you. Are you ready? Are you prepared? And what are you doing to prepare? You think your little cheap mantras – “OM MANI PADME HUM, OM MANI PADME HUM, OM MANI PADME HUM, OM MANI PADME HUM…oh, I did 21 today. I am such a great practitioner.” Ridiculous. You think you can recite a few mantras and avoid yourself from going to hell and the Three Lower Realms in the next life? You think? You think it’s so easy? If it is so easy, Buddha Shakyamuni would have thrown out…wouldn’t have taught anything; just recite one mantra, you become enlightened. Not so simple.

Because karma is so complicated. Because life is so complicated, delusions are so complicated. That is why Dharma is complicated. But it is a complication worth bearing. It’s a complication worth learning. It’s a complication worth achieving and approaching and trying to learn. It is worth it. Because the battle you are trying to fight is quite a complicated big battle. It is a big, big battle you are trying to fight. You should be embarrassed of the negative things you do all day long. Don’t be embarrassed of Dharma practice. Don’t hide it. Don’t be embarrassed that you do Dharma practice. There is nothing fanatical. Fanaticism is when you do Dharma practice of the basis of, you know, just for the sake of doing it and going overboard and forcing everybody into it because you are doing it. Fanaticism is harmful. You should not be embarrassed of Dharma practice. You should be proud that you are a Buddhist. You should be proud that you have met the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha.

[tape gap at 2:17:30 to 2:17:32]

You’re making excuses. It doesn’t matter how old you are or what position you are in. Whether you know a lot of Dharma or not. What you know, practice it. What you know, do it. And do it without complaint, do it without showing off, do it without making a big spectacle and a drama and a Chinese opera out of it. Do it from the heart. In the end it is going to be you and Buddha. That’s who you are going to have to face up to. So no matter how beautiful you are, no matter how wonderful you are, no matter how rich you are, no matter how much business you have, no matter how intelligent you are, how many degrees you have – it doesn’t matter when you face the truth in the end when you face Buddha.

Modify your behavior immediately. Change your behaviors that need to be changed immediately. Increase the positive. Put the volume up on the positive and stop procrastinating in your Dharma practice. Stop procrastinating. Stop waiting. Because death is not going to be procrastinated. Stop procrastinating and stop making up excuses for your laziness. Stop it and, for your ego, stop hiding behind different excuses to protect that ego that is destroying you. Modify your behavior immediately and pull out that ego that is just destroying your life and destroying your future happiness. Pull it out. And the only way to do it is to go head-on by modifying your behavior, avoiding the ten non-virtues. Purifying by Vajrasattva and praying to your Guru and showing respect to all sentient beings. All sentient beings. That is Dharma practice. Nothing else. Think about it.

Prostration is an incredible, wonderful way to purify the negative karma. There is a right way of doing it. There’s a negative way…a wrong way of doing it. I will show you the right way. Not that I am doing it the right way but I learned it from my holy Gurus who are infallible. Who learned it from their holy Gurus and their Gurus and their Gurus, up to the time when the Buddha first taught it originally. It is an excellent practice to purify the negativities of the body, the speech and the mind, especially the body. Especially the body and it is excellent, and will destroy your pride and your ego. Always.

Okay, do we have any questions? Basically we are finished. Yes, yes, go ahead. Now is the time to ask. It will benefit everybody if you ask.

[someone asks a question]

[answer] That is a very good question. Actually the minute you get up, out of respect, if you brush then prostrate then wash, it’s okay. But most of us, after we wash, we prostrate you know, not convenient. The minute you get up, you prostrate. Out of faith. So whether you brush your teeth before or after, doesn’t make a difference. It’s the mind. That’s a very good question. Usually when we go to the altar, also we have washed and brushed and bathed and then we go to the altar. So what she is asking is okay. If you want to brush your teeth first, out of respect, that’s okay. Because when you are prostrating, your breathing maybe Tsongkhapa will go like that. So okay.

Any more questions?

[someone asks a question]

[answer] Oh you do, the Guru is the Buddha. Yes, the Buddha Shakyamuni. You don’t need to have an initiation to have a Guru, you do not. And you do not need a Guru to prostrate. So ultimate Guru is Shakyamuni. You prostrate to the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha. So the Guru is Shakyamuni, the Buddha is Shakyumuni, the Dharma is speech and the Sangha is his holy body. That’s fine.

[someone asks a question]

[answer] If you don’t have an altar, you visualize the Buddha.

[someone asks a question]

[answer] No, no, the fact that you have a Buddha there, and the fact the form is a Buddha is already blessed. It’t is already blessed. And if you have the opportunity to bring it to your Guru and further bless it, it’s wonderful. But just because he hasn’t blessed it, doesn’t mean it is not blessed. Buddha is Buddha, regardless.

I remember one Tibetan man brought a small pendant of Tara to Zong Rinpoche. He got a nice yelling. Rinpoche said to him…he said, “Could you bless it?” and Rinpoche said, “Because it has the form of the holy Buddha Tara the female goddess, it’s already blessed. There is nothing I can do for it.” He kicked him out and chased him out. Yes, actually. Any other questions?

[someone asks a question]

[answer] No, no, he’s been on top of you. You don’t get up, run here, say, “You are forgiven” and run back. No, no, he’s here. He’s here and he’s talking. And then you don’t have to go…you can hear him, it’s enough. If you really want to get complicated, you put a mirror and visualize him: “Yah, okay, I’m forgiven.” But he is here, here, and facing the same way you are.

[someone asks a question]

[answer] No, you cannot receive a lung unless it’s direct. It must be directly from the mouth so by phone is okay but not by tape recorder. No. It must be directly from the teacher.

[someone asks a question]

[answer] The air dissolves into your central channel. It just dissolves. It doesn’t go out. Don’t visualize it going out. Visualize it dissolves.

[someone asks a question]

[answer] Oh you can sit, no problem, but if it turns you on to stand up, you do it standing up. Make sure your back is straight. If your back is crooked, your meridian line or psychic channel will be crooked. Best is straight. That’s why when we do meditation the psychic channel must be straight. And even when you do it, you should put a light little cushion under your buttocks and push it up a little so that the back is straight. It’s very important.

[someone asks a question]

[answer] Oh no, refuge is a state of mind. If you take formal refuge with your Guru that is very nice. If you don’t, you can visualize the Buddha and take refuge yourself. No problem. No problem. Refuge is a state of mind and the sign of taking refuge is when your behavior becomes modified. That’s the real sign of refuge.

Someone in back? [pointing at audience]

[someone asks a question]

[answer] No. Then you visualize prostrations. You visualize you’re doing it. It’s okay. It’s a state of mind. The Buddha is not going to say, “No blessings, no prostrations today”. It’s not a deal here, you know. Any other questions?

Yah?

[someone asks a question]

[answer] Oh no, you can read it, you can just read it like that, yes. No, no, this is not an Islamic temple here you know, where you go, “OooOOOOoo.” You don’t have to do that, no, no. Not that that’s wrong, but in our tradition, you just do it quietly and nicely.

[someone asks a question]

[answer] No, this one that I gave you? No. This one that I gave you. But it will have the same effect. Don’t worry. You have a big hang-up about initiations. Don’t get any.

[someone asks a question]

[answer] Oh that, nothing you can do about it. No. You meditate on impermanence and you pray for the Buddha for the killed animals. You cannot take their karma away. Not karma, you cannot purify their karma. If that’s the case, every time we do something negative, Buddha could take our negative karma away. And beyond ignorance, we do much more things that are worse. Much, much worse. No, you cannot take their karma away. Yes, any questions?

[someone asks a question]

[answer] You see, being a vegetarian has nothing to do with Buddhist…kasa…it has nothing to do with deep practice because Buddha said that if you have nothing to be involved with the meat, if you don’t know that it has been killed for you and you did not specifically order it, it is permissible to eat because monks are permiss…kasa…monks are allowed to eat meat on the basis that they do not ask for it. I’m a little naughty. But anyway, that they don’t ask for it because it is to let go of attachments. So when the monks used to go and beg – even Buddha used to beg – whatever the patrons gave in their alms bowl, the Buddha and monks cannot look at them, they keep their eyes lowered, and they put the alms bowl out, they put it in, they cover it, they take the alms bowl, put it on the patron’s head, and they recite a sutra for them and pray for them, and they take back to the monastery to and eat. You are not even to look at what you have inside. So whatever you are given, you eat. So if you can reduce meat consciously, if you can reduce it consciously, it is very good. It is very, very good.

The Chinese Mahayana tradition of the 1st and the 15th of reducing the meat, that’s excellent because out of a year you are reducing meat what, 24 times. Better than what you normally would, right? But if you can reduce it, better because actually animals are killed and they are killed violently and against their will. So the violent energy is in their meat, it is in their flesh. When you eat that that energy will be transformed into you, making you a more aggressive person.

And also, it’s a Catch-22 situation. If you don’t buy it, no one’s going to kill it. Right? So if you can consciously eat less, that would be very good, very good – out of compassion for the animals that are killed. Out of compassion for the people that have killed them. You do it. You may think, “Oh I’m one person and I eat it or not, it is still going to be there.” That’s not the point. The point is the strength of your practice.

The point is the strength of your compassion. But you should not go cold turkey. You should eat a little and take a little and keep your strength up, keep your strength up. If you can reduce it consciously and say it’s for saving animals, you are collecting merit. If you just stop it to show off to people, you’re not collecting any merit. So consciously giving up, realizing that it causes harm, it is beneficial. Any reduction, even .0001%, it is productive.

[someone asks a question]

[answer] If there’s meat, you can offer a little, no problem. No problem. You can offer a little bit. The Buddha will accept anything from your heart, just like when he was alive. But in other traditions such as the Theravadan traditions, in Thailand or Burma, that would be offensive, so we should respect their traditions and not offer meat on their altar to offend them. And when we go to Chinese Mahayana traditions, not to offend them. It is not that we are wrong, but again the name of the game here is to protect their mind, protect their mind. Any other questions?

[someone asks a question]

[answer] So your hands is not empty. You should visualize it as a wish-fulfilling jewel having precious things inside. When you go to your Guru you should never have an empty hand. So you should visualize it as filled with precious jewels, filled with precious things, everything excellent and wonderful. As a symbolism, that is not empty. Any questions?

Yes.

Now tonight if we end up one o’clock, it’s not my fault, all right? So don’t be looking at me through the corner of your eyes, with your red eyes like the last night, and complain saying, “This Rinpoche keeps us here all night.” Tonight it’s you guys, alright? I can go on for the rest of the night. It’s up to you, alright? So don’t sigh at me!

[someone asks a question]

You find the visualization appealing. Okay.

[answer] Oh yes, you can apply that to another Buddha. You can apply that to Guru Rinpoche, you can apply that to Shakyamuni, you can apply that to Tara. No problem. No problem. That is absolutely fine because it is a general method. And in fact Guru Rinpoche is just one of the previous emanations of Tsongkhapa. They are on the same mental continuum. Any other questions? Yes?

[someone asks a question]

[answer] If it feels nice because you know you are doing good things and you are purifying, that’s not attachment. If you feel nice for the sake of just feeling nice and you don’t have the objective of becoming enlightened, that’s attachment. But the objective is enlightenment, there’s nothing wrong in wanting enlightenment. Right? So that would not be an attachment. And when he says ‘nice’, I think he means comfortable. Comfortable. Yes.

[someone asks a question]

[answer] No, that…what we are talking about in non-virtue is that taking intoxicants is an extension of those tenets. It is…yes, it is an extension of those tenets. It is not specifically mentioned because the root of taking intoxicants is one of the three negative states of mind, right? So it is not there explicitly but it is indirectly there because the root is there. If you cut off the root, you would not be drinking at all, would you? Understand?

[someone asks a question]

[answer] You shouldn’t take drink itself has different properties. Drink itself in excessiveness will damage your body so if you damage your body you are destroying your opportunity to meditate, you are destroying your wind energy channels. When you actually meditate it’s destroyed, it’s been burnt. You are killing yourself. That’s not very good, right? Number two, when you drink, the drinking itself is nothing but when you become intoxicated, the negative states of minds appear, right? So that’s why it becomes a negative action. Any other questions?

[someone asks a question]

[answer] Where does it say that? The quote? From who? Source? Who? Oh, I see. So what’s the question? If you do the Vajrasattva and that, yes, it will be more powerful because it is speech purification and body purification. Why not? [someone continues asking a question] No, if your karma is being purified at a faster rate, and then you do it and it becomes slower, how can that be negative? It’s just slower but it is not negative. It is still being purified. Otherwise what are you doing with your mouth? You might as well use it for Vajrasattva. That’s very illogical. It is not as fast but it is still okay, right? Any other questions?

[someone asks a question]

[answer] As much as one can. If you can take one for the rest of your life, once a month, however much you can hold it, you should take it. As much because the more…if…as I told you, simply refraining from an action doesn’t mean you are practicing morality. But you have to consciously know the result and consciously know that it has benefits, and consciously take the vow to get actually the benefits. Example, a baby, when it doesn’t kill and lions kill, doesn’t mean they are practicing morality. So if you can take the Mahayana precepts once and for all, for the rest of your life, fabulous. If you cannot, try to take it as often as you think you can hold it. And keep it well during that time. It is better to take it for one day and keep it well, than take it for a lifetime and break it constantly. Even if you break it, you can purify by the four opponent powers with Vajrasattva because we are human. Any other questions?

[someone asks a question]

[answer] Among lay people. Can I tell you any–…yes, there was an Indian girl named Kamadevi who in her previous life was killed in a car accident. It was very well-documented in India. And this young girl was born about 60 or 70 kilometers away from where she was killed. And when she was killed, she was a young woman with a family with children, and a husband and a mother-in-law, and all of that. And she was killed at that time riding in a bike, having an accident as far as I remember. In her next rebirth, she took rebirth as a young girl again and from a young age she used to tell her parents, “Oh, my family is here. I have brothers and sisters. I have children here, I have my family here, they live in this town.” I mean to a young girl…the parents never even heard of the town. The parents never heard of these people. She said it over and over again, and again and again until her parents were…not convinced, but they were becoming…kasa…interested. So they actually took the girl to where she was talking about. They took her there and she was able to identify the family, the people and even her kids, who were grown up now, and her husband. It was very well-documented. It was in Punjab in North India. And in fact, later on, the girl had an audience with His Holiness the Dalai Lama to tell about her experience. Lots of lots of people.

We will not speak about it because we will be harassed by society who say it is not true, but it doesn’t mean that it is not true. It is true. That was very well-documented in India. I think a lot of people might have heard about it. It was in all the newspapers. Very, very famous documentary. Yesm there are definitely. I see it all the time. If you watch different kinds of shows that talk about reincarnation. They show it all the time in books, about regular housewives and regular people who remember. And there’s past life regression therapy. Have you heard of that? Where they actually take you back to your previous life to see why you act this way or do this way. But we don’t need therapists. The best is Buddha. Meditation is the best. Is that alright? Any other questions?

Okay. So tomorrow night we will…yes?

[someone asks a question]

[answer] Oh what vows? If the Sangha member is there, you take it from the Sangha member. If not, if not you can take it in front of the Buddha. Visualized or with altar, no problem, no problem. Because in a place where Sangha members and teachers are not readily available, you have to make do, isn’t it? Any other questions?

[someone asks a question]

[answer] Okay, we’ll do the dedication. Tomorrow night…kasa…tomorrow night we will conclude the teachings this week, which has been very enjoyable. And I hope it has been for you. We will conclude it by doing water offerings, which is just as easy as tonight, very nicely and well because we need to do that on our altar every day. Offerings, general water offerings, and also we will learn how to do the mandala, the short and the long one, the meaning behind it. So one should try to be here tomorrow night. It will the last night. And let’s try to start at 7:30, 8 o’clock, whenever you can get here, with traffic. I understand. To finish it off. And then you have a lot of new things to do, you have a lot of new knowledge, and you have a lot of new information regarding the Dharma. Now all this information should not just be placed on the shelf or placed in the back of your mind, or wait till you are finished with your job, or finished with…you’re retired, or you are at a disposable time. The best disposable time, the best opportunity is right now so apply that immediately. So you will get the full benefit. So tomorrow night we will do mandala, and then tomorrow night I will show you how to do offerings on your altar, and then the five preliminaries will be finished. Refuge is finish, Guru Yoga is finished, how to react…kasa…how be with your Guru is complete, and also the holy meditational practice of Je Rinpoche will be finished, will be complete. You have a lot of new things, and these teachings you can apply to all other teachings of the Dharma.

So we should again dedicate our energies tonight to the full enlightenment of all sentient beings. We should dedicate that all beings may be free from illusions and delusions. We should be dedicating that the world be at peace. We should dedicate that the holy beings in the world who work for the sake of others like Mother Theresa and His Holiness the Dalai Lama, and all such beings that we may or may not know about, have long life, excellent health, and their needs and wants for the sake of others be fulfilled effortlessly and without any difficulties.

And we should also pray that the Dharma flourishes where the Dharma has already taken root, may it become stronger. Where it has not taken root, may it take root. And where it has taken root and begun, degenerated, may it be regenerated. We should also dedicate that in this and all lives, may all sentient beings come under the holy protection of the Three Jewels, be watched and taken care of and receive the nectar-like Dharma like we have, to be able to practice and receive the attainments. May all sentient beings be able to pull out from the roots their delusions, their ego grasping, their hatred, their desire, their ignorance and wrong conceptions, etc. And we dedicate this holy energy that we have collected tonight in listening to the Dharma, and talking about the Dharma, and thinking about the Dharma and to teach the Dharma, we dedicate it for the complete enlightenment of all sentient beings. Completely from this planet. May we become a fully enlightened Being and after enlightenment, may we not rest in enlightenment but we may come back again and again to benefit others.

As the quote by Shantideva, as long as suffering beings exist, as long as there are beings existing here, may I come back again and again and again in order to save them, in order to teach them, to help them. Please think like so when I recite the dedication verses. Whether you know the words or not does not make any difference. It is the energy that is collected by dedicating towards that, full enlightenment.

KYE-WA KUN-TU YANG-DAK LA-MA DANG
DRAL-ME CHO-KYI PAL-LA LONG-CHO CHING
SA-DANG LAM-GYI YON-TEN RAP-DZOK NA
DORJE CHANG-GI GO-PANG NYUR-TO SHUG

GANG RI RAWE KORWAI SHING KHAM DIR
PEN DANG DEWA MALU GYUNG WAI NE
CHENREZIG WANG TENZIN GYATSO YI
SHA PEI SITHAI BARDU DEN GYUR CHIG

JETSUN LAMA KU TSE RABTEN CHING
NAMKAR TRINLEY CHOG CHUR GYE PA DANG
LOBSANG TENPE DRON ME SA SUM GYI
DRO WE MUNSEL TAKTUR NE GYUR CHIG

GE WA DI YI KYE WO KUN
SO NAM YE SHE TSOK DZOK SHING
SO NAM YE SHE LEI CHUNG WAI
DAM PA KU NYI TOB PAR SHOB

JANG-JUB SEM-CHOK RINPOCHE
MA-KYE PA-NAM KYE-GYUR CHIK
KYE-PA NYAM-PA ME-PA YANG
GONG-NA GONG-DU PEL-WAR SHUG (2x)

TONG-NI TONG-WA RINPOCHE
MA-KYE PA-NAM KYE-GYUR CHIK
KYE-PA NYAM-PA ME-PA YANG
GONG-NA GONG-DU PEL-WAR SHUG

GE-WA DI-YI NYUR-DU DAK
LA-MA SANG-GYE DRUP-GYUR NA
DRO-WA CHIK-KYANG MA-LU PA
DE-YI SA-LA GO-PAR SHUG

SI-ZHI NAM-KAR JI-NYE GE-TSEN-GYI
DENG-DIR MI-SHI GU-PA KUN-DRAL-TE
NAY-KAP TAR-TUG GE-LEK NAM-KYE-DZO
PUN-TSOK PEL-LA ROL-PAY TRA-SHI-SHOG

KUN-KYEN LO-ZANG DRAG-PEY CHO-KYI-DHER
LAP-SUM NAM-DAG TSE-CHIG DRUP-LA-TSON
NEL-JOR RAP-JHUNG TSOG-KYI YONG-GANG-WEY
TUB-TEN YUN-DHU NEY-PEY TRA-SHI-SHOG

ZHON-NU DU-NAY LA-MA LHA-TSOG-LA
SOL-WA TAB-PEY LO-ZANG DRAG-PA-YI
JHIN-LAP SHUG-NAY ZHEN-DHON LHUN-GYI-DRUB
LO-ZANG DOR-JE CHANG-GI TRA-SHI-SHOG

DHO-GU JOR-PA YAR-GYI TSOG-PAR-PHEL
KYON-MEY RIG-KYI DHAL-DRO GYIM-CHEY-MEY
NYIN-TSHEN LO-ZANG DHAM-PEY CHO-KYI-DHA
PUN-TSOK PEL-LA ROL-PAY TRA-SHI-SHOG

DAG-SOG NAM-KYI DENG-NAY JANG-CHUB-BAR
GYI-DANG GYI-GYUR GE-WA CHI-SAG-PA
SHING-DHIR JE-TSUN DAM-PEY ZU-KYI-KU
GYUR-MEY DOR-JE TAR-TEN TRA-SHI-SHOG

From my two collections, vast as space, that I have amassed
From working with effort at this practice for a great length of time,
May I become the chief leading Buddha for all those
Whose mind’s wisdom eye is blinded by ignorance.

Even if do not reach this state, may I be held
In your loving compassion for all my lives, Manjushri.
May I find the best of complete graded paths of the teachings
And may I please all the Buddhas by practicing.

Using skillful means drawn by the strong force of compassion,
May I clear the darkness from the minds of all beings
With the points of the path as I have discerned them.
May I uphold Buddha’s teachings for a very long time.

With my heart going out with great compassion
In whatever direction the most precious teachings
Have not yet spread or once spread have declined,
May I offer this treasure of happiness to aid all sentient beings.

May the minds of those who wish for liberation be granted bounteous peace
And the Buddhas’ deeds be nourished for a long time
By even this graded Path to Enlightenment completed due to
The wondrous virtuous conduct of the Buddhas and their Sons.

May all human and non-human beings that eliminate adversity
And make things conducive for practicing the excellent paths
Never be parted in any of their lives
From the purest path praised by the Buddhas.

Whenever someone makes effort to act
In accordance with the ten-fold Mahayana virtuous practices,
May he/she always be assisted by the mighty ones
And may oceans of prosperity spread everywhere.

DAG-SOG JIN-NYEH SAG-PA GE-WA DEE
TAN-DANG DRO-WA KUN-LA GANG-PHAN DANG
CHE-PAR JE-TSUN LO-ZANG DRAG-PA YI
TAN-PI NYING-PO RING-DU SAL-SHEH SHUG

Very good. Very, very good. So all of you please try to make it for tomorrow to the best of your ability. We can go out to dinners and parties and fun and karaokes and movies and discos and sleep when the teachings are all over…

Transcribed by Linda Meryl, checked by Boyce Teoh

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