Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 28-minute introduction to Vajrayāna practice, Choedak cautions against treating the path as quick or easy, using the image of a snake in a bamboo tube—fall forward or fall back, no third way. He distinguishes authentic Vajrayāna training from market hype, emphasizing that it demands rigorous foundation practices and fierce dedication, not exoticism. Open to laypeople and monastics alike, the path requires strength to chew bone, not meat. Choedak illustrates the power of committed practice through his own mother’s transformation: prostrations healed her tuberculosis-ravaged body and mind when medicine and injection failed. He walks through how foundation practices work psychologically and physically—prostrations humble arrogance, build spiritual momentum, and can fit into Western life in short daily sessions. The talk closes on tone: don’t treat this as entertainment; instead, filter everything heard, extract the essence, and recognize that spiritual transmission depends on the interdependence of teacher, student, and genuine motivation.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 06 VP.mp3
UUID: 58785470-613e-45aa-876c-e8c51a82e2a2
Teacher: Choedak
Collection: Intro to Vajrayāna Psychology (Choedak)
Date: 1987 (exact day not recorded)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Words: ~3,418
They said, it’s like a snake in a bamboo. It can either fall from the top or fall from the bottom. There’s no other third way. If you practice very hard, proving to be very suitable to Tantra practice wholeheartedly, then there’s a chance of going from the other end. Otherwise, you will fall back.
That is, I don’t know, Vajra hell. Called Vajra hell. It’s the worst stage of downfall. So it’s very, very profound, but yet, it’s not something to be grabbed as it appears to be very exotic, as it appears to be very, very suitable. But yet, Vajrayāna teachings, it’s very interesting.
Vajrayāna, whether you are lay, whether you are monk, doesn’t make any distinction. Everybody is more or less welcome. Everybody can come. Everybody can practice.
It has no sense of restriction. If you are a monk or a nun, of course, that very foundation of morality serves as solid foundation. Being a strict monk doesn’t mean you don’t have to fulfill the Vajrayāna criteria, such as completing all the foundation practice. All the great teachers of Tibet who have proven to be existing Buddhas in flesh, they have gone through tremendous hardship of these practices. They don’t tell you much of the result that they gain from this highest form of Vajrayāna practice.
They always talk about the calluses on the bottom. How the wrist got worn out with the flesh. All these hardship practices. So, Vajrayāna practice, when you’re looking at it, you have to have really strong teeth. You have to chew the bone, not the flesh.
You’re talking about really being able to chew the bone like Vajrayāna, and yet being able to extract the real energy, real marrow out of it. It’s not talking about easy and being attractive and wearing swift and quick path. These are only the compulsive Vajrayāna people, you know, marketers of Vajrayāna, when they say it’s quick and easy and swift. But actually, it’s not. It’s very hard.
You have to have very strong teeth to bite bone. And so, I don’t know. I don’t know why we are here. Anyway, as I told you, when you have your karmic link, your readiness, your dedication and devotion, everything falls in the right place. So, the best way to embark oneself on a path like Vajrayāna is to try those foundation practices.
Whether in one lump sometime, or two months or three months, or on a consistent basis, on a regular basis. I’ll tell you one convincing story about my own mother, who was really diseased by tuberculosis so many years. No medicine, no injection would help her, mainly because of her health, physical health, and also mentally very, very sad and distressed about the whole thing, what happened in Tibet, and all these problems. And no medication ever helped her. But then my teacher, when she consulted him, he said, you better do some foundation practices, mainly the prostrations.
Your health comes from your bodily negativities, your unhealthy condition comes from bodily negativities, so you better do your body some work. So he actually said, my mother was really saying, oh, I want to go to a long retreat and do this and that. He said, no, no, no, you don’t have to. Just do as much as you can, providing that you do it wholeheartedly, providing that you do it consistently. So she pledged in front of my teacher.
Taking pledge for Tibetan old people is very serious business. They really bite their fingers and think about twelve times and go again, come back, and then they really think it’s true, then they go for it. So she went in. She never felt she could do it. For carrying a bucket full of water from fifteen meters down the road was very difficult for her, let alone doing prostrations and going down and again and again many times a day.
So she pledged herself. And she has dedicated every day to do hundred prostrations every day, no matter how long it’s gonna take, doesn’t really matter. So she has pledged to do this, and first two months she really, her body was aching everywhere. She almost felt that it’s not doing anything good. She always felt that she’s gonna stop it.
But then of course, because her faith was quite okay and everyone was trying to help her and take care, and now that she, no matter how, whatever health she is, she finishes hundred prostrations before we can brush our teeth. She’s the oldest one in the family. She’s done everything. She’s cleaning the whole room. All the shrines are cleaning.
She has finished her hundred prostrations in the morning. Her health is much better than ever was. So, spiritual value of practices, we cannot debate that. Only the health was brought just into that because of her dedication, despite her age, despite her health, despite all the mental distress that she had to undergo because of the problems that she had to go through.
So it doesn’t therefore mean that you have to go and do it all at once. We all have lived in the west. We have a lot of responsibilities to catch up everything on time, paced by the reality. So if we can discipline ourselves to do such practice, fifteen hundred prostrations each day for people of our age, not more than twenty minutes, if you get used to it. You don’t have to go take crash dieting courses.
You don’t have to take weight-losing courses. You don’t have to buy all these expensive weight-loss products. You don’t have to jog early morning. You can, but everything is in that, within that practice.
Spiritual, physical fitness, everything. Everything can come. Am I selling prostrations tonight? Really, the psychological effect of that is not only psychological. What it does is that it makes you to bow down.
Not only once, hundred thousand times.
The nature of karma is that the intensity of karma makes the karma heavy, whether it’s positive or negative. So the more you do, of course, more it leaves the imprint. The idea of prostration is not so much to bow down to Buddha, although relatively speaking, you have an object of refuge and visualize everything, but the idea of the prostration is, as I just exactly explained before with the guru devotion, you are meant to see everybody as equal as guru. When you bow down this hundred thousand times or whatever, the whole reason that should change your idea of other people is that you feel humble with everybody. That’s the aim that will directly attack your arrogance, pride, self-elevating ideas, attitude, and will humble your mind to see everybody at the level of their feet rather than at the level of their eyes and nose or even crown sometimes.
So our eyes become someone who can look everybody like this. It has to have that effect. It has that effect. And if person understands these things very clearly, there’s nothing that can stop them from doing it.
Psychologically, spiritually, physically, emotionally. You’ve got every reason to do it. No one can stop it. You don’t have to have a great stupa in front of you to do it. You don’t have to have a great lama to do in front of.
You don’t have to have a shrine in your room, you can do. You can do. You can do when you allow yourself, you feel like doing. You can visualize because it’s all over your mind.
It’s all your mind. When you allow your mind, you can do. When you don’t allow mind, you cannot do. So when you allow your mind to do, hundred thousand is nothing. Because we did more, the work, the habit of wrong action that we have is millions and millions of times, hundred thousand times.
A hundred thousand times, nothing. Uncounted. The actions that we are good at it. The cakes that we have eaten, the tea we have drunk. Oh, more than hundred thousand times pieces or cups.
Really? So we have good habits, we have habit of doing those things, we can replace this habit by doing very, very spiritually and healthily based practices. And this is, if our practice makes us more humble, more able to reach your own negativities, and therefore being able to relate to that level of your heart, that’s the aim of practice, so you don’t get attached to this life. As I said before, you become prepared to do prostration because you’re not attached to this life. Because you’re attached to this life, you’d rather go swimming, you’d rather go dancing, you’d rather go doing this and that.
Thus, the mind cannot be tuned into spiritual practices. Because the mind is attached to this, all the other practices becomes cornered. Thinking, next Sunday, next full moon. Tonight is, by the way, a full moon, so it’s good reason to talk these things. Always postponing, always leaving it as something unimportant.
Something very good, but not quite ready yet. This is very, very dangerous. It is very dangerous to leave these things. That’s why when I said at the very beginning, to be a religious practitioner, you gotta not attach to this life, so looking for spiritual result.
This is very, very important. If you ever get a chance to go to India for pilgrimage, you look for a teacher, you look for a practice, something very meaningful for you. You’re looking for a spiritual quest, not something more beautiful than Australia you can see, although you are obliged to see, although no one would be envious to see the mountains. But when you really go for a pilgrimage, you really look for something, this kind of practice. Here, when we are here, you only find wandering lamas like me, who’s got nothing.
Nothing to show spiritual qualities. Who’s just able to make you waste your time. Who just seems to be, have some way of communicating to you so that you feel, oh, I’m in front of a Tibetan. So he’s got something. Must be genuine.
Oh. You must, there must be something. There’s not something in me. There’s not something in these wandering lamas.
The real teachers hiding under the mountains. You go and look for them. You go and look for them. But I’ve seen quite a few of them, so I can, what I’m telling is what they do. I don’t want to extend any further.
I had a wonderful time and delayed. And all the things what I’ve said, all the things what I’ve said is a learning process. Probably what I’m doing, what I’m doing is because I’m learning. Not so much I feel I got to teach. Because you never, when you really listen, when you really listen, you learn few things.
When you teach, you really have to work hard to make sure you really mean it. So, I would say, every time I teach, I learn more from teaching than I have been learning. So what really is, what really what I’m saying is that through this integration, through the interaction, our interaction of coming here, sharing and this thing, we have our immediate coming connection right now, and as well as various past, as well as existing future. So whatever might be the case, we are not trying to make ourselves much closer than we were, know where, know what we’re gonna, know where we going to get forward. What we are trying to say when we say karmic connection is to say that meeting a person should be a purpose for us to awaken ourselves.
When Angulimala met Buddha, Buddha was scolding him for doing what he was doing, and therefore he was able to stop. Not so much Buddha helped him but karmic conditionings ripen whenever their condition is. But the person who really is, like I’m saying that my connecting with people wanting to listen to me makes my karma ripen to understand dharma a little bit better. Little bit better. So what I’m really saying is hope that this is also happening in you.
Hope that this is also happening with you. And therefore, the conditions that allow us to be in these conditions is to be valued in a way of our spiritual nourishment, upliftment, not annoying somebody. We get to know many people. We don’t wanna know many people with whom we get commonly obliged and being burdened to each other. We rather wanted to give each other, receive something from each other that we feel is precious to ourselves.
No teachers can be a great teacher without the presence of students listening to it. So I’m talking about the interdependence of our coming together is allowing all of us, including the, I would say, timely appropriate usage of Buddha House, which has been put by many people’s hard work, effort, pure motivation, set up a place in the middle of Adelaide, a Buddhist house. So we have to really go home, all of us. What have we come in as a result from this interaction? This is very important.
We’re talking about spirituality. We’re not talking about getting to know somebody to be nice with. Anyway, thank you very much for listening all this garbage. And I hope to see all of you, see all of you where you are. Not quite being able to see where you are now.
If we do integrate Vajrayāna practice, I’m sure it has this capacity of making the reality appear as it is. So I have nothing to say. And at the end, I would like to say, what do we think is important? What are you thinking? What are you thinking right now?
What I’m thinking right now? It’s very important. Impact on our mind can be laid where we tune our mind. How we tune our mind, in what conditions. And this is what is all about, talking about the spiritual upliftment or realization.
What we, there’s danger of taking teachers or artists or performers as a form of entertainer. I’m absolutely not an entertainer. I can’t even speak the word properly. And I cough more than I speak. How can I entertain you?
You see, it’s very important, very important. We, oh, I have a nice time. It was good. Okay. What do we mean by that?
There’s a danger of taking it as an entertainment. Absolutely, that was not my motivation. Absolutely, that wasn’t your motivation of coming, so we should clarify ourselves before we go. We weren’t entertained. We were talking the real crunchy part of the practices, and what really we have to take home as a result.
No matter how hard you face, is it difficult being in this condition or not, and this is how we have to look. When I say what are you thinking means, did you really enjoy it? If you say enjoy, if you say I enjoy it, that wouldn’t be a favorable answer that I would like to hear. But despite what you think or not, it’s very, very, very important how we really always have to churn everything and then try to really gain the essence out of it. It is said, if something was said and found interesting spiritually, or beneficial, educational to you, it is to be learned even from a child.
If something is very, very aromatic and delicious and good smell, it can be taken from the deer musk. Musk is taken from deer’s dirtiest part of the body. So if it is not nice, if it is not nice, leave it as it is. It will ferment on time. It will ripen on time.
So this is how I would like to conclude with you. I’m not just sending you with burdens of information and concepts. I’m not interested in doing so, and now would be the aim of doing so. I would like you to filter, percolate everything, what you heard, and let it boil, and then try to simmer it, and then try to really see the essence, that you got something out of it. And our interaction is not just ordinary interaction.
Because when people talk about spirituality, it’s some kind of value in it. See, I’m sitting a little bit higher than you for some reason. We have a great myth of royalty, don’t we? I’m also wearing something very rather different, rather than what I usually wear. You must pick, find it peculiar to find someone wearing a Mongolian dress and sitting a little bit higher than you and talking all these weird things.
These are, all these things, as we said, the dharma, when we say dharma, it has its own value. Say, even though we don’t like kings, even we don’t like royalties, but places where they don’t have royalties or monarch seem to talk more about it. Lot of television programs about the English royalty in America than in England. Everything, everybody seems to have a myth and mystery about them. And this is how, this is interesting, impact on you.
We always visualize the practices, the deity or the guru on a throne lifted by lions. These are all something to do with the value and quality of Dharma. Because dharma is valuable, because dharma is valuable, a person who knows nothing and who have no realization, acting to be speaking about it, is placed a little bit higher and facing to you. And this is the tradition where the, as I said, whoever is managing the dharma, has to be valued, and thereby, person himself who is valuing is actually valuating oneself. Therefore, we, as long as we do not realize the true nature of mind, where we value ourselves, each other, where we, how we see each other is very important.
Because how we see each other would influence how we’re gonna see other things. How we’re gonna think other things. How we’re gonna examine other things. Therefore, there is a tremendous emphasize of how we see things is more important than how it appears. I’m wearing jeans.
This is not necessary now. I’ll stop you totally. And we’ll say some prayers. I think that’s better. And there will be handed out two papers there down there.
Those of you who are inclining to go to India at times, there’s great teachings being particularly organized for Western students. This time by His Holiness Sakya Trizin in May and June in India, in Dehra Dun in north of India, for two months, particularly for Western students for two months completely on the base starting with Theravāda and Mahāyāna and Vajrayāna initiations, all we’ve been discussing. And information of that teaching if you are planning to go to India, that’s the information about that, and one retreat on related to this foundation practice I’m talking about, I’m going to conduct one in Canberra and one particular practice, one of the four foundation practices, but it’ll be taught there at the benefit of those Buddhist Vajrayāna practitioners there, so I thought if having listened to me here, if you are interested, maybe I should learn one practice, you know, that’s one course, so I think there are information if you are interested down there. So we will dedicate the merit here.