Audio recorded at Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 47-minute teaching on Guru Puja (Lama Chopa), Kyabje Rinpoche uses the vivid image of the moon outshining stars to explain the guru’s supreme place among spiritual guides. He works through homage to all lineage lamas and the Three Jewels, emphasizing how this is paid through body, speech, and mind simultaneously. The main focus falls on the offering section, particularly the four waters offering, which Rinpoche contextualizes with Indian customs: water for drinking, washing feet, rinsing the mouth, and sprinkling. He stresses the importance of blessing all offerings with OM AH HUM and cultivating awareness that the offerer, object, and substance are empty of inherent existence. The teaching concludes with a Q&A on the nature of homage and the Buddha body.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 1992-08-28 – 12B – KR.mp3
UUID: 12e9710b-ff80-4bb4-8cc0-003ef0cedc6a
Teacher: Kyabje Rinpoche
Collection: Guru Puja – Lama Chopa
Date: 1992-08-28
Recorded at: Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide
Words: ~2,048
You tower above the whole host of āryas. aryas are superiors. Rinpoche explains that like at night there the many there are multitudes of stars, and there is the moon, and the moon outshines all of these stars, and likewise, and the stars are like superiors, superiors, and the lama is like the moon, which outshines all of these superiors, all of these stars. Through his teachings on what is to be adopted and what is to be avoided as a means of liberation, to such a lama, I pay homage. And the next, the fifth offering homage.
With faith, esteem, and a sea of melodious praise manifesting with bodies as many as the atoms of the world, we prostrate to you the Gurus of the three times in 10 directions to the supreme jewel and to all who are worthy of homage. So the meaning of this first verse is that in one is praising him as being the condensation of all the Buddhas of the three times, the Buddhas of the past, the Buddhas of the present, and those of the future, and also of all the Buddhas in the 10 directions, the cardinal, the four cardinal, or the four sub-directions, and above and below. That in all the directions, that the Buddha in all directions, you are the condensation, you are the entity which is the condensation of all the lamas, and not only this, but you are the condensation of the Three Jewels, the jewel or the supreme rarities, or the jewel, supreme jewels, the supreme jewels, the Buddha, the Dharma, and the spiritual community. And to all to such a Dharma, I pay homage. The distinction which was made here in this fifth as compared to the previous four verses is that the previous four verses were directed toward the main lama, that is Pänchen Losang Chökyi Gyaltsen.
Here the fifth verse is being directed toward all lamas, and that is to say all the various lineage lamas, profound, the vast, the blessings, the practice lineage, the Buddhas, the meditational deities, the protectors, etcetera, all lamas are being paid homage to in this fifth verse. And then within this verse, we are paid homage. So here it expressly mentions that we are paying homage in terms of our body, speech, and mind, and this applies to all of the previous verses also, but here it is explicitly mentioned that one is paying mental homage through one’s faith, one is paying verbal homage through words of praise, and one is paying physical homage by imagining prostrating with as many bodies as there are atoms in the universe, equal to the number of atoms in the universe. So it explicitly mentions that we are paying homage by physical, verbal, and mental homage, this would apply to the previous four verses also. So that completes the limb of paying homage, or prostration.
So as as has been mentioned previously that prostration acts as an antidote to arrogance or pride and is this paying of homage is by means of paying homage we’re able to purify various negativities and to accumulate the collection. So now we’ve come to the offering section. Second. So with respect to this second limb of offering, offering is made in five manners. The four types of offerings that are generally offered, that is to say external, internal, secret, and offering of suchness.
So beginning with the first, the external offering is in terms of the vase empowerment, the inner offering is in terms of the secret empowerment, The secret offering is in terms of the wisdom empowerment. The offering of suchness is in terms of the word empowerment. And then the fifth empowerment is the offering of medicine and oneself as a servant. With respect to the first external offering, by means of the offering of the vase empowerment this is five divisions. For what?
The first is the four waters? I have to figure out what this term means. This is second. There are offerings such as incense and flowers, but it has a special name and I’ll have to. Is practice.
So this this external offering, which is in terms of the involvement is has five different offerings. What’s the Tibetan? Chushi. Chushi. So in terms of the making arrangement, when we arrange offerings, it’s necessary that it be blessed, it might be, whether offering incense or light or water or tormas, we have to offer it.
We have to bless it first with it. So one should immediately upon arranging offerings to bless them. If we don’t bless them there are many drawbacks that the offering is not of, there are obstacles. The offering is not of good quality without the blessing that we do not accumulate as much creative potential through the offering and it will represent an obstacle to our practice by not blessing the offering. So it’s necessary at the immediate upon arranging offerings to bless them with the syllables OM AH HUM.
Each individual offering has a particular obstacle. So I think so each I think maybe the word drawback. Each particular offering has a particular drawback. So if one does not bless it, then that becomes an obstruction to our practice. So in making these offerings, one should have element of motivation, should be the awareness of the emptiness of the three spheres.
That is to say that one should have an awareness that the offeror, the person who is doing the offering, the object to which the offering is being made, and the substance which is being offered are of the nature of emptiness and do not truly exist nor inherently exist. So initially upon arranging an abbreviated way of making the offering is to that they be blessed with but in a more extensive fashion then the offerings arise out of emptiness. So we should apply our understanding as has been developed through our teachings on the heart of wisdom when it says that form is empty, emptiness is form, it is no other than form. Form is no other than emptiness. So we should apply that understanding in terms of these offerings.
So we should we should look at So, of the four types of offering, the first, the offering of four waters is contained within verses twenty three and twenty four, O refuge protectors of venerable Gurus together with your entourage, we present you with oceans of clouds and various offerings from expansive well fashioned vessels radiant and precious. Fill gently forth four streams of purifying nectar. So the very first line it says, Oh refuge protector, your venerable Guru together with your entourage. So this is the object of offering that to which we’re going to make the offering and refers to them as a refuge protector that they are able to act as a means of eliminating our various sufferings through eliminating our various delusions and bring to consummation all our excellent qualities. And then it uses the word sometimes here it’s translated as venerable.
The word J, the syllable J denotes, J denotes the being of capacity, denotes the being of middling capacity, and lama denotes the being of great capacity, so all three capacities in terms of Jetsün Lama. And then two, this object which is along with the retinue, that is all the various lineage lamas, the Buddhas, the Bodhisattvas, etcetera. You’re making offerings. So then the next line, it says, we present you an ocean of clouds of various offerings. So it’s a vast variety of offerings, flowers, incense, and these are as if clouds, to the extent that they are like clouds filling up space, and they are said to be oceans of clouds, unlimited offerings.
And then the next container of the objects of offering where it says from expansive vessels radiant and precious flow gently forth four streams of purifying. So just up to that line where it says from expansive vessels radiant and precious. So these containers are the holders of the containers of the objects of offering. They’re beautiful shaped, well fashioned. Have precious gems and they’re radiant and they’re very So here it’s then the next line from flow gently forth four purifying nectars.
Purifying nectar. So purifying is, you know, that like for example with water, we can clean that which is dirty. We can clean our hands, we can clean our clothes, etcetera. So these are not just nectars but purifying nectars and they are the nectars of exalted wisdom of non-dual bliss and emptiness So this is a purifying nectars which are being offered and that is to say by purifying, are not like, you know, we said that the water is able to clean, but here we’re not cleaning clothes. We are removing the afflicted emotions along with the knowledge obstructions from our minds, and that which is only able to do this is the wisdom of non-dual bliss and emptiness.
So this is in the nature of these nectars, these purifying nectars are in the nature of the wisdom of non dual bliss emptiness in the aspect of nectars and there are four. And you know in the, when a, in India, India is a very hot place and if if you were to be visited by a king or a high official, then it was customary to first to offer them cool water for drinking, then to that’s the first water, and then the second was to offer them cool water to wash their feet, then third water to rinse their mouth, then the fourth was the cool water was sprinkled, spritzed. So I was gonna my If you want, you can offer Coca Cola or orange or tea, and if somebody asks for a Coke, you give them a Coke. Anyway, so in this container of actual offering substance, you can put in the container milk, in the water. You can put in the water milk or white flour, barley, a fragrant perfume which is not poisonous, kusha grass, yogurt, or nectar?
Doctor. So in offering bowl and one offers. So remember, she has never seen, you know, in what types of offerings of liquids can be offered. He has never seen Coca Cola or orange juice in a text, but he thinks that because maybe it was around in those days, that he didn’t mention it, but he thinks it would be okay to offer these. So these are the four types of liquid nectars which are being offered.
These are the Sprinkling? Washing the feet? Pouring water on the feet? Rinsing the mouth out?
[unclear] So if you were doing it in an abbreviated manner, this verse number 24, the second line where it says flow gently forth four streams of purifying nectar. If you were doing it in an abbreviated manner, you just simply mention the four waters, So, it mentions four streams of purifying nectars here. Is doing it in a condensed, abbreviated manner.
One simply makes the various four offerings. If one was going to do it in a more extensive manner, then you would repeat that verse number 24, flow gently forth, and rather than saying four, then you would mention each individual nectar which you are offering. So you recite that twenty fourth verse four different times substituting rather than four the name of each particular stream of purifying nectar that you’re offering with the appropriate Mudra. And then we’ll stop there for the day. So I want to ask you a question.
The very first prostration, what manner of homage was being made? What manner was homage being made? Second. So the the lama in the in the, offering is made to the lama as a representative of the Enjoyment Body. Third.
Yeah, that’s fine. Lama. Chöpa. Lama Chöpa.. One day. The wisdom truth body is the consciousness within.
Briefly, it is the consciousness within a Buddha. The Buddha has six different consciousnesses, eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mental consciousness, these six consciousness are the wisdom truth body. That’s right. We said with respect to the truth body, there was the abandonment. It would say this is the factor within the Buddhist continuum which is the freedom.