Audio recorded at Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 46-minute teaching, Kyabje Rinpoche guides practitioners through the mandala offering section of the Lama Chöpa Guru Puja. He explains the Abhidharma cosmological model—wind, water, Mount Meru, and four continents—and the vast scale of offering: a billion universes. He covers the seven precious royal emblems, clarifies the Pandit Naropa mandala tradition (23 heaps), and teaches the core principle: by imagining offering a pure land Buddha field to the Buddhas, one accumulates immeasurable creative potential for future buddhahood—without needing money or possessions, only visualization. He then unfolds the offerings of practice, inner offering (saffron tea transformed as nectar), and secret offering, explaining the symbolism: hooks draw the five siddhis, lamps illuminate paths and grounds. For practitioners already received in tantra.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 1992-09-15 – 14A – KR.mp3
UUID: 8006b2df-52ef-427f-9fbe-590cf923241d
Teacher: Kyabje Rinpoche
Collection: Guru Puja – Lama Chopa
Date: 1992-09-15
Recorded at: Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide
Words: ~1,832
For the sake of myself, for the sake of all living beings, in order to free them from suffering and to bring them to complete happiness, in order that I will actualize the state of Vajradhāra. As a means to achieve this in our practice in the condensation of the profound path, the secret mantra as contained within the essence of the great vehicle practice of Guru Yoga, the supreme method to achieve this in by means of my practices of listening to, reflecting upon and meditating upon the supreme path. So visually before us in space, to whom we are making these offerings, four types of offerings, external, internal, secret and suchness and have made the general external offerings, as argham, padyam, etc, then we offer mandala. Now we come to the section in the Lama Chöpa Guru Puja where we’re offering the mandala. This begins with as far as the actual text of Lama Chöpa it is contained in verse of 32 where it says, To you, O refuge, protect your treasures of compassion, eminent and supreme field of merit.
Present with pure faith, Mount Meru and the four continents a billion times over the seven precious royal emblems, precious minor symbols and more perfectly delightful environments and those dwelling within and a great treasure of all wishes and wealth of gods and men. There are different ways in which the universe can be represented and there is different traditions. For example, is a tradition according to to and according to And here it’s being explained the way in which the universe is composed according to Abhidharma or knowledge. Where first there was a great wind mandala and through the motion of the wind there arose a water mandala, the turning of the water arose Mount Meru. Each of the four continents in the South, Lūpakpo and that’s the East.
East is Lūpakpo, South is Jambudvīpa, and West and North is Draminyen, etcetera. There’s Mount Meru and the four continents. So we’re not going to go into this in detail. Just going over how many numbers of universes one is actually offering. So if we take as a unit the four continents, Mount Meru, the king of mountains, and the sun and the moon, we have seven parts to this universe.
That makes one unit. Then we have a thousand of those. A thousand, a thousand of those units. And then taking that as one unit, then we have a thousand of those. Taking that as one unit, a thousand of those.
So it’s a thousand times thousand times a thousand, I believe. Here it’s translated as a billion times over, It just means an extremely large number. So a thousand times a thousand times a thousand. So one may in fact physically be offering but a single dollar representation, it is imagined that one is offering these billions of universes. And then we offer the seven precious royal emblems.
These are all listed in the mandala, the precious wheel, wish-granting jewel, wish-fulfilling cow, the unsown harvest, precious elephant, precious horse, precious minister. So the precious jewel queen, minister elephant horse general, and great and pot or vase. The tradition of offering the mandala which is being followed here proceeds from Pandit Naropa and is accordance with the tradition of Sakya Pandita in which 20 heaps are offered as opposed to for example, who offered a mandala of 37 So so there’s four continents? The eight sub continents. So there’s the four continents.
Each of them has a pair of sub continents making eight sub-continents. Seven precious symbols and the great treasure vase and the king of mountains makes 23. 23.
So the other ones the others, it is the 23 parts which are being offered the others for example the lady of beauty etc are not being offered here The seven minor precious symbols are offered. All that is of delight to both gods and men, one’s possessions, one’s merit, one’s skillful actions, but one should not think of this as an ordinary place but in fact is a pure land and that a pure land is something which is a place which has been created for the sake of sentient beings and imagining that you’re offering this Buddha field to the Buddhas, through the force of imagining offering a Buddha field to the Buddhas, one generates one’s own future Buddha field where one will be able to abide in the future. Just as in if we were to offer a butter lamp or a flower, then we are accumulating a certain amount of creative potential. But if we were to imagine offering the complete universe, then the creative potential is limitless that we accumulate in this way. So we are seeking to attain Buddhahood, we are seeking to become Buddhas, and to that end it’s necessary to accumulate the collection of creative potential, and we need to be skilled in means of creating such potential.
By means of offering the mandala, it is extremely skillful in that we don’t need to make a great deal of effort, we don’t need money, etcetera, and possessions in order to make offerings, but we simply imagine offering the mandala to the Buddha in the aspect of the Buddha who is in fact one’s root lama and we by means of such a method we accumulate an immeasurable collection of creative potential, and also it is a skillful means of purifying one’s negativity. So when I said 27, I should have said 37 previously. 37, one tradition of 37 heaps. I made a mistake. So here there are 23 heaps.
So the East, the King Mountains and the continents and subcontinents are as normally formed. So the East is towards you and then one places the seven precious royal emblems, seven precious royal emblems plus the vase in the four cardinal or main directions and the four sub directions. Rather than the general, there is I don’t know what to call it. Something like the wealth the precious wealthy, rich householder. Householder.
Householder. Oh, it should be someone’s favorite. Merchant. Merchant. Okay.
Wealthy merchant. And then the offering of practice. Then the verse of offering of practice is verse number 33. It says To please you, O venerable gurus, we offer these objects both actually arrayed and those envisioned as a pleasure grove on the shore of a wish-granting sea. It is strewn with thousand petals and lotuses captivating the hearts of all.
These are the offering objects arising from saṃsāra and the Bhagavan’s white virtues. So we are offering both objects actually arrayed, is to say the various objects which are actually placed upon the altar, and then the imagined offerings, that is to say we’re emanating offerings in space before us through our imagination. And these are as if the taking form of our skillful actions over the three times, the past, present, and future. These skillful actions as if taking form forming an ocean in which are a thousand petaled lotuses, flowers. These are also the flowers of all the skillful actions of the ordinary beings and superiors over the three times, and extremely beautiful and vast flowers.
These are the results of the practices of the three trainings, higher training in ethics, meditative concentration, and wisdom. The results, the fruits of the practice of the two stages of the secret mantra and of the five paths. And these flowers which are extremely beautiful, merely to see them one generates a great liking and generates a sense of bliss and that they give the sound of the Dharma and they have a wonderful smell and a beautiful color and imagining this process of visualization in this aspect is the offering of practice. So this the offering of this imagined ocean with all of these flowers is the offering of practice. All of one’s skillful actions created out of these practices imagined in the form of these flowers and ocean, and this would be included with the offerings of the vase empowerment, the external offering of the vase empowerment.
The external So this is an offering which is associated with the external. So, and then the next verse is, you know, we’re making four levels of offering, external, internal, secret, and word empowerment, in accordance with that offering which is associated with the secret empowerment. So this is the inner offering is associated with the secret empowerment and here in verse 34, we offer a libation of fine tea, the color of saffron steeped in the glories of a 100 flavors with a delicate bouquet. This with the five hooks and five lamps and so forth is purified, transformed and increased into a sea of nectar. So we imagine offering a tea which is made with saffron, which has a wonderful bouquet of smell, which is possessed of a 100 flavors.
And in the Kadampa tradition they would use tea as the actual offering substance in their inner offering, and in this they would place a nectar pill. Then one goes on to bless the offering just as in the case of the inner offering in the detailed fashion as has been explained the blessing of the inner offering for example in the tradition of Heruka, but in a very abbreviated manner through the means of the mantra OM AH HUM. The HUM is used as a means of ridding the offering of various faults. The AH transforms it into nectar and the OM increases it till it becomes inexhaustible. The five hooks just like you know if you went fishing, you hook.
This has been explained when we had the teaching on Vajrayoginī. If you went fishing then you would hook the fish in the mouth and draw it forth. Here the five hooks represent the hooks going out and drawing forth the five siddhis, attainments, both supreme and ordinary attainments. And the five lamps correspond to five nectars, but the lamp has the idea of illuminating and what it illuminates are the various paths and grounds, that is to say being able to by this means to illuminate or come to know or come to realize, manifesting the various paths and grounds within oneself. So So this is the way of offering the inner offering, and as has been explained in terms of actual position that you hold the inner offering in, to the lama.
From the lama down to the bodhisattvas, dakinis and Dharma protectors, and then lastly one tastes it for one moment. So the offering of the secret empowerment is associated with the offering corresponding to the exalted wisdom empowerment. And it’s in verse 35. So there are four offerings in total. The four offerings — external, internal, secret, and word empowerment — corresponding with the four empowerments of vase, secret, exalted wisdom, and word.
So now we are at the third offering, which is corresponds to the third empowerment.