Audio recorded at Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 17.9-minute teaching, Kyabje Rinpoche walks through the complete structure of the Heruka mandala mansion visualization, level by level. He describes the central father-and-mother principle at the apex, the four great mothers on the second level, eight mind-chakra deities in blue, eight speech-chakra deities in red, and the body-chakra deities. He details the four door guards with crow, pig, dog, and lion faces, and the four directional guardians whose faces display two colors reflecting their position between cardinal directions. Throughout, Rinpoche stresses maintaining a cumulative visualization—each new component added to rather than replacing what came before. He closes by establishing the essential inner orientation: holding deity pride while recognizing all appearances as bliss inseparable from emptiness. Pitched at practitioners who have received Heruka initiation.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 1989-10-28 – 10A – KR.mp3
UUID: d324c570-152a-4c77-a572-791b5b85c463
Teacher: Kyabje Rinpoche
Collection: Heruka Commentary
Date: 1989-10-28
Recorded at: Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide
Words: ~675
Combine it with the clear appearance, meaning the clear visualization of one’s in the aspect of deity. And then think that once being on the top level, there are five levels as explained before, like with the mandala mansion. And on this top of the five layers, one visualized, one is on the top is the Heruka and consort, the father and mother. And then below it, a little bit lower to it on four-petalled lotus on four directions. On top of each lotus, the each of the four great mothers, east black, north green, west red, and south yellow, and we’ll call it Khandauri, Khanjauri, Shandaroji, and Saurimajima.
And below that is the third level on which on eight directions and sub directions meaning four directions and four sub directions on eight directions are the eight deities of the mind chakras they are blue in color. Each eight of the mind chakra deities is in union And they are blue in color. And below that are the deities eight deities of the speech chakra on four direction, four sub-directions making eight with the mother in union. And they are red in color. And below that also, I think the of the body chakras four in this four main directions, four in sub-directions, total, and with each of them having each of the consort or each of the mothers And then the celestial mansion has four doors.
So on each of the doors, four doors are the each of the four door guards. Door guards are different places like the crow face, pig face, dog face, and lion face and they’re without union, unlike the father and mother main principle. And on each of these are four sub directions of this celestial mansion, four Yamarantis and they are without union So why are these, crow face, pig face, dog face, lion face is because when the Īśvara and his consort try to tame sentient beings, they emanate in the form having those aspects of crow face, pig face, and so forth. Therefore, Buddha generated himself at the time of teaching the tantra in those aspects to subdue Īśvara and his consort And with each of the four subdirectional guards, the four Yamarantis, so each of them have two-colored face.
So that’s because of their being in the position which is facing to the both directions let’s say with this East North or Northeast one who is residing there has the black face, corresponding to the black of the East and other half of the face green corresponding to the green color of the North, and same as for the rest of them, every respective two colors. So try to visualize as clear as one can and when one goes on visualizing later parts of the visualization, don’t forget the former parts of visualization. Instead, the more you go on visualizing the other parts, you put it as an addition to your previous visualization and then at the end, try to have the whole thing complete to have the whole visualization complete as mentioned, with the father and mother. And then whatever appearance one has, one gets, whatever things one sees, recognizing all appearances in the aspect of bliss.
And that bliss being in the nature of emptiness, does try to have the inseparability of bliss and emptiness and with that the coarsening of appearance and increase also try to have a clear visualization of one’s deity together with the pride that one is deity. The beginning before one starts the visualization of our meditation on this, it would be good to start with the and cultivating renunciation and bodhicitta. And then if one follows with this visualization, it is very fortunate to be able to do, and it’s excellently good. If one wants to do in detail, then recite the slowly and thinking on the meaning. And when you come to the end of the sādhana, then that’s the point where you remain for a while in meditation or visualization.
Yeah.