Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 28-minute session, HH Sakya Trizin guides students through a foundational meditation on taking refuge, which he emphasizes as the most important key to all spiritual practice. He begins by establishing proper motivation—practicing for the enlightenment of all sentient beings rather than oneself—then walks through the visualization step by step: Buddha Śākyamūni in the center surrounded by lineage gurus and bodhisattvas in radiant light form; oneself in front facing them with all sentient beings arranged according to relationship (parents and relatives on the sides, friends behind, enemies in front, ordinary beings filling the remaining space). He explains the meaning of refuge in the Triple Gem and guru, clarifies the visualization should repeat for all sentient beings, then leads a recitation of the refuge prayer with commentary on each request. The session closes with visualization of the objects dissolving into light that absorbs into one’s body, conferring freedom from obstacles and cultivation of compassion. The final minutes include a brief Q&A on karma and the hell realms, cut short as His Holiness is about to arrive.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 20 FfK 1988 05 28.mp3
UUID: 39398075-e675-4684-b577-aac358f09cc9
Teacher: HH Sakya Trizin
Collection: Freedom from the Known (HH Sakya Trizin)
Date: 1988-05-28
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 27.9 minutes
Words: ~2,397
I’ve got thirty minutes for this session, and I would like to guide you to a short meditation on the taking refuge. As His Holiness has already emphasized all the time he emphasized on the meditation on the refuge. I’m saying that this is the most important key to all your practices. So generally, the meditation actually means the thinking of something again and again so that is actually meditation. So here the meditation means thinking of the meaning of taking refuge or object again and again and that’s called the meditation.
So since the motivation is very important for doing anything especially the Dharma practice here before we go to meditate on the refuge, we should create the motivation, which means thinking that we are going to meditate shortly on this refuge in order to gain the enlightenment or absolute enlightenment for the sake of all the sentient beings, not for your own purpose. So visualization is in front of you is the Buddha, a Buddha Śākyamūni. You can visualize in this form and then surround it by the bodhisattvas and the lineage gurus. A lineage guru here could be the one who gives you the initiation or other teachings and especially at this time the one who gives the this teaching which is called the Parting from the Four Attachments. So mainly the lineage gurus of his holiness like.
So although you do not have the ideas of the forms of the lineage gurus, you can just visualize that there are the bodhisattvas and lineage gurus surrounded the Buddha Śākyamūni. And this Buddha Śākyamūni, all the lineage gurus are not in the ordinary form, means not fleshy, not bony, and not like, you know, we ordinary body consist of the blood, flesh, and bones. It is actually in the aspect of the light. So it’s just you visualize very light transparent. It doesn’t have organs, all these things.
It is just light, but physically in the form of Buddha Śākyamūni and other lineage gurus. Of course, there should be it should be very clear in the sense when you visualize the eyes, it should be the eyeballs. Inside eyeballs are dark, and then in two sides are white, and then at the two corners are red. All these you have to visualize clearly. And then you visualize yourself sitting in front of this object of the refuge and your cell is surrounded by sentient beings in the six realms, means all types of sentient being.
But the sentient beings, those are animals, ghosts, or gods are not in their form. They are all in the human form. And then from your left right side is your father and then your brothers and your I mean, male relatives, your brothers, your son, or your cousin, your nephews. And from your left side is your mother and female relatives, your sister, your daughter, your niece, cousin daughter, something like that. And then behind that is other relatives or your friends.
And then behind that friends is the ordinary sentient beings, which means neither your friend nor your enemy. So just ordinary sentient beings which are not related to to yourself which means not nor the nor the relatives, neither relative, nor the enemies. And then in front of you are the enemies. Enemy here could be human being, your present enemy, or enemies here means could be also spirits. Whoever is going to disturb you, whoever is going to harm you, whether you know them or you do not know them, it doesn’t matter.
You just visualize all the enemies whoever is trying to harm you, trying to put you into the trouble in front of you in the human form. And then you think that you are going to take refuge in the Triple Gem from now onwards till you gain the enlightenment. And when you say here, Buddha, Dharma, Sangha, Buddha is the in the center, the Śākyamūni. The Dharma is usually for other visualizations. Sometime you have to visualize the scriptures as a Dharma.
Like in the Sakya path when you visualize the refuge of the practice, then behind the is the scriptures representing the Dharma words. But here, it is not necessary to visualize in that way, but Dharma here actually means the Buddha’s wisdom or qualities. And then Sangha means surrounding Buddhas, surrounding bodhisattvas and your lineage gurus. And then you say that when you say take refuge in the it’s it’s integrated. Sorry.
Take refuge in the first line is take refuge in the lineage gurus and in the lineage gurus take refuge in the lineage gurus and Buddhas. That time, you visualize you imagine that you are requesting them to be your teacher to show the right path or path to the liberation. And, generally, there are three objects of refuge, Buddha, Dharma, Sangha. But according to vajrayana, there’s one addition, which is the guru. So here, guru and Buddha for same purpose, which are for the teacher, which means when you say take refuge in the lineage gurus, you also think that you are requesting gurus and lineage lineage gurus to be your teacher.
And then when you say take refuge in the Buddha, also same thing, you are requesting the Buddha’s not although you visualize one in the center, but actually you are requesting all the Buddhas in the ten directions to be your teacher. And then when you say take refuge in the Dharma, means you’re requesting the the wisdom or Dharmakāya to be your actual path. And then when you say take refuge in the Sangha, it is the Bodhisattvas, surrounding Bodhisattva, them to guide you from the wrong path and also to guide while you are practicing. And this way, we recite this refuge prayers in Tibetan, but first I will I will again tell you the visualization slowly and at the same time you visualize. Okay?
In the center is the Buddha surrounded by the lineage gurus and root guru and bodhisattvas, all the bodhisattvas. You can actually visualize this set of object of refuge many many not only one Millions and millions sets of object of refuge in front of each sentient beings. The object of the refuge are not fleshy, bony, not the ordinary form. They are in the light form. Light, very bright, transparent.
No organs such as liver, heart, intestines. Then in front of this object of refuge is yourself. And from your right, is father, brother, son, cousin, nephew, all the male relatives. From your left side is mother, sister, daughter, niece, etcetera. And behind yourself is or behind these other other very ordinary relatives and also your friends.
Behind these friends are the ordinary sentient beings who are not who are neither your friend or relatives nor your enemies. And in front of you is in front of you are the enemies. Enemy here means your present enemy who’s trying to give you trouble or the spirit or evil spirit or other spirits who is trying to harm you directly or indirectly whether you know them or not. And you think imagine that yourself together with all these sentient beings are taking refuge in the triple gem. And now we recite this.
But when we recite this, we should think that every all the sentient beings are reciting together being oneself as the leader of this prayer. Have you got the pages? This is the first verse. So you just imagine that you’re requesting lineage gurus and root guru to be your teacher. Okay.
Now we go to the next sentence. Imagine you are requesting Buddha to be your master or teacher to show the right path. Okay. Go to this next line. Imagine you are requesting the wisdom of Buddhas and bodhisattvas to be your right path.
Wisdom or their qualities. Imagine you are requesting the Bodhisattvas, surrounding Bodhisattvas to be your guide along the path. So in this way, we recite refuge again two more times, which starts from the beginning. From the headline. Get it? Headline.
Headline, they say that you don’t have to recite. Now start from the. Okay? Get it? We recite the next sentences thinking we are requesting the to bless us.
Okay. Start. I said this praying blessing praying is you are requesting the triple gem to bless you so that you will not have the irreligious thought and to bless you to turn your mind to Dharma, to dispel obstacles, to dispel, to disappear the impure visions so that you would not attachment to them and to bless that you will not have the obstacles along your path and to place that to bless you to arise the compassion and loving kindness in your mind. So now that we have already done, and now you imagine that the object that you visualize in the space dissolved into the light and then this light absorbed into your body And due to this absorption, you yourself become free from the obstacles and free from irreligious thought and become very compassionate and clear of all the defilements. In that way, you have to visualize for a while, but I will I will say you slowly and you meditate.
The object of the refuge are dissolved into the light, and this light absorbed into your body through your crown. Due to this, you became free from the obstacles, free from the irreligious thought, free from anger and all the non-virtuous deeds, and you are full of the merit and compassion and loving kindness. Then now slowly, you try not to think anything. Just keep your mind free from all thoughts, all concepts. So that’s the meditation on the refuge, and we have got still few minutes.
And if you have any question, Yes? What’s the difference between the cold and the hot hills in terms of the kind of sufferings that hot hell is I’m sorry. Not in terms of suffering, but in terms of the non virtuous things we do to get reborn in. Mhmm. Mhmm.
So the comparison between hot hell and cold hell, the hot hell is worse than the cold hell. So in order to be born in the hot hell realm you must have worse bad karma than the karma somebody created for being born in the cold hell. But are there different kinds of things? For example, like, for example, things which are, like, being cold towards people, do they mean being cold in in the cold hells?
Things being cold mean. Being cold towards people like saying hateful things or being unkind in a cold kind of way. Yeah. As His Holiness says, the ten non-virtuous deeds. Right?
If you do the strong way, very too much then non virtuous deed then you will be born in the hell. But within the hell it depends how strongly you you know commit the ten non virtuous deed And then if you really did very badly, then you’ll be born the worst one. So am I understanding correctly? There’s not so much difference in the type of action. It’s the degree.
Yeah. Sometime there may be some specifications, but generally, it’s what you said. So in specific, could you give some examples between the cold and the hot hell in different just say different types of Cold and hell, hot. Yeah. Cold and hot.
No. No. I mean, not saying that the cold will have. Generally, the the the karmas, let’s say, if you every action of the karma, you must have three things. Right?
First, motivation, then secondly four things motivation and then object. Let’s if you’re going to kill that’s a non-virtue of killing. So if first you must have thought of killing the person then thirdly you must have a human somebody, you know, somebody and somebody your enemy or whom you want to kill. And fourthly, you must not be mistaken in that. Although you kill somebody and you are mistaken you mistakenly killed somebody else than you want to kill, then that is not complete.
So you must not be mistaken in killing the object, you know, the person. And let’s say if you want to kill somebody and you have mistakenly killed his friend then that is actually not what you wished. Right? Because your motivation is not related to that person. And finally the person must be killed.
Person must be dead. So that is the complete. So due to that complete, maybe you that that that person have more chances to be born in the hell realm. But if you do any of these first one just maybe you have a bad motivation then you will not be born in the hell but you will have a bad result. And if you have two, four among the four you have two that is worse than yet one.
If you have a three then that is worse than the two. Understand? The result will be like a animal. You were born as an animal. You were born as a hungry ghost.
You were born as a hell beings. So am I right in saying there’s a a difference of degree between if it’s something milder, it will be born animals. If it’s more serious in the hungry ghost and the worst is in the hell Yeah. Yeah. Degree.
Yeah. But then there are also, for example, like, the animals is the ignorance and hungry ghosts is the Yeah that is what I mean that if you specify then there is specifications but that is not the general explanation generally explain depending on the quantities. So no question. If excuse me? Samsāra Samsāra and nirvana.
Samsāra and nirvana. Uh-huh. And they all the same Uh-huh. Realities. Where do the hells exist?
Oh, it’s due to our karma. Even the hell realm is not something that really inherently exists somewhere. It is also due to our karma we see. Due to that karma, we will be born somewhere where we can see that all terrible things. And due to our good karma, we were born here where we can see not really as bad as hell.
Yeah. It is all our karma. So maybe we will end up the session here. His Holiness is arriving in any moment. Right?
Yeah. Yeah. So we do the dedication. Thank you.