Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 43-minute session, Khensur Rinpoche guides practitioners through the Chöd sadhana in real time as it is performed. He opens with the white and red distributions — offering to the Three Jewels, protectors such as Mahākāla, sentient beings, and harmful beings — while meditating on the emptiness of giver, recipient, and gift. He then walks through the seven traditional offerings (water, flowers, incense, light, scented water, food, and music), each keyed to a sense faculty, with hands-on guidance on the vajra fist, emanating goddesses from the heart, and the wisdom being dissolving into the commitment being. He closes with visualization instructions for mantra recitation: purifying body, speech, and mind, then radiating light to transform beings and their environment. Suited to practitioners who have received the Chöd permission transmission.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 08 Ch 1993 06 13.mp3
UUID: 9df70201-572f-41d0-a729-db8b9287789d
Teacher: Khensur Rinpoche
Collection: Chod (Khensur Rinpoche)
Date: 1993-06-13
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 43.5 minutes
Words: ~1,589
It is by this means that one plants a seed such that one in the future will be able to quickly develop the wisdom of uncontaminated bliss. So there’s the This is the white distribution and there’s a red distribution. So the red distribution is that having cut away the skin, spreading it out, piling the various flesh blooded substance upon it, one forms a torma ritual cake as an offering. So, this is So, in the white distribution, one respectfully makes offerings the Three Jewels, the jewels of the Buddha Dharma and the Sangha. One makes offerings to the protectors such as Mahākāla.
One practices giving compassionately to sentient beings and one gives to the harmful beings as a means of repaying what one has been given in the past. Those harmers, one repays them for having been given to in the past. One’s self as the giver, the objects to whom one is giving, and the substances being given do not intrinsically exist and remain in meditative equipoise on the emptiness of those three spheres. And then one should contemplate that all phenomena are like a dream, a mirage, a reflection, an echo. And then having accumulated the collections of creative potential and wisdom to share this with all living beings through one’s dedication.
So the commentary was composed by an emanation of the Venerable Mañjuśrī, Jamyong Kunjo. Emanation of the activities of Mañjuśrī. And then the root text is benefiting those who long for liberation by and then there are many commentaries to those. So this is according to the Gelug tradition but each sect would have variations on this practice. So the actual, the commentary is actually very extensive and it’s hundreds of pages long and it’s very set up very clear and it’s very profound in its thought.
This is a commentary to benefiting those who long for liberation. So we’re going to to stop there. So you have received the permission of the Chöd practice from Khensur Rinpoche and now you are involved in the practice and I think this is really excellent and you really through your meditations will have accumulated a vast amount of creative potential and planted latencies for the actual realization of the practice. So this And also this is for those who are involved in the center at Conqueror Island, and this is an excellent practice because Chöd is very intimately associated with vajravarahi and Heruka. And I have great hopes that this will bring advanced practitioners and secret mantra of many great Yogis.
So if you have some questions? So, so this would apply to any of the practices also that whether it’s the awakening heart or the realization of emptiness that in order order to if one is if there is a heavy load it takes a number of people to carry it. And there aren’t that many who are practicing in a perfect fashion to be able to carry the load to at present. But if one has a perfect practice, for example, the individuals such as Thunkapa, Millarepa, Marpa, Nāgārjuna that even though they were only one individual we can see how many people they did influence but that there aren’t that many perfect practitioners. If there are perfect practitioners, then generally, then it will in the future spread to many, but without perfect practitioners it won’t.
So at places such as Tibet and China, Malaysia, Indonesia, previously there was no one, there were no practitioners, and then but due to the influence of some real masters, then they were the practices were propagated in those countries and they spread widely. And the same will occur in Australia. Previously there haven’t been Masters here, but again the same process will take place. So you all of you have to become perfect practitioners. So even if one of you were a perfect practitioner in the future, could have one or two or five or six hundred disciples.
So there are two systems of offerings. One, offering to oneself as the self generation deity and then offering to the front generation deity. Making the vajra fist. So offering to oneself as the deity first. First.
Emanating goddesses? Oneself does not make the offering but the emanated goddesses make the actual offering. Meditative concentration resides mainly at the heart area so one is evoking the goddesses from there. Holding the vajra and Bell. Method and wisdom.
Method, great bliss, and wisdom, realization of emptiness. So method and wisdom conjoined. And then the turning the which is the first nectar. Different interpretations? So some So, this first, argham, some people say it’s for the washing of the feet, others for rubbing the body, some for rinsing the mouth, but rather the first of these nectars of argham is it’s going to be offered to oneself and what it is offered and one should imagine that having offered to oneself that it generates a bliss and then one uses this blissful consciousness to meditate on emptiness and so one generates the wisdom of non dual bliss emptiness.
Having made the offering then one withdraws the goddesses back into the heart. The lotus turning? So washing of washing of the feet? These offerings are in accordance with the fashion that an official or royalty would be greeted in the Buddhist time in India. At first they, because it was a hot country, upon arriving they would be given water to rinse their mouth and their hands and then they would be given that’s argham and then they would be given Padam which was to rinse their feet.
Now the offering of flowers. vajra fist. Emanating goddess. Tossing the flowers. They offer to the head.
Withdrawing the goddesses? This is This is incense, dhupe? Like incense smoke? It’s very pleasant smelling. So inside the the smoke would have a tendency to settle down like that?
Scented water or perfume? So be, this is an offering of cool water which has been scented with sandalwood or some other type of scent, and then it’s applied to the heart area and said that because Indy was a hot place, then applying cool water to the chest, to the heart is a way to cool the body. Food? So now with some pleasant music. So this is present music, present sound.
This is a horn. This is offering of sound. So the offerings of Argham and Padam are offered to the body, two waters. Then the Pupe is an offering of flowers, so it’s offering to the nose. Dhupe is offering to the nose, Aloke is offering to the eyes, butter lamps, Gande is the scented water offered to the heart, Naividya is offered food to the mouth, and Shabda, the music offered to the ear.
So is offering of a mirror which is offering a form, offering to the eyes, we’re offering to now we’re offering to the ear. Then offering to the heart? Offering torma to the mouth. Offering clothing, garment. So these are the five offerings of the five sense objects.
This is objects of touch, piece of clothing, one is holding a garment. Yes. The The fingers slightly curled. So you’re holding water because you’re holding water. You’re holding like a tray.
So it’s flat. So now offering to the front generation. So the rest is the same. This is self generation. This is front generation.
So other than that difference, there’s no difference in the way of offering. First time. This this this the first time. You don’t have to do it the others. So you have the Dorje vajra in the right hand?
This is method. Right? It’s method. Left is wisdom. So the first like that.
vajra fist. That’s the vajra fist. Lotus. So this is when the wisdom being dissolves into the commitment being? Hey.
Younger to tick. No. No. Oneself is the commitment being and the wisdom being comes to the crown of one’s head. That dissolves into you.
Dissolves in. So it’s like pouring milk into tea but it hasn’t mixed yet. Now they mix. And then lastly the wisdom being and abides joyfully. They become joyfully inseparable.
Very happy. Okay. Yep. Thinking about emptiness? So one can think about emptiness during the recitation of the mantra when thinking that products arise dependent upon the aggregation of causes and conditions, therefore they are dependent arising, that nothing exists independently, therefore they are empty of such independent ways of existing.
But also one can do a visualization for one’s own welfare and also for the welfare of others. In the visualization in terms of one’s own welfare that visualizing oneself as the hum and the mantra circling around in a counter clockwise fashion. Radiates out lights completely purifying one’s body, speech, mind. Purifying all the negativities and obstructions of one’s body, speech, mind, and one becomes clear as crystal. And then for the welfare of others, imagining that the lights radiating out from the home and the mantra to the sentient beings and the environment, completely purifying them of all their various negativities and purifying the environment, it becomes a celestial abode and the beings therein become gods and goddesses.
And then, a visualization where lights radiate out making unimaginable types of offerings of all the various types of offerings, substantial offerings, and offerings of suchness, etcetera, to the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas and in response to which nectar begins to flow down like rain absorbing into oneself and one generates various realizations as a result.