Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 47-minute session, Khensur Rinpoche takes practitioners through a step-by-step visualization of the subtle body at the heart of completion stage practice. He opens by clarifying how to alternate vase breathing with physical exercises, then traces the six session yoga text back to Tsongkhapa before turning to the main subject: the three channels and four channel wheels. Working from a diagram, he describes the central channel — straight, red interior, blue exterior, hollow — alongside the red right and white left channels, then covers each wheel in sequence: heart (eight petals, six knots), throat (sixteen petals), crown (thirty-two petals), and navel (sixty-four petals). He closes by advising beginners to focus on the central channel first and roughly imagine the branch channels rather than attempt the full visualization at once. Suited to practitioners already engaged with Highest Yoga Tantra generation or completion stage.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 03 IH 1993 12 05.mp3
UUID: 4d2ca86b-ba33-4083-aee4-3eb6aa5a8840
Teacher: Khensur Rinpoche
Collection: Inner Heart Retreat (Khensur Rinpoche)
Date: 1993-12-05
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 47.5 minutes
Words: ~1,678
So I think it would be difficult to to do the exercise and the breathing together. Rather than combining the vase breathing and these exercises simultaneously, you could do them in an alternate, do a then an exercise, an breathing exercise. There’s no specific numbers set out according to how much time you have. In view of how much time you have, would you’d have to allot that much time for the exercise. Yeah.
So one session and one time, but how long they took would be according to how much time you had for your session. So this is a an explanation of a teaching of Je Rinpoche on the six session yoga, but it’s this text itself is not Tsongkhapa. It’s not composed by Tsongkhapa. It’s a is a comment, an explanation of a other commentary of Tsongkhapa’s teaching on six session yoga. So it’s taken from Tsongkhapa’s, but it’s an explanation of a teaching by Tsongkhapa in six session yoga.
His his teacher received the teaching on six session yoga from Je Rinpoche. From Tsongkhapa. So in a slow, relaxed. So it’s in it’s best if it’s done in a slow, relaxed manner with the proper visualization. It’s mainly trying to expel the bad winds, to remove conceptions, and to vitalize the channels of the body.
So, a slow, gentle, relaxed manner. So, it’s necessary to the channels have various defects and trying to eliminate the defects of the channels and to bring about healthy channels. So, this is in order to remove any obstacles as was explained previously to request the blessings that one develop winds become blissful, to develop healthy channels, and to gain the realization of emptiness. That’s, yeah, as was explained, one is the single deity without consort whether it be Vajrayoginī, Heruka, or Yamāntaka, and maintaining the visualization of oneself as the deity. So in the practice of generation stage, one is to continually visualize oneself as a deity, and so here, since this is a completion stage practice, go back, but it’s done at the preparation, it’s done at the generating stage.
It is mentioned specifically that one is to generate oneself in the deity, but in general, in practice of generation stage, one is continually meditating oneself as the deity. The, without, and without the generation stage, one cannot go on to the completion stage. Yes. So once in through the dissolution into emptiness, has eliminated one’s gross body. Within emptiness, gross body is purified, everything becomes empty.
And then within this emptiness, the wisdom realizing emptiness, it takes on the aspect of the deity. It’s like in the course of taking rebirth, we abandon the old body, we go through an intermediate state, and we take on a new body. And likewise here, we abandon the old gross body and then go through an intermediate state and take on the new body of it of the deity. The deity in the embodiment is in fact the expression of the wisdom realizing emptiness and taking on physical aspect of the deity whether it’s Heruka, Yamāntaka, Vajrayoginī. One’s body is in the nature of wisdom.
So, the one in nature, one’s body is wisdom, understanding, emptiness. In aspect, it takes the shape of the particular deity, and then internally it’s completely empty or hollow. So it’s in the once the body is light, like an illusory body without any defects and without any external, without any physical problems whatsoever. Internally, there are no organs, like intestines, etcetera. It’s hollow.
So but then we go on to visualize the channels within the body. The human body has these channels and we go on to visualize these channels. So now we should then visualize that in the center of our body, we’re going to visualize the central channel and with in in the center center of our body, slightly to the back, near to the back and very straight runs the central channel from the navel, level the navel upward toward the crown and ending at between the brow. It can be the thickness depending upon it can be the diameter can be thin as as Rinpoche pointed out, or if that you find it difficult, it can be visualized thicker depending upon ease of visualization. So, the second division is the visualizing the channels and They’re flexible and smooth.
Should do. So the channel has three qualities. It is straight. It is the inside of the channel is the inside wall. The channel internally, it’s red.
Externally, it’s blue. That’s the second quality color. And thirdly, it’s hollow. So the interior wall is red. The external wall is blue.
It’s straight. It’s very flexible, very delicate like the petals of a flower. And then this is the visualization of the right and left channels. It’s central channel, then to to the right is the right channel, is red in color. And then to the left is the left channel, white in color.
Running along the the side channels are running alongside the central channel. So the, as you may be able to see from the drawing, central channels are, the side channels are joined into the central channel at the bottom and then they all three channels move upward. The central channel opens up, comes out at the brow between the eyebrows and the two side channels exit down at the The central channel just extends down to the level of the navel. The two side channels extend slightly further, but then curve back up and enter into the central channel. The the central channel to the level of the navel.
The side channels extend a bit further down and then curve back up and join into the center. In general, there are seventy two thousand channels, but here we’re just concerned with the three main channels. So in general, there are five channel wheels. But here we’re only concerned with four. At the channel wheels at the level of the navel, the heart, the throat, and the crown.
This is the the channel wheel of great bliss at the crown? Great bliss. The wheel of great bliss at the crown? Between the two breasts, center of the is the heart channel wheel? So at the heart center, each of the two side channels wrap around twice, three times.
So, the right wraps around three times, the left wraps around three times making so these are called knots. So making total six knots at the heart center. So the the there are three knots above and three knots below the actual heart center itself with the channel wheel at the heart. So, the channel wheel, there are three knots, below the channel wheel there are three knots. Then the actual channel wheel itself, there are four main channels, subchannels moving off, one in each of the directions, north, south, east, and west.
So then these, again, fork off into two branches, making eight branch channels. Now look here. So you can you can look at this. Yes. Yes.
You got. So they they are it’s like is there a curve? The shape is that they are curved. They’re white in color. So their their shape is that they’re curved?
Oh, I’m round. I’m sorry. They’re round? I call those. And and they’re So they’re they’re circular.
They’re they’re white, and they’re they’re they’re bowl shaped facing downward. So they’re curving downward. So at the heart at the throat center, there are two knots. And then as was the case at the heart center, there the the the sub channels branch off in the four directions. But here, they they branch they fork off twice, making a total of sixteen branches or petals.
Petals. Not the red in color? Yeah. Circular. Same shape as before.
And the the the channel wheel is like the bowl bowl shape facing upward. Then the crown channel wheel called the wheel of great bliss is located between the skull, the cranium and the brain. So there’s a space between the cranium and the brain. Between that space is the crown channel wheel. And it has thirty two petals. And the the arrangement of the petals of the of the branches is there’s thirty two.
So it’s just as in the case of the secret place illustration. Then at the navel, the place of the navel, there is the navel channel wheel, which is called the wheel of emanation. And it has a knot above and below, two knots. And as is the case with the others, if there are the four main branches, and then these fork off immediately again and again and finally making a total of sixty four petals, these sub branches. The the the Uh-huh.
And the the crown channel wheel is the branches are multicolored. The shape is triangular. Curving downward. The throat throat branches are curving upward. Throat channel wheel branches are red.
The branches are multicolored. And the shape is triangular. Four channels three channels and four channel centers. So we we won’t be dealing with the channel. We are the secret place.
The channels are transparent, almost like glass. They’re very they have no defects. They’re flawless, and the the side channels run immediately alongside the central channel. Beginners, such a visualization would be extremely difficult. We should mainly, you know, we can simply mainly concern ourselves with the visualization of the three channels.
And just imagine that the various branch branches, channels moving out from the centers are there. Just roughly imagine. And amongst them, mainly concerning ourselves with the visualization of the central channel. So this is that’s the second. So this is the second division visualizing the the channels and the channel centers.
So trying to gain a clear appearance in terms of visualization of these channels and channel centers. Then the third division is training in the pathways. Channel as clearly as possible. Like, try to see them as you would see an object with your eye. They should try to be that clear.