Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. The image of one’s mind as a pea-sized drop of brilliant white light opens this 46-minute session, in which Khensur Rinpoche covers the third division of Inner Heart practice: training in the passageways of the channels. He traces the mind-drop traveling through the channel wheels at throat, crown, and between the brows, then back to navel, inspecting branch channels at each level. He then places four syllables in the central channel: Ah at navel and Om at throat stand upright as fire; Ham at heart and a fourth syllable at crown point downward as dripping white bodhicitta. The key instruction is that the mind must enter into these letters rather than observe them, since wind energies follow wherever the mind abides. Rinpoche closes with the signs of tummo progress — equalized nostril breath, cessation of breathing, and the final dissolution into clear light. For advanced completion stage practitioners.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 04 IH 1993 12 05.mp3
UUID: 2b4a8fea-fffc-42d9-90f5-340b03cdeba4
Teacher: Khensur Rinpoche
Collection: Inner Heart Retreat (Khensur Rinpoche)
Date: 1993-12-05
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.6 minutes
Words: ~1,859
So the second division was a visualization of the channels and channel centers. Now we finished that. Now we’re moving on to the third division, which is training in the passageways of these channels. So, like a road. So, at this point, we want to emphasize the visualization at the heart center and at the very heart center within the central channel.
At the center of the heart center, the channel wheel within the central channel is own mind. In nature, it’s the of the two types of gross and subtle. It is extremely subtle inseparable entity of mind and energy, mind and wind energy. So extremely subtle combination of mind and wind energy. That’s its nature.
In aspect, it is a drop of brilliant white light the size of a pea. So a drop of a brilliant white light and it’s radiating five colored lights. It itself is white, but the color that it radiates is five colored light. That’s one’s own mind. That’s your own mind.
So this pea sized drop of light, which is one’s own mind radiating that light is able to illuminate. So if one can ease easily see the interior of these channels through the radiating of this light. Travels up, I just say the mind drop, upward to the throat center. So when then this one’s mind as a pea drop light comes to the throat center, and now it it’s it’s very luminous like if you turn on the light, it illuminates everything. And now we’re going to investigate.
We’re going to examine the branches, the branch channels. Just like if someone came into your house and they started looking around, what does your bathroom look like? What does your bedroom look like? What does your living room look like? And they just walked around your house checking it out.
Likewise, we’re going to check out the condition of our branch channels at the level of our throat to see their condition. So we’re going to move along looking at the condition of these branch channels. Then we move upward to the Crown Channel Center. And then here at the wheel of great bliss, the channel center at the crown, we we radiate out this light, illuminating this all the the the branches, the petals, the sub channels, and examining their conditions. The examining their conditions.
And then the our mind then travels moving forward again and then down to the opening of the central channel between the brows such that now the half of the the pea like mind is is outside the body, half is still in. And it looks what, you know, we are visualizing ourselves as a deity. And so the the mind then looks to see what deity we are visualizing ourselves as. And it should be a clear appearance to one of the of the deity. And it’s able to illuminate the entire world just like the sun in there.
Then moving back upward to the crown channel center, again, examining the the conditions of the channels, the sub channels, the branches, moving down to the throat, like, remaining there for a while, examining the condition of the channel wheel of the throat, and then, again, moving slowly downward to the heart channel center, examining the the petals, the branches at the heart center, then moving down finally to the channel center at the navel and examining the branches at the level of the channel, navel center. Then, again, moving upward from the navel to the heart channel center, examining the branches there, going moving upward to the throat, to the crown, again, to between the eyebrows, inspecting the, you know, the deity, the appearance of the deity, and moving back up into the crown, back to the throat, the heart, the navel. And then finally, at the end, the bringing one’s mind to the heart center. This is the training in the passageways. So then comes the visualizing of the syllables.
So each of the channel wheels, the channel wheel at the navel, the wheel of emanation, the channel wheel of the heart, the wheel of phenomena, channel wheel of the throat, the wheel of enjoyment, and the channel wheel at the crown, the wheel of great bliss has a particular syllable or letter. So, the level of the navel, they’re inside the central channel at the level of navel channel center is an ah. Ah. Ah. It’s this letter, the second letter without this little circle.
Okay. Ah without this little circle. This has a little circle on top. Without that, that’s ah. It’s standing upright straight.
So within the central channel at the level of the navel channel center. At heart is a ham pointing downward. At the throat is standing upward. I have I can draw this for you. And then at the crown is pointing downward.
Okay. Okay. So the the at the crown and the at the heart, they’re in the nature of white bodhicitta and just as like they’re pointing downward because they are dripping like like just like they’re going to drip downward. The substance of the white bodhicitta is like just, like, dripping downward. So they’re upside down.
Whereas the the the ah at the navel and the om at the throat are in the nature of fire. The fire burns upward. So therefore, they are pointing upward, standing upright. So remember this: the ham and the ah. So when the when the when the inner heat is ignited and the the fire blazes up and the white bodhicitta drips down.
Syllables is resting on a half a moon. You know, the the half moon disc. Some text have the om and the ah seated on a sun and moon. But according to Tsongkhapa has them all seated on half moons. So as it’s So when this is written out, we say a syllable ah, but in actual, its aspect is more like this shape that which is shown here because it’s just a portion of the ah is used.
So it comes out to this shape. And then as as pictured in this drawing, each of them has at their head, the the three parts, the the crescent, circle, and nada. That there. You can get. So that is the visualizing of the syllable.
So all of the letters should be thought of should be visualized, have a very clear luminous appearance and should be thought of as one’s own mind. You get this. Yeah, man. You get this. So these aren’t just merely letters which are written somewhere, but These letters are are in the nature of your mind, inseparable in entity from one’s deity.
So but more than that, it it wants you not simply look at these letters outwardly as, you know, like looking at flowers. One sees that there’s a flower over there and there’s a table over there, but one’s mind is within. You know, you are you are as if within these letters. So in if if this section of your practice, say you have fifteen minutes to spend on this section of your practice. This is just an example.
Fifteen minutes to spend on this section of the practice, and you would spend just by way of example, what used to be emphasized that if you had fifteen minutes and you would spend the visualization of the syllables, spending three minutes at the crown, three minutes at the throat, three minutes at the heart, and six minutes at the level of the navel. The reason that we emphasize time spent at level of navel because this is where the tummo will be ignited. So it is emphasized. So it’s important to imagine that your mind is actually entered into these letters, that that’s where your mind is abiding. It’s not like watching a show where you’re standing outside.
If you look at these letters in that way, then your wind energies will not enter into the letters. The wind energies will go to the place where your mind is abiding. So you must imagine that your mind is within these letters, therefore, and that will bring the wind energies along with them. So, of we’ll stop there. But if you have some questions, if you have any we’ll clear up any doubts or problems that you may have.
Generation stage. You must be able to hold the the gross the coarse appearance of the deity along with the mandala for six hours and be able to generate all this instantly. Six hours. Six hours. So within five minutes.
If your session is your session is going to last six hours, within five minutes, you should have a clear appearance of the deity and the the mandala, the the basis of the deity, and then I’m gonna be able to hold that clearly for six hours. So that’s the standard for a coarse generation stage. In order to attain this subtle, you must be able to abide in for one month. Upon meditating tummo, that the generally, the the air coming out of the nostrils is uneven and forcefulness. One one one nostril, the air will be more forceful than the other Or over over a series of inhalations, exhalation, there will be an unevenness even if it’s they’re coming out evenly with both nostrils over a series of great breaths, it it will there will be a fluctuation in the in the forcefulness of the breath coming out of nostrils.
So given that from the sign of entry of the winds into the central channel upon meditating tummo is that there is an equality of the forcefulness of the breath, of the air rushing coming out of the nostrils. And not only once, but but this would continue over a long series of breaths that the force of the winds would be equal over a series and simultaneously in terms of of each nostril. That’s a sign. Meditating tummo, these these constrictions are loosened, and the air is able to to move into the central channel. And so there are three parts.
There’s entrance, abidance, the dissolution of the air. And so we talked about the entrance. The sign of the abidance is that there is no air coming out of the nose, and the abdomen ceases rising and falling. So and then the the dissolution of the subtle so there’s entrance, abidance, and then dissolving dissolutions. And the the sign of the dissolutions is the arising of the the sign of the of a mirage as when the earth dissolves into water.
That is the sign that the subtle winds are dissolving into the So then moving, you know, each of the as it takes place, the dissolution of each of the the gross wind energy and moving down to the more subtle and moving to get each of the elements dissolves one from the other. And there’s the various appearances, the white appearance of white increase, red, black near-attainment, and then finally, rising of the clear light. Yeah. karma. That’s it.
K. That’s okay. K.