Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. The story of Sadāprarudita — the Indian master who tried to sell slices of his own flesh to fund an offering for his teacher — opens Khensur Rinpoche’s 50-minute second session of a 1990 Mahāmudrā retreat. Rinpoche uses it to illuminate the mandala offering, second of the four preliminaries: a low-cost practice that builds vast positive potential. He then covers the Vajrasattva hundred-syllable mantra (twenty-one recitations daily, seven each for body, speech, and mind) and prostrations to the thirty-five Buddhas, showing how the two practices reinforce each other to clear the obscurations blocking realization of emptiness. A crystal encrusted with dirt captures the idea. The session closes with detailed Guru Yoga instruction: visualizing Tsongkhapa with his two spiritual sons, working through the seven-limb prayer, making three specific requests, then dissolving the teacher into the crown of the head before sitting in meditation.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 02 MR 1990 04 13.mp3
UUID: b1e23587-a4f7-462a-8395-81a5dbd415ed
Teacher: Khensur Rinpoche
Collection: Mahāmudrā Retreat (Khensur Rinpoche)
Date: 1990-04-13
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 50.3 minutes
Words: ~2,615
So that is the the first of the two preliminaries of the four. That is the going for refuge and the second is the offering of mandala. And this is extremely important. It is important that by means of offering mandala that we create a vast amount of accumulation, that we create the accumulations or the collections. That is to say the positive potential, that simply we can with little expense, with little difficulties, by means of offering mandala, we create a great deal of positive potential.
So, this practice of offering the mandala — there’s no great expense involved in it. All we need is a base for the offering. By means of this we can create a great accumulation. This is why we offer the mandala. We are doing this regularly.
We recite the offering of mandala. The ground is scented with incense and strewn with flowers, adorned with Mount Meru, the four continents, sun and moon. Imagine the Buddha field and offer it: may all beings, living beings, enjoy this pure realm. So we do this offering of the mandala regularly, and where did it come from? The originator of this practice of offering mandala — I don’t know the Sanskrit name — is an Indian master by the name of Sadāprarudita, which means always crying. So just, you know, a very brief account about Sadāprarudita.
Why was he always crying? Was constantly crying. It was because he had a great desire to understand the meaning of the perfection of wisdom. That is to say he had a great desire to understand emptiness. But he had no spiritual teacher to teach him emptiness and he felt very depressed about this, very dejected about not having met with the spiritual master to teach him about emptiness.
So one day, Maitreya appeared in the sky to Sadāprarudita and he said, What’s your trouble? Sadāprarudita saw him and said, I have no teacher to explain to me the meaning of emptiness. And Maitreya suggested that he go to the south, and there he would find a spiritual teacher by the name of Dharmodgata. And in dependence upon this teacher he would realize emptiness. So when Sadāprarudita was traveling to the south to visit the spiritual teacher Dharmodgata, he approached till he was perhaps a short distance from the master’s residence.
He was perhaps one day’s travel. He would arrive the next day. But he began to wonder that he couldn’t approach the master without any offerings. But what could he offer him in exchange for these teachings. He was extremely poor and he went to a nearby village and he decided to sell his flesh, his own flesh.
And he went through the village yelling, human flesh? Does anybody want to buy human flesh? And of course, everybody thought he was crazy. He wasn’t even carrying anything, let alone the fact that he was trying to sell human flesh. But there appeared in the sky an emanation of a particular deity.
And the deity said, yes, I want to buy some human flesh and I need I think five kilos. The deity gave him the money and Sadāprarudita began to slice off part of his leg. And he kept slicing and slicing. It just wouldn’t weigh up to five kilos. And the more he sliced, it just couldn’t amount up to the weight.
He says, well, maybe if I I’ll give you my foot. And he said, I’ll take this stone and smash it off. And the guy says, no. I don’t want feet. I want flesh.
Yes. So it turned out he wasn’t able to get money to buy an offering, but he went to Dharmodgata’s residence anyway. And when he got there, he learned — he sought an audience with Dharmodgata — but he learned that Dharmodgata was in meditative equipoise on emptiness and he would be in that for the next seven years. And he was upset about this and he wondered what he could do. And so he began to circumambulate him, walking around him, making prostrations, etcetera.
So as it turned out, the spiritual teacher Dharmodgata only resided in meditative equipoise on emptiness for seven days. And after seven days he arose to now ask for teachings. And it was necessary in order to receive the teachings to repair the place in which the teachings were to be given as the place had to be a very clean and special place. And he went to prepare the place of the teaching site. And in order to do that, generally they would smooth the earth and scatter water about so there would be no dust.
And he wanted to make this preparation but due to the influence of a malevolent spirit being there was no water to be had and he couldn’t make proper preparations. He cut his leg and collected the blood and spread blood in the area to smooth the earth. And then in in the actual prior to the actual receiving the teaching, he offered a mandala. And as a consequence of having received the teaching, he was quickly able to realize the first through the seventh grounds. So this second of these preliminaries is the offering of mandala.
And by means of it, with little difficulty, quite easily, we can create we can collect a great mass of accumulation. And the third preliminary is that of the practice of Vajrasattva. This is within the mantra we receive permission or an empowerment which empowers us to recite the hundred syllable mantra. And by the recitation of a hundred thousand of these mantras we are able to purify a great deal of negativities. If we do this as a daily practice, for example reciting twenty one times the hundred syllable mantra, seven for the negativities of body, seven for speech, seven for mind.
Making this effort, we can purify a great deal of the negativities created in these three manners. Additionally, a very potent method of purifying negativities, can make use of the prostrations in the practice of confession of negativities to the thirty five Buddhas. And it is by this means that Tsongkhapa purified the negativities whereby he was able to realize emptiness. And as a consequence of purification, we can easily develop the awakening heart, understand emptiness, and we can have an actual appearance of our particular meditation deity. Why are we meditating Mahāmudrā?
Whether we’re meditating in accordance with mantra or sūtra, is that we definitely have to realize emptiness. And why haven’t we realized emptiness up to now? It’s because we have all of these obscurations, these hindrances. And therefore, it’s necessary to remove these obscurations, are necessary to purify these negativities. You know, from beginningless time up to taking rebirth and cyclic existence up to now, we have been creating negativities through our body, speech and mind.
And these obscure our ability to understand emptiness. So it is by means of these practices of Vajrasattva and prostrations that we are able to remove these negativities in order to gain realization of emptiness. So as far as the preliminaries, we go for refuge as to the Three Jewels to distinguish the practice as being particularly Buddhist. But further, we develop the mind generation, the awakened heart, in order to distinguish the practice as being that of the great vehicle. And to go on to seeking to realize emptiness, we then make use of the Vajrasattva mantra and the confession of negativities in order to purify the negativities which prevent us from realizing emptiness.
Through this acknowledgment of our negativities and the accumulation of positive potential, we are able to purify the mind. These two practices, the acknowledgement of negativities and the creation of positive potential, mutually assist one another. By acknowledging our negativities, we accumulate positive potential. By creating positive potential, we eliminate our negativities. And these are reinforcing one another, these two practices.
It is by this means that our presently defiled mind is made pure and this facilitating the realization of emptiness. So our mind can be compared to a crystal. Though the crystal by its very nature is clear, presently it’s encrusted with dirt and so the clarity is not apparent to us. And likewise, though the nature of the mind is clear and pure, it is encrusted, covered over with negativities and obscurations. In the same way that by removing the encrusted dirt on the crystal allows for us to see vividly its actual nature.
Its nature actually vividly appears to us. Likewise, by removing the obscurations and negativity from the mind, its actual nature will vividly appear to us. So in the process of the purification of the mind and removing the negativities and the creation of positive potential, it’s necessary that the mind be assisted in some manner, that it be empowered. That is to say, that if our practices go well, it’s necessary for the mind to be blessed. What or who is it that blesses the mind?
It is the Lama, that is to say the spiritual teacher. Therefore it is necessary to practice Guru Yoga or a union with a spiritual teacher. So the subject of the explanation of Guru Yoga is extremely expansive and it is set out in detail on the teachings on the graduated path in Lam Rim. So I won’t set it out in detailed fashion, just in abbreviated way. And this, in abbreviated way, we can make use of, for example, the having as a center of the meditation, Tsongkhapa, along with his two spiritual sons.
Or, another even more abbreviated fashion, we can simply imagine our root spiritual teacher and think of him as a condensation of all the various holy beings. So if we do it in accordance with this first condensed method of Guru Yoga, we imagine that descending from Tuśita Pure Land upon a cloud is a lion throne. Upon the central throne is seated Tsongkhapa. To his left and right are his two spiritual sons. On his left particularly is Gyaltsab Je and on his right is Khedrup Je.
Tsongkhapa is to be thought of as an emanation of Mañjuśrī. Gyaltsab Je as an emanation of Chenrezig, Khedrup Je as an emanation of vajrapani. They are all three marked with om at the crown, ah at the throat, and hum at the heart. And we should imagine that Je Rinpoche, that is to say Tsongkhapa, is inseparable in nature for one’s own individual root teacher, possessing all the kindness.
That teacher was showing you the teachings. That Tsongkhapa is of the same nature. In fact Tsongkhapa is to be thought of as the condensation of all the Buddhas. Additionally, his body is in the nature of the spiritual community, his speech is the Dharma jewel, and his mind is the Buddha jewel. And then having imagined this in the space before us, then reciting the seven-limb prayer as we normally do.
The first limb is generating respect and faith through physically prostrating oneself. The second is making offerings. We can make actual physical offerings as is done here or simply mental offerings, offering anything which is beautiful in the world. Then the third is the acknowledgement of our previously created negativities, that is the confessions of our wrongdoings, acknowledging that all of the negativities that we’ve done through body, speech, the mind previously, confessing them, and that and determining, making a commitment not to repeat those negativities again in the future. The next limb, the fourth, is the limb of rejoicing.
And it reads: rejoice in the merit of all holy and ordinary beings. Whatever skillful actions ordinary beings may create, and additionally whatever vast skillful actions are created by those who have entered into the path, whether they’re hearers, bodhisattvas, and Buddhas — taking the mind of the vast wonder of their skillful actions and rejoicing in it. The fifth limb: please remain until saṃsāra ends. And this is making a request to these holy beings to remain within cyclic existence until cyclic existence is empty. That is to say, until all sentient beings have been liberated — for our sake, please remain.
Then the sixth limb is the turning of the wheel of Dharma and requesting that the wheel of Dharma be turned again and again for sentient beings. And asking that for myself and all sentient beings in order to benefit eliminate our suffering, in order for us that we are able to achieve happiness, please again and again give the teachings of Dharma. The seventh limb is the limb of dedication. By means of these six previous limbs, we’ve created a great deal of positive potential and purified a great deal of negativity. We take all of the skillful actions which we have created in this way and we dedicate it so that all sentient beings achieve Buddhahood, that they find complete happiness, that all their sufferings finally be ended.
And having made offerings to the spiritual teacher by means of the seven-limb prayer, may then asking for whatever, asking to please be helped in whatever it is that you desire. Desire. That is to say, we are to ask that our three great purposes be fulfilled. And these three great purposes are that may my mind not go in the direction of negativity but follow into the direction of Dharma practice, spiritual path. That’s the first.
The second is that may my practice of Dharma, may I have no obstructions to my practice in my practicing the Dharma? And may I bring it to completion? That’s the second. And the third is may I not have any hindrance or harms by external forces such as humans, nonhumans, diseases, and such things. It’s having firm conviction in the efficacy of such requests, then it’s definite that you will be benefit in this way.
And having made these requests for the three great purposes to be fulfilled, the two spiritual sons dissolve into the figure of Tsongkhapa and Tsongkhapa comes down to the crown of our head and it is at this time that we actually begin the meditation. Then we would begin whatever meditation that we wished with meditating, having brought the figure of the spiritual teacher down to the crown of our head. The spiritual teacher is there to assist us in our practice, he or she is the condensation of the Buddha, the Dharma and the spiritual community. It’s by means of them that we are able to receive blessings to our mind, that we’re able to, that our mind will be pure, will be flexible, that it will be workable. And that if during the course of our meditation that our mind is not going into the meditation, is not going into the path, that our mind becomes unclear, that we have some obstruction, then we should intermittently make requests to the spiritual master visualized above our head, requesting that these obstacles, that these difficulties be eliminated.
And in answer to this request, nectars flow down into ourselves, eliminating all the various faults, all these various obstructions, and again, we can carry on their meditation. And again, intermittently, making requests, eliminating the faults. And it’s this way that our mind is made pliable and we develop a good mind, and it’s by means of this that realization will arise. So those are the preliminaries — the preparation according to mantra that we briefly discussed.
And I’m extremely pleased with the number of people who have gathered here and who wish to practice. And I think things are going very well. And therefore, I feel on my side that I