Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. A question about whether meditation can genuinely cure illness becomes the pivot of this 30-minute Q&A session with Khensur Rinpoche. He first distinguishes practice for those with and without Medicine Buddha empowerment: initiates dissolve the eight Medicine Buddhas progressively into themselves; others visualize in front-space, receive the nectar, but skip the mantra-garland visualization. He then explains how to direct the practice toward a specific sick person by holding them in mind as the nectar flows. The session deepens when the illness question arrives: Rinpoche identifies ignorant self-grasping as the single root of all disease, and wisdom realizing emptiness — cultivated through renunciation, bodhicitta, and meditation — as the axe that severs it from the root. Suited to practitioners in active retreat.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 04 MBR 2000-07-22.mp3
UUID: 2f6a86c5-f85f-4dbb-82c7-11b59c63fd7c
Teacher: Khensur Rinpoche
Collection: Medicine Buddha Retreat (Khensur Rinpoche)
Date: 2000-07-22
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 30.5 minutes
Words: ~1,131
Okay. We’ll stop here. And if you want to ask something, you’re welcome. Effective and profound practices of the sūtra, Sūtrayāna. Yes.
It has been clearly stated, as we said, the Buddha Śākyamūni’s time, the Tantrayāna and the Sūtrayāna. So it’s clearly stated in the Sūtrayāna that the practice of Medicine Buddha, the ritual practice of Medicine Buddha, is one of the most effective and very swift and profound practices of the Sūtrayāna — that by doing so, as those medicine Buddhas have the motivation to attain enlightenment specifically to help sentient beings who are undergoing through the sufferings. Therefore, by doing such practices, one will receive, once one will instantly or swiftly receive the blessings and the nectars from the medicine. The main ritual practice of Medicine Buddha — we can’t do that here in the west.
But in traditionally, in in in Tibet or in our monasteries, we have particular text for the the the ritual practices of Buddha, which is very thick and long, and they perform for a day. In that text, it’s clearly written about the how effective and swift and very how perform that particular the practices of Medicine Buddha. And in Tashi Lhunpo monastery, this is one of the main activities in the monastery — the Medicine Buddha’s ritual practice is done almost every day. And it is very famous in Taiwan as well, because China, I’m very, very happy. Do you want a translation?
Maybe. How about doing one at Buddha House? So maybe not one day, but if you start around six o’clock doing that, maybe continuously, finish around eleven, twelve noon. Yeah. But you need to set up a very big altar, making all the tormas and the butter lamps and so forth.
Good good good tunes there for the ritual practice. You don’t need to understand the meaning. Just from hearing the tune, you’re just drawn into it. The yeah. If one has received the empowerment or initiation, then one according to the empowerment, what one can do, one can visualize all the medicine Buddha, and then the dissolving of one medicine Buddha into the next one, and then finally, at the main main medicine Buddha, then dissolving men, Buddha, medicine Buddha into oneself.
And if those who haven’t received any empowerment should should do the visualization in the front and then make the praise and recite the mantra, not dissolve them into within one So those who haven’t received the initiation should visualize in the front space and make all the prayers. Who have received the empowerment then go practice as stated in the empowerment. Dissolve into one, into the other, and then finally into oneself. And during the recitation of the mantra, those who haven’t received empowerment do not necessarily need to visualize the mantra or the garland. Just recite the mantra and visualize the Buddha in the front and then, along with the mantra recitation, imagine the nectar comes from the Buddha — and don’t need to visualize the mantra garland at the heart of the Buddha.
Just imagine. Yeah. It’s called the four deeds — the peaceful, increase, power, and the wrathful.
So which is white for peace, yellow for increase, and and the red for the power. The last one, the is black. Black. Nice. I recall you saying, would you say something about You can do it in this way that while doing your meditation or visualization.
In general terms, when one does the Medicine Buddha practice, one does it for the entire sentient beings — the distilling or the receiving of nectar is towards the entire sentient beings. And that this is how one does the practice. And if one really specifically or specially wants to do it for somebody, then during your meditation, visualize that particular friend or person in front of you, and then do the practice of distilling or receiving the nectar from the Medicine Buddha. Imagining that the nectars go towards both yourself and the one visualized in front, which heals all the disease. So and yeah.
Now through this visualization of the coming of the nectars, you can visualize that the nectars are in the form of mind, or mental nectar. That as mental to cure the mental — the mental has to cure the mental disease. So through imagining the nectars in the form of mental nectar which enters into your mind, which challenges and cleanses mental illnesses. Basically, one cures mental illness through meditation of developing the renunciation. And then, the renunciation, bodhicitta, the altruistic intention and the perfect view, the view of realizing emptiness.
By developing all these three — the three main teachings — the bodhicitta and the view of realizing emptiness are the two main ones to get rid of and uproot the mental illnesses. I have to tell you, the tormas here are very, very good. Very, very good.
So, meditation is the main, and your question is a very good question. Through meditation we can get rid of and uproot from the root of the mental illnesses, the root of the illnesses, which is called the ignorant self-grasping attitude. So that is the main root. From this, all those entire, the hundreds of numbers of disease or the illness comes from. And in order to cure that uproot or the abandoned, eliminate the ignorant self grasping attitude from its root, one needs to have the wisdom realizing the selflessness.
And to uproot that, one needs to have the view of wisdom realizing emptiness to cut ignorance from its root, which is the main source. And that wisdom realizing emptiness can attain through meditation. So meditation is the best. It is the main to cure the illnesses or the disease. The ignorance is like the root of the tree.
So once you get rid of ignorance by the reason of realizing emptiness, then the branches will just gradually dries up. In Asia, we use an axe to cut the tree from its root or whatever. But ignorance is like a root. It’s a root, and we need to cut it like — in Australia, they use what’s called a machine, you know? Whatever.
We have to cut it like that. Excuse me? What you wanted to ask — you have to visualize emptiness? How do you — to develop a wisdom realizing emptiness?
How do you visualize emptiness? No. I said wisdom realized, to develop or generate a wisdom realizing emptiness. Yeah. Yeah.
You’re having lunch? Lunch? Yep. Okay. And it’s very good that you’re doing the retreat of Medicine Buddha, which would be very helpful to you. And doing the Medicine Buddha practice every second Saturday is very, very good. And by doing this, you will have received lots of nectars.