Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Khensur Rinpoche anchors this 42-minute commentary with a story from the session’s Q&A: three people share a contaminated meal — one dies, one writhes in agony, the third, still symptom-free, recognises the poison inside and seeks a doctor. The image crystallises the session’s theme: fear is a necessary cause for going for refuge, as it alone motivates us to seek help. The main commentary outlines the four qualities making the Three Jewels worthy objects of refuge — freedom from fear, skillfulness, compassion, and impartiality toward all beings — then walks through the refuge visualization step by step: a lion-supported throne with Śākyamūni Buddha at centre, flanked by Maitreya, Mañjuśrī, and Vajradhāra, white nectar flowing with each recitation to purify negativities. The session closes with the entire assembly dissolving into oneself, taking the result as the path. Suited to practitioners beginning the preliminary practices.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 03 PP 1989-05-06.mp3
UUID: 86d8bdad-eaea-4504-9bdc-1cf68e18e8a1
Teacher: Khensur Rinpoche
Collection: Preliminary Practices (Khensur Rinpoche)
Date: 1989-05-06
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 41.9 minutes
Words: ~2,592
Immigrant who immigrated from India to Australia, that he was certain types of restrictions are made on his behavior that he should act in a certain way and that he shouldn’t act in a certain way in order to guarantee that he’d be allowed to remain to stay. Otherwise, he’s going to be sent back and then he’s going to have to face life threatening back in India. Likewise, for us to seek to avoid the bad migrations in the future, that we go for refuge we go for refuge. But if if we don’t practice, then nothing can ever protect us. So it’s necessary to put into effect the actions of adopting and rejecting.
That is to practice, and then the objects of refuge can protect us. So if we simply abbreviate the training of refuge, then it involves simply the, as much as possible, generating faith and conviction in the objects of refuge, that when we eat food or that we offer it to the objects of refuge, that we take refuge in the morning and night, that we, in general, that we place our hopes in objects of refuge and not in other deities that are outside of these objects of refuge. Then in the fourth categorization, that is, why is the object worthy of why are the Buddha, Dharma, Sangha worthy objects of refuge? Why are the Buddha, Dharma, Sangha worthy objects of refuge? And there in order for an object to be worthy of our refuge, they they themselves, for example, must be free of fear.
That if if the object of our refuge are themselves not free of fear, then how can they save save us from our fear? That Yes. As if if if a person is drowning, then how can they save someone else who is drowning also? So the object of refuge must has to be free of fear, that they have to be have skill for skill and meaning to bring about the welfare of others, that if they lack the ability themselves to that they haven’t freed themselves from all suffering, then how are they going to know the methods to help others to free them from their own suffering? And also they have to have The third quality is that the object of refuge must have great compassion.
That is a willingness to help others, to eliminate their suffering. And the fourth is that they must not hold some close and others distant. For most people, if someone helps them, benefits them, then they’re willing to help them. If they don’t, if they hurt us or they don’t help us, then we just give them up. We don’t pay any attention to them.
But the, but we’re the object of refuge must be such that whether we help or harm, they still treat us in the same manner, that they don’t hold them close and others distant. They don’t have bias. So we don’t have much time left. We’ll go very quickly through the visualization of to which we’re going to make go for refuge to in the space before us, perhaps one and a half meters in front, that you should imagine eight great lions supporting a throne. And upon the throne are five smaller thrones, one to each of the four directions, and raised slightly higher, a throne in the middle.
So there on the on the main throne, there are five thrones. On the central throne is the Buddha in the aspect of Śākyamūni Buddha. It is thought of as being in the same nature or entity as one’s root lama. In the throne to the front is is one’s root lama. To to the right is Maitreya.
To the left throne is Mañjuśrī. The throne behind, sitting behind on the throne is vajradhara, and behind him the lineage of the blessed instruction lineage. Surrounding this throne are various Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, and Dakas, Dakinis. This is what is appearing in front of you. Then with respect to yourself, on your right side is your father and all your relatives.
On your left side is your mother and all your female relatives. Behind you are all your enemies. No. I’m sorry. Behind you are all your friends and relatives.
Those close to you. In front of you are all your enemies. And then surrounding you are sentient beings in general in the form of human beings. Then once you think of oneself as a chanting master, a chanting leader, and leading other sentient beings in a recitation of going, I go for refuge to the Buddha, etcetera. So then we act as one act as a chanting master, imagine that all sentient beings who have been associated through endless rebirth are gathered around you, and you’re going to lead them in the taking of refuge and generating conviction.
At first, the fear, and then the conviction that the objects of refuge have the ability to to protect you from that fear, then going for refuge first to the lama, and reciting I go for refuge to the lama. And from the lama extends white nectars coming down into yourself and all sentient beings, entering into your body, and purifying all the negativities which you’ve created with respect to your spiritual teachers. And then going for refuge to the Buddha, and likewise, the white nectar flows down into yourself, into into all sentient beings surrounding you, purifying all the negativity that you’ve created with respect to the Buddhas. Then behind this assembly are stacks of texts which represent the Dharma scriptures. And then going for refuge to the Dharma, from these scriptures white nectar flows down to yourself and ultimately being purifying the negativity created with respect to the Dharma.
And then again, in reciting, I go for refuge to the Sangha that from the the bodhisattvas surrounding and also the solitary realizers and the hearers, the various arhats, that white nectar flows down to yourself and all sentient beings and purifying all the negativity that you’ve created with respect to the spiritual community and that you’ve completely eliminated all the negativity created in this manner and that your body is clear, crystal clean. All negativities eliminated like a crystal. Then this should be repeated again and again. And then at the end of the practice, all the the entire assembly visualized before you, the objects of refuge, dissolve into the central figure of Śākyamūni Buddha. And Śākyamūni Buddha comes down to the crown of one’s head and dissolves into oneself, and that oneself becomes in the nature of Buddha.
And we should imagine that that now we have become in the nature, the same entity as Buddha. And we radiate from our body light, striking all of the sentient beings surrounding us, and they too become in the nature of Buddha. And thinking in this way that now my I have achieved my final goal, that now my work is finished. And thinking in this way generates a great joy in one’s heart that you’ve accomplished your goal of yourself and others. So this type of practice is taking the result as the path and meditating in this way.
Taking the result as the path and meditating in this way creates a tremendous amount of positive potential. So this what we’ve presented today is an extremely abbreviated presentation of the of the practice of refuge. It can be quite extensive that we could talk about all the various qualities of the Buddha, talk about the qualities of the Dharma and the Sangha that when you’re going into with respect to the Buddha, the all the various unimaginable qualities of the Buddha’s speech, body, and mind. And then these are all designed to help us to generate faith, but we can’t we don’t have the time to go into an extensive explanation, so this abbreviated explanation will have to suffice and we’ll stop there. Also, if we were to, in an extensive explanation, go into a more extended explanation of the training of going for refuge, then we would go into the training from the point of view of refuge, small, middling, and great levels of capacity, and where there was an increase in the extent of the entailment of the law of cause and effect.
They all observe the law of cause and effect, but there’s more of extensive practice in observing the law of cause and effect. So in all the practices, whether the being of small, middling, or great, whatever are involved are subsumed within the going for When we recite to the Buddha Dharma and the Sangha, I go for refuge until I’m enlightened. So when when ref so we’ll stop there, but I was just when he when he gave his teaching at Chenrezig, it took two days. Forget it. Sometimes you And each of the each of those days, he talked for three hours.
The probably, they’ll write up that talk that Rinpoche gave, and then later on, you can at what they have written up. So, you have some questions? Yeah. Yes. How much I might be done?
Minutes per question. Yeah. And then around the circling of the other, meditational deity, and then the Buddha, and the bodhisattva circling, and then solitary realizers, hearers, Dharma protectors. And then behind this Behind this So there’s this main throne with this circling, there’s a beam. And behind all this is the texts which are stacked up.
The Yeah, just like stacks of shelves. Yeah, maybe shelves, use, like the in Dharmasala. There’s all these behind the front, there are these huge shelves with all the various texts are stacked up. So this is behind it. So if we had more time, could go into a more extensive explanation.
There are various methods in which the object of refuge can be visualized there. So this is one system where it’s just on a flat plane and the various beings are circling around the main throne. There’s the other visualization where it’s like there’s there’s a like in bleachers, like when you when you when you go to a spectator in in a in a theater, the seats are graduated up like this. And so there’s there’s this visualization where there’s So this is a this graduated system is used in the the the refuge visualization with respect to the practice of Yamāntaka. And then there’s the system there’s this most simple system that we can use that we imagine that all of the the all of the refuge is condensed into one.
And this is in the aspect of Śākyamūni Buddha, but in in the same nature as one’s spiritual master, and that we should think that all the objects of refuge are condensed into this one central figure of Śākyamūni Buddha, having aspect of Śākyamūni Buddha, that the speech is the Dharma, that the mind is the Buddha, and the body is the Sangha. And we can just simplify the refuge down to one central figure. One figure. Why is using fear as one of the causes for going for refuge bad, negative. So, as we mentioned, there were actually two reasons for going for refuge, two causes for going for refuge.
One was the fear, but the other one was also having the conviction and the ability of the object of refuge to free us from that fear. So the conviction in the capacity of the object of refuge. And it depends upon those fears, then there actually arises a longing to go for refuge. in dependence upon these two causes, one will actually go for refuge. Without fear, then refuge will not arise.
So, our life, perhaps the things which bring us the most difficulty are disease and death. It brings the most fear. In the case of, for example, if there were three people who went to a restaurant and they both had, they both, they all, three of them shared the same meal And they came out, and immediately one of them dropped dead. And the second was rolling around on the ground in great pain. And the third, though he not, he wasn’t experiencing any difficulty at that present moment, realizes that there was something wrong with their food, that they were suffering from food poisoning.
And that even though he is not experiencing any difficulty at now, it’s just a matter of time till the consequences of having eaten that contaminated food are going to cause him a great deal of suffering and perhaps death, just like his one friend in the pain that his other friend is going through. There will naturally develop a rise of fear. This fear will lead him to seek a remedy. That is to say, due to this fear, he’ll go to a doctor, and the doctor will diagnose the situation and prescribe some medicine, and dependence upon that medicine, he’ll take the medicine and that will either perhaps cause him to throw it up or in some way rid his body of that poisoned food, the contaminated food. If it wasn’t for that fear, he never have been motivated to go to the doctor and he would have died.
That it was only through that fear which caused him to seek out help and therefore to take the remedy. And therefore, the doctor is the refuge and the doctor and the medicine are the refuge. And it’s only through fear that one was motivated to make use of the doctor and the medicine. And so, in response to this fear, we’re led to seek out someone who can help us. Now, you know, we have to rely on someone who’s skillful who can diagnose our illness accurately and therefore prescribe the proper remedy whereby we can actually get rid of our potential sickness, even though at that perhaps at that point we aren’t actually experiencing the pain.
So this is simply an analogy. If we actually give the meaning of the analogy on actual basis, then the poison that these three individuals took was that they created negative actions. And that the action of these negative actions, the function of these negative actions is that they can lead to rebirth in hell. That there’s three, there were three individuals and that the person who had actually died, they were, had already taken rebirth in hell. The second person who was rolling around on the ground would be someone who was in the throes of death and they were experiencing the visions of what was to confront them.
They’re in a great fear, great struggle, breathing very, with a great difficulty in breathing, etcetera. But the third person is that they understand that they’ve created the same negative actions which lead to this result of taking rebirth in hell. They’ve eaten the same food and at present they aren’t undergoing either the throes of death or they actually haven’t taken rebirth in hell, but they know that the potential is there within them, so they seek some protection from this, possible result. They go for refuge, and they go for refuge to the doctor who is the Buddha, and he prescribes the medicine, which is the Dharma. So, yeah, that that would be fine.
You know, first, as Jean Pierre mentioned, we we imagined the refuge object, and then we generate the two causes for going for refuge. And then upon that, we can recite, for example, Namo Gurubhya, Namo Gurubhya,