Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Using Vajrasattva practice as purification is the focus of this 45-minute commentary by Khensur Rinpoche, delivered at Buddha House in 1989. He opens by asking why spiritual realisations fail to develop — or degenerate once gained — and names accumulated negativity as the cause. He then introduces the Vajrasattva sadhana in its Heruka form, walking through the visualization step by step: lotus and moon disc appearing above the crown, a white hum syllable transforming into Vajrasattva and his consort, their three places marked with Om, Ah, and Hum, light radiating outward to purify all beings, wisdom beings dissolving into the deity. He covers the hundred-syllable mantra and the four opponent powers required for genuine confession. The commentary closes with a sustained argument that conviction in past and future lives underpins all Dharma practice — without it, karma carries no weight and purification has no direction. Suited to practitioners with some grounding in Vajrayāna.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 08 PP 1989-06-03.mp3
UUID: 0ceb7698-94f9-4924-9c3a-929c9fcaa515
Teacher: Khensur Rinpoche
Collection: Preliminary Practices (Khensur Rinpoche)
Date: 1989-06-03
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 44.6 minutes
Words: ~2,402
So for the sake of all sentient beings equal to space to in order to establish them in complete bliss and happiness, I must attain the purest perfect state of Buddhahood. In order to do that, I’m going to listen to this profound teaching on the great vehicle. I adjusted our motivation such that we’re going to seek to listen to this teaching with the awakening heart. So as Śāntideva has said that at this time having found this perfect human life that with that which is free of the contradictory conditions and possesses all the conducive conditions to practice the Dharma, then we must take advantage of this opportunity. So at this time, having found this precious human life, if we do not use it skillfully, that is to create various types of productive actions to practice the Dharma, then there’s no greater fault.
There’s no greater unskillful activity than this. Such a way of acting is really a very ignorant and very silly way to act. So why is it necessary to practice the Dharma to begin with? It’s because we want happiness and we don’t want to suffer. And the methods for bringing about happiness are the very skillful actions and the abandonment of the various types of unskillful actions which bring us suffering.
And therefore, it is the Dharma which sets forth the methods to eliminate our sufferings to bring us happiness, and that’s why it’s necessary to practice. So in in order in the practice of Vajrayāna, in order to develop all the excellent qualities such as the paths and grounds, we have various obstruction. And why isn’t it that we’re unable to develop the paths and grounds? Why is it that even when we gain some realizations, they degenerate? This is because of all the various negativities and hindrances within our mind.
So it’s through the elimination of all the various negativities in our mind that we will be able to reach a state which is beyond suffering and therefore achieve we will be able to abide in complete happiness. So how are we to eliminate these various negativities from our mind? What are the methods? In general, there are quite a few methods that we can make use of. For example, there are as the practice of the confession to the thirty-five Buddhas, we can read various scriptures, we can practice various types of meditation.
Here this morning we’re going to explain a particular method, extremely powerful method of Vajrasattva as a means of purifying the eliminating and purifying the negativities from our mind. So this is within the context of the practice of Buddha Dharma and especially the great vehicle. And therefore, initially, it’s necessary to take refuge and then having taken refuge to practice mind generation, that is to say, develop an awakening heart. So there are various methods of practicing Vajrasattva. But here, amongst them, one of the most profound and powerful methods is in conjunction with the Heruka Vajrasattva.
And so that’s in accordance with that will be explained this morning. Heruka Vajrasattva. So initially, beginning with the taking of refuge, and we take refuge in the Buddha who is thought of as the shore of the refuge, the Dharma which is the actual refuge, and the spiritual community or Sangha which assists us in achieving refuge. So, the refuge which was previously explained is termed the common refuge. And because this is classified within the tantric tradition, we perform an uncommon going for refuge.
And here, we go for refuge to the Three Jewels and all the various heroes and heroines and bodhisattvas. And amongst all the various types of objects we go for refuge in this uncommon refuge is the essential object of refuge is the vajra master who gave us the empowerment and remembering his kindness is the going for refuge. So the the going these two going for refuge act as the cause for the mind generation, that is to say the development of awakening heart bodhicitta. And the verse of bodhicitta is that I must attain the state of Heruka so that I can establish all sentient beings in that same state. Then we actually begin the visualization of the practice.
And at the crown of one’s head, not touching one’s head, is the letter PAM, p a m, or a Tibetan letter. This transforms into a white lotus with a thousand petals. So I think a hundred thousand petals. And then on top of the lotus is the white letter Ah. This transforms into a moon disc. The Ah transforms into a white moon disc cushion.
And as Rinpoche was describing, maybe about four inches in diameter. It’s flat. So upon the white lotus is the white letter hum, upon the white moon disc is the white letter hum. Which is in the nature of the non-dual wisdom of all the Buddhas. Then, this hum transforms into a white vajra, which at its navel, at its center, is a white letter again.
Then from the hum at the center of the vajra, light radiates out in all the various directions striking all the sentient beings, touching all the sentient beings, purifying all their obstructions and negativities, causing them to attain Buddhahood. And then again, light radiates out making offerings to all the various Buddhas in all the directions. And then the light withdraws back into the vajra. And the aggregates. Then the light having withdrawn back into the vajra.
The vajra transforms into Vajrasattva, white in color, with two arms sitting in the vajrasana, the lotus posture, holding Dorje and Drilbu. He is embracing his consort, who is holding a skull cup and a knife. They both are adorned with precious ornaments such as the ornaments on their head, earrings, necklace, bracelets, anklets. The three places of each of the of Vajrasattva and his consort are marked at the forehead with a white Om, at the throat a red Ah, and at the heart a blue hum. Light radiates from the heart of the two in all the directions, contacting all the various Buddhas in all the directions, inviting the wisdom beings to come forth.
And the wisdom beings come forth from their various abodes, dissolving into Vajrasattva and his consort. And they become non-dual, inseparable with the wisdom beings. The wisdom beings dissolve into them. Again, light radiates out from the heart. And in response, the various empowering goddesses come forth along with the five Buddhas of the five lineages or families. The five lineages or families.
Then one makes requests to grant empowerment. In response to the request, the goddesses pour nectars, the empowering nectars from the vases, filling one’s body completely, purifying it of all the stains. And the excess nectar on the crown of one’s head transforms into Amitābha Buddha. So we should think that Vajrasattva and one’s root lama spiritual master are of the same nature. That though they are in the same nature, that they are in the same nature but the aspect is Vajrasattva and his consort.
So the aspect is the Vajrasattva and his consort, but in nature, they’re inseparable from one’s main spiritual teacher. So we should think that the Vajrasattva is the condensation of all the Buddhas that he is the collection of all the objects of refuge into one, that his body is the refuge of the spiritual community, that his speech is the refuge of the Dharma, and that his mind is the refuge of the Buddha. So we should think that in recalling being mindful thinking of Vajrasattva as being inseparable from one’s spiritual master. That simply remembering him eliminates all the harm from both humans and non-humans and making requests to Vajrasattva to attain all the to achieve all the powerful attainments, the various siddhis and that to look upon Vajrasattva as if he were a wish-fulfilling gem. So the color of both the Vajrasattva and his consort is clear like crystal.
And at the heart of each is there is a white moon disc. And this white moon disc is the color of a white conch shell. At the center of the moon disc, of each of the moon discs is the letter hum. And this letter is silver in color. And upon the moon disc, standing up and surrounding in a clockwise — not in clockwise, in a circular fashion — is the hundred syllable mantra of Vajrasattva which is also silver in color.
And according to mother tantra, the mantra goes in a counter-clockwise direction. According to father tantra, the mantra goes in a clockwise direction. Then we should imagine that each of the letters individually is making its own sound and that the letters themselves are radiating light, white light. Just like the light here or the sun radiating, each of them is radiating light. White light. Then, at this point, we then must consider the various negativities that we have created.
That is to say, we confession of negativities or the acknowledgement of negativities. And this is involved in this is the application of the four opponent powers. Without the application of the four opponent powers, there’s no way to purify the negativities. So initially, begin with the application of applying the four opponent powers, recalling the various negativities that we’ve created and coming to understand that this is inappropriate types of actions considering the ripening effects of these negativities. For example, the ripening effect of taking rebirth in hell where one would have to undergo the various sufferings of hot and cold and thinking in this way of how improper such ways of acting are.
So, how are we to remember our various negativities? Quite often, for many people, when they begin to look at their negativities, they say, Well, you know, I haven’t really done any. I haven’t really committed any negativities or wrongs. But this is simply a sign that they haven’t really examined their conduct. If we were to really look at our conduct on a daily basis and analyze it well, we would see that every day that we’re involved in various negativities.
When we really begin to examine our conduct we can see that every day we’re committing hundreds and thousands of types of negativities. And so, you know, to a great extent in this life we’ve involved ourselves in almost numberless negativities. But not only that, but in our previous life we likewise were involved in negativities. And our life previous to that we were involved in negativities. And before that, and before that.
And this process has been going on since the beginning of this time. And if we don’t have a conviction in past or future lives, then it’s going to be difficult for us to really carry on a practice of Dharma. Without the conviction in the existence of past and future lives, then we aren’t going to see the significance of the law of cause and effect that is karma. That is to say that from skillful actions, the effect of skillful actions is happiness and the effect of unskillful actions is suffering. And not observing the law of cause and effect, then there’s no way that we can really practice Dharma.
Our practice of Dharma is not directed to only this life. That mainly, the practice of Dharma is directed towards future states of existence. That is to seek good states of future existence. Most the actions that we create in this lifetime, the consequences will not be experienced in this lifetime. Therefore, if we if we are directed only toward this life itself, then we will not be motivated to create actions for future lifetimes.
Therefore, you know, we will not be motivated to bring about to engage in productive types of actions, to abandon destructive types of actions since we’re not going to experience all those consequences in this life and we’re not concerned with future lives. You know, if in our practice of Dharma as has been said, we’re mainly directing our attention toward future states of existence. If we don’t have conviction in the future states of existence, then it seems to be sufficient to only direct our energies toward the happinesses and the pleasures of this life. You know, expending our energies gathering together more money, food, clothing, all the various material things, drinking. It doesn’t matter what we do since it’s not going to bear any consequences on us.
But, we are trying to develop the progression of lives where we keep improving our situation. Where we keep progressing along a path. And therefore, we have to even though we aren’t going to experience the consequences in this life of productive actions — many of our productive actions and many of our negative actions — we are concerned about how that’s going to affect us in the future. That if we engage in skillful actions in this life, then in the future we’re going to achieve that much due to the latencies, the predispositions of these skillful actions, productive types of actions. We’re going to be that much more advanced, progress that much further in a future life.
And dependence upon that again, progress further, further, further, and further. And so we can expect this progression in future lives in this way. So it’s quite necessary if we’re going to engage in that type of conduct, that is to say, practice of Dharma, that we have conviction in past and future lives. There’s nothing particularly wonderful about seeking only happiness in this life, the pleasures of this life. Even animals do this.
That you know, when they’re cold they find some place to find comfort, warmth. When they’re hot for example, when they’re cold they go out into the sun. When they’re hot they find a cool place. When they’re hungry they look for food. And, you know, we as humans should try to exceed this level, this mentality of the same type of conduct as animals.
What we as humans can seek is to try to achieve a type of happiness which is completely separate from any type of suffering. And this we can achieve in the future. So in accepting previous lives, we can understand that we’ve created a great deal of negativities in past lives and additionally we’ve created more negativities in this life.