Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. A student’s observation opens this 17-minute session: why does contemplating positive actions bring joy even when one has few, while thinking about negative ones brings dread of future suffering? Khensur Rinpoche briefly acknowledges this, then moves into the central instruction — the three visualizations for reciting the hundred-syllable Vajrasattva mantra. After covering correct pace and volume, he explains each in sequence: the downward movement, where purifying nectar flushes negativities out through the lower body into harmful spirits who are pacified and sealed; the upward movement, where rising nectar carries obscurations out through the crown; and the heap movement, from completion stage practice, where nectar instantly dissolves accumulated negativity at the heart. He closes with requesting Vajrasattva to merge into one’s heart, meditating on the emptiness of negativities themselves, and reciting the dedication prayer.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 10 PP 1989-06-03.mp3
UUID: d07d7027-abe7-42ae-a357-90927d007f1f
Teacher: Khensur Rinpoche
Collection: Preliminary Practices (Khensur Rinpoche)
Date: 1989-06-03
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 17.1 minutes
Words: ~886
Can we? So the queen said, when you when you talk about the positive, the augmentative quality, increasing quality of positive actions, and and I, you know, I don’t — it sounds — I don’t know. Maybe I’m trying to see more than it’s there. It’s because she says, by thinking about it, I create positive it’s a positive action for me to think about it so it makes me happy because I have no positive actions. Therefore, to hear you talk about it and think about it is a positive action so it makes me happy and I know that you’ve created a lot of positive actions.
Then, on the other hand, when you talk about the increasing of negative actions, I think about all the difficulty that I’m going to experience in the suffering in the future. That’s not very good. So now we’re going to come to the section where we actually recite the hundred syllable mantra. And we should try to recite the mantra in a proper manner. It should not be recited too quickly or too slowly.
It should not be recited too loudly. This for example, that others should not be able to hear you reciting the mantra nor should it be recited too quietly. It should be said that you yourself can hear. Then we reciting the hundred syllable mantra begin the practice of purification in the downward movement and this is the begin to flow downward throughout our body just like falling rain and we’re imagining that all that just like in a sudden downpour that all the debris that’s been trapped in a drain pipe is just washed away. Likewise, this nectar is beginning to wash away all the various negativities, the obscurations, the various sicknesses, all the hindrances from our body in the same way that by this down rushing downward movement of the nectars. The all this debris, these negativities are being washed out down to the lower part openings of our body and we imagine that the ground, there’s beneath this, there’s a crack opens up in the ground and there are various types of harmful spirits, harmful beings which seek to interfere with our practice and that, that all these negativities rush into their mouth.
They’re swallowed up by these harmful beings and in this way they’re pacified because this is, we imagine that this is bringing them whatever they desire that they’re completely satisfied and they will no longer bring us any harm. Then we imagine that having satisfied that a, that their mouth is sealed with a double cross over their mouth and then the ground closes back up and now we imagine that our body is completely purified of all negativities and obscurations. So there are there are during the recitation of the mantra there are three visualizations which can be performed. You can perform either of these three or all three. The first one is as we described the visualization of the downward movement.
That is purification through the down rushing of the nectar completely washing out from the lower orifice of openings of the body, all the various negativities and obscurations. Then, there’s the upward movement. The nectar begins, flows down into one’s body and from the bottom up begins to rise and as if when you, the debris, you know, all types of various debris if you were to pour water in a glass, if there was any light material on the bottom, it would rise up as the water level rose. In this case, all the various negativities and obscurations float to the surface, rise up with the rising nectars, and come out the crown of one’s head. That’s the second possible visualization.
The third is called — that’s the upward movement. Then the third is heap movement. Heap movement. And this is we at the in conjunction with the completion stage practice that we imagine all the obstructions and negativities are at our heart and that this nectar rushes down and completely eliminates this heap of negativity at one’s mind or heart. It’s in the same way that turning on a light in a dark empty room.
You know, we say, where did the darkness go? It’s a you know, it’s completely — the darkness is completely instantly vanished. It completely instantly vanishes. Likewise with this down rushing nectar at the negativities and obscurations heaped up at our heart. When they strike this heap, they instantly vanish. Then we should make request to Vajrasattva and here we meditate on emptiness thinking that the the the acknowledger of the negativities, that the object to which the negativities have been acknowledged before and that the negativities themselves lack inherent existence.
Thinking in this way, requesting making request to Vajrasattva, Vajrasattva sinks down into our heart and our mind becomes inseparably one with the mind of Vajrasattva. And then if we conclude with the dedication prayer, the, you know, the normal dedication prayer that we make but substituting in place of guru or buddha. Through these merits may I soon attain the enlightened state of. This would be very good. So we’ll stop there.
We don’t have time today for questions because has to make preparations for the empowerment which is going to take place at two o’clock.