Audio recorded at Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 26-minute Medicine Buddha empowerment, Kyabje Rinpoche offers practitioners a flexible approach to daily mantra recitation—21+ times, 21 times, 7 times, or a minimum of 3, depending on capacity. He teaches both the full mantra and its short essence form (beginning Om Bekandze), explaining how the shorter version can follow an initial period of longer practice. A practical emphasis throughout is integrating Buddhist practice with modern medicine: by reciting the mantra and blowing on medicines before taking them, practitioners receive the Medicine Buddha’s blessings, which enhance the treatment’s effectiveness. The session includes a formal offering ceremony with rice as a symbolic flower offering to the guru, culminating in the empowerment itself. Rinpoche closes with a crucial reminder—receiving the empowerment confers no automatic benefits; results depend entirely on the intensity and consistency of one’s subsequent practice.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 1999-11-28 – 2B – Empowerment B – KR.mp3
UUID: 2c817be0-c94e-4b08-809b-84a09c96a9ae
Teacher: Kyabje Rinpoche
Collection: Medicine Buddha
Date: 1999-11-28
Recorded at: Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide
Words: ~805
So, for the best, you can make a commitment to recite the Medicine Buddha mantra 21 more than 21 times a day. And if not, then one can make the commitment of reciting 21 times a day or seven times a day, and the minimum is three times a day. So, can, if you want to make any commitment, you can make a commitment by yourself. So, the way of reciting the mantra is in two ways, the long version and the short version. And the long version was reciting all the entire mantra, which started from the Namo Bhagavate right till Samudgate Svāhā.
And the short version, the way of reciting the short version, which means the short version is the essence of the mantra, which started from Tayata, Om Bekandze, Bekandze, Maha Bekandze, Samudgate Svāhā. So if you do the short version, the main essence of the mantra, it’s not really a long mantra, it’s very short one. And, if it happens for you to do a lend meditation or retreat of Medicine Buddha, and just try start the mantra from the Namo Bhagavate, the long version for a while, and after that you can continue with the short version. And it’s still okay to do this. So, there is a saying that it is very easy to make commitments, but very hard to maintain the commitments.
So, that’s because just committing is very easy by saying yes, yes, yes. And then, when you perform the practice, it’s a bit harder. So, whatever I will recite, repeat the lines which are for making commitments, and if you were to make a commitment, just make commitments by yourself, how much you, I mean, for how many times you want to recite a day. So you had made commitments already. So, at this stage, we we we we we face, undergo lots of disease and suffering, and we get various types of disease.
And in order to cure from those illness or diseases, we do have the human doctors as well as man made or human made medicines. So, taking those medicines, which we can take to recover from our illness. But by making supplication prayers towards the Medicine Buddha’s, by reciting the mantras of the Medicine Buddha, and then blowing by reciting the mantra, blow towards one’s ear or blow towards the medicines which you’re going to take. And by doing this, you do receive blessings from the Medicine Buddha, and that medicine which you’re going to take will also become more powerful and more beneficial. And by blowing on those medicines, by reciting the Medicine Buddha mantra and giving it to other people, very effective and helpful to others than the ordinary medicine.
So, actually, we we haven’t finished all the the the recited all the lines of making commitments. So repeat after him. Your name. When you say means state inwardly your spiritual name, if you have if you don’t have spiritual names, then. Now this is now this is the time to make offerings towards the medicine Buddha.
So we are making offering altogether towards the medicine Buddha. Okay. No. No. Incense and incense and all this rice.
Yeah. So I will go through the offering prayers and you should imagine along with me that you’re making offerings towards the offering to Medicine Buddhas. Now you are are make a flower offering towards the guru, which is the rice. You can spread the rice towards the master to the guru. By reciting Chandana, Dhupa, Sarvashodhana Svāhā with three times, Rinpoche, the guru, will sprinkle the rice, and you should spit the rice after him.
So by making the flower offering to the Guru, and the Guru has accepted one’s flowers and is now returning your flowers back by blessing the flowers and giving you the flowers back. And through this, imagine you receive the blessings from Guru. So now we have finished the empowerment of Medicine Buddha, and it is that you are very fortunate to have received this Medicine Buddha empowerment, and this is a very profound practice. If one does a very good practice of Medicine Buddha, this practice is very helpful and effective to overcome one’s diseases, illness, and also one’s obstacles. And so, by receiving blessings, it entirely depends on how one does the practices.
The more you perform, the more intense you do the practice, and the better and the greater blessings and benefits you receive. So therefore, I request you to practice as much as you can. And just by receiving empowerment doesn’t mean that you have received great benefits. So, it is entirely depends on how how much practice you you perform or you do. And now here, I’ll do the bless all the offerings, and then we make the thanksgiving mandala offering.
Okay. Okay.