Audio recorded at Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 44-minute talk, Khensur Rinpoche opens study of the Ornament for Clear Realization by grounding students in proper motivation—developing compassion to achieve Buddhahood for all beings. The centerpiece is the famous story of Asaṇga, who spent twelve years in retreat seeking Maitreya. When meditation alone failed, Asaṇga encountered a dying dog eaten by maggots. His compassion at that moment—choosing to sacrifice his flesh rather than harm the insects—purified his obscurations, and Maitreya appeared. Rinpoche emphasizes such examples as sources of courage for practice, then turns to technical work: unpacking the Sanskrit title and explaining the metaphor of “ornament.” Suited to practitioners with prior Mahāyāna background.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 1989-05-04 – Side 1 – poor sound – KR.MP3
UUID: c0f2b0e1-d529-4dc8-b209-81df5eb1f234
Teacher: Kyabje Rinpoche
Collection: Ornament of Clear Realization
Date: 1989-05-04
Recorded at: Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide
Words: ~2,510
So initially we may have to adjust our motivation to developing the kind heart, which is going to seek to listen to the teaching well, whereby in order to practice that which is taught. And this we’re doing in order to finally attain perfect complete Buddhahood as a means to bring complete happiness and bliss to all mother sentient beings equal to space. So the Buddha said that all the victors of the three times, the victors of the past, the victors of the future, and those who gaining victory now, have all relied on the path of transcendent wisdom. There is no path other than the path of transcendent wisdom in order to arrive at perfect Buddhahood. So, the path which takes us to Buddhahood is made up of the profound view of emptiness and the vast deeds of the bodhisattvas.
In reliance upon these two, we can travel the path to perfect Buddhahood. So in in the teachings of the of the Buddha on the subject of transcendent transcendent wisdom, They are comprised of the they are abbreviated or condensed into the mother sutras or discourses which of the extensive, middling, and abbreviated mother discourses. And amongst all the various treatises or commentaries to the the discourses on transcendent wisdom that were taught by the Buddha, the main or the foundation amongst these all these treatises is the Ornament for Clear Realization which we’re about to begin the study of. So, if we were to ask who composed the Ornament for Clear Realization, then Buddha Śākyamūni himself did not teach the ornament of clear realization. But there is said to be the two main spokesmen who commented upon the Buddhist words were Mañjuśrī and Maitreya.
And of these two, Maitreya taught the Ornament for Clear Realization. So if we were to ask who was the I’m going to refer to the ornament of clear realization in the future just simply as ornament, just for abbreviation sake. Who was the first who did Maitreya first teach the ornament to? And this would be the great charioteer or the pioneer, Ārya Asaṇga. And this text was taught by Maitreya to Asaṇga over six hundred years after the passing of the Buddha into Parinirvana.
So, you know, if we ask what was the situation in which the actual teaching took place? In general, new students, they don’t like to hear about such accounts, but as most of your old students, it would be profitable if we went into the actual transmission of the teaching. So, you know, generally in talking about the situation in which the teaching actually takes took place, it can be actually going into the account as necessary from two points of view. One is that the preciousness of the Dharma is from the point of view of practice. And if we’re going to practice then we should know how this teaching came about in order to practice it correctly.
And the second is that we have a tendency to not like to engage in any difficulties in our practice. And if we hear of the great difficulties that went that were incurred by past great masters, this will act a means to help us develop courage and help us in in creating more effort or making more effort in our own practice. So a third necessity for going into the actual situation of the passage of the teaching was that the students present here themselves will in the future, the students who are presently studying will in the future have students of their own. And you’re going to have to find a way to encourage your students. And that you can look back at the time that you were taking this teaching and you can remember, you can say to your students, Oh, old bald abbot of Sera Je, he told us how we should have courage and he told us the story about Asaṇga, and that really encouraged me, and I’m going to do the same to you.
So, you know this you can use this as examples for yourself in the future to help you to develop courage in others and help you to develop courage. In the situation as it was previously in Tibet, when Atisha went to Tibet and one of his most outstanding disciples was Drom Tonpa. And Dromtonpa was a layperson. He held the vows of a lay person. And though he was a lay person, he was still the most outstanding of all the thousands of Atisha’s disciples.
And so from this, no matter who we might be, whether we’re lay persons or whoever, there’s still no reason why we can’t carry on a very powerful practice. And using these examples of great practitioners in the past can help us to encourage ourselves, create more enthusiasm, and we can make prayers to act in the same way as these past great masters. So, to speak briefly about how the actual teaching took place between Maitreya and Asaṇga, the situation was such that hundreds of years had passed the passing away of Śākyamūni Buddha. And during this period there was a degeneration or a dying away of the great vehicle. There were only those who were striving for the solitary, the state of foe destroyer.
But as time passed there came the great master Nāgārjuna who revived the view that was held within the great vehicle, the profound view of emptiness. And so he regenerated this aspect of the Buddhist Dharma. So there came to pass that due to the work of Nāgārjuna that the view of the great vehicle was revived. But still this left the conduct aspect of the great vehicle still in a state of degeneration. And there was a nun by the name of Prasannasila who was very disturbed by seeing the behavior or the conduct of the great vehicle being lost and degenerating.
And so she decided for herself that how best could she revive the conduct of the bodhisattva. And she thought if the method that she came up with was that motivated by seeking to revive the great vehicle she gave up her vows. And she went and she married a great king. And through this relationship they gave birth to two great beings. The first was Asaṇga and the second was Vasubandhu.
And they taught them extensively all that was known of the great vehicle in the hopes that they would revive the great vehicle behavior tradition or conduct. It was tradition in ancient India that the sons of the father would take on their occupation as they grew older. But in the case these children that was objected to by the wife, they said no, that these children were born solely to revive and to spread the holy Dharma. Therefore they engaged only in the study of Dharma. So during the course of study of Asaṇga trying to understand the vast activities of the great vehicle.
He was having a great deal of difficulty and he asked himself, Who can I go to for help to come to understand all the intricacies of the great vehicle? And he thought only Maitreya can help me. So he went into retreat in order to accomplish Maitreya, that is actually having seen the face of Maitreya. And after three years he had no accomplishment in his practice and he was giving up but he again he went back into his practice and again for three years and he almost gave up and again he went back to his practice. And this went on for twelve years practicing in a cave trying to accomplish Maitreya.
So after twelve years he had not accomplished the practice of Maitreya and he was very dejected and he gave up and he was going to go home. And he began to walk away from his cave walking down a path. And on the side of the path he came along a wounded dog that was dying. Its whole hind quarters were a mass of flesh that was being eaten away by maggots, and the dog was howling and barking. So seeing this this dog in great pain being eaten away by maggots aroused great compassion in Asaṇga.
And he decided that he had to do something, that the maggots were actually eating away at the dog and it would finally kill it. So he decided, you know, what can I do? I can’t allow the dog to be killed but I have to remove the maggots from the dog. If I remove them, for example, with my hand, then I’m going to crush them. I’ll kill the maggots.
And so he decided as a way out that he cut a piece of his own flesh from his body and he was going to place the maggots on his own piece of flesh that he had cut off. And he thought, well I can’t remove them with my hand or I might kill them, therefore I’m going to remove them with my tongue. And he closed his eyes and he was bending down in order to begin to place the maggots on his tongue and transfer them to the meat. And he kept bending forward more and more and his tongue never touched anything. And finally he opened his eyes and in front of him was Maitreya.
And the actual Maitreya appeared before Asaṇga at that moment. The dog was in actuality an emanation of Maitreya, but Asaṇga was unable to see Maitreya due to the obscurations of past negative karma that which he had created. But due to the force of having developed this great compassion toward the dog, it purified all the past obscurations, the latencies of negative karma, and created a great deal of positive potential. And therefore, due to the power of this great compassion, he was actually able to meet Maitreya even though he had spent twelve years in his cave meditating without having accomplished his feat. And Maitreya, Asaṇga said, Why didn’t you appear to me before?
And Maitreya answered, I have been in your cave standing behind you, to your side since the very beginning of your retreat. And look at my robes where you had been spitting to the side and you had been spitting upon me and myself. So having finally met with Maitreya, like Having actually met with Maitreya, Maitreya asked Asaṇga what he wanted and Asaṇga said that he needed teachings on the Dharma. And at that point Maitreya took Asaṇga to Tuśita, to Ganden, Tuśita, Pure Land, and there proceeded to teach him what is now the Ornament for Clear Realization along with the five treatises on enlightenment, a set of texts. And this process took fifty human years, but in Tuśita it was only one morning.
And then having received all the various teachings in order to revive the great vehicle of the conduct, the great vast activities of the bodhisattva, Asaṇga re descended to earth and began to disseminate the teachings which had begun had been given to him by Maitreya. So, you know, it’s due to the great kindness of Asaṇga that the vast activities of the great vehicle are now able to be practiced. And this was made possible through compassionate motivation and intentions of the nun Prasannasila who also gave birth to Vasubandhu who was one of the greatest experts and scholars on, Abhidharma, or manifest knowledge. So we should try to remember the great kindness of these past great masters That all the difficulties that they went through in order that we have the opportunity to study the precious Dharma and to take courage from their efforts in order to make, reassert our own effort in our own practice. So that’s a brief account of the transmission of the teaching of ornament.
Now we’re going to begin the actual teaching. Initially Maitreya taught Asaṇga the ornament in the Sanskrit language. Initially the title was of course in Sanskrit and then it was translated into Tibetan so the text actually lists the title both in the Sanskrit and Tibetan. So the text that we’re studying ornament in the Sanskrit language is as Rinpoche said, Abhisamayālamkāra Nama Prajñāpāramitā Upadesa Shastra. And the term Abhi Samaya is translated into Tibetan as which means clear realization.
Abhisamaya means clear realization. So Abhisamaya, translated in Tibetan as Mngon par rtogs pa. Mngon par rtogs pa and in English it’s clear realization. Now the subject which is being a clear realization is of course the consciousness. And it’s describing the bodhisattva’s paths and grounds, our clear realizers, clear realizations.
So the subject which is being taught, that is the paths and grounds, are taken into the expression of the title, clear realization. So that which is the title itself, the words we’re using to express the title, clear realization, is the actual subject which is being intended to be taught. For example, we talk about the heart of wisdom discourse by the Buddha. The Heart of Wisdom is the understanding of emptiness and the understanding that emptiness is taken as that subject is taken as the title of the text and so we have the Heart of Wisdom Sūtra. So it’s a matter of taking the name of the subject being taught, the subject being taught, that is the clear realizations.
We take that as a name because within the title itself clear realizations are only words. So we’re taking those words as an indication of what is being taught and that is clear realization. Actually clear realizations are consciousnesses but we’re using it as title which are merely words. So again another example, if we were to recite the text on the 21 Taras and we come across the word Tarah, we recite Tarah, Tarah, Tarah. This isn’t Tarah, those words aren’t Tarah.
The words aren’t Tarah. Tarah is the Buddha activities, an embodiment of Buddha activities. So but we use these words which express the subject to indicate as an indication, but the words themselves are not the subject. So we finished the word Abhisamaya. Now the next word is alankara.
Alankara is translated into Tibetan as rgyan and rgyan means ornament. So you’re familiar with ornaments. There are many different types of ornaments. There are earrings, bracelets, necklaces, all these various types of ornaments. So in general we can talk about four different types of ornaments.
There are natural ornaments, beautifying ornaments, illuminating ornaments, and joy-giving ornament. So help us understand what we mean by these various types of ornaments. By way of example, this is just an analogy, when we talk about a natural ornament, this would be somebody has a very beautiful body or a woman has a beautiful body or a man has a handsome body. Know people, like to look at them. They don’t have to do any work on their body.
Their body was naturally beautiful. So this is an example of a natural analogy of a natural ornament. Natural.