Audio recorded at Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Geshe Jampa Gyaltsen explores how practitioners can consolidate their entire spiritual practice around a single focus, using Mañjuśrī as the central example. He explains how students typically receive Mañjuśrī permission or empowerment to support wisdom development, and describes visualising Mañjuśrī as identical to one’s spiritual teacher, embodying all three jewels. Rather than scattering effort across many practices and deities, he teaches how to unify everything—prayers, mantras, devotion—into one coherent practice centred on Mañjuśrī. He illustrates the common pitfall: constantly switching between practices instead of committing deeply to one. Citing the Indian master Atisha, he contrasts the Indian approach of mastering one deity with the Tibetan habit of attempting a hundred deities without achieving realisation in any. Pitched at practitioners familiar with deity practice and empowerment.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 1990-02-15 – 31A – KR.mp3
UUID: 59dea8a7-6f90-465a-b7df-533e964e8ce1
Teacher: Geshe Jampa Gyaltsen
Collection: Ornament of Clear Realization
Date: 1990-02-15
Recorded at: Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide
Words: ~461
This transcript was generated using AI speech recognition and has been reviewed for Buddhist terminology accuracy. Some inaccuracies may remain. Please refer to the original audio recording as the authoritative source.
# Ornament 31a 1990-02-15 **Collection:** Rinpoche Recordings — Ornament of Clear Realisation (1989-90) **Duration:** 8.5 minutes **Words:** 461 **Model:** Deepgram Nova-3 **Corrections applied:** 4 **Transcribed:** 2026-02-28 23:26 — So we can direct all of our various practices toward Mañjuśrī himself. Now, this is quite often the students would receive the permission, something in the nature of an empowerment…
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# Ornament 31a 1990-02-15
**Collection:** Rinpoche Recordings — Ornament of Clear Realisation (1989-90)
**Duration:** 8.5 minutes
**Words:** 461
**Model:** Deepgram Nova-3
**Corrections applied:** 4
**Transcribed:** 2026-02-28 23:26
—
So we can direct all of our various practices toward Mañjuśrī himself. Now, this is quite often the students would receive the permission, something in the nature of an empowerment with respect to Mañjuśrī in order to help them in development of their wisdom. We can imagine Mañjuśrī as being in the same entity as our main spiritual teacher. In aspect appearing as Mañjuśrī and in the nature of the three jewels. The body of Mañjuśrī is the jewel of the spiritual community.
Speech of Mañjuśrī is the jewel of the Dharma and the mind of Mañjuśrī is the jewel of Buddha. Therefore, we can go to refuge to Mañjuśrī in the same way that we go for refuge to the three jewels. We can practice the mantra of Mañjuśrī, AH RAH PAH TSA NAH DHI. We can, there’s a prayer to Mañjuśrī that we can make, we can center our entire practice around Mañjuśrī. Mentioned in the prayer ritual offering to the spiritual master, Lama Chöpa, we can actually direct our devotion to Mañjuśrī as a single figure embodying all of the various spiritual ideals. You are my lama, my spiritual teacher.
You are my meditational deity. You are the Buddha. You are the Dharma. You are the spiritual community. You are the Dakinis.
You are the heroes. You are the protectors. You are the wisdom. That in this way, directing our entire practice toward this one figure of Mañjuśrī helps us to develop a tremendous amount of power, ability. So, you know, if we know how, we can take almost any element of Dharma as an object of our complete practice.
But the problem is we don’t know how, and even those who know how to carry on this way don’t do it. That if taking one particular deity, one element of Dharma, we can carry on a complete practice unerringly with unimaginable results if we are able, if we know how and do it. In our case, we think, oh, this looks like a good practice. I think I’ll concentrate on this. Oh, maybe, no, this is better.
Maybe I’ll work on this. Oh, wait. No, this one’s better. And we keep, we’re never able to abide, to stick, commit ourselves to any one form of practice. And therefore, all that happens is that we’ve exhausted our time.
The master Atisha, who was an Indian master, he said, in India, we concentrate on one deity and we are able to achieve a hundred. The Tibetans, they have a hundred deities and they don’t achieve even one.