Audio recorded at Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 44-minute teaching, Kyabje Rinpoche provides instruction in the subtle channel visualizations that underpin the Six Yogas of Naropa. He establishes the meditation posture—the sevenfold posture of Vairochana—and the awakened-heart motivation. The core instruction maps the body’s channel system: the central channel running through the center, the red channel of aggression and the white channel of desire running alongside, and energetic knots formed where these wrap around four main chakra points. He describes each chakra (crown, throat, heart, navel) with specific details—shape, color, and number of subsidiary channels branching outward, particularly eight from the heart center and sixteen from the throat. A question-and-answer section addresses textual variations and how these channels become tangible in deepening meditation. For practitioners who have already received Naropa initiation.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 1997-09-12 – 5B – Naropa 6Y – KR.mp3
UUID: 7c5fd90d-a811-4c49-bd52-6f01ef5c9ab2
Teacher: Kyabje Rinpoche
Collection: Six Yogas of Naropa
Date: 1997-09-12
Recorded at: Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide
Words: ~1,836
So in in general, we make supplications to the the the the field visualized before us as as a means to gain the realizations of the path, but here in this context we make special supplications that we have, that our channels be smooth and loose, say flexible and that we generate tummo winds in order to develop a special bliss emptiness. So we So we develop a positive motivation, especially that of the awakened heart, that for the sake of all sentient beings equal to space, I must quickly quickly attain the state of Vajradhāra. And as the means to to do that, I am going to practice the method which is the practice of inner heat. And then we having made supplication, we instantaneously arise in whichever the meditation we are practicing, whether it be Heruka or Hevajra, whichever arising in that form. For example, in the case of Heruka to rise as a solitary Heruka, that is to say without consort and with one face, two arms.
So we should place ourselves firmly on a comfortable seat wearing our meditation belt. You can see when in the illustration, it is as illustrated by Milarepa, when he’s pictured, he has he’s wearing a meditation belt. So taking the a a the meditation posture which is enumerated in the sevenfold posture of Vairochana. The in a cross legged position with the straight back, with the straight back will straighten out the wind energy channels and will allow the wind energies to move through the body more freely and bring clarity of mind. The eyes should be focused along the nose toward the tip.
If we were to look upward then our mind would be drawn outwardly, and if we were to look too far downward then we would fall asleep. The hands are placed in a meditative equipoise position with the arms away from the body so that the armpits are open and we aren’t sleepy. The tongue is pressed against the hard palate at the upper roof of the mouth, this will cause us not to lose saliva and our mouth will not dry out. So taking a sevenfold posture of Vairochana. Meditation posture when he used to say, when he assumed the sevenfold posture of Vairochana, that there was no one who sat in all of Tibet like himself.
So if one sits in this this bodily posture, one there’s no there’s no physical difficulties that the wind energies are able to move freely through the body. The channels are straight. The mind is clear so and one experiences a pleasant physical sensation in the body. So and now proceeding in the meditation, we begin by meditating on the hollow body. Imagine that our body is hollow just like a balloon, that we that the skin is that there is the skin, the outward shape of the physical form, but internally all of the various internal organs such as intestines, stomach, etcetera are are not present.
There’s no blood. There’s there’s nothing within the body. It’s completely hollow. There is just the outward shape of the body. So then the body in a in a straight fashion, we should imagine that there is a we should then and and imagine in a hollow fashion.
Imagine within this, the hollow body is the the central channel which running straight. Running straight in in the center in the central position of the body just inside the the toward this toward the center of the body inside the spinal cord, not inside, toward, in the front of the spinal cord. In front of the spinal cord running straight along the center of the body is the central channel. It begins at the mid brow and moves up toward the top of the skull and down into the front of the spinal cord in the center of the body and down and it ends four fingers below the navel at the level, not at the navel, four fingers below the level of the navel and it’s inward inside it is slightly red in color, outside is blue. Luminous.
It is, like, delicate, like flower petals, very smooth, very straight, like, made up of luminous like light. Alongside the central channel run the right and left channels. The right channel is which is associated with with wind energies of hatred which is red in color and then the left the left channel associated with the wind energies of desire attachment is white in color and that these have their origin the inside the nostrils of the nose, the right from the right nostril, the left from the left nostril, running alongside the central channel and extending slightly down further than the central channel about two fingers and then rising, turning upward, and joining the central channel. Then the the the as the right and left channels rise and move upward alongside the central channel toward the top of the skull at the level, at the place of the channel center of great bliss at the crown, which is situated between the skull and the brain. The right and left channels wrap around wrap around the central channel causing a knot at that site.
And the same occurs at each of the channel wheel sites, for example, at the level of the throat. Again, the right and left channels wrap around the central channel at that site causing a knot at at that site. So there there there are this this occurs there’s two wrappings around at the at the at the channel center at the at the crown causing two knots. There there occurs two knots at the throat center, and perhaps three or four at the heart is not clear in the text. It could be as many as four knots at the at the heart center.
So it’s not clear here how many knots there are at the heart center. It could be three or four. I I think it’s four, but I’m going to have to investigate. And then further there are at the level of the navel at the channel center called the wheel of emanation there are two knots, so there is at the crown two at the crown, two at the throat, probably four at the heart, and then two at the navel. So so at the heart channel center which is so this is situated between, midway between the nipples.
Between, midway between those two is the level, is location of the heart center which is termed, is the channel center of phenomena. And we said there were four knots. Below the, between the upper two and lower two is the site where there is channels running out from the central channel. There are side channels. There are one moving out in each of the four directions.
So as these so there there are four principal channels moving out, running out from the central channel at the heart center and but these bifurcate into two. So there’s a channel, a sub channel which runs off each of the each of these principal channels. So it is said, making a total of eight. So it is said that the the the central channel, the channel center at the heart has eight channels running out from it. There are eight channels running out from the the So they it would be cardinal directions and ordinal directions, the cardinal in a east, south, north and west, east, south, west and north, and then the southeast and southwest, and then the other direction.
So these these these eight channels running out from the heart channel center are circular in shape and they they are moving curving downward. Curving downward. It’s shaped like an umbrella. It spokes of an umbrella. Then at the at the the channel center at the throat, there we said there were there were two knots and between these two knots run out the channels running out from the channel center.
And as we mentioned that in the case of the the heart channel center first they, there is the principal channels moving out from the heart center in the four directions, and then each of these bifurcates making eight, then each of these bifurcate again making a total of 16 channels moving out from the throat channel center. So the the the the channels at the throat channel center, they are slightly red in color, that is a pinkish, a pink toward, moving toward red where the, this is, they’re more red in color due to greater predominance of blood, whereas the channels moving out from the heart center were slight were mostly white but with a pink tinge, but more toward white due to a predominance of the male creative substances predominant there, more toward the white. And then these are round, the channels at the throat center are round in shape and they are curving upward. So the heart channel center channels were moving were curving downward, the throat channel center channels are curving upward. Yeah.
So we’re gonna stop there, but if you have some questions, we’ll take some time for that. What do in what way are they just like, the shapes of the colors or numbers of channels or what kind of discrepancies? There there are extensive explanations of the for example, the number of the chakras or the channel centers that could be expanded into 72,000 channel centers. And if we can we can begin to condense these down into a fewer fewer numbers, we can condense them down to three. So the difference in is simply in a number in numbers is simply the the extensive the detail of enumeration.
Here we are enumerating the number of channel centers for the purpose of a particular practice and those which play a part in bringing about the benefits of this practice are enumerated and made use of. Very good. This will be very it’s probably in accordance with the teaching that was given like Milarepa’s song. They would be very good to have. Yeah.
So through power of meditation, one will one is one will develop the ability to to actually observe. One develops the ability to observe the actual channels. That’s so you wanna pursue that? At another time, but that’s only that’s the point that I established that I said that you can So the the the the channels which appear by the power of meditative concentration are the actual channels and they are appearing to the mental consciousness. So this would all of what we are explaining in terms of the channels and the wind energies actually appearing to that consciousness.
Oh, so these are all of these things are So these things, all of these, what we’re describing actually exist. For example, the white bodhicitta, the red bodhicitta, all of these in fact exist. Yeah. Okay. So It had to come.
It’s the