Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this guided preparation meditation, Venerable Thubten Chodron leads practitioners through a comprehensive visualization and prayer sequence designed to set the mind and motivation before analytical Lamrim practice. Beginning with breath observation to calm the mind, she guides the visualization of an emanated Buddha surrounded by the lineage, bodhisattvas, and all sentient beings. The meditation unfolds through the seven-limb prayer sequence: prostrations, offerings of clouds of beautiful objects, confession of negative actions using the four opponent powers, rejoicing in virtues, requesting teachers to remain and teach, requesting the turning of the Dharma wheel, and dedicating merit for all beings’ enlightenment. A mandala offering follows, filled with imagined beautiful objects. She then leads a guru yoga practice, inviting the root guru to the crown of the head, and concludes with the Buddha mantra recitation, radiating purifying light. The instruction includes practical guidance on using this foundation before analytical meditations on the gradual path.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 02 GM.mp3
UUID: 3129b4f6-30e4-40f8-b1ef-ef120027373d
Teacher: Thubten Chodron Guided Med
Collection: Guided Meditation (Thubten Chodron Guided Med)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Words: ~2,385
The following meditation is an initial practice to help you prepare your mind and set your motivation. You can find a shorter version of the same prayers on track four. So now we’ll do the longer version of the prayers together with the visualization that we do as a preparation before we do the analytical meditations on the Lam Rim. So begin by observing your breath for a few minutes to calm the mind. Think of the qualities of infinite love and compassion for all living beings, qualities of wisdom and skillful means.
So what would it feel like to have those qualities? How do they feel? So try and get a sense of the expansiveness and peace that would come through having a wise and kind heart that reached out impartially to all living beings. Then imagine that those qualities of love and compassion, compassion, wisdom, and skill appear in the space in front of you in the form of the Buddha. He sits on an open lotus flower and flat cushions of a sun and moon, and his body is made of radiant transparent light as is the entire visualization.
His body is golden in color, and he wears the robes of a monk. His right palm rests on his right knee, and his left is in his lap holding a bowl of nectar, which is medicine to cure our disturbing attitudes and other hindrances. The Buddha’s face is very beautiful, and his smiling, compassionate gaze looks at you with complete acceptance and simultaneously encompasses all sentient beings. His eyes are long, narrow, and peaceful. His lips are red, and his ear lobes are long.
Rays of light emanate from each pore of the Buddha’s body going out and reaching every part of the universe. These rays carry countless miniature Buddhas on them. Some of the Buddhas going out to help living beings and others dissolving back into the Buddha after having finished their work. The Buddha is surrounded by innumerable other Buddhas, bodhisattvas, arhats, and the entire lineage of spiritual masters. And to the side of each of these holy beings are elegant tables upon which are arranged volumes of the Dharma teachings.
Surrounding you are all the sentient beings appearing in human form with your mother on your left and your father on your right. The people you don’t get along with are in front of you. And all of you are looking together at the Buddha for guidance. To cultivate a sense of refuge, first think of the dangers of cyclic existence by remembering your own suffering and problems, your own lack of security and dissatisfaction. And think of all the other sentient beings who, like you, also go round and around in cyclic existence, wanting to be happy, wanting to be free of suffering, but not knowing how, and generate compassion for all of these beings.
And finally, think of the wonderful qualities of the Buddha, the Dharma, the Sangha. Generate faith and confidence in the ability of the Three Jewels to guide you from all these constantly recurring problems of cyclic existence. Determine that since it’s possible on the basis of your present body and mind to free yourself from these undesirable experiences that you will explore this possibility to its fullest and feel great trust and confidence in the Three Jewels, opening your heart to rely on them to guide you and others from cyclic existence to liberation and enlightenment. And as we say the refuge, think that all the sentient beings around you take refuge together with you. Visualize incredible radiant light flowing from the Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, and the other holy beings into you and into all the beings around you.
This light completely purifies all negative karmic imprints, disturbing attitudes, illness. The light also enriches you with all the qualities and realizations of the path. So feel the light completely fill you up, and it fills up all the sentient beings around you. And feel that you and all others have come under the protection of the Three Jewels. Now turn your thoughts to others and contemplate how much you depend on others for everything that you enjoy and know in your life.
Our food, clothing, everything we use, everything we know and enjoy, it all comes due to others’ efforts. Everything we know comes from others, and all our talents have been developed due to the kindness of others. Even our ability to practice the Dharma and gain realizations on the path depends on the kindness of sentient beings. So really get a feeling of that. Just Just as your innermost wish is to be free of suffering and have happiness, so too do all other beings want happiness and want to be free of suffering.
But they, like us, encounter all sorts of sufferings and problems in their lives. And often, their difficulties are much worse than our own. So when we think about their kindness and then think about their problems, very naturally, we want to help them. But what can we do to help them now? At this time, our ability to help others is quite limited.
But if we’re able to reduce our own ignorance, anger, and attachment, and other faults, and if we increase our good qualities such as generosity, patience, loving kindness, compassion, and wisdom, then we’ll be able to be of greater benefit. And if we can become fully enlightened, then we’ll be of the greatest possible benefit to all living beings. In this way, generate the altruistic intention to become a Buddha in order to benefit all sentient beings most effectively. And as you recite the refuge in bodhicitta prayer, think that much light flows from the Buddhas and other holy beings into you and into all the other sentient beings around you, purifying and enriching your mind. I take refuge until I am enlightened in the Buddhas, the Dharma, and the Sangha by the positive potential I create by practicing generosity and the other far reaching attitudes, may I attain Buddhahood in order to benefit all sentient beings.
I take refuge until I am enlightened in the Buddhas, the Dharma, and the Sangha. By the positive potential I create by practicing generosity and the other far reaching attitudes, may I attain Buddhahood in order to benefit all sentient beings. I take refuge until I am enlightened in the Buddhas, the Dharma, and the Sangha by the positive potential I create by practicing generosity and the other far reaching attitudes. May I attain Buddhahood in order to benefit all sentient beings. The Buddha is very pleased with your altruistic intention, and a replica of the Buddha emerges from him and goes to the crown of your head, melts into light, and that light flows into you becoming inseparable from you and inspiring and transforming your mind.
So really feel that closeness with the Buddha who has dissolved into you. Let go of all conceptions that you have about yourself, particularly any self denigrating thoughts as well as the concept of inherent existence and meditate on emptiness, the lack of things existing in dependence upon their own side. At your heart appears a small Buddha made of light. He radiates the light of wisdom and compassion in all directions throughout the whole universe. And the light from the Buddha at your heart transforms all the sentient beings and all the universes into Buddhas, and it transforms all the environments into pure lands, into places with all the conducive circumstances for practicing the Dharma and generating realizations of the path.
So really imagine this. So you’ve transformed all the sentient beings and their environments into enlightened beings and into pure lands in your imagination. But we still wonder why hasn’t this become a reality. And that’s because we sentient beings still have a lot of bias and prejudice. We lack love, compassion, and joy.
So wishing yourself and others to have these, contemplate the four immeasurables. Reinforce your feelings of love and compassion for everybody, friends, relatives, strangers, as well as the people that we dislike, mistrust, disapprove of, and the people who have harmed us in the past. May all sentient beings have happiness and its causes. May all sentient beings be free of suffering May all sentient beings not be separated from sorrowless bliss. May all sentient beings abide in equanimity, free of bias, attachment, and anger.
Now we offer the seven-limb prayer in order to purify our negativities and create positive potential. Reverently, I prostrate with my body, speech, and mind. So imagine that you and all the sentient beings throughout infinite space surrounding you all bow to the merit field, to the Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, Arhats, and the lineage teachers, and other holy beings with an attitude of inspiration and trust and respect and present clouds of every type of offering, actual and mentally transformed. So think the whole sky is filled with beautiful things, especially the things you’re attached to. Imagine them, multiply them, make them even more beautiful, and then we offer these to the Merit Field.
I confess all my negative actions accumulated since beginningless time. So here, purify your negativities through the four opponent powers. Generate regret for them. Take refuge and generate bodhicitta to restore the relationship. Make a determination not to do them again, and then do the rest of your practice as the remedial action.
And rejoice in the virtues of all holy and ordinary beings. So think of all the virtues, the good qualities, the positive actions of all the holy beings who have realizations and all the ordinary beings. In other words, think of all the goodness in the world and feel happy. Rejoice about it. Please remain until cyclic existence ends To symbolize our wish for our teachers and the Buddhists to remain and teach and guide us for a long time, we offer a double dorje, a crossed vajra, which symbolizes long life to the merit field.
And turn the wheel of Dharma for sentient beings To symbolize this, we offer a beautiful golden thousand spoke dharma wheel to the merit field. They accept it, and it absorbs into them. I dedicate all the virtues of myself and others to the great enlightenment. So all the positive potential, the merit accumulated by the previous six practices, we now send out and dedicate for the welfare of all sentient beings. Now to offer the mandala, we imagine making extensive offerings of everything beautiful in the universe to the merit field.
So fill the whole earth and sky, the whole place completely filled with beautiful things, and really have a happy mind. Take delight in giving. Be happy for the sake of the Dharma to offer all these beautiful things to the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. This ground anointed with perfume, flowers strewn Mount Meru, four land, sun, and moon. Imagined as a Buddha land and offer to you.
May all beings enjoy this pure land. The objects of attachment, aversion, and ignorance, friends, enemies, and strangers, my body, wealth, and enjoyment, I offer these without any sense of loss. Please accept them with pleasure and inspire me and others to be free from the three poisonous attitudes. The Buddha receives your offerings with pleasure. The offerings dissolve into light and absorb into the Buddha’s heart.
And from his heart, light radiates back into you, filling your body and mind, inspiring you to practice the Dharma. To progress along the path and develop the realizations of the path to enlightenment, we need the inspiration of our teachers, especially our principal teacher or our root guru, the one who touched our heart so deeply with the Dharma. So now we make request to the root guru who is in the aspect of the Buddha in front of us. Glorious and precious root guru, sit upon the lotus and moon seat on my crown. Guiding me with your great kindness, bestow upon me the attainments of your body, speech, and mind.
So a replica of your root guru, your principal teacher, in the aspect of the Buddha emerges from the Buddha in front of you and comes to sit on a lotus and moon cushion on your head facing the same direction as you. The Buddha on your crown now acts as an advocate for you in requesting inspiration from the entire merit field as you make this prayer. The eyes through whom the vast scriptures are seen, supreme doors for the fortunate who would cross over to spiritual freedom, illuminators whose wise means vibrate with compassion. To the entire line of spiritual masters, I make request. If you’d like, you can now review all the meditations on the gradual path by reciting the foundation of all good qualities, in which case, press the pause button.
Otherwise, you can continue on. Now all the figures in the merit field melt into light and dissolve into the central figure of the Buddha in front of you. And this Buddha, who is the embodiment of the Three Jewels, now comes on top of your head and absorbs into the Buddha that’s already sitting there. And as you recite the Buddha’s mantra, much white light flows from the Buddha into you, purifying all negativities and obstacles and also generating within you all the realizations of the gradual path. So we do this visualization as we recite the mantra.
Tayata Om Muni Muni Mahamuni Śākyamūni Svāhā. Tayata Om Muni Muni Mahamuni Śākyamūni Svāhā. Now stop the disc and do one of the analytical meditations on the gradual path. You’ll find these on the other CDs in this set. If you’d prefer to do some more breathing meditation to further calm your mind before you do one of the analytical meditations, Venerable Chodron will guide you through a longer breathing meditation on the next track of this disc.
That will begin in a few moments. No matter which meditation you choose to do, you should always end your meditation session by reciting the prayers found in the booklet that accompanies these discs. You can also hear them on the last track of this disc. So either press stop now and begin one of the analytical meditations, or continue on and do the longer breathing meditation.