Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Thubten Chodron leads a guided meditation on the four opponent powers, a Buddhist purification practice for transforming negative karmic imprints. After reflecting on harmful actions committed, practitioners work systematically through regret, repair of relationships through refuge and bodhicitta, firm determination to abandon the behaviour for a realistic timeframe, and remedial action. The core practice involves visualizing Buddha in front of you, radiating white purifying light that fills your entire body and mind, dissolving all guilt and negative energy. Practitioners then recite Buddha’s mantra seven times while fully absorbing the Buddha’s wisdom and compassion into their heart. This is aimed at practitioners already familiar with Buddhist meditation who are ready to actively engage with purification work.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 24 GM.mp3
UUID: 15e9c98f-92a3-45ec-b1f8-581b5a9bf7b8
Teacher: Thubten Chodron Guided Med
Collection: Guided Meditation (Thubten Chodron Guided Med)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Words: ~736
After we think about the destructive actions that we’ve done in our life and contemplated their results, we begin to have a very strong urge to do purification practice in order to stop those results from coming and in order to clear our mind of all the obstacles and confusion obstruction that all these negative karmic seeds put on our mind stream. So to purify the negative karmic imprints, we do a practice with the four opponent powers. So think of one action that you want to purify, and we’ll go through the four opponent powers in terms of that. So first, develop regret for doing the action. So regret is very different from guilt.
Guilt is really useless and quite self centered. But with regret, we stop our rationalizations. We come out of denial, and we are honest with ourself and recognize our mistake, have sincere regret, and a wish not to experience the negative effects. So generate that feeling in terms of the action that you want to emphasize in your purification today. And then second, we repair the relationship by mentally transforming our attitude toward those that we harmed.
So in general, when we act negatively, it’s either against holy beings or ordinary beings. So to mentally transform our relationship with the holy beings, we take refuge in the triple gem. So we generate a positive attitude towards the ones that we previously harmed or previously harmed or had negative attitudes towards. And to purify actions that we’ve done that have harmed ordinary beings, then we generate the bodhicitta, the altruistic intention to become a Buddha in order to benefit living beings. And this is a big transformation in our attitude towards the ordinary beings who previously we harmed.
So take a few minutes to take refuge and generate this altruistic intention to transform your attitudes, especially towards those that you previously had negative attitudes towards. And then third, we make a determination not to do that action again in the future. So some actions we can feel pretty confident in saying, I will never do that again. And other things such as gossip, we know it’s gonna be very hard for us not to do it again. So here it’s better to pick a certain time period, maybe one day or a week or a month, and say, during this time, I’m definitely not going to gossip.
So we make some kind of determination to abandon the action in a time frame that we feel confident that we can keep. And then the fourth is to do some kind of remedial behavior. So this could be community service or some kind of spiritual practice, doing prostrations, making offerings, reciting mantras, meditating on emptiness, reading Dharma books, any kind of positive action. So here, what we’ll do is we’ll imagine the Buddha in the space in front of us and recite his mantra as a way of purifying the negative karma. So think of the Buddha appearing in front of you, this body made of radiant golden light, and he looks at you with a lot of acceptance.
So you’re completely open. You’ve acknowledged your mistaken actions, had regret for them, determined not to do them again. And the Buddha radiates very brilliant white light from his body. This white light flows into you, and you can think it flows into you from your head downwards or that it enters through all the pores of your body. Either way, the result is that your whole body mind is completely filled with this white purifying light so that there’s no space inside for the negative karma or any kind of anxiety or guilt over it.
So white light completely clears all the psychological burden we carry around from our mistakes. So as you continue the visualization, we’ll also recite the Buddha’s mantra seven times. Really feel like all the negative energy from all your negative actions completely purified and stopped so nothing of it remains? And then think that the Buddha comes on top of your head facing Buddha facing the same direction as you. He melts into golden light and dissolves into you.
And that golden light comes right into the center of your chest, your heart center. Really feel the Buddha’s presence inside of you. Feel that your mind has transformed into the Buddha, that you’re full of wisdom and compassion.