Audio recorded at Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Kyabje Rinpoche opens this 46-minute session with the Heart Sūtra and obstacle-clearing ritual, then launches into the core foundational motivation for tantra practice: the rarity and preciousness of human birth. Drawing on Śāntideva, he shows how we squander this opportunity through worldly preoccupation, then guides students through the sequential stages—taking refuge, practicing ethics, recognizing the unsatisfactory nature of cyclic existence, and developing bodhicitta through a vivid meditation on all sentient beings as blind elderly parents stumbling toward a cliff, crying out for aid. He explains why secret mantra offers the swiftest path to Buddhahood and concludes with an overview of the four levels of tantra. For practitioners who have received or are about to receive Vajrayoginī initiation.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 1991-09-19 – 1A – Comm 3 – KR.mp3
UUID: 08d1bd42-2c88-480d-a0a2-f975b32688ed
Teacher: Kyabje Rinpoche
Collection: Vajrayoginī
Date: 1991-09-19
Recorded at: Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide
Words: ~2,717
We’re going to begin by with the recitation of the Heart Sūtra or as is the discourse of the essence of the wisdom gone beyond. And the subject matter which is explained in the Heart Sūtra is emptiness. Since the Dharma is extremely precious in its practice, in the course of its practice there are many obstacles and hindrances. And by cultivating emptiness, by meditating on emptiness, are able to eliminate obstacles. And so during the course of the recitation, when we come to the mantra, we actually clap three times as a mean to rid the area of obstacles.
And then having done that, we will offer a ritual cake to the protector of Vajrayoginī, requesting that we be protected from obstacles. We offer a short mandala. So we’re going to recite the essence of the wisdom gone beyond in English and upon completion then we will clap three times to rid ourselves of obstacles. I have heard, once the Blessed One was dwelling in Rajgriha on Vulture’s Peak, together with the great assembly of monks and bodhisattvas. At that time the Blessed One was totally absorbed, the concentration that examines all phenomena called profound illumination.
And at the same time the noble Avalokiteśvara, Bodhisattva, Mahāsattva, was engaged in the profound practice of the wisdom gone beyond, analyzing the five aggregates by nature empty. Then through the inspiration of the Buddha, the Venerable Śāriputra spoke to the noble Avalokiteśvara, the Bodhisattva, Mahāsattva, saying, How should those a good family learn who wish to follow the profound practice of the wisdom gone beyond? Thus he spoke, and the Noble Avalokiteśvara, the Bodhisattva, Mahāsattva replied to the Venerable Śāriputra as saying: O Śāriputra, whatever or daughter of a good family wishes to follow the profound practice of the wisdom gone beyond, should look at it like this, analyzing the five aggregates by nature empty. Form is empty, emptiness is form, emptiness is no other than form, form is no other than emptiness. In the same way, feeling, recognition, karmic formations, and consciousness are all empty.
Therefore, Śāriputra, all phenomena are empty without characteristics. They are unborn and unceasing. They are neither impure nor free from impurity. They neither decrease nor increase. Therefore, in emptiness there is no form, no feeling, recognition, no karmic formations, no consciousness.
There is no eye, no ear, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind. There are no spheres of the eye up to no spheres of the mind. They are none of these. All the way up to the sphere of mental consciousness. There is no ignorance nor is there destruction of ignorance.
There are none of these. All the way up to there is no old age and death nor there is a destruction of old age and death. Thus there is no suffering, no cause of suffering, no cessation of suffering, and no path. There is no wisdom, no attainment, and no non attainment. Therefore, Śāriputra, because there is no attainment, all Bodhisattvas hold to the wisdom gone beyond, and because there is no obscurity obscurity of mind, they have no fear.
Passing utterly beyond falsity, they reach beyond the bounds of sorrow. All the Buddhists who dwell in the three times by relying on the wisdom gone beyond fully and clearly awaken to the unsurpassed, most perfect and complete enlightenment. Therefore the mantra of the wisdom gone beyond, the mantra of the great insight, the unequaled and unsurpassed mantra, the mantra that calms all suffering, should be known as truth for its truth. The mantra of the wisdom gone beyond is proclaimed: O Śāriputra, this is how a Bodhisattva should learn the profound wisdom gone beyond. Then the Blessed One arose from that concentration and praise the Noble Avalokiteśvara, the Bodhisattva Mahāsattva, saying, Very good, very good, O son of good family, it is exactly like that.
A profound wisdom gone beyond shall be practiced exactly as you have said. And then the Tathagatas will rejoice. When the Blessed One has said this, the Venerable Śāriputra, the Noble Avalokiteśvara, the whole gathering in the world with its gods, men, demigods and spirits, their hearts full of joy, praise the words of the Blessed One. So ends the Noble Discourse and the Essence of the Wisdom Gone Beyond. So, according to a verse by Śāntideva, in which he asked us to appreciate that we now possess a human life by means of which we can carry on a successful practice of Dharma, a precious human life which possesses all the various conducive conditions and the freedom from inhibitory conditions.
And these are constituted by the 18 qualities of the Eight Freedoms and 10 Fortunes. And within the practices of Dharma, the practice of the universal vehicle or the greater vehicle, and within that there is the practice of sacred mantra, by which means one can attain enlightenment in one lifetime. Today we have all the gathering together of all the conducive conditions, and we have not had such an experience before. Having the Dharma and having all of the conducive conditions whereby to practice the Dharma, that is, having this wonderful opportunity, if we were not to practice, if our life was to simply be led in a meaningless manner, then it would be a real tragedy. So what is the tragedy?
Is that we have never previously brought together such conditions as we now have, and we may never experience them again, and this therefore represents a rare opportunity for us. There is no comparison with the leading of a purposeless life by not practicing our Dharma in terms of its tragedy and not having made meaningful. And if we were to try to compare it, even if we were to say that if we were to have lost hundreds of thousands of dollars, then even though that might deprive us of some pleasure, at best it could only deprive us of the pleasures of this life. But not making use of our human life, not by making it purposeless, then we not only are deprived of happiness of this life, but all of our future life. So even if we can through the practice of Dharma achieve Buddhahood in this very life, but even if we want not to do that, we can generate various paths and grounds.
And even if we want to do that, at least we are implanting latencies of these within our mind. Then the adverse of that is not only is it possible for us to not make use of the rest of human life, but in not making use of it there is a great danger that we can simply lead a life involved in creating negative activities, that we can create a great deal of various destructive actions whereby we will in the future experience endless suffering. So the our present situation provides us with our present situation provides us with a crossroad, not a crossroad, a fork in the road whereby we have control and we have a choice before us, whether we are simply going to continue to create negativities or we continue to do otherwise and do practice well. And it is in our control which type of pathway we take. And whether we practice well or not, eventually we’re going to have to face death.
And even if we were as rich as a king and powerful, a lord of a vast country with many subjects, even having all of these, we would have to go we would go forth alone empty handed. And the same would hold true for a beggar. No matter if they were so poor that all they had was a mug to pour their tea in. Even that mug would have to be left behind and they would go forth alone. And quoting from a verse by the Pänchen Lama in which he says that people expend a great deal of difficulties in gathering together wealth.
And they worry about it and they practice they involve themselves in trying to keep it all for themselves. And they but all of this at the time of death will be left behind. And even if we live in the middle of a big city and we have many friends and many relatives, our parents and our children, all of them will have to be left behind. And even this body which we have a company to now, that also will be left behind. The fact of our death is definite, but the time of our death is uncertain.
We simply don’t know when we’re going to die. End, even though we might make plans to do well tomorrow, the possibility of carrying out those plans is there is no guarantee. Guarantee. Ordinary people like ourselves simply don’t know when we’re going to die. So rather than completely absorbing oneself in secular activities, now is the time to practice the Dharma.
So, you know, we now possess a human life, it’s not sure that next year or even next month we might not be reborn as an animal with horns. It’s indefinite. And what do we do in such a situation having been born as such an animal? Don’t know how to practice the Dharma. We don’t even know what the Dharma is.
There’s nobody to teach us the Dharma. All we do is create negativities and this is really a sad situation. So the time to practice the Dharma is now, and this is a very important point. That it is the it’s a very beneficial to practice and we should reflect upon this that the time of our practice that we think we’re going to practice tomorrow, death could come before that time. So how are we to carry out our practice of Dharma?
That we should ensure that in the future that we do not take rebirth in a bad migration. And to that end we go for protection from such a possibility to the Three Jewels, going for refuge to the Three Jewels to protect us from bad migrations. But additionally that we abandon unhealthy activities of our body, speech and mind and begin to practice healthy actions. And if we were to practice in such a manner then after our death we can be assured migration, that we will in fact achieve a fortunate migration as a celestial being or as a human and in such a state that we will have a healthy body, that we will have material necessities, that we will have be born in a prosperous place, and that we will have a fine retinue of friends. But though in dependence upon practicing in this way we were to achieve a human life in the future, and no matter how wonderful that human life might be, it in fact it has no essence.
It is that we will still have to undergo the dissatisfactory states of disease, aging, and death again and again in the future. As long as we remain within cyclic existence under the influence of karma and afflictive emotions, it will our situation will be dissatisfactory. And so in such a situation, we’ll continue to be dissatisfactory as long as we remain within cyclic existence. And so it’s necessary to develop the determination to be free from cyclic existence by seeing its various faults and to develop the aspiration to be liberated from cyclic existence and thereby to abandon cyclic existence. But what are the methods, what are the means by which we abandon cyclic existence?
They are by observing ethics, stabilizing our mind by developing meditative stabilizations, and finally through meditation generating the wisdom realizing emptiness. It is by this means that we can go beyond completely our suffering and achieve liberation. Achieving this bliss of liberation for oneself alone is not sufficient that we must consider that the great kindness that all sentient beings have shown to us as our own mother and remembering their kindness that they have all shown us and seeing that they are continually tortured by suffering. If we were not to help them in their plight then this would be a terrible way to act. Our mothers are as if blind, old, and poor, and are stumbling toward the edge of a cliff, crying out for their child, and hearing their cries if we were not to go to their aid, then this would be an inhuman way to act.
Our mothers, that is mother, that is to say all sentient beings are blinded by ignorance with respect to what is to be adopted and what is to be avoided. And they are continually beset by the sufferings of aging, disease, and death. And they are about to fall over the edge of the cliff due to their negative karmas into the bad migration. And if we were not to make effort to come to their aid then this would be an inhumane way to act. And seeing the plight of sentient beings, we should cultivate the awakening heart which is reflected within the thought to free them from their suffering and to lead them to complete happiness.
And in order to do that we must as individuals rid ourselves of our various faults and bring to consummation our excellent qualities. That is to say we must become Buddhas. So this is the motivation of the awakening heart which is included within the vehicle of sūtra. But for those who wish to practice mantra, the mantric vehicle, we should have an even more forceful motivation in our awakening heart. That our motivation should be such that in order to, we should want to quickly, quickly as possible, not just free sentient beings, but as quickly as possible to free them from their suffering and to lead them to happiness.
And therefore not just to attain Buddhahood, simply attain Buddhahood, quickly as possible to do it, to attain Buddhahood. It is a more forceful attitude of the awakening heart. So please contemplate as I have explained in generating this motivation. I will generate the motivation, such a motivation and you from your side generate such a motivation. So, you know, we have sought to develop an aspiration to seek Buddhahood, but simply aspiring is not enough.
We say, Oh, I’m going wanting to eat and seeking food does not fill your stomach. You actually have to eat the food and put it in your stomach and therefore, though it’s not enough simply to wish for Buddhahood, we must practice in a practical way the methods and these methods are as stated within the practice of sūtra, the practices of generosity, ethics, tolerance, effort, meditative stabilization, emptiness but these are engaged in with even a more forceful manner in the terms of secret mantra. So in beginning our practices, we should adjust our motivation. And we it’s extremely extremely useful in adjusting our motivation to try to generate each of the stages of the motivations of the three types of perspectives. The being of narrow perspective, the of medium perspective, and the being of vast perspective.
And graduating and taking, generating these motivations in their respective stages will lead to a very forceful generation of the awakening heart. Having adjusted one’s motivation then there is the Dharma to be practiced, and it was our teacher, the Buddha, initially developed the mind generation which is the awakening heart. He went on to train and then at Bodh Gaya attained Buddhahood and taught the Dharma. And in teaching the Dharma for those of the individual vehicle disposition, He taught the method whereby to free oneself of attachment. To those who had, who were vast minded had very broad vast disposition that is to say the Bodhisattvas.
He taught the practices of the six perfections and 10 grounds. And for those who were of a special quality, who had a special disposition and joy with respect to emptiness. Those who found emptiness extremely wonderful, to them he taught secret mantra. Conviction with respect to emptiness. So with respect to secret mantra, are four levels a secret mantra is synonym of tantra.
So there are four levels of tantra. There is the Action tantra, Performance tantra, Yoga tantra, and Highest Yoga tantra.