Audio recorded at Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Opening with a recitation of the Heart Sūtra, Kyabje Rinpoche establishes the foundations of Vajrayoginī practice in this 46-minute teaching. He maps out who is qualified to practise—those with compassion, determination to be free, and understanding of emptiness—then outlines the four essential causes for siddhi: stable faith, freedom from doubt, single-minded focus on one deity, and keeping teachings secret. He brings this to life with a story from Atisha, who rebuked Tibetan practitioners for accumulating empowerments from hundreds of deities while actualizing none. The talk addresses those who have received Vajrayoginī initiation.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 1991-09-26 – 2A – Comm 2 – KR.mp3
UUID: da01768b-aa46-4831-9ac9-820c81e709a4
Teacher: Kyabje Rinpoche
Collection: Vajrayoginī
Date: 1991-09-26
Recorded at: Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide
Words: ~2,398
I will now have the recitation of the essence of the wisdom gone beyond. That’s why I’ve heard once the blessed one was dwelling in Rajgir on Vulture’s Peak together with a great assembly of monks and bodhisattvas. At that time, the blessed one was absorbed in the concentration that examines all phenomena called profound illumination. And at the same time, the noble Avalokiteśvara, the bodhisattva, Mahāsattva, was engaged in the profound practice of wisdom gone beyond, analyzing the five aggregates by nature emptying. 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 to the wisdom gone beyond?
Thus he spoke in the noble Avalokiteśvara, bodhisattva Mahāsattva, replied to the venerable saying, oh, Śāriputra, whatever son or daughter of this 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 this way, in the same way, feelings, recognitions, compositional 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 are neither decreased nor increased. Therefore, Śāriputra, in emptiness, is no form, no feeling, no recognition, no compositional formation, no consciousness.
There is no eye, no ear, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind. There are no spheres of the eye no spheres of the mind. There 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 is there 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 the bodhisattvas abide in the wisdom gone beyond and because there is no obscurity of mind, they have no fear.
Passing utterly beyond falsity, they reach nirvana. All the Buddhas who dwell in the three times relying on the wisdom gone beyond fully and clearly awaken to unsurpassed most perfect and complete enlightenment. Therefore the mantra the wisdom gone beyond, the mantra of great insight, the unequalled and unsurpassed mantra, the mantra that calms all suffering should be known to be the truth for there is no deception. The mantra of the wisdom gone beyond is proclaimed. Very good, very good, oh son of good family.
It is exactly like that. The profound wisdom gone beyond should 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 and the demigods and spirits their hearts full of joy praise the words of the blessed one so ends the noble discourse on the essence of the wisdom gone beyond. So to begin with the teaching, it has three overriding divisions.
These are: who is the basis who is able to practice, the individual who is able to perform practice; the actual practice which is to be performed and the third is the way in which to perform this practice. Can you hear now? No. Can you hear now? Did you hear this?
So the three over overriding divisions are who is the basis that is the person who is to practice, what is the Dharma to be practiced and the way in which that Dharma is practiced. So with respect to the first overall division, there is the subdivision into two. The first of these is the person suitable to enter into the ripening path and the second is the person suitable to cultivate the path of liberation. So when we in this first overall division we talked about the basis that is the person who is suitable to practice, who is able to practice. That is referring to that we are the basis who are practicing the Dharma of Vajrayoginī.
So the person such as we who are able to practice the Dharma of Vajrayoginī and then these types of people are divided into two types. So with respect to this first, the person suitable to enter into the ripening path. This would be a person who has compassion within the mind directed towards all sentient beings and has the determination to be free. And has generated the awakening heart. So if we were to condense the the characteristics of this first individual that is suitable to enter the path of the ripening path then they would we can summarize that there are three principal paths and those of an individual, firstly on the first level an individual who has actually generated the experience of the three principal paths those of determination to be free, the awakening heart and authentic view of emptiness.
An individual is actually getting the experience of these. Not having, if one is not up to that level then beneath that can, if one has not experienced them, one through effort can gain their generation. That is to say, first one comes spontaneously having gained experience, the second one can realize them by making effort. It does not come naturally but one needs to make effort. It comes artificially and if one has not gained that level of proficiency then one should have a good understanding of these three subjects.
With respect to the person suitable to cultivate the path of liberation individual that should have the following qualities. The seeds of the four levels of empowerment should have been planted, implanted by a qualified Vajra master. This is a these are candidates at the time of actually attending the empowerment. And additionally, through that the individual has gained the blessings of Vajrayoginī and the Mandala. This is explained that in the course of generating oneself as Vajrayoginī which during the actual empowerment there was the actual generating oneself in the aspect of Vajrayoginī.
Then there was the, that’s the inner Vajrayoginī, then the descension of the external Vajrayoginī into oneself and then the introduction into the sacred Vajrayoginī. This is the way in which the Vajrayoginī and the mandala are bestowed. Then additionally having obtained the empowerment of Vajrayoginī, one keeps well the various words of honor. So the person who is suitable to cultivate the path of liberation should have these two qualities. Fortunately you all are suitable individuals, suitable persons to enter into the ripening path and suitable individuals to cultivate the path of liberation that you have. You have some understanding of the three aspects of the path and that you have respect for these principles and additionally you have attained the empowerment of Chakrasamvara and have received the blessing of Vajrayoginī and have accepted to observe the precepts.
So with respect to to practice the path of having attained the blessings of Vajrayoginī then there is the result of having practiced in terms of ordinary powers of attainment, the mundane power of attainment and supreme power of attainment. In order to attain the powerful attainment, there must be a complete set of four causes So the first is the four causes for it which are necessary to achieve the resulting powerful attainment. It is a non relapsing and this is having a stable faith in the practice, the Lama giving the practice, the Yidam, the Meditational Deity and the Dharma and it’s a stable kind of faith, an unfluctuating faith. It’s not the type of faith where we are fickle. Sometimes we like it, sometimes we don’t.
Sometimes we give it up and sometimes we take it back up. But it’s a very stable, unchanging faith. The second cause is freedom from doubt and this is or more precisely freedom from doubt by means of wisdom and this involves practicing this Dharma that through one generates a wisdom through listening, reflecting, meditating and then having gone through this process when one actually involves oneself in practice, one knows precisely the mode of practice that there is no doubt, one does not have any doubts about what is the order of practice and so this is a wisdom which eliminates any sort of doubt as to the actual mode of practice one knows exactly the means of practice. The third of these four causes is single mindedness. This represents a single mindedness with respect to a particular meditation or deity.
If we give a practical example that one day we hear that this Lama is giving an empowerment, a great empowerment and so you go and you attend that empowerment and you receive the four levels of empowerment and you go off to practice for a few days and you hear, oh Lama, another Lama is giving this other power which is much more powerful. We go, oh I’ll go to that Lama and we throw away our other practice and we go and we attend that practice and we practice that for a while and then we just, oh this Lama has given us great blessings. A blessing to end all blessings — you have to go. So we throw away our practice and we go attend this other empowerment and in this way we end up with nothing. So what is meant by here by single mindedness purpose is that one decides what is one particular inclination toward a deity, reflects upon it, what deity appeals to you.
We receive that particular deity’s empowerment, the four levels of empowerment and then we single mindedly carry through with that practice and we carry through with the intention until I achieve the results of this practice I’m going to pursue it. I’m going to actualize the potential of this practice. Previously, Atisha was speaking to a group of Tibetans and he said, you Tibetans really like your deities. The problem is that you receive the empowerment of hundreds of deities and you don’t even actualize one of them. On the other hand, the Indians, they receive the empowerment of that one deity and that one deity’s practice, by means of that one deity’s practice they achieve realization.
So we should develop faith in the in one in the potential of a particular meditation or deity and and not keep jumping around one to another. And then the fourth of these four causes is secrecy. Now, secret mantra, within the term secret mantra the word secret means that what we have heard we have to keep hidden. We are not discussing or talk about it and these practices are extremely profound and by talking about them idly, one will create obstacles for oneself. This word secret within the term secret mantra initially upon having taken the empowerment from a Lama, the power, potential is highly concentrated at that time having initially taken that empowerment.
This would be analogous to if we heated up some rice and it’s piled up and as it piles up in a solid mass, in a concentrated mass, it’s able to retain its heat and warm food is much more delicious than cold food. If we were to spread the rice around it would cool very quickly. We would scatter the grains of rice. It would cool very quickly and lose its potential to be delicious. Likewise, initially upon taking empowerment from our lama the potential is like a concentrated mass but by discussing the secret mantra with others it’s like scattering, spreading its potential and loses its potency and will achieve no great result.
So we’ve been discussing the working basis of who will practice these teachings. Working basis is who will practice these teachings. Now the second overall division is the actual teaching which is to be practiced. So in this respect we’re going to there are two subdivisions. The first subdivision is going to be further subdivided into four.
So there are four whispered lineages, the four whispered lineages and the four validities — or another word would be reliabilities. So the first of these four whispered lineages is in terms of the continuity of the stream of empowerment. The continuity of the stream of empowerment. Uninterrupted stream of empowerment.
Empowerment. This means that those who are actually bestowing the empowerment aside from being fully qualified are uninterrupted in practice and teaching. There is continuity of practicing of empowering mastery. And the the second is the continuity of blessing. This means that the that there has been a continual transmission of the blessings of the practice beginning with
Vajradhāra down through all the various lamas to one empowering lama or the root lama and that none of them have in any way. There’s never been an interruption in this continuity of blessing nor has any of them degenerated, caused to degenerate their practices and their words of honor. And then the third is the order of the teaching should not be confused. The order of the teaching should not be confused and this is the in terms of the way in which the one is to carry out the practice that first there are the various teachings of the common path and then upon having good being proficient in the common path, one attains the empowerment, receives the blessing and then goes on to practice the two stages and so there is this un confused order of the practice. Then the fourth is a stable fervent regard for the Lama and the Deity.
One should have developed a stable, respect, conviction in the lama the Meditational Deity and the practice. And the four validity that these four are as follows. There should be a valid lama, a valid oral transmission, a valid instruction, and a valid experience. So in order to practice in these four are extremely important. So not only that but the practices of Vajrayoginī which are outlined should have all of their sources within the tantras of the Rupa.