Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Teacher Valham leads a foundational Lamrim meditation session centered on cultivating compassion through the figure of Chenrezig, the embodiment of universal compassion. The session opens with guided visualization of Chenrezig surrounded by all living beings, followed by extensive prayers and reflections that form the core of Tibetan Buddhist practice: reliance on the spiritual teacher, recognizing the preciousness of human rebirth, contemplating impermanence and karma, generating renunciation, developing bodhicitta (the wish to free all beings from suffering), and the disciplines of both individual and bodhisattva ethics. A key teaching distinguishes three types of suffering and uses the metaphor of chocolate cake to illustrate how attachment misconceives its objects, creating endless dissatisfaction—the very hook that binds us to cyclic existence. The talk concludes with detailed visualization of Chenrezig’s thousand arms and wisdom eyes, and practices for recognizing the extraordinary fortune of human life and access to authentic spiritual guidance. Suitable for those new to Tibetan Buddhist practice or deepening their understanding of foundational paths.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 01 M.mp3
UUID: 9263d26a-6f91-4935-8e6a-c59990f7a452
Teacher: Valham
Collection: Lam Rim Meditation (Valham)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Words: ~2,288
So we think of ourselves surrounded by all living beings. And And in our mind we don’t leave anybody out of our caring mind, that thinks with loving kindness, thinking of mothers, friends, and many strangers, and, you know, all the kindness they have bestowed And then our object that we rely on, the great compassionate one, generously standing in space in front of you. You know the miraculous emanation of Buddha’s compassion. Well, the want, a supreme being’s compassion. So whatever in the prayers you find, things like, please bless me, then you think you’re turning towards Chenrezig with that request.
Please bless us. Please bless me. Or when it says, Guru, Deity, then you think, Chenrezig is my guru, universal compassion, to bless your mind, to inspire. I prostrate with my body, speech, mind. I present clouds of every type of offering, actual and proximate.
I declare all my negative actions accumulated since beginning of time. I rejoice in the merits of all holy and ordinary beings. Please remain until the end of cyclic existence and turn the wheel of Dharma for living being. I dedicate my own merits and those of all others to the great. The foundation of all qualities is the kind and venerable guru.
Correctly devoting to him is the root of the path. By clearly seeing this and applying great effort, please bless me to rely upon you with great respect. Understanding that the precious freedom of this rebirth is found only once is greatly meaningful and difficult to find again. Please bless me to generate the mind that unceasingly day and night takes its essence. This life is as impermanent as a water bubble.
Remember how quickly it decays and death comes. After death, just like a shadow follows the body, the results of black and white karma follows. Finding firm and definite conviction in this, please bless me always to be careful, to abandon even the slightest negativities, and accomplish all virtuous deeds. Seeking saṃsāra pleasures is the door to all suffering. They are uncertain and cannot be relied upon.
Recognizing these shortcomings, please bless me to generate a strong wish for the bliss of liberation. Led by this pure thought, mindfulness, alertness, and great caution arise. The root of the teachings is keeping the pratimoksha vows. Please bless me to accomplish this essential practice. Just as I have fallen into the sea of saṃsāra, so have all mother and my greater beings.
Bless me to see this, train in supreme bodhicitta, and take on the responsibility of freeing all mother sentient beings. Clearly recognizing that developing bodhicitta without practicing the three types of morality, I will not achieve enlightenment. Please bless me to practice the bodhisattva vows with great energy by pacifying distractions to wrong objects and correctly analyzing the meaning of reality, please bless me to generate quickly within my mind stream the unified path of calm abiding and special insight. Having become a pure vessel by training in the general path, please bless me to enter the holy gateway of the fortunate ones, to supreme Vajrayāna. At that time, the basis for accomplishing the two attainments is keeping pure vows and samaya.
Having become firmly convinced of this, please bless me to protect these vows and pledges like my life. Then having realized the importance of the two stages, which are the essence of the Vajrayāna, by practicing with great energy, never giving up the four sessions, please bless me to realize the teachings of the holy guru. Like that, may the gurus who show the noble path and the spiritual friends who practice have long lives. Please bless me to pacify completely all outer and inner hindrances. In all my lives, never separated from perfect gurus, may I enjoy the magnificent Dharma by completing the qualities of the stages and paths, may I quickly attain the state of Vajradhāra.
So then it’s page twenty eight. How wonderful it would be if all sentient beings were to abide in equanimity, free of bias, attachment, and anger. May they abide in this way. I shall cause them to abide in this way. Guru Deity, please inspire me to be able to do so.
How wonderful it would be if all sentient beings had happiness and its causes. May they have these. I shall cause them to have these. Gurudeiti, please inspire me to be able to do so. How wonderful it would be if all sentient beings were free from suffering and its causes.
May they be free. I shall cause them to be free. Guru Deity, please inspire me to be able to do so. How wonderful it would be if all sentient beings never parted from happy rebirth and liberation’s excellent bliss. May they never be parted.
I shall cause them never to be parted. Guru Deity, please inspire me to be able to do so. How wonderful it would be if all sentient beings were to abide in equanimity, free of bias, attachment, and anger. May they abide in this way. I shall cause them to abide in this way.
Guru Devi, please inspire me to be able to do so. How wonderful it would be if all sentient beings had happiness in its causes. May they have these. I shall cause them to have these. Please, Gurudeiti, please inspire me to be able to do so.
How wonderful it would be if all sentient beings were free from suffering and its causes. May they be free. I shall cause them to be free. Guru Deity, please inspire me to be able to do so. How wonderful it would be if all sentient beings were never parted from upper rebirth and liberation’s excellent bliss.
May they never be parted. I shall cause them never to be parted. Guru Deity, please inspire me to be able to How wonderful it would be if all sentient beings were to abide in equanimity, free of bias, attachment, and anger. May they abide in this way. I shall cause them to abide in this way.
Gurudeiti, please inspire me to be able to do so. How wonderful it will be if all sentient beings had happiness and its causes. May they have these. I shall cause them to have these. Guru Deity, please inspire me to be able to do so.
How wonderful it would be if all sentient beings were free from suffering and its causes. May they be free. I shall cause them to be free. Guru Devi, please inspire me to be able to do so. How wonderful it would be if all sentient beings were never parted from upper rebirth and liberation’s excellent bliss.
May they never be parted. I shall cause them never to be parted. Gurudeiti, please inspire me to be able to do so. I think that Chenrezig comes to the very crown of your head or to just above the crown of your head, seated on a lotus and moon, gazing and inspiring you through your meditation practice. And then contemplating samsaric sufferings and our delusions is a bit like going to the dentist, you know.
It’s not very pleasant. But something that has, you know, that has to be done in order to clarify, first of all, of course, in order to remove, ultimately, to remove the source of our problems. But also to clarify in our mind what is suffering, and what is the cause of suffering? If we are not clear in our own mind what really suffering means and what is the nature of cyclic existence, we will not aspire or seek for liberation. And there will there won’t be that genuine sense of renunciation within our mind.
So also, we will not experience, you know, true happiness. As long as we You see, even if we know suffering to a certain degree, we know the suffering of suffering, or, you know, the manifest suffering that is like pain and problems. But a deeper level of suffering, of change. That is still not, you know, completely discovered. We still think, even we hear the teachings, we understand the teachings, but we still think that chocolate cake brings, you know, happiness.
We still feel that the pleasures in existence is the source of happiness. And because of this, we have attachment. And when it comes down to it, that is exactly the emotion, the uncontrolled emotion that keeps us in cyclic existence. It’s attachment. Attachment to sense pleasures, attachment to what we call me and my things, attachment to our body.
This is the one, you know, emotional affliction that hooks us to the spinning wheel of cyclic existence. And we experience the third type of suffering, you know, of pervasiveness. That wherever we go in the six realms, even the highest formless realm, is pervaded by suffering. If chocolate cake was the real happiness, then, you know, then then first of all, everybody, everyone would experience chocolate cake as happiness. That’s one thing, which is not true.
You know, another thing is that the more chocolate cake we have, the happier we would be, which is obviously not true. Because, you know, after the third chocolate cake, we end up with stomach pain, and we feel sick. So the difficult thing is to understand how, you know, attachment completely misconceives its object. It puts more value onto it than what is really there. And so we end up chasing the objects of attachment without any, you know, satisfaction.
And let’s dedicate. Due to these merits and efforts that we put in meditating, trying to understand our mind, May we overcome all the causes for suffering. The three poisonous minds attachment, aversion, and ignorance. And may we quickly develop true inner qualities that will make our life meaningful both for ourselves and for others. We can stop now.
Meditation three. We visualize Chenrezig in front of us, standing on a white lotus, a moon disc, with its white radiant body Emanating light out in the ten directions. First two hands holding a wish granting jewel in front of his heart. Second two hands holding lotus and rosary, crystal rosary. Third two hands, dharma chakra and vase.
Fourth pair of hands, the first one is in the mudra of granting sublime realizations. The other one is holding initiation vase. The remaining nine hundred ninety-two hands stretched out, the wisdom eye in each palm, and you think much incredible, powerful, white radiating light of compassion reaches the very end of the universe. And as we recite the mantra, our own body, speech and mind, and the body, speech and mind of our mother and father, dear ones behind us, people aggravating us in front, and universal living beings are being purified and filled with great compassionate energy. So you recite the mantra for as long as you like.
So we think this precious human life is our most valuable possession, incomparable to any wealth or any power in the world. Because with it we can go beyond suffering. We can liberate ourselves and we can even attain full awakening in order to have the skillful means to also liberate others. Think, in many lifetimes we have spent roaming in the animal realm or even the lower realms of existence without any chance to develop, you know, compassion or wisdom. This time we are a human being with the intelligence to follow an inner path.
And nothing at all can prevent us from following this path. Not only are we born human beings with intelligence that can discriminate between what to practice and what to avoid, in this life, on top of that, we also have keen interest to change and develop our mind. So many times we were born in places and situations where we didn’t have the freedom or the interest, where our mind was totally turned towards sense pleasures, materialistic, you know, comfort. Think this time we can see that that is not the solution to human dissatisfaction. that the cause for happiness is within our mind, within our own mind.
So I think this time I’m a human being with intelligence, ability to practice, and you know a mind that is turning towards the Dharma. It is also extremely rare and fortunate. And not only that, by some incredible great good fortune, we have found a spiritual master who can guide us step by step, who has the power, the compassion and the wisdom to liberate a person like myself, an ordinary person like myself, from the wrong views and delusions, guide me to liberation, perfect state of happiness, and even to the fully awakened state of Buddhahood. The attainment of unlimited compassion and wisdom, an ability to benefit others. Think how unbelievably fortunate.
It’s like all the best conditions came together in this life. As if our body, speech and mind is ready made to enter pure spiritual power. Think about how incredibly fortunate and how wonderful that this has happened to me, And how now to make a determination to definitely use it skillfully. Now it’s a dedication thing. Now the more one thinks of the preciousness of this human life and one’s ability to practice Dharma, one cannot find any reason to feel depressed or unhappy.
Think, now we have the means to overcome suffering forever. It’s just a matter of making a determination. So think. May we generate the three most important realizations in our mind stream: renunciation, bodhicitta, and the correct view of reality right now, in this very lifetime, due to these merits. So we can stop now.