Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Venerable Kaye Miner wraps up a weekend healing workshop with practical guidance on meditation techniques for illness and self-esteem. She begins by addressing low self-esteem in Western practitioners and the importance of recognising the nature and potential of mind. She then introduces several meditational approaches: mindfulness breathing meditation and white light healing as accessible foundations, and visualisation practices on meditational deities—particularly the Medicine Buddha, whose blue form represents the power to overcome sickness, and Chenrezig, embodying compassion. Miner explains how meditational deities are not external devotional objects but inner qualities to be awakened. She concludes with a brief white light meditation combined with Chenrezig visualisation and the Chenrezig mantra Om Mani Padme Hum, suited to practitioners of all experience levels and faith backgrounds.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 02 Healing Workshop 1995 07 09.mp3
UUID: 00646004-c863-4b89-b0f7-2b24b9d1163c
Teacher: Ven Kaye Miner
Collection: Healing Workshop (Ven Kaye Miner)
Date: 1995-07-09
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 10.4 minutes
Words: ~1,433
In that culture. Think maybe that’s the same in other cultures. It’s not like it is with us. But I think for many of us Westerners, low self esteem is an incredible problem. We need to acknowledge and recognize that we do have a lot of good qualities and this is where recognising the nature of our mind is very important and the potential of our mind.
Is that a bit clearer now about that self grasping? Okay. Well, I think we really should try and have a quick afternoon tea. It’s amazing how time flies, isn’t it? So it’s quarter past three.
Maybe if we could be back about three thirty just to have a quick cup of tea and then we’ll have a final meditation for the afternoon and then wrap it up. Really amazed, although I probably shouldn’t be knowing what I’m like and how much I can talk. Before we do our final meditation, which I think we’ll do just a simple and depending on what people like, we could either do a breathing or a white light meditation. What would people prefer? White light?
You’d like that very much. I’ll do that at the end of the, yeah. So white light with some mantras at the end. Good idea. Mhmm.
Are you trying to throw a spanner in the works here? Pardon me. Are you throwing a spanner in the works here? Okay. I just thought to mention there’s this little book here called The Healing Buddha, which is another thing by Lama Zopa.
And when we’ve been talking about different types of meditation, I was just talking with some people on the veranda just now, I was asked, if somebody came to me and said I’ve just been diagnosed with cancer, what would I suggest? And I’d certainly suggest that the person starts meditating because as I mentioned right at the beginning yesterday, making that change from doing to being is very, very important if we’re going to start healing ourselves. And then depending on the person, their propensities, their inclination, then there’s this kind of meditation teachings that we’ve been doing today over the weekend. I certainly think the breathing mindfulness meditation is very essential. I think the white light healing is very essential.
I think the Tonglen, if you can get to that, is brilliant. But of course, as we’ve all seen, it takes a lot of preparation for that and a lot of understanding and a lot of background. So somebody that’s coming to me and saying, look, I’ve got cancer and just really doesn’t have the, has a need that needs to be met immediately and doesn’t have necessarily the time and the inclination to go into philosophy too much, then I think I’d stick with the white light and the breathing meditation. Then if, as I say, they’ve the propensity, then I would suggest even a visualization meditation on a particular meditation or deity. And this one here, the Medicine Buddha, is particularly effective for illness.
There’s been a number of people that have done this meditation who have actually been able to transform their illness. It’s visualizing the Medicine Buddha, which is sitting in a position like the Buddha does but with a blue body. And that’s representing the ability to overcome illness and to help with illness. There are lots of different meditational deities, unbelievable numbers of them. And they’re basically manifestations of the awakened energy, like they’re manifestations of the Buddha or Buddhas.
And they appear in different forms because they’re concentrating on different qualities or very subtle kind of energies. So the blue one here is the Medicine Buddha to help overcome sickness. Up here, the white one is Chenrezig. Chenrezig or Avalokiteśvara is representing compassion. And all the colors of the body, the hand gestures, the things they hold in their hands, the way they sit, all have a lot of symbolism.
The one up here, straight at the back here, has a sword up in the hair, and that’s Mañjuśrī. Mañjuśrī represents wisdom. So if you want to develop your wisdom, you meditate on Mañjuśrī. If you want to develop your compassion, you meditate on Chenrezig. Where I live at Tārā Institute, there is Tārā and Tārā is in female form.
And there’s green Tārā and she represents the action qualities of the Buddha and the ability to be able to achieve or to succeed. And she’s sitting with one foot out like this, she’s ready to kind of jump to the aid of beings out of her compassion. I quite like her. And so I say her mantra, is om tare tuttare ture Svāhā. And it’s very, very effective, especially when you need to find parking spaces.
It really works. And I mean, that sounds a bit trite. Can kind of the idea is that you meditate on that deity to develop those qualities within you. It’s not like a completely devotional thing on something external. It’s to help develop those qualities within you.
So if we meditate on Chenrezig of compassion, it’s to help you awaken the compassionate qualities within you that are your true nature that are obscured by the clouds of your delusions and self-cherishing. We’ve got that kind of line right now, haven’t we? So the same with the Medicine Buddha. The Medicine Buddha has the power to help heal you, but what it does is awaken those healing qualities within your own mind. So this is a very nice little booklet.
It goes through a little bit about the meditation on Medicine Buddha and healing your mind and body and things like that. And it’s got a beautiful cover. I think that should be available from the bookshop as well. Not very expensive. So there are lots of different kind of techniques that you can use.
And there’s different meditational aids in the form of these meditational deities that we can meditate upon to help awaken those qualities within us. Normally when we visualize some of those meditational deities, we would then go and say some mantras as a result. Now, when we do this white light meditation this afternoon, if you feel so inclined, then when we’re visualising that source of inspiration before us, that object that represents universal healing energy, how about we try and imagine that it’s Chenrezig there, Chenrezig that represents compassion. Now, I won’t get you too confused, but Chenrezig comes in a number of different forms. And you might see sometimes there’s with one thousand arms and eleven heads.
And that becomes really quite hard to understand meditate upon. But basically, all the hands are in a gesture of bestowing blessings, of giving out compassion. So if you’re able to see this one up here and able to visualize clearly, then fantastic. If not, just have a sense that this source of inspiration, of white light healing energy, represents this compassion of Chenrezig. You don’t have to believe it’s Chenrezig if you find that using a Buddhist deity is not in tune with your own beliefs, then you don’t need to worry about that at all.
You could use whatever. But we will be saying the mantra of Chenrezig at the end. We’ll just recite that chant it together. And that mantra is Om Mani Padme Hum. You’ll join in, you’ll find it’s not too hard when we start chanting it.
Basically that represents the compassionate altruistic wish to benefit others. We can go into all kinds of literal translations of those Sanskrit syllables, but I think if we just have this feeling that that mantra represents the compassionate wish to benefit others so that as we’re doing that meditation, we say that mantra, then it becomes in accord with our own hearts and minds. Well, we’ve only got ten minutes, so it’ll be a fairly brief meditation, unless you mind if we go a few minutes over. Coming along this weekend and being so patient and putting up with my voice going on and on and on. It’s been a real delight to share this time with you, and I hope that some of the things that I might have talked about or presented will be of benefit to you.
If so, please use it, put it into practice. But the other stuff that seems too much or you don’t like, just forget about it. The important thing is that we have a happy mind. So please go well, be happy, enjoy your lives, benefit others. It makes me very happy.
Thank you.