Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 37-minute teaching, Ven Margaret McAndrew explores whether daily prayers count as Dharma practice, finding the answer in motivation. She examines Tārā practice through an unexpected lens—praying for personal help with money troubles—and tells a story of a center director whose direct prayer to Tārā prompted an unexpected financial gift from his brother. She outlines four levels of motivation: seeking better rebirth, seeking liberation from saṃsāra, generating bodhicitta (wishing enlightenment for all beings), and self-interested motivation, which is not practice. Even ordinary actions become virtuous if animated by bodhicitta; spectacular generosity performed selfishly remains empty. The second half shifts to detailed visualization instruction for refuge: Śākyamūni Buddha at the center, root and lineage lamas on nested thrones, surrounded by concentric circles of tantric deities, bodhisattvas, arhats, and protectors, all made of light. For practitioners preparing the preliminaries.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 04 P P P 1998 03 21.mp3
UUID: ac922fe3-37d9-4c7b-97fa-69fc50a1b320
Teacher: Ven Margaret McAndrew
Collection: Prayers, Prostrations and Preliminaries (Ven Margaret McAndrew)
Date: 1998-03-21
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 37.7 minutes
Words: ~4,904
Words. And, of course, sometimes you are trying to, but the main but you can’t really get the concentration. But the main effect of trying would make it virtuous, whereas if you’re just rattling it off, it would be pretty meaningless. That’s true. And in that case, you would doing it with no particular motivation at all, no matter what the words were that you were saying.
Me asking for a for me to do. Asking for a lot. You’re asking Tārā to do all these things for you. That’s alright if you’re doing it for the welfare of sentient beings. She does.
She she asks you help you. Yes. Hard in faces. Yes. You think she yes.
That’s right. She she helps you with all these things. Yes. That’s right. Tārā, that’s an exact way of expressing it.
She really is a doer, and she’s amazingly noted for bringing results. I’ll just have to tell you this little story. I can’t stop telling stories. It takes too much time. I always think there’s a lot of benefit in the stories anyway.
I don’t know whether any of you know Colin Crosby at Chenrezig Institute. He’s got the most gorgeous Scottish accent. But anyway, Colin, he’s actually the he has been the director of the center in the past, and he’s already involved. He’s been very involved there for years and years, but this goes several years back, and he was having a lot of financial difficulties at that time. And he was driving up the road from where he lived up to the Institute one day, he was just reflecting on Tārā, and of all the stories he’d heard about how Tārā helped people.
And thought occurred him that was also in need of help. And so he said to Tārā, he just sort of made this little prayer as he was driving along, Look Tārā, you’ve helped this person, you’ve helped that person, and you’ve helped the other person. Don’t you think it’s time you help me a bit with my money troubles? And when he got up to the office and looked at his mail, there was a check for one thousand dollars from his brother, and the check was saying, I’ve been doing very well lately in my business, and I know that you’re a bit hard up, so I thought I’d send you something to help you along. .
You wish you’d already done it. I’m sure you did. Yes. So you prayed for Well, they expressed in different terms, but I feel that Tārā and the Virgin Mary are very closely related. There was a beautiful book can’t Can anybody remember the name of that book, particularly going into The Black Virgins?
That was a very interesting book. I forget what it was called. Did you maybe you never had it here. It’s a wonderful book. Well, actually, had a section on Buddhism.
It also went into the black Catholic versions, and also had quite a bit about the Torah, the Black Madonnas, yes. Anyway, that’s a bit beside the point, but I can’t remember the title of it now. Very much recommend it to anybody who’s interested in these things. Good. Yes.
Yes. I think particularly some people are word people, and other people perhaps are a bit more just sort of abstract in their thinking, or maybe more visual or whatever. So you’d find what works for you and go with that. Think ritual prayer No, I think it’s post that sort of Christian era, very sort of extreme, sort of low church Protestant puritanical sort of era, where they tried to simplify everything down to the basics. Well, I think that the pendulum sort of swings both ways.
There comes a point where people feel that the ritual that’s being performed has lost its meaning, and so their natural approach to that is to strip away the ritual and try to get to the essence. But then they start to realise that the ritual is very helpful for that, that it’s not so easy to get to the essence. And then they start to realise that if you perform the meaning the ritual with meaning, then it is helpful. It’s the way it’s done. When it just becomes mumbo jumbo, then it doesn’t help.
So anyway, to get sorry, to get back to this point about whether the Tārā practice is Dharma practice, there’s four different motivations that you can have for doing something like a prayer. And these have four different results. Have you got any idea what the four different levels of motivation might be? Okay, yes, that’s getting to it. So actually, first, the it does relate to the three scopes.
So the first of the scopes is the small scope, the person who’s mainly concerned with their future lives rebirth. And if they recite a practice such as a Tārā prayer or a mandala offering to the merit field or whatever, with this thought, then that’s the result they’ll get. If you take it a step further and want to realize that you have to get out of cyclic existence, you want to work for liberation, then if you do these practices with the sort of wanting to attain liberation, that’s the result you’ll get. And if you make it greater and make it bodhicitta, the sort of wanting to attain liberation not just for your own self, but for all others, and that implies also attaining enlightenment, because that’s the skillful way to bring this about, then that brings the result of enlightenment. So you’ve got three virtuous results there: higher rebirth, liberation, and Buddhahood for the welfare of all.
And those are all Dharma practices, but of course it makes sense to go for the greatest. It’s more beneficial, not only for others, of course, but it’s obvious that it’s going be more beneficial for others if you take this motivation. It’s also more beneficial for yourself because the merits of this sort are vastly greater than the merits of the other two levels of motivation, and therefore they will bring results in your Dharma practice much more and much more powerfully. So it’s very worthwhile working on this motivation. The other level of motivation is just thinking of your welfare in this life, and that isn’t Dharma practice.
It doesn’t really bring any result. So if we have this motivation, if we have one of these virtuous levels of motivation, then even an ordinary action can become a virtuous action through a skillful way of looking at it. So there’s a quotation that each that for somebody with bodhicitta motivation, each footstep becomes worth more than a hundred thousand gold coins. So even if you’re just walking along the street, you have this sort of bodhicitta in your mind. And it doesn’t even have to be at the front of your mind, as long as it’s sort of generally behind your activities in a general sort of way throughout the day.
Then even the steps that we do, steps that we take, our ordinary activities just for taking care of our daily needs and so on, can become virtuous. Because we’re doing all these things with the idea of using our life to become enlightened. Whereas even what looks like a wonderfully good action, such as extensive giving to the needy, for example, or extensive giving monks or whatever, could be done just to make a good impression. And if it’s done for this reason, then it’s really a meaningless activity. And it’s not Dharma practice anyway.
Well if you’re doing it with this attitude of well, you’ll say you do it with an experimental attitude rather than an actual wanting to change attitude. I think that’s fine, and it’s very good to experiment. Buddha always said that we should experiment with these thoughts, and you’re doing it with a sort of tendency towards Dharma practice, so it makes it virtuous. But on the other hand, it’s when you get really committed to the idea of bodhicitta that it becomes stronger and stronger. But it’s still positive at the state you’re at now, the right thing to do is to check out thoroughly before you jump in.
So that’s certainly something that would be in terms with Buddha’s advice. Buddha definitely advised people to be very, very careful and to check out thoroughly what he taught before they jumped in and accepted it. It certainly pays off in the long run. I think it’d be stronger if you feel the motivation is actually your own, non externalized. Yes.
It has to be your own. It doesn’t work unless it’s your own. So that’s I think, that’s totally positive from my point of view. So, anyway, the thought of bodhicitta can be either artificial or forced bodhicitta, or it can be the unforced or spontaneous type of bodhicitta. So we have to expect that when we first start off, it’s going to be forced.
That means is that it’s not going to come naturally. We have to produce it, we have to work on it, we have to keep on building it up, and we have maintain this practice, otherwise we’ll lose what we’ve got already. So it’s something that we have to keep on working on all the time. As you know, every day we’re advised first thing in the morning before we go about our daily activities, to set our mind on the sort of bodhicitta, as well as dedicating our merits at the end of the day. And if we do this, then the sort of bodhicitta can sort of be behind our various ordinary actions of the day, and also our virtuous actions.
Although when we embark on virtuous action, we should actually specifically generate bodhicitta also at the beginning of that action. So, and of course, at the end of the evening also dedicate our merits for enlightenment. These two things go together. And by continuing to do this practice and by carrying out the various meditations that we learn in the graduated path, we can eventually attain the spontaneous bodhicitta. And when that happens, you don’t need to keep on working, because it becomes very much a part of your being, and it just keeps on flowing all the time.
So you’re saying the positive actions actually build up, and then, like the snowball gets bigger and bigger. Do you think that’s what happens? Well, the imprint of the thought of body bodhicitta eventually becomes so strongly imprinted that it becomes a part of your being. And you don’t have to work on it. It will come up Just as we have anger and attachment as part of our beings now, and we don’t have to work on them, they just come up whenever they encounter a suitable object.
In the same way bodhicitta can become a part of our being, and come up whenever we encounter a suitable object, which is any sentient being. And as we encounter sentient beings all the time, then we don’t have to worry about our bodhicitta not coming up all the time. I would say that it’s a fair enough question. I definitely noticed some big changes. I am still capable of getting very, very niggled by certain people in certain situations.
What I particularly noticed is that these states don’t last now, whereas I used to get upset and perhaps stew over it for a few days. I can sort of be really stewing over it for fifteen minutes and then it suddenly sort of recurs, oh I don’t have to be bothered about this!’ Which is a great relief, you know? And so nowadays, when I see myself getting really bothered and niggled, kind of tell myself, Oh, you know, in fifteen minutes, tell myself, or perhaps an hour if it’s really bad or something, I’ll be sort of looking at it quite differently, and that helps too. It’s not going to last. Yes, you can sort of see how you’re filling yourself into these annoyed states, and once you start to see it often enough, it really helps you to not get into them.
But of course, it is still very much an instinctive reaction and you do get into them, so it doesn’t stop. Yes. I probably have more of a problem now with sort of underlying sort of trouble with people, not the sort of thing that bursts out in a real sort of feeling of rage, but just sort of finding particular people, you know, I just don’t want to be around them, or I can’t stand her, know, I’ll just keep away from her, that sort of thing. I still have a lot of difficulty with that, there are certain people that I just want to keep away from, and that’s that, you know. That’s an aversion.
That is an aversion, it’s a lower level of anger and dislike and so on. And I suppose because extreme, it’s probably going to be a lot harder to get rid of. The more subtle it gets, the harder it is to get rid of. Yes. Nowadays if I have too many confrontations with the same person, I might not sort of stew over the confrontations, but it’s going to leave a residue that I find that I have a sort of negative attitude towards that person and find it very hard to deal with them in an open sort of a way.
So that’s it too. As you work through each level, you start to see more clearly what the next thing is that you have to work on. You start to identify problems that weren’t even problems to you before, because you were more occupied with a bigger problem, but then you get on to the next level of work. So there’s plenty of work to be done. Do you want to take a little break and stand up and rest your legs?
Wasn’t it? Okay, so now we’re going to look at the practice of taking refuge. And we have to practice the refuge visualization, first of all. We have to build up the refuge visualization. Now, they don’t see any pictures of the refuge visualization, but it’s pretty much in the same order as the visualization that we do for the Merit Field.
But whereas for the merit field, you’ve got all the different beings on different tiers. You’ve got this lotus with many tiers, and you’ve got some of the Gurus up in space, that one there. But here we’re visualizing all the visualization is on the level, but in tears going up from the center. Not tears, but rings going up from the center. Concentric circles.
Exactly. And in the center, we have Śākyamūni Buddha. So I’ll just read you out a nice clear explanation of this visualization. It’s like any visualization that we do. We shouldn’t think of it as being solid.
It’s all made of light. The bodies of the beings and their thrones, everything is made of light. And it’s not flat like a picture, it’s three-dimensional. And it’s not still like statues or a picture, it’s in movement. We have to visualize that these beings are doing all sorts of things.
They’re debating with one another, and sending out emanations that are coming and going, and they’re giving teachings and performing all sorts of virtuous activities. So just to get you an idea of it, don’t think it’s going to be simple. The good news is that if you don’t want to do this very complicated visualization, then you can visualize Śākyamūni Buddha as representing all the Three Jewels of refuge just in that one form of Śākyamūni Buddha. And it’s also a good idea to start to familiarize yourself with a more complex visualization and gradually become accustomed to it because it’s one that’s very important in tradition. I’ve got some printouts here too.
I haven’t got enough printouts for everybody. But if you’re interested in having this printout, I could perhaps do some more copies. In any case, you can work it out fairly well by reading the refuge visualization, which comes at the beginning of not the refuge visualization, but the merit field visualization, which is explained at the beginning of Guru Puja. And, of course, also there’s a lot of explanation here in Pabongka Rinpoche’s book. In fact, it’s so complex complicated in there that I chose not to read from there, but to read this one out instead.
And this is from a practice on visualizing visualizing for the refuge, if you’re doing the refuge mandala. Was talking last week about the difference between the mandala practices and the refuge and the and the ordinary preliminaries. But when it comes to refuge, the way it’s explained here is exactly the same in this book as it is when you’re doing the Mandala practices. There’s absolutely no difference. What Pabongka Rinpoche is talking about in here is exactly what you do when you take refuge as part of your Mandala, when you do the hundred thousand repetitions of the refuge formula for your preliminary to tantric practice.
It’s just the same, whereas some of them are a bit different. So it’s a visualization of the merit field is that you visualize your mother, female relatives, and all the females on your left, your father, male relatives, and all males on your right, enemies in front, and friends behind you. And around that, you would have all the sentient beings. Oh, it doesn’t actually say so in this in this printout, but it’s understood there are all sentient beings around you. And Pabongka Rinpoche says we should visualize them as being like no.
Actually, Lama Zopa Rinpoche, but he would have got that from the the text of the lamas. I’m not I don’t remember whether Pabongka Rinpoche says it or not. You should visualize, anyway, these all these living beings as being all these sentient beings as being in the form of human beings, but as having the sufferings of whatever respective realm they’re in. So you look at them, Lama Zopa gives an incredibly vivid description in this book, which of how they have their eyes wide open and they’re all sort of looking to you to to help release them from suffering. So you think that you’re acting as like the chant leader to all these beings and and you’re leading them to take refuge in the Three Jewels of refuge.
So that’s just the start. Then in the center, about six feet from you and at the level of your forehead, you’re visualizing a large jewelled golden throne supported by eight snow lions. And it’s similar to the one that we visualized Buddha sitting on. But what we visualize next, There should be five thrones on that throne. Five smaller thrones on top of the large throne.
The central one is raised a bit higher than the other four, and those are in the four directions, one in front, one behind, one to the left, one to the right. Then on that central throne in which is higher than the others, you visualize Śākyamūni Buddha, who is really, in essence, your root guru. If you have a root guru, then you can think that Śākyamūni Buddha is really your root guru. But if you don’t have a root guru, just you can just think that it’s Śākyamūni Buddha. His then he’s in the usual position in which we normally visualize him with his right hand is in the mudra of touching the earth, the earth-touching mudra, and his left hand is, with the palm upturned, holding a a bowl filled with nectar, and so on.
All these things which come in the visualizations visualizations of Buddha, which we do all the time. We’ll be doing that later on, so don’t worry too much about the details. Now it’s written out in many different places. On the throne in front of Buddha, you visualize your root guru in his ordinary aspect but without any physical defects. And he’s got his right hand in the mudra of teaching and his left hand in the mudra of concentration, holding a long life vase filled with nectar.
And he’s surrounded by all of your other direct gurus in this life. And you visualize that all of these direct gurus are towards face towards you and looking at you. All the other and, course, Śākyamūni Buddha is also facing towards you. All the other visualized beings in the refuge field are faced inwards as if they were in a big arena and facing inwards towards Buddha. So all all your living direct gurus are seated on golden cushions.
All the ones who have passed away are on cushions with a lotus and a moon disc. I’m sorry, on thrones with a lotus and moon disc for cushions. It’s not auspicious to visualize your living gurus on on a, yeah, lotus and moon disc, so you visualize them on cushions instead. Then on the throne to the left is the Buddha is Mañjuśrī, surrounded by the lineage lamas of profound wisdom. These include Nāgārjuna, Candrakīrti, his disciples, Buddhapālita and Candrakīrti, Atisha and Dromtonpa, who was a layperson, the only layperson in this lineage.
Potowa Rinchen Sal, Neusurpa, It goes on and on and on, right down to the present lamas of that lineage. On the throne to the right of the Buddha is Maitreya Buddha surrounded by the lineage lamas of the extensive method. Asaṇga, Vasubandhu, Vimuktasena, Govindasena, Vairocanasena, Vinitasena, and so on and so on. Right down and they all come down to Lama Tsongkhapa. And then after Lama Tsongkhapa so you have to have Lamat Tsongkhapa on both sides.
And after that, you have all the Lamas who follow Lama Tsongkhapa who combine the two lineages would also have to be on both sides. And there’s an empty seat at the end for the auspicious coming of future Lamas. I’ve also heard it said sometimes that the empty seat is for yourself when you become a lama. Oh, that’s not interesting. But, anyway, it’s particularly auspicious for future Lamas to come along and to guide us.
Then behind Buddha is vajradhara, Buddha Vajradhāra, blue colored Buddha, seated in full earnest posture with his hands in this crossed mudra with a bell and a dorje in his right hand and a bell in his left hand. And he’s sitting on that throne behind, surrounded by the lineage of of the tantric practice. Then surrounding these five thrones are four circles of tantric deities. Actually, that doesn’t add up. There should be I think there should be five circles.
Because there are two circles of the Maha Anuttara Yoga Tantra deities. Because you have a small inner circle of the four chief deities, and then beyond that, you have the circle of the the secondary deities of Anuttara Yoga Tantra. And then around that, there are the four types of Tantra. So around that, you have the the Anuttara Yoga Tantra deities, then the circle of the Caryā Tantra deities, and then a circle of the Kriyā Yoga tantra deities. So don’t worry about that.
But when you get to do this visualization perfectly, have to visualize all of these. Is there a shorter book? Yes, you can visualize Śākyamūni Buddha as combining all of these. Okay, so that makes you like that. Can you do this?
No way. But there are some meditators who can. Of course, you would really for most of wouldn’t even know who all these deities are. You would have had to have studied the tantric lineages and everything to really know who they are. I don’t even know who half the lineage gurus of the found and extensive lineages are.
So there then beyond this is a circle of the Nirmānakāya aspects of Buddhas, including the thousand founding Buddhas of the fortunate aeon. How’s the time going? Oh, I’m terribly sorry. We’ve gone past lunchtime. Oh, well, did.
Yes. Okay. Well, I’ll just finish these circles, and then we can come back. So I didn’t leave I wasn’t even looking at the time. I’m sorry.
Circles of Sambhogakāya aspects of Buddhas, including the thousand founding Buddhas of the fortunate aeon, with whom we have connections, the thirty five Buddhas of confession, powerful for for purifying negative karma and broken vows, and the eight medicine Buddhas who have promised to quickly grant all the prayers we’ve made in these degenerate times. And also then we have the refuge object of Dharma, which is pretty simple. It’s in the form of texts, which are on little tables next to in front of each lama. But if they’ve written too many texts for you to visualize them in front, such as, for instance, Lama Tsongkhapa, wrote a huge pile of texts, then you would have to visualize the texts on little tables beside them. And then refuge object of Sangha.
So next we have a circle of bodhisattvas, such as the eight disciples of Śākyamūni Buddha, and the other bodhisattvas. Then around them you have a circle of solitary realizer arhats, and beyond them you have a circle of hearer arhats, and around them you have a circle of dakas and dakinis. There seems to be different ways to visualize them. Either you can visualize all the the dakas on one side and the dakinis on the other, or you can visualize them alternately, a daka and then a dakini. And around those, you’ve got the dharma protectors.
And then beyond those, you’ve got the four direction protectors with the eastern one in front of you who are not these are not on the throne. These are off the throne on clouds below the throne, because they’re supposed to be worldly beings, although there seems to be some discussion about that too. And also it’s also sometimes said that they’re holy beings who’ve manifested as these in the form of these worldly beings. But, anyway, we to be on the safe side, we visualize them on thrones, on clouds in in each direction of the of the big throne. So That one you just telling us, please make that one look quite small, don’t you?
Yes. Yes. Okay. So that just about finishes that visualization. It’s too difficult the visualization, if it’s too difficult to visualize all this, just know this line is this is the Kriyā Tantra deities and so on.
So just visualize them in a general sort of way. Just sort of for instance, there’s one particular standard visualization that you can have for all the arhats. You know, they all look pretty much the same. With the Kriyatantra deities, you could just of think of one particular deity and and That could be that could be. Oh, that could be generated, for example, or Tārā.
And sort of just think that there’s a lot of others there. Everyone in the merit field, except your direct gurus, is facing the central figure, Śākyamūni Buddha, like in a sports stadium. All these figures are made of rainbow like and are extremely radiant like a golden pot with a flame inside. They are alive, discussing Dharma with each other and transforming into various aspects to work for beings and reabsorbing their transformations when the work is finished. All the pores of their bodies are pure lands.
So if you find that you’ve got all the details visualized clearly there, then you can start to visualize all their pores as being pure lands. And all the pure lands have visualizations of all these beings in them as well. So they’re very pleased to see you doing this practice of taking refuge. Don’t worry, but when you gain single point of concentration, you can start to do these kinds of visualizations. That’s why it’s so amazing.
It’s not for the next thirty years. I haven’t been able last time to go without any nasty words. That’s true. That’s very true. So they’re very pleased to see doing this practice of taking refuge and meditating on lamrim instead of doing the opposite to what the Buddhas and bodhisattvas have told you to do, like a mother whose naughty child does something good for once.
And when you recall the qualities of kindness and so on of everyone in the merit field and sees them being extremely pleased with you, just looking at the mirrored field fills you with joy and bliss, while the minds in this state of strong devotion generate the special bodhicitta motivation. So I think the main thing is to visualize mainly Buddha and your root guru, and if possible, other direct gurus, and try to get some sort of feeling of them really being there. Or at least just visualize Buddha and really with the thought that he is the embodiment of all your actual gurus. So we’ll finish there. So we’ll dedicate our merits as it says on page page five, I think, of the book.
Page six. Could you do it in You can turn off the if you’d like to it in Tibetan, yes, that would be good.