Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 101-minute session from week three of a daily practice course, Ven Thubten Dondrub guides students through the foundational elements of establishing a sustainable Buddhist meditation routine. He begins by grounding the practice in the Buddha’s central teaching on cause and effect, then introduces bodhicitta—the compassionate intention to achieve enlightenment for the benefit of all sentient beings—as the supreme motivation for any spiritual work. Dondrub walks students methodically through the preparatory steps: creating a clean meditation space, making water-bowl offerings to accumulate merit, generating refuge in the Buddha and the path, visualizing Śākyamūni Buddha in detail (from his golden throne supported by snow lions to the symbolism of the lotus, sun disc, and moon disc beneath him), and cultivating the four immeasurable thoughts of equanimity, loving-kindness, compassion, and sympathetic joy toward all beings. Throughout, he emphasizes why receiving teachings repeatedly from qualified teachers is essential—not merely reading books—and stresses that understanding and transformation take time and genuine engagement. He also addresses common confusions about flexibility in practice, offering to work individually with students to clarify their own approach. Pitched at newcomers to Buddhist practice and serious practitioners seeking to establish a structured daily meditation routine.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 2014 01 21 DB Daily Practice Week 3 210114.mp3
UUID: 514dde51-4f77-48b9-be92-2baeda280225
Teacher: Ven Thubten Dondrub
Collection: DB Daily Practice (Ven Thubten Dondrub)
Date: 2014-01-21
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 101.3 minutes
Words: ~12,372
Just a couple of announcements. If and when we have discussion groups for this course, there there I’ve divided everyone in or or the group into three groups, and that your names are on the the notice board outside so in the break you could check which group you’re in. Okay, so we might have a discussion group tonight, may not. I’m not sure if we do anyway the discussion group questions are over there. Also just to remind you, especially for the newer people, please remember every week to check this table to put your completed homework in, collect last week’s homework and collect your next homework.
And also sometimes there are different handouts to collect so they’ll all be over there to collect before the class starts or in the break time. Okay and the other thing is the retreat day has been changed, just moved forward one day to from the Sunday. It’s advertised, I think you in your schedule, it mentions, I think, that it’s on Sunday the second, but it will be on Saturday the first. I hope that will be okay. So it’ll be from, what is it, nine o’clock, I think, nine till three thirty.
So I would really encourage people to enroll for that because it is meant to be part although there’s a unfortunately extra charge for it and whatever, but it is meant to be an integral part of each of each course, whether there’s a chance to really go through some of the main practices together, which can be very helpful. Most people find the retreat days very helpful, enjoyable. Some people may think a whole day of retreat sounds incredibly difficult, but they’re not. They’re very easygoing and pleasant. And we ask people to bring a plate of vegetarian food to share with everyone if they can.
So those yeah. Okay. So if you would like to join in the traditional prayers that we do each session. So this is on page twelve. So essential teaching of the Buddha or one of the crucial pivotal teachings of the Buddha is the law of cause and effect, which which says that every the Buddha didn’t make this up.
This is what the, you know, Buddha being the ultimate scientist perceived how things actually, how reality actually works and the Buddha perceived that everything we do everything has an effect. So the nature of the effect depends on the nature of the cause. So that’s why when we listen or when we try and do anything, especially in following anything in relation to the Buddhist practice, it’s really important that the cause of what we do, you know, the reason, the motivation is a really good one to and try and make it as best as possible, as strong as possible, as conscious and clear, and as genuine as possible. And the very best motivation we can have for doing anything is the bodhicitta motivation, which has two aspects. It’s one the basic aspect is recognizing and feeling the great suffering of all sentient beings and wanting to help all sentient beings without exception to become completely free of all suffering and all its causes and to help them to achieve perfect happiness in its causes.
And because of that, then that leads to the second aspect of bodhicitta which is wanting to achieve enlightenment, being determined to achieve enlightenment, to realize the full potential of mind, understanding that only as an enlightened being can one free sentient beings from suffering and lead them to happiness. As we can’t do it as an unenlightened being. We can help in some ways, but we will always be limited. It’s only as an unlimited enlightened being that we can be of perfect help to all sentient beings. Why should we?
Because they are suffering and especially because all these suffering beings are intimately connected to me. Especially every sentient being because of beginningless saṃsāra, beginningless mind, has been my mother, has been my father over and over again. Even when we’re not in those very intimate close relationships with sentient beings, we depend on them in every other way. As I often say, if you check just to eat a piece of toast for breakfast or whatever you eat for breakfast or whatever you eat at any time, drink, wear, use, it all depends on others either directly or indirectly. Right?
So directly the piece of oh, I think you can understand that directly the piece of toast depends on various people like the shopkeeper and blah blah blah. But then there are more indirectly the people who grew it. More indirectly, they could only grow the wheat or whatever because people grew it before them and then people before them going back into the history of this world. Right? So just have a piece of toast depends on all the kindness of all the human beings who’ve ever lived on this planet, plus all the animals, you know, who’ve, you know, helped made growing wheat possible.
Including the tiny insects in the soil that make the soil and make the soil, having made the soil, then they make it fertile. So we and so so this is true for every day of this life. It’s true for all of our previous lives. It’s true for all our future lives that we are totally dependent on all sentient beings. And not just for basic things, but for all the good things in our life, all the good experiences, the the the the good qualities and skills we develop, all of it arises depending directly, indirectly, indirectly on the kindness of others.
But sadly, all these beings are suffering, and they don’t understand completely why they’re suffering, how to really effectively reduce, eliminate, transform that suffering. Because of that, in their confusion, most beings, much of the time, trying to be happy, trying to be free of suffering, are in reality creating the causes of more suffering, more saṃsāra. So this is really an unbearable situation. So by thinking about that, we can generate this wish that I must use this and all of my future lives to to eliminate every every hindering negative quality in my mind and awaken all the positive qualities completely in a way that they will never decline. So that then, as a perfect Buddha, I can perfectly benefit others.
So to achieve enlightenment, we have to follow the path. To do that, We have to know the path. That’s why we have to listen to the teachings over and over again. And we and but then we have to apply those teachings in our daily life. And that’s why we need to establish a daily practice.
Because this will benefit daily practice will benefit us in that day, that week, that month, that year, that life. But that daily practice helps us to achieve good rebirths, helps us to create the causes to eliminate overcome and become free of saṃsāra. It helps us to achieve enlightenment. We need to establish a daily practice for our own sake, for all sentient beings. And having established it, to keep it going.
So we can think for the sake of all kind sentient beings I will study this topic in order to establish a daily practice for the sake of all beings. So we think of the Buddha in front of us as our source of refuge, inspiration, guidance, all sentient beings surrounding us as I’ve explained before. I go for refuge until I’m enlightened to the Buddha, Dharma, and the supreme assembly. By the merits I create through listening to the Dharma, may I become a Buddha in order to benefit all sentient beings. So then we can imagine that the Buddha in front of us now approaches the crown of our head and when directly above our crown we imagine that the Buddha turns to face the same direction as our self and then dissolves into blissful golden light which pours down into us, blessing our mind.
And then we can do the nine round breathing exercise just for a short time to help establish a calmer, clearer, more concentrated mind so that we can use that level of mind to listen to and think about the Buddha’s teachings tonight. Okay. Thank you. So just to recapitulate a little bit, in establishing a daily practice, basically, we want to try to get into the habit of meditating every day, meditating on the Buddha’s teachings every day. So particularly in the tradition that we follow here, what we’re encouraged to meditate on is what is called the teachings of the graduated path because they they set out the in an essential form the whole path to enlightenment as the Buddha taught it, and it sets out all the essential meditations that we need to do to transform our mind.
And so these teachings on the graduated path are called the lam rim. So if we can study and receive teachings on the Lamrim, study them, meditate on them this is really the most important thing. They are incredibly helpful, very useful. So this is the best thing. Also to learn to concentrate our mind by doing some breathing meditation as well.
This is also helpful. Or some kind of concentration meditation is useful. And to combine those two. But also to make those things work we need to purify our mind, put effort into purifying our mind and also accumulating merit. So these are yeah.
And of course establishing a daily practice involves training the mind in the essential qualities of the spiritual path, the Mahāyāna path which is developing renunciation, letting go of reducing our attachment to the things of this life, attachment to cyclic existence. We need to be able to do this. We need to cultivate bodhicitta and the essential aspects of bodhicitta, of course, are loving kindness and compassion. And we need to develop wisdom, allowing our mind to see things more and more clearly, developing penetrative insight into the reality of our self and all things. So this is what establishing a daily practice is about.
So accomplishing those things step by step. So? In establishing a practice also assumes that one is learning the Buddhadharma right, by attending some teachings. Some people think, a lot of people in the West have this idea, have developed this idea that you don’t really need to listen to teachings, you don’t listen to don’t need teachers and teach the oral teachings and whatever. You just can read the books yourself.
You know, all the all the Buddhist teachings are available in books, so you just read the books and apply them. This sounds like it could work, and it certainly sounds very easy, but it really does not work. The the the Buddhadharma is something much more than words. You know? You can’t even the most intelligent, educated person, I think, cannot really get the Dharma without it having without it without having it oh my gosh.
Without without it being explained by someone who knows it and has is living it to some degree. So the the more qualified the teacher, the more beneficial it is. But even a slightly qualified teacher can help you a bit. Yeah. And please don’t think I mean, some people think that that by attending one course, one DB course on one topic, they now know that topic.
Oh, I’ve heard that. I mean, it’s ridiculous. It takes years and years of even just listening to the teachings to get them, let alone then you have to spend years meditating on them until the real real the real realizations, the transformation comes. But especially I’m trying I hope this I’m not making trying to make this too difficult and complicated, but particularly for us who who we we come from a different culture, influenced by different religions to cut through all the stuff, our our preconcepts, preconceptions about Buddhism or what it should be or what I want it to be, to be able to cut through all that, to be able to actually hear and understand what it actually is takes time. Yeah.
It really does take time of hearing it from others, thinking about it oneself, under trying to put it into practice, meditate on it, put it into practice. So anyway, the point I’m trying to make is we our daily practice really depends a lot, I think, on putting effort into taking teachings on regular basis. I think that is extremely helpful. Some people get to the point where they think they don’t need to hear the teachings anymore. But this is kind of misguided, really.
His Holiness the Dalai Lama teaches, all the people who come, like the Tibetans who come, including the thousands of monks, are not just the ordinary monks, but even the highest Lamas come to listen to His Holiness, not out of politeness, but because they understand that by hearing someone more realized, they can advance on the path. You you never get too realized to hear the teachings again and again. We shouldn’t make that mistake. So on the basis of studying the receiving teachings and having that interest in studying the teachings, we establish a daily practice. Does anyone want to comment on that or ask some questions or debate or argue?
Which practice we start with? Well, I’ll I’ll try and answer that as we go along tonight. Yeah. Okay. Right.
So daily practice is, as I said, we try and get something going in the morning and maybe something at night as well. So in the morning the idea is to have a place ideally where one can meditate. You try and make that a nice clean space. You clean it. You have an altar of some description.
You make offerings on the altar because this is a way to accumulate merit. A traditional way is to do the water bowl offering practice. Having at least one set You can have two, three, four. You can fill the entire room. Some of you may know my teacher Lama Zopa Rinpoche.
He has a house. He’s sort of in theoretically, he is based in in California, and he has a house there. I mean, he’s Nepalese. Comes from Nepal originally. But and and quite a few other people live in this house, and there is one nun who’s who is kind of nominated.
She spends her entire day filling water bowls. There are rooms full of water bowls. Some is big, you know, like, she they can hardly lift up. Some very small. But all day long, they have filled hundreds and thousands of them.
Yeah. It just happens to be that there are a group of nuns there, so they do it. Yeah. But elsewhere, anyone does that. Lamas themselves, yes, do it.
So the one one of the ideas for that is so people students all around the world can think of all these water bowls and then use them as the basis to offer to the Buddha. So there’s a few places around the world where this is done, also in Kopan monastery and so on. So, anyway, so at least we can do one set. That was my point. Yeah.
So then having done that, the the the next step in the the the preparatory practices is to someone said, I don’t understand why we have to do preparatory practices. They are preparing the mind. We need to prepare our mind so that the effort we do in the actual meditation will bear the greatest fruit. So that means as much as possible, like in general, to achieve the realizations, have to purify our mind and accumulate merit. In in many teachings, it makes the point that you achieve enlightenment when you complete the two accumulations.
There is the accumulation of merit and the accumulation of wisdom. So to do that, one has to purify the mind and accumulate merit. We have to get rid of the obstacles, and we have to accumulate the the the encouraging forces. It’s just so simple. Right?
Yeah. So obvious if you think about it. So this is why we do so that’s how we prepare the mind. So that that’s why we do the water bowl offering. And then the next step, Christina, is to, as I mentioned, we can do well, if we’re following if we go to our little meditation booklet, having set up the altar, we if we want to do that, no compulsion, but I’m just setting you know, this is the tradition.
Then, Rinpoche suggests to do that preliminary motivation, which is set out on pages, three and four. And then having sort of done a preliminary motivation, and you can do it more extensively than that, and it doesn’t have to be that, but that’s just sort of indicating we shouldn’t the point is we shouldn’t just do things like habitually but really think about why we’re doing all of this and the more we can do that the more effective it will be. So having prepared the altar nicely as much as we can then we consciously generate a good motivation, and then we can do prostrations. So as I said last week, we can if we’ve only got that much time or interest or energy, we do at least three prostrations. That’s the tradition.
But if you’ve got the time and energy, then you can do the the the actual thirty five Buddha practice, Either one set, you know, reciting so many ways you can do it very quickly, where you where you only recite the names once. One set, you can do it very quickly. One set medium speed, one set slowly, or you could do two sets very quickly, medium, or very slowly, or three sets. You know, so many possibilities there. Right?
So right. Okay. So we do the prostrate so I’ve explained those. So are there any questions about doing the prostrations? Can I help in any way about that?
Is that don’t be shy because, you know yes. Yes. Yes. You you were given a or should have got. You don’t have that one?
Yes. This is the thirty five Buddhas. And but also you have it. It’s all set out in there, but this is a condensed, you know, the essential thing. Both.
You have a choice. I I yeah. Yes. I I I don’t know the Tibetan at all. I’ve always done it in English.
Yeah. From yeah. I never learned the Tibetan. It’s one of the few things I’ve never bothered to learn in Tibetan. But I’m sorry.
But it’s up to you. What bit? Yes, yes. That’s refuge. I say your name throughout all times.
Take refuge to the Buddha, Dharman, Sangha three times. Yes. Yes. You say the whole thing, yeah, as many times as you can. Yeah.
From the yeah. You can there’s so many ways. You can you can stand up and say the whole name and then prostrate, but it’s much easier to say the name as you’re prostrating. Yeah. Can I make a I you know, the our organization sorry?
Shouldn’t say the word. Organization. Anyway, we’re in this international group of centers that have been developed. And over the years I mean, we are one of the main Buddhist groups in, you know, in the world, you know, worldwide groups to teaching Tibetan Buddhism. So what we’ve tried to do is stand and everything has to be translated into different languages.
So there’s been an attempt to standardize the English translation of things. See, I learned this many, many years ago and since then it’s changed about four times which drives me crazy. So that’s why I get confused when I try and lead it in front of people. But so I try and follow the official party line when I teach. So, you here it sets out, like for example, after you’ve said the Buddha’s name, says the next Buddha the Buddha called thoroughly destroying with vajra essence.
So you say, Thutathagata thoroughly destroying with vajra essence I prostrate. What I secretly do, because you can say it much more quickly, is I just say, homage Thagatha thoroughly destroying with vajra essence, homage Thagatha so and so, because you can do that much more quickly. Because I think it’s a bit strange to say I prostrate because the Buddha can see that you’re prostrating to him, so you don’t have to tell him you’re prostrating too. Because actually, what saying homage to to Thagata so and so, that is more closely aligned with the Sanskrit because the Sanskrit says Namu as and then the name of the Buddha, Namu Śākyamūni. And Namu means homage.
Prost you know, it means high prostrate. So I do that, but it’s not strictly what the official FPMT translation says. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Okay. So is that a no. You what hole practice? No. No.
No. I just said it’s good to try and do try and do the prostration first, Christina. This is where you do the either you can do three or you can do the thirty five Buddha practice at this point, either very quickly or elaborately. Your choice or not at all. And then you do the Śākyamūni Buddha.
Right? Śākyamūni yes. Right. Yeah. That’s the way.
Okay. So so then if one is very keen as as well as doing the if you do the thirty five Buddhas it’s not necessary to do this but if you only do the three prostrations you can say this page five the Guru Śākyamūni prayer and mantra which I mentioned last week, I think. Lama Yeshe, the founder of our FPMT organization, very fond of. He always used to say it at the beginning of teachings. So it’s nice to learn the tune to that in Tibetan, but you can say it in English if you like.
So one could use that prayer as well. So then the next prayer that is done traditionally, this is like you could mark this as an optional extra if you if you want to you know if you want to do things more briefly you could leave this out But traditionally, there is the prayer called purifying the place where as you chant this, you imagine you sort of try and have the sense that you’re not just in an ordinary you’re not just in your bedroom or in some room in your house or just in an ordinary place, but it’s an incredibly beautiful pure place. A perfect environment where you can invite the Buddha to be present to bless you as you’re meditating. Okay. So I won’t bore you with chanting.
If you have got the recording, you can download the recording. I chanted it last week so you can listen to it to become familiar with the tune. Actually, I can try and we can make a sort of separate CD or something with all of these tunes on it in Tibetan including myself doing the prostrations if you like. Committee could organize that at some point. So then there’s the the offering cloud technically, it’s not a mantra, but a Dharani.
But I don’t know what the difference between a Dharani and mantra is. I’ve never really just other than the Dharani seems to be longer than most mantras. As I tried to say last week, and this is something it’s really inexplicable, that mantras seem to have are believed to have great power. How to explain this? I don’t think there is any way to really explain it.
You can either believe it or not depending on how much refuge you have. But certainly my teacher, my guru, has incredible faith in the power of mantras and encourages the use of these mantras a lot. So since we’ve set out these offerings on the altar, hopefully we have, so then it is believed by reciting this mantra it increases the offerings and also as one recites this Dharani or mantra, one imagines visualizing all sorts of beautiful offerings. And not just what like, if you can visualize an apple, you don’t just try and visualize one, but thousands and millions and they’re all multiplying like lots of flowers and food and music and all sorts of beautiful things. Whatever you think is beautiful that, you would like to have, think of millions of them filling space and you offer them to the Buddha.
So my teacher Lama Zopa Rinpoche says actually any time when you make offerings, not just in the morning but any any other time you may make offerings on the altar or on so on, it’s really good to recite this mantra three times. Rinpoche has on number of occasions has given whole teachings on the benefits of this mantra and all the all the karmic effects of reciting this mantra, none of which I can remember right now. But I’ll try and check them up and let you know all the karmic effects of reciting this this mantra. So then one recites the power of truth, where it says, by the power of truth of the three rare sublime ones, which is referring to the Buddha, the Dharma, and Sangha. The blessings of all the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas.
So a Bodhisattva is someone who has generated bodhicitta. Right? The great wealth of the completed two collections. So there is the reference to the two collections, meaning the collections of merit and wisdom. And the sphere of phenomena being pure and inconceivable, may these piles of clouds of offerings arising through transformation by the bodhisattvas, Ārya Samantabhādra, Mañjuśrī, and so forth.
So Samant in in the Mahāyāna tradition well, of course, there are countless Buddhas and countless bodhisattvas. But in the Mahāyāna tradition, there are eight particular great bodhisattvas who are called Mahāsattva bodhisattvas. Great beings, super great bodhisattvas, and these are like the main upholders of the the, Mahāyāna teachings. So Samantabhādra is one of these. And also Mañjuśrī who is the embodiment of wisdom, also Avalokiteśvara, the embodiment of great compassion, vajrapani, who is the embodiment of the the power of the enlightened mind.
So Samantabhādra, one of the features of special qualities of the Bodhisattva, Samantabhādra, is that when he was a bodhisattva you know, yeah, as a bodhisattva, he he was became famous for making incredible offerings to the Buddhas. And what he would do is he would his special method of making offerings was that he would visualize a particularly beautiful offering and then he would imagine that from that one offering millions of rays of light would come out and on the tips of those rays of light was a replica of that offering. Then millions of rays of light would come out from the replicas and on the tips of those rays of light were more replicas. And so it was ever expanding. So from this one offering billions of offerings would come and from each of those billions of offerings billions and billions of offerings would come filling space.
So this is how he accumulated a lots of merit. Because just by visualizing making offerings, it is the same as physically making them if one does it with sincerity. Yeah. So by making offerings this way, one creates merit. So the more one can actually visualize then the more merit we make.
Myself, I’ve made very little merit this way because I find it very difficult to but we can try. So my teacher, Lama Zopa Rinpoche, emphasizes a lot the the the importance of creating merit and how easy it is because and and how much fun it is because just by visualizing making offerings, it makes merit. And the more merit, the the then we are just like in ordinary life, just very roughly, very generally speaking, the more money you have, the more easy one’s life can be, the more comfortable one’s life is in general. I mean yeah. Yeah.
If you’ve got lots of money or, you know, enough money, then you can get the things that make life comfortable and deal with some problems up to a point. But even more so, the more merit one has, the more things go well. But much more than money, money can never guarantee things going well. Merit does. Merit doesn’t fail.
That is actually what makes things go well. Money doesn’t make the world go round. Merit does. Well, actually, merit makes the world go away. It makes saṃsāra disappear.
We need lots. Do you agree? I know lots of people really dislike this. Buddhists dislike they this idea because they think it’s about being a goody goody. But in a sense, being a Buddhist is trying to be a goody goody.
We’re trying to be good, trying to be virtuous. That’s what brings happiness. But the merit is not just for our own happiness. It’s for every being’s happiness. Yeah.
I can’t help myself. I have to tell this story. I often tell it many times. So when I when I was in I lived in Taiwan. I got sent to Taiwan for three years to teach the Dharma or pretend to teach the Dharma.
It’s a very, very difficult period of my life. Anyway, while I was there, I had the good fortune to meet, a very, very, very revered famous nun who’s I’m I’m I’m very sorry. I’ve forgotten her name. Who she became extremely famous because she dedicated much of her life and all the nuns who followed her to building a hospital, a very large hospital somewhere in Taiwan, was offered all treatment completely free. Why she did this was because when she was a young nun at one point she visited a hospital And while she was there, this very poor young pregnant woman came in who was just about to give birth, and she wasn’t allowed she wasn’t accepted because she couldn’t afford it.
And she ended up having the baby there on the floor of you know, in the waiting you know, in the entrance, blood everywhere and everything. And this young nun was horrified by this, and and she said, you know, she she, you know, she would she vowed. She made this vow that she would do everything to make sure that no poor person was ever turned away from a hospital again. So then she she at this stage, because she was an amazing practitioner. She already had a group of nuns following her.
And so she she said that they had to work, and and the the money they got in the monastery, they worked in the monastery making incense and stuff, and they started saving this money to build a hospital. Then people started to get to know this, and they started to help and give donations and help and it turned into a huge organization and they end up building a teaching hospital. And this organization is now all over the world. It’s it’s huge. It was one of the I don’t remember the name of it.
I should know. But and I met her. She’s amazing person. So the point was to accomplish my point. My first point is to accomplish this amazing thing of building not only a hospital, but a teaching hospital, is completely free.
It needs money, not just nice wishes. You know? You need stuff. You need money isn’t evil. It, you know, it can be used for horrible purposes, but it can be used for really, really good purposes.
But to do good things in the world, you need money. Right? You don’t just be holy. You know, you have to have, you know, you have to have stuff. Like, to run this center, it needs a lot of money.
If we had more money, then the air conditioning would work better. If we had more money, we could have our own center where we could do really terrific things. But, anyway, that was just a little ad, by the way. Sorry. So my, you know, so my my real point is in the same way that you need money to accomplish good stuff in in the world to, you know, to achieve super good stuff, transcendental good stuff, one needs lots of merit.
Right? Well, up to a point it is, because we don’t have bodhicitta yet. We have an idea, well, I’m just speaking myself, that you know it’s nice to be nice to people, but we have we don’t as ordinary people have this intense wish to free you know, to suffer in order so that and do difficult things so other people don’t have to suffer. But the more we develop that we see that to accomplish all these things we need merit. Because as I tried to say last week, negative imprints before they ripen, they have this effect of obscuring our mind right now.
That is why we find it difficult to have, you know, to have faith or to deepen our faith. Even if we’ve got faith, it’s it’s difficult to understand the teachings. Then even if we understand them, if the more obscured our mind, it’s difficult to practice them and gain the realizations. That’s all because our mind is obscured. Right?
So that’s why we need to purify. The nature my understanding is that the merit even be the merit ripens as all sorts of terrific stuff, but it’s it’s also possible that in the same way in the opposite way that even before this ripens, the merit has this may maybe this is not true. I don’t know. That it it it it empowers the mind in a positive way just like the negative karma even before it ripens, you know, is an obstacle. It weighs down the mind.
Merit lightens the mind. You know, it it directs the mind in a positive way. But certainly when the merit ripens, it ripens as as all the things that we need to practice to be of benefit. The more merit, the more we achieve things. I mean, this is what we should try to understand.
Like, to practice the Dharma, one needs, a healthy body and a strong body. And, you know, some people, you can see they have tremendous sort of energy, you know, that to so, you know and so they can do stuff. They can go and go and go. So we need that. That depends on merit.
And you need intelligence. That depends on merit. And one needs, food and clothing and friends and a house and this and that. And you need to meet teachers, and you need to meet the right teachers, not weird, creepy ones. And you need to read meet the teachings.
And all of that all of that depends on merit. You you don’t meet the teachings by chance. You have to have the merit to meet the teachings, then you have to have the merit to have faith in them, and you need even more merit than to understand them. It just doesn’t happen. In words, you have to create the cause for good stuff.
You create the cause for bad stuff, you have to create the cause for good stuff. And the the karmic imprints of the of the good causes is called merit. We need that. It’s still merit. Yeah.
But according to the Buddhist understanding, if it’s not dedicated, then it can be easily destroyed by, you know, our delusions, especially anger. But any strong delusion that arises during the day of strong desire, anger, pride, jealousy can wipe out those positive imprints very easily. That’s why we the Buddha taught to dedicate the merit. For that that reason and also to dedicate it so that it doesn’t ripen as just ordinary samsaric pleasure and stuff, but it ripens in a very, you know, in a dharmic way. Yes.
Yeah. Any any, like, formal practice we do, it’s really good to dedicate it straight away. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Well, also, an official dedication prayer there, which you’re encouraged to use. Yeah. But you can also add your own personal things as well. Okay.
Rapidly moving along. Oh, okay. Well, the the dedication is not so much honoring the Buddha. It’s it’s the purpose of it, as I said, is, like, firstly protecting it so it will ripen in a good way. It will ripen and not get destroyed, but but particularly, it’s to make sure that it will act it will ripe you know, any you know, everyone creates, you know, positive actions, not just Buddhists, you know, not just people who have religious beliefs.
So but because they don’t have a specific motivation and a specific purpose for it, it can just ripen as some pleasant experience in cyclic existence. So we don’t we’re not creating merit for that purpose just to have, you know, nice things in our life. We’re trying to create merit to be able to follow and complete the spiritual path. That’s that’s what we’re encouraged. So we dedicate it to achieving enlightenment.
We dedicate it to achieving a precious human rebirth, to meeting perfect teachers, and to always have the right attitude to perfect teachers so that we can we dedicate that we won’t have any obstacles in our in the path. Yeah. So all of that, you know, is is in one sense is about me, but underlying that is so that I can achieve enlightenment to benefit all sentient beings. This is the mind we’re trying to of course, it all comes from having great admiration for the Buddha and the Buddha’s qualities and what the Buddha does. But dedication as such is not honoring the Buddha.
It’s not for the purpose of honoring the Buddha. Generating refuge is part of that is honoring the Buddha. Yeah. Okay. So then comes the visualization.
Oh, hold it. Sorry. I’ve I’ve skipped. Purifying before purifying the place, that’s when we sit down. So when we sit down, we can then sort of check our posture, do the Vairochana posture, do the nine round breathing, that then you do purifying the place if you wish, blessing the offerings, the extensive power of truth.
And then there is the then there’s the main part of of of generating refuge. So some people here haven’t taken refuge and don’t feel it themselves Buddhist. So most people here at least think of themselves as being Buddhist. So anyway, take this as however you like. But, you know, in in establishing a daily practice, we’re we’re really talking about establishing a daily Buddhist practice for Buddhists.
So and at the at the very core of Buddhist practice is the Buddha. So we need to you know, we have a are assuming we have a connection with the Buddha. We want to maintain that connection of faith and devotion and refuge in the Buddha and to continuously, if we can, deepen that connection, that faith, that refuge. So this is why Lama Zopa Rinpoche bases this practice around, you know, Śākyamūni Buddha. So we now try and visualize the Buddha in front of us.
So we do this by reading this section. And as we read it, we try with our mental consciousness to create the image of the Buddha in front of us. So what we do is we visualize at the level of our forehead, yeah, and about an arm’s length away from us, so about there in space. We imagine is a golden throne, so it’s square and it has these kind of it’s in stages. Anyway, something like this one over here.
It’s got sort of steps at the bottom then then it’s straight and then it steps up. So it’s a golden throne. But it’s all in the nature of light, all visualizations. Although you imagine it is a particular thing, but one tries to imagine it as completely light. Nothing solid and concrete.
It’s like translucent light. You can see through it. It’s kind of like whatever the object is, it’s hollow and you can see through it. This is what we imagine. Alright.
So there’s this golden throne. It’s beautifully adorned with jewels supported each corner by a pair of snow lions. So these snow lions here, it says, signify the Buddha’s quality of fearlessness. Also, are eight of them because there are two at eight two at each corner, so they also are meant to embody these eight great bodhisattvas, the Mahāsattva protectors of the teachings. On the throne is a fully developed lotus which here it mentions signifies the Buddha’s holy body and mind unstained by the shortcomings of saṃsāra.
So in a simple way, it it it represents the mind of renunciation because just like a lotus actually grows out of mud, but in India, the lotus was considered the most beautiful pure flower possible. And yet this most beautiful pure flower grows in really muddy, ugly water, but it grows very high above the water. So it became a symbol that our mind right now, our mind is stuck in saṃsāra. Our mind’s controlled by delusions and karma like black water, muddy, polluted water. But yet our mind, by purifying the mind, we can renounce all that.
We can rise above all that and be completely we can live beyond that. So that’s what the lotus symbolizes, the our mind achieving the state of renunciation. And that’s what the Buddha achieved, perfect renunciation so that the Buddha can live, you know, in the in the world but be completely untouched by it, not affected in a negative way. Untouched not in the sense of indifferent because many people make the mistake of thinking renunciation and non attachment is you don’t care about anything. This is rubbish.
This is a neurotic state that we not caring about anything means you need to see a doctor. Nonattachment enables you to care about what is worth caring for, sentient beings and their suffering, and also oneself in in the right way. Nonattachment and renunciation doesn’t mean you don’t give a damn about anything, which is what some people think. You know, I’ve re achieved this high spiritual state, but I I because I don’t care about anything. That means something is really wrong with you if you don’t care about anything because there are things to be cared for, sentient beings, your yourself.
Anyway, I’ll never get a finish at this date at this rate. So then above the lotus is a sun disc lying horizontally symbolizing wisdom, wisdom that eliminates the darkness of ignorance, which is you know, causes our saṃsāra. And then on that, a moon disc. So there’s the sun there’s lotus, then a little bit smaller, the sun disc, a little bit smaller above is the moon disc symbolizing bodhicitta. So these are the three essential qualities we have to develop to achieve enlightenment renunciation, wisdom bodhicitta wisdom.
And then seated on the lotus sun and moon is Śākyamūni Buddha who has achieved perfect cessation of all suffering and obscurations and has attained all perfect realizations. He is the manifestation of the omniscient mind of all Buddhas, the ultimate guru. So the omniscient mind of all Buddhas is the ultimate guru that we rely on. That is the actual guru, the omniscient mind of the Buddha. Śākyamūni Buddha is inseparable from your root guru.
So if you have a main teacher that you feel is highly qualified, great realizations, that you see as someone you can totally rely on, you’ve made that connection. One should think that one’s root guru, the human teacher, not any ordinary teacher or even, anyway, but the root guru is actually, inseparably the same as Śākyamūni Buddha is an emanation of Śākyamūni Buddha who shows the unmistaken path and is bound with infinite compassion to you and all sentient beings. So we visualize the Buddha. Its body is in the nature of golden light, very magnificent, wearing the three robes of a monk, which is the lower robe and the two, upper monk, gold, saffron saffron robes. His face is beautiful, has a loving smile, compassionate eyes look toward you but simultaneously encompass all sentient beings.
So his eyes are sort of longish, narrow, and the eyes are a deep oh, goes on and explains that. His mind is free of all judgmental critical thoughts exceptionally. His eyes are long, narrow, and fine. The gaze is very peaceful. His eyes are half opened, half closed, half opened, and, his eyes are the iris is a deep blue color.
His lips are a red color. The hair are blue blue black, meaning a deep blue. Each hair individually curling to the right. On the crown of his head is a golden pinnacle which is actually part of his head. So above the hair appears this part of his crown which is called the in Sanskrit is called the Ushnisha.
The palm of his right hand rests on his right knee. The middle finger touching the moon cushion. His left hand rests in his lap in the mudra of meditation. In his left hand he is holding a bowl, a begging bowl, a monk’s begging bowl filled with nectar. So that nectar symbolizes the wisdom that the Buddha developed and that wisdom is what eliminates all suffering.
So just like nectar has come to symbolize this this the something that brings about immortality. So, the Buddha has achieved immortality, the deathless state. That nectar, that wisdom nectar that the Buddha has realized, he he is passing on to us. His teachings are, you know, are that wisdom nectar. So when we, you know, absorb that wisdom nectar, we will also be free of all sickness and all aging, and we will achieve the deathless state, free of all suffering.
And we will then be able to pass it on to others. So his body is in the vajra posture. This refers to the leg position of sitting in the posture, what what in the Hindu tradition is called the lotus posture. So that’s all depicted in our statue there. He sits peacefully in the center of interlaced beams of light.
Each feature of his holy body represents an aspect of his omniscient mind, his inner and and his inner attainments. Each feature also demonstrates the causes, the merit that was collected in the past. No matter how much one looks at Śākyamūni Buddha, one never feels satiated. So this is what we try to visualize. Okay, so we have to stop here for a tea break.
Oh, but before that, just any questions before just one or two. About visualizing, I think most people find it difficult, but don’t be put off. Just try. Through the power of familiarity, it will come at some point. But even if it if it doesn’t seem to come very much, the point is just putting in the effort is really beneficial for our mind.
It is purifying the mind in itself. Just trying to visualize the Buddha and focus on that is purifying the mind, accumulating merit. Because so much of the time, and we’re not even conscious of it, we are focusing on things which are not, you know, we’re visualizing stuff in our mind which is not beneficial, not very virtuous, not very meaningful. So to put some really concentrated effort with a, you know, with a really good motivation on trying to visualize the Buddha, that is really good thing to do for our mind. Yeah.
So we should be happy with the effort, not so much concerned about the result. The effort, the yeah, is the main thing. Right. Good. Nice point.
We could all yeah. Have a picnic. Have a lotus picnic. Okay. No.
Tea break. No. Didn’t know. Someone has mentioned in a very nice way that maybe the fact that I say there are so many ways to do the one thing is very confusing for people that some people would just prefer to say for me to say, do it this way. I want to emphasize that there are many ways of doing the one thing in Buddhist.
There’s no kind of rigid system. As a Buddhist, we are trying to deconstruct our rigid mind that thinks it’s like that and only like that. But also, if people are finding it confusing that I’m I’ve said too many you know, you can do this fifteen ways and there’s sixteen ways. If you would like me to go through you go with you individually of how you would like to do it so it’s all very clean, clear, I’m happy to do that. At at some point, if you’re finding it all too confusing having so many opportunities possibilities.
But so I could explain, you know, step by step to different people if they prefer at some point. Because also in general as the resident teacher I am happy to sort of talk to people at any time throughout the year about their practice about how they what they can do and improve it or start it or so on. Hopefully people understand that’s what that’s one of the reasons I, you know, I’m here to help in any way about if if I can. I harm, but I try if I can to to help people in their practice. Right.
Right. Yeah. But as as I try to say in in in my defense, well, firstly, have to do this because this is the course. Know? I I’d be much happier to, you know, make up my own thing but this is what the course is.
But what I’m trying to say is how you can change it yourself to your own. You can leave out this, this, this and this. But if you want, I can happily talk to you individually about at some point exactly what you know. Right? Or maybe we can just start again.
Also you go just also remember in going through this, it takes a long time to explain it at the beginning. But once you get familiar with it, some this this be done quite, you know, quite quickly. Right? It’s a matter of and I know I do tend to explain things a lot but I feel that’s important to try and make some sense. I’d like to explain things longer if I could but the courses get too long.
But the more we understand things the better it is. This is also why I gave out just that that very simple there’s Śākyamūni Buddha in the full scap form. Know, if all this gets far too confusing, just do that. Okay. So we’re visualizing the Buddha in front of us.
But even with all the stuff we’ve done so far, all it comes down to is, if possible, having some kind of altar. You prostrate, sit down, and visualize the Buddha. That’s all we’re doing so far. That’s pretty that’s pretty manageable for everyone. That that that there’s not too much of a, you know, Right?
The water bowls, the full set can be done in less I think five minutes or less once you’re familiar with it. But you don’t even have to do that. Like I said I would highly recommend it to do regularly. It just takes a couple of minutes. Feel it once you are all set up know what to do.
Zing, zing, zing, done. Depending on how big the bowls are. You know, big bowls would take five minutes to fill but your average side bowl should be easy. Okay. So the refuge meditation.
So refuge is is at the heart of Buddhist practice. So it involve it all comes from developing some faith that Buddhas exist. The Buddha was an enlightened being that the Buddha is Śākyamūni Buddha, the historical Buddha, eliminated all negativity from his mind in such a way that it could never return. The Buddha awakened all positive qualities in such a way that they they are fully operative all the time in such a way that they can never decline. The Buddha is totally omniscient.
The Buddha’s awareness is totally unmistaken. There’s no mistake in the Buddha’s perception at any moment, even even the slightest. So it’s fully omniscient, fully clear mind. Right? So therefore, what the Buddha taught, we can trust, and the Buddha taught us that we have minds that have Buddha potential, and there is a method to awaken that potential so that we can become Buddhas.
And there is a need to do so because sentient beings are suffering. So understanding those things, we can develop the wish to work with our mind, understanding that it is the source of suffering but also the source of happiness. So we have to do this step by step. And so refuge is that commitment to taking care of the mind and relying only on the Buddha’s methods to do so because one has decided, one has checked up that the Buddha’s methods are the perfect methods. They’re complete.
They’re and what what my teacher Lama Zopa Rinpoche says, they are which I find very helpful. They are unbetrayable. If if we practice the Buddha’s methods properly with the right motivation, they won’t betray us. There are many things that work okay for some time, but then after some time it all faults apart because they are based on an incorrect, incomplete perception of things. But the Buddhist teachings, methods, we we take refuge, are based on a complete unmistaken perception of everything.
So that means if that’s true, it means that that these methods really work. They they won’t betray us. Of course, peep but, you know, ordinary people mess them up because they practice them wrongly with the wrong motivation and things go wrong. But if one practices with the right motivation in the right way, they won’t betray us. They will really help us.
They will really benefit us. So that’s why we rely you know, if we have refuge, that’s why we rely on them, not something else because it looks nice, it’s newer, it’s easier, but I trust the Buddha’s teachings, the Buddha’s methods. So that mindset is really important to cultivate over and over again. So as part of that, we think that around me are seated infinite father and mother sentient beings and completely intoxicated with infinite unimaginable suffering. Actually, won’t read that because it takes too long.
Hopefully, it all makes sense. If it doesn’t please ask me in the homework or personally at any time. But I’ve explained the visualization. Know you visualize father mother on the left, father on the right. Our natural inclination is to think of all our family and friends in front of us, but the psychology is to reduce our attachment to them.
We think of them behind us, and our natural inclination is to not think of all the people we dislike or dislike us or, you know, put them somewhere way in the back. But the the so the psychology is to put those people in front of us, not to generate negative thoughts to them, but to realize these people actually they have been my mothers and fathers in the past. In the future, they will be my mother and father. They’ve been and they’re so they’ve been very kind, and they’re also suffering people, suffering beings. So they deserve my compassion.
So at least we try and think of those people because infinite father and mother sentient beings, you know, this is such a huge concept to put the head around, especially even to try and visualize. To to to so to think, oh, I am surrounded by all sentient beings becomes meaningless. If we practice at that level, we’re not really practicing. Yeah? Even though Buddhism emphasizes so much, you know, infinite sentient beings, all sentient beings, it’s it’s a it’s a huge concept.
So we have to start with something very realistic. Everything is a lum rim graduated path. You start at the simple basic thing. So that’s why we visualize that core group of people, at least try and have a sense of them and a a real sense that they’re really there. You know, these living, breathing people who are suffering but are kind.
Yeah. They’re just right there. But as much as possible, we then try and think of all the other beings of cyclic existence starting with other human beings, then the different kinds of animals, then, you know, then there are the the hungry ghost beings of the hungry ghost realms, then there are the different beings of the hell realms, the hot hells, the cold hells. There are the different kinds of gods, goddesses, and and and there are the Bardo beings. Don’t forget the Bardo beings, infinite numbers of Bardo beings buzzing around.
So from a Buddhist point of view right now in this room there are countless other beings with us. The the ones in in who’ve in the the Bardo is the intermediate state between one rebirth and the next where one is trying to get another body. Okay. So and, you know, so we try and at least have some sense of all those beings and and and trying to generate that thought that I’m doing this practice, whatever it is, whether it lasts for five minutes, fifteen, an hour, whatever. I’m dedicating it to them.
This is my offering to sentient beings. So then we do the refuge practice. So as I said, maybe this is getting complicated, but the simplest thing is where it says refuge prayer, you just do the refuge prayer that is actually in our student material that most people here hopefully are familiar with by now, which is the where is it? Page twelve, thirteen. The prayer for meditation I go for refuge until I am enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma, the supreme assembly.
So the supreme assembly refers to the Sangha. By my practice of giving and other perfections. So there is the six perfections of generosity, morality, patience, perseverance, concentration, and wisdom. So these are the six essential practices of a bodhisattva. So through that may I become a Buddha to benefit all sentient beings.
So we recite that three times. His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, at a teaching I attended, once said that, you know, the tradition is to recite this prayer three times. But his Holiness said, in fact, when you’re by yourself meditating and you do this refuge prayer, you should recite it continuously until the hairs on your body stand on end. In other words, until the feeling of refuge just pervades you, until it becomes really real. In other words well, I don’t know if we have to take that too concretely, but what his holiness is indicating, don’t just say the words, try and connect your heart, your mind with that, the words.
Yeah. That you yeah. So that’s the basic thing. Otherwise, if you want to do something more elaborate, you can do this practice as it’s set out here where you recite the believe me there’s a much much more elaborate version of this than here. This is a super super super simplified version of it where you visualize the Buddha then you recite Namo Gurave which means I go for refuge to the Guru.
So as you recite that white light and nectar comes from Śākyamūni Buddha into you. It’s very blissful. All your negativity is created in this past lives in relation to Gurus is all purified. The negativity leaves the mind in the form of black liquid, pours out of the lower part of the body. Then you do the same for the Buddha, the Dharma, the Sangha.
So and each time you think, all your obstacles to the Guru, to the Buddha, the Dharma, Sangha purified, you think now I am really I have this pure refuge. I’m I’m really under the guidance of the Guru, the Buddha, the Dharma, the Sangha. Okay? You can do that. So that’s something elaborate.
Otherwise, at least do the the refuge prayer. The this the the the Tibetan one there. That prayer was composed by Lama Yeshe. So it’s very special. So all the Lamas make the point that it is really important, helpful and beneficial to recite these prayers because they were composed by great Lamas, realized beings.
Composed is not the right word because you know, we think of like Beethoven composing something or, you know, some author writing a book where they think, you know, oh, this oh, no. Make that. Oh, no. This is a bit better. But these are like the spontaneous expressions of pure mind.
You know? These are not just nice words that, you know, oh, what’s a nice word I can write about the Buddha? This is like, you know, the the the most deep heartfelt expressions of realized beings. Right? So for us, just to recite those words, we are is is a way to connect our mind with the realized mind of an incredible or, you know, holy being.
To start to align our mind, our way of thinking with how these beings think and feel. Right? So it’s really reciting these prayers is very important. We can also say our own we can make up our own little prayers and this is and that, but it’s really important to connect with the Buddhas and the Bodhisattvas by reciting these prayers. And also chanting the tunes in Tibetan can be very helpful because again the tunes have some effect on the mind.
Yeah. You’re putting an imprint in it. Yeah. Yes. Yes.
That’s why it’s so helpful to read things like the Heart Sūtra, which is a condensed expression of the of the most profound advanced teachings of the Buddha. So of course at first there’s no way to understand what it really means but it’s putting the imprint in the mind so that in the future, especially when we study the teachings on emptiness, we’ve laid the groundwork. We’ve started to lay some groundwork. As some of you know, there, you know, there is the story of one of the great Indian masters. Was it Vasubandhu?
Vasubandhu. Anyway, one of them, once upon a time, there was a great Indian master and he would he would particularly once a year he would spend a period of time memorizing, reciting some of the sutras just all day long and what he would he would stand in a he would sit in a particular place and do this. And the story goes that while he was reciting all these sutras over and over again for many months each year, this pigeon was sitting in the rafter above him and heard this. And then the pigeon died and was reborn as a human being and Vasubandhu or whoever it was because he was clairvoyant knew where that pigeon was reborn and took that child as his disciple and that that child as a human being could then recite all of these all of these sutras that or understand when when he was taught about them, he could understand the meaning because he as a pigeon, he’d heard them all, so he was already familiar with them. I love that story.
That’s why it’s so important to put positive imprints in our mind. Because even if we don’t understand it now, it’s it’s laying the groundwork in the future. And that’s why also you know we hear we hear a teaching once. Don’t understand anything. We hear it twice.
Don’t understand anything. Three times. Then you know starts to make some sense. Four times. Five times.
Then you know these pathways start to be created in the mind, not and in the brain, but especially in the mind. Yeah. And also it depends on having some imprints from the past. The more imprints from the past when we hear something in this life, then it starts to resonate. It all starts to open up to awaken again.
So then next bit is very good to do is the bodhicitta motivation. If you if if the one thing you have to do in the morning after you get up is generate bodhicitta. Rinpoche makes the point, you know, we should wake up thinking, well, today, I am probably going to die since especially for those people who’ve studied the topic about impermanence and death, we can understand that there are so many causes of death. We are impermanent, so we’re going to die. We could literally die at any moment.
So it’s highly likely tomorrow, since I didn’t die today, tomorrow, I’m going to die. Very high chance. So if since today, you know, now I wake up, high chance I’m gonna die today. This could be my last day as a human being. So what am I going to do?
Just panic? Freak out? No. Most important thing is to generate bodhicitta. Cause if I die with bodhicitta, then I’ll have a good death, a good rebirth, and I don’t have to worry about anything.
The most important thing, in other words, is to have a good mind. The best mind to have is bodhicitta or trying to have bodhicitta. And what does that mean? In essence, the essence is today, since I’m probably going to die today, what I’m going to do on my last day is not following my self-cherishing. And what what am I going to do?
I am going to cherish others as much as possible. So that’s the most important thing. So there’s a bodhicitta motivation written there. So to help, one can read that or some other bodhicitta motivation you may have written down by some your favorite lama, guru, something from His Holiness. You can generate your own bodhicitta motivation if you know you know, if you’re familiar with the teachings on bodhicitta.
But that’s what’s good to do. Then one there’s the traditional prayer of the four immeasurable thoughts. This is also which is, you know, is related to bodhicitta, where one thinks how wonderful it would be if all sentient beings were to abide in equanimity, free of hatred and attachment. Then an even stronger thought is, may they abide in equanimity. Then even stronger is the thought, I myself, rather than just thinking how nice it would be, may they be have equanimity, then I’ve I’ve got to help people achieve equanimity.
I’m going to do it. This is how I can make this life meaningful. This is how I can, you know, put my bodhicitta into practice. I’m going to help all sentient beings live in equanimity. I can’t do it by myself, so please, guru deity.
So this can be referring to Śākyamūni Buddha, one’s guru. Plea grant me blessings to be able to do this. So remember, we’re still visualizing the Buddha in front of us. So you think blessings come from the Buddha for you to be able to help sentient being yourself and all beings abide in equanimity. And similarly so that’s the first immeasurable thought, equanimity.
Then second immeasurable thought is love. How wonderful it would be if all sentient beings had happiness and the causes of happiness. Okay. This itself, the four measurable thoughts, is a whole meditation in itself. If you don’t have time to do anything else, maybe you don’t do an elaborate visualization of the Buddha, maybe you don’t even visualize the Buddha, but it is good to try and visualize the Buddha.
Right? But maybe you don’t do any other meditation, but you can meditate on the Four Immeasurables. Think, like, the first statement is how wonderful it would be if all sentient beings could have equanimity. So you can think, would it be wonderful? It’s so easy to say, but what does that mean?
Would it be wonderful if everyone had equanimity? Would it be wonderful or not? Think about it. Check up. Then become convinced it would be wonderful.
And then you can think that may they abide so. This is it’s gotta in other words, this has gotta happen, and it can happen. Why? Because everyone has the potential to abide in equanimity. That is our true nature.
You know, attachment and hatred, these this is not our true nature. These are superficial adventitious delusions, defilements to the true nature of our mind. So then, you know, I I I will help sentient beings abide in equanimity. I will cause them to do that. And, you know, because I’ve got the precious human rebirth now.
I’ve met the Dharma. I’ve met found the methods. I can apply the methods. I can help. But I I myself need help, so I need the blessings of the guru.
I need the blessings of the Buddha. Please get you know, grant blessings. And imagine that the blessings come. Nectar come light and nectar comes into you. And the same with, you know, developing love.
Would it be wonderful for all sentient beings? What is all sentient beings? That’s not just human beings. It’s animals, crocodiles, scorpions, you know, all sentient beings. And with humans, it’s not just nice people.
It’s not just the strangers, but it’s also the nasty people. You know, the child molesters, murderers, rapists, everybody. Would it be wonderful if they had happiness? And you may think, no. It wouldn’t.
But the Buddha says it would. Why? That’s the that’s the way the Buddha thinks. Would it be wonderful? Meditate on it.
Work out why it would be wonderful if even terrible people could be happy, and I want them to be, And I will help them to be. That’s my goal in life is to help all the horrible people to have happiness. Actually, think about it would be best if all the horrible people had happiness before the nice people. Yes. Right.
Yeah. Yes. You’ve got it. By George, you’ve got it. Yeah.
If the horrible people were happy, they wouldn’t be horrible. When you’re happy, genuine not happy happy, you know, like drug induced happy, but when one has real peace of mind, there’s no way one would even want to be horrible and harmful. Okay. I’m talking to the converted. It’s obvious.
So then developing compassion, how wonderful would be if all sentient beings could be free of suffering. May they be free. I will cause them. So like that. Oh, we didn’t get very far as usual.
Sorry. I’ve done it again. I hope something was useful for tonight. Anyway, we’re going through this slowly, slowly for the rest of the course and some other things. One day I will learn how to teach DB properly.
Any hints happily accepted? I am doing a very short version actually. This is just introduction to this. But often anyway. Any final questions?
Anyway, don’t worry about if it gets all too confusing and you can’t do it all. Just do what you can do and especially what you enjoy doing and what you feel. This this this this is good. This is, you know, I I you know, this is meaningful. I should do this.
This is good to do. So just focus on that. And I hope by the end of the course and doing the retreat it all becomes clear about how to establish a daily practice. Yes, we are going to get to first I will explain we are getting to that. Yes.
That is fairly straightforward. In the retreat. Yes. Oh, tomorrow night? No.
No. No. It’s just Vajrasattva. Okay. Right.
Oh, I didn’t did you talk about that? Oh. No. But did you tell everyone? Me?
Oh, no. Okay. So in this course, you know, you all were given a handout, which is a little booklet about the Vajrasattva practice. I will explain this later on in the course as an evening practice to do. But also tomorrow night, I’m also going to go through the Vajrasattva practice in some detail.
So if people would want to come as well tomorrow night, if you gluttons for punishment, I will explain the Vajrasattva purification practice tomorrow night and we will do the practice. But just that, not the thirty five Buddhas. No. Just that. Yeah.
So that will be at seven fifteen tomorrow night. But I will be explaining it later on in the actual Tuesday course, this course. Right? Okay. It’s five dollars tomorrow night if you come along.
Okay. So we can dedicate the merit. We created some merit tonight. Hopefully, depending on how good your motivation was, how good you listened nicely to what I was saying, and and and depending on now we’re finished, so hopefully, you’re happy. Not that it’s finished, but that you you’re happy that you did this.
Yeah. That you stayed. You stuck it out even though this guy raved on and on and on. So you’re happy that you did this. So that has created some really positive imprints in our mind that we can now dedicate that to enlightenment.
Page thirteen, if you’d like to join in. Through the merits of these virtuous actions, may I quickly attain the state of a guru buddha and lead all living beings without exception into that enlightened state. May the precious body mind not yet born arise and grow. May that born have no decline but increase forevermore. Okay, so for those people who feel comfortable, especially those who have taken refuge, the tradition is to finish the teaching with three prostrations.