Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 104-minute session, Ven Thubten Dondrub lays the foundation for establishing a daily Buddhist practice by first grounding students in proper motivation—moving from concern for a good rebirth, to liberation from suffering, to bodhicitta, the aspiration to achieve enlightenment for the sake of all sentient beings. He then walks through the practical setup: creating a clean meditation space and altar with a Buddha image, stupa, and Dharma texts as the “three supports”; making daily water bowl offerings (with detailed instruction on filling eight bowls with Om Ah Hum, and emptying them with clockwise and counterclockwise motions to purify and cultivate positive qualities); performing prostrations—the simple hand gesture, short, and long prostration forms—as a way to accumulate merit and reduce self-cherishing. He emphasizes that these seemingly ritualistic elements are powerful causes for spiritual transformation, rooted in the tantric tradition but available to all practitioners. Throughout, Dondrub stresses the integration of formal practice with daily life mindfulness, the necessity of merit as a foundation for all realizations, and the Tibetan Buddhist principle that practice should adapt to individual capacity—simple if time is limited, elaborate if conditions allow. Pitched at a mixed-experience group, some entirely new to Buddhism and some already familiar with Discovering Buddhism materials.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 2014 07 01 DB Daily Practice Week 1 010714.mp3
UUID: e48e52de-bbef-4b35-9fa4-bafff60c663d
Teacher: Ven Thubten Dondrub
Collection: DB Daily Practice (Ven Thubten Dondrub)
Date: 2014-07-01
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 103.8 minutes
Words: ~11,828
A few days later, usually by about Thursday, I think, I’m not sure exactly, Kathy sends out a or someone no. Bill Bill. Peter. Tomorrow we’ll send out the recording to those people who’ve registered for the course so you can listen to it again. I would as part of the homework recommend that so you can pick up those things that you didn’t get in the first round.
It’s not compulsory of course but something to listen to again if you wish. Resource is available anyway. So just briefly, when I sit on the Buddhist teachings, what is emphasized in the Tibetan tradition by all the lamas that I’ve received teachings from is that it’s really important to listen to the teachings not only with an open mind and non judgmental mind with an intelligent mind of course but also it’s really important to listen with the right motivation to let go of any negative motivation or lack of motivation and try to cultivate a really positive virtuous strong motivation for listening to the teachings. Part of that motivation involves wanting to put them into practice because the ultimate aim of the Buddha’s teachings is on why the Buddha himself taught is so that people who felt that there was something true about what the Buddha taught put those teachings into practice because it’s only by putting him into practice will we get any real benefit, major benefit from the teachings because all the teachings that the Buddha gave are meant to be put into practice. Are teachings of how we can change our mind or transform our mind or realize the true potential of our mind so that we can become free of suffering and achieve perfect everlasting happiness, peerless everlasting happiness.
So basic mode from a Buddhist perspective the basic motivation for listening to the teachings in order to put them into practice is not just for some benefit of this life but particularly so that we can ensure that we because our mind is going to continue forever to ensure that at the very least our next life will be a good life where we have the opportunity to continue to work on our mind, reduce the suffering and causes of suffering in our mind and cultivate the positive potentials of our mind which are the source of real happiness. So that’s the basic motivation of renouncing this life and in order to achieve a good rebirth. A much deeper motivation for listening to the Buddhist teachings and putting them into practice comes from realizing that even good rebirths are in the nature of suffering. While we have delusion and karma we are still in saṃsāra, cyclic existence. Even good rebirths in cyclic existence aren’t all that terrific.
They don’t go beyond suffering even though as a human being we can experience some happiness, that happiness doesn’t last, there’s always some kind of suffering. And while we are suffering and confused unfortunately, directly, indirectly, consciously or unconsciously, we also affect other people in a negative way. Realizing those things we can develop this deeper motivation not just to get a good rebirth to use the Buddhist teachings to get a good rebirth but to get out of cyclic existence altogether to become totally free of all suffering and all the causes of suffering. But there is an even greater motivation that we can cultivate and this is the motivation that all of the schools of Tibetan Buddhism encourage us to cultivate which is called bodhicitta. And this motivation, bodhicitta, is the motivation seeking to achieve enlightenment to realize the full potential of our mind in order to be in a position where not only do we become free of all suffering and experience perfect happiness but we’re in a position where we can help every living being without exception to become free of all suffering and all its causes and for every to help every sentient being without exception to achieve peerless everlasting happiness.
And the reason for wanting to do that is due to recognizing that we are connected to every sentient being. That every sentient being has been immensely kind to us in countless ways in every possible way we depend life after life on sentient beings. They give us our body, they take care of our body, they protect it, they educate us. Every good thing that happens to us either depends either directly or indirectly on all sentient beings. All the good qualities and skills that we develop ordinary and spiritual also we develop depending directly indirectly on all sentient beings.
Even our mere survival depends directly indirectly on all sentient beings on their kindness their help. So recognizing that and now recognizing that all these beings who I’m inextricably interconnected with due to kindness but also one of the very interesting important theories that Mahāyāna Buddhism emphasizes is that because our mind is beginningless and therefore we’ve had infinite past rebirths It follows that we’ve had an infinite number of mothers, not just the mother of this life, every previous life which you can’t count the number of previous lives we’ve had. For each one we’ve depended on a mother. So we’ve had infinite mothers. So who are these infinite mothers?
Where are they? They’re in this room, they’re on this earth. Every sentient being on this earth in the universe has been our mother. And not just one time, but the Buddha says every sentient being, every human being, every animal, insect, all other beings of cyclic existence have been our mother countless times. Every sentient being has been our father, our brother, our sister, our best friend, our doctor, our teacher many times.
Every sentient being has saved our life many times. Every sentient being has sacrificed their life for us countless times. This is the Mahāyāna view. And yet all these immensely kind beings are suffering. Like ourselves, we are suffering because we have a mind controlled by delusion and karma.
We are suffering. We grow old, we get sick, we die. All of that is suffering. In between those experiences we have all sorts of other unpleasant things happening. This is true for all sentient beings.
But actually most sentient beings right now have more suffering than ourselves and with less ability at the moment, less freedom at the moment to understand their suffering, to make sense of it, to reduce it, modify it, transform it or eliminate it. Thinking about those things we can generate this wish that right now since I’m in this very fortunate position I have to train my mind, work with my mind and achieve enlightenment so I can free all sentient beings from suffering. Not help them, help them not only get a good rebirth, not only help them get out of a cyclic existence, but help everyone without exception achieve peerless everlasting happiness. So to do that, to achieve enlightenment we have to follow the path to enlightenment and to follow the path to enlightenment we have to know the path to enlightenment. So that’s why we listen to the teachings.
But also in order to achieve enlightenment not only do we have to know the path properly by listening to the teachings, we have to put those teachings and practices into practice. And to do that, we have to establish a daily practice. So that’s why we’re doing this course. We can try and generate this motivation that I’m going to study this course about establishing a daily practice in order to actually establish a daily practice in order to achieve not just a good rebirth, not just to free myself from saṃsāra but to achieve enlightenment, to repay the kindness of all suffering mother sentient beings. So that’s our motivation.
There is a traditional prayer that we say along those lines. This is on page twelve. Traditionally to make this prayer more meaningful, more powerful as we say it we try and think of Śākyamūni Buddha in front of us as our source of refuge, inspiration, guidance. At the same time we try to think of all sentient beings surrounding us. At the very least we try and think of those people that we are most connected to in this life.
So we think of our mother, of this life on our left, our father on our right, we think of the rest of our family, all our friends and helpers behind us and those people that we don’t like or dislike us who have even harmed us, we imagine them in front of us not to generate negative thoughts towards them, but to help realize that they are kind, suffering mother sentient beings. So they deserve my they have been very kind to me in the past, will be in the future. So they deserve my compassion not my aversion. So that as much as possible while thinking of that core group we try and open our hearts and minds to an awareness and concern for all the beings of cyclic existence. Should we say this prayer?
We can do it twice in Tibetan for the sake of connecting to the tradition and one time in English for the sake of understanding the meaning. I go for refuge until I am enlightened to the Buddha, the 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 if you find it helpful, that the Buddha in front of you now comes towards you. As he approaches you, the Buddha becomes smaller and smaller.
And when directly above the crown of your head, imagine that the Buddha turns to face the same direction as yourself and then dissolves into blissful golden light so that that light can then pour into you, blessing your mind. So for a short time we can reinforce that positive state of mind by doing some simple breathing exercise. Those who know how can do the nine round breathing exercise. If you’re not familiar with that, just do some basic breathing meditation just for a very short time. Okay.
Thank you. So as I’ve already mentioned but just to reinforce Tibetan Buddhism or the four schools of Tibetan Buddhism all follow the Mahāyāna teachings of the Buddha and what the Mahāyāna teachings of the Buddha emphasize is that all sentient beings because of the very nature of our mind we have Buddha potential and so we can achieve the enlightened state that Śākyamūni Buddha himself achieved and the Mahāyāna teachings encourage us not only to get a good rebirth not just to seek liberation from saṃsāra ourselves what is called nirvana. This is a wonderful state free of suffering but when one enters that state of nirvana one achieves one’s own benefit but one is not able to benefit others. One doesn’t cause any harm to others but in the state of nirvana one is not able to be of any benefit to sentient beings because one is not aware of them anymore. One is just in this lasting permanent state of pure bliss and all that one is aware of is that bliss.
One’s the bliss of one’s own mind. So one can’t help sentient beings. To help sentient beings one has to go beyond that state, awaken the mind fully and achieve enlightenment. So that’s what the Mahāyāna teachings encourage us to achieve enlightenment because sentient beings are suffering and how can we allow them to suffer when they have been so immensely kind to them that to get a good rebirth to achieve nirvana one needs to rely on sentient beings. But how can you escape suffering depending on suffering beings and leave them to continue to suffer?
It’s kind of like a disgrace, especially if one realizes that these suffering beings are our mothers. We have to help them, and not just a little bit, but completely. And not just a few of them, but all of them, because every sentient being has equally been our mother, our father. Not just some have been more helpful than others. In any particular life of course we can say some people are more helpful to us than others, some are more harmful than others But in the scheme of things when you take infinite past lives, infinite future lives, you can’t distinguish.
Everyone’s been equally kind. So we can’t just help a few, we have to help all sentient beings. And not just a little bit, but completely. That’s the only way to repay their kindness. So we have to become enlightened, we have to do all the hard work to free our mind of all negativities but we also have to awaken all the positive potentials of our mind.
So we have to achieve enlightenment. So that’s what the Mahāyāna tradition encourages that we do. The Mahāyāna teachings explain how to achieve enlightenment. So that involves following the path to enlightenment or what is called the graduated path to enlightenment. There is this graduated process of freeing the mind from suffering and confusion and self-cherishing, making it more and more selfless, more concerned with others rather than self, more free of suffering, more compassionate and so on.
So there is a step by step process that we can follow to achieve enlightenment which in Tibetan is called well it’s the in English it’s translated as the graduated path to enlightenment which in Tibetan is simply ‘lam rim’. Means path particularly referring to the path to enlightenment and ‘rim’ means graduated or step by step. So there is a graduated process of awakening our mind to its true nature, to its Buddha potential, its Buddha nature. So this is the Lamrim. Establishing a daily practice what we’re trying to do is establish a daily practice of working with our mind so that we are trying to reduce the negative tendencies of our mind, the negative habits of our mind, and purify the mind and cultivate the positive potentials.
Firstly, so that we can get a good rebirth with the idea of being able to continue the practice, then working towards becoming completely free of suffering, achieving liberation, but ultimately aiming to achieve enlightenment. So that’s what we’re trying to do. So this is a big job. People are attracted to Tibetan Buddhism for all sorts of reasons but also a lot of people even though they may be attracted to it find it very overwhelming because there is so much in Mahāyāna Buddhism, there is so much in the Tibetan tradition, there are so many meditation practices to do, so many practices to do, so it can be overwhelming. How do you say, the longer one stays in the Tibetan tradition the more things one learns and there are more practices that one is encouraged to do so one can end up if one becomes a very serious practitioner of Tibetan Buddhism, with many hours of practice each day, horrifies the thought of which horrifies some people.
But of course if you think about it, if we really want to become free of suffering, this can’t be done in a few minutes, a few hours, a few days, or a few weeks, or a few months, or a few years. Is big job changing the mind. And we have to work on it as much as possible because our mind is with us all the time. We can’t escape our mind. As the bumper sticker says, ‘Wherever you go, there you are.’ So we need to work on our mind.
What I’m trying to say is that this course, if I’ve got time to present it, is going to present a how can you say a basic daily practice but it’s quite a lot. It’s quite a lot in it. So it which may be far far too much for some people. But the Tibetan approach is that how can you say Tibetan’s practice if there’s time you do a lot if you don’t do a little bit it’s a little bit like one of those what do you call them piano accordions or concertinas which can be stretched out quite a long way but can squeeze them in. So if you don’t have much time you just do a simple version of the daily practice.
If you find time and the motivation and the interest you can elaborate. So I’m going to try to explain some of the essential practices are encouraged by all the lamas of all the four schools of Tibetan Buddhism to do for the average student. Many many Tibetans do these practices quite regularly. Not all of course but they do these practices. And also these practices that we’re going to talk about are basically from the sūtra tradition of the Buddhist teachings but all the four schools of Tibetan Buddhism encourage people to eventually practice tantra.
The Lamrim teachings are sūtra teachings but the aim of them is to provide the background, the basis to be able to practice tantra. So as well as this basic daily practice that I’m going to try to elaborate on, talk about, explain, at some point if you get involved in Tibetan Buddhism in any of the four schools one is encouraged to take tantric initiations. So with tantric initiations, the main commitment is to recite some mantras every day, but ideally one has these meditation practices, these daily meditation practices to do. Some of which are quite short, some can take a very long time to do. So some of you may not have any kind of daily practice at all yet.
Some of you may have already developed a daily practice that you do so you can modify it according to what we do during this course. If it gets all confusing you can come and see me and how to arrange your daily practice. Right. So I I I realized I didn’t prepare myself properly. I got distracted by doing some other things preliminary.
Anyway, what we’re going to basically this little meditation called a daily meditation on Śākyamūni Buddha is going to be the basis of what we’re going to go through in this course so everyone who’s enrolls for the course will get a copy of this. In establishing the daily practice ideally what we need to want to do is establish the discipline of doing some practice in the morning first thing when we wake up, something in the evening as well, and then during the day practice mindfulness of the Buddha’s teachings and also to set aside some time to study the Buddhist teachings. So in establishing a daily practice one could say the main components of establishing a daily practice what it involves is doing some practice to purify our mind. We need to purify our mind of the negative imprints that we’ve already generated by negative actions done earlier in this life and in past lives. So we need to one essential thing to do is to try and remove the negative imprints from that as much as possible.
Why? Because those negative imprints, those negative karmic imprints, of course they’re not purified they will ripen and the only way they can ripen is suffering to us. But at the time of death and can bring a very bad suffering rebirth especially a human rebirth. So we need to purify, get rid of as many of those imprints as possible. So that’s one thing.
The other reason is because even right now our negative imprints they’re not actually having the effect of suffering, that’s only when they ripen does the suffering come, but those negative imprints are having a clouding, obscuring effect. Yeah. Has all these amazing qualities, perfect qualities. But you know we are not terrifically wise and intelligent and so on right now. We have flashes. Why aren’t all these qualities operating all the time at a hundred percent intensity?
Because our mind is obscured. What is obscuring our mind are our delusions of ignorance, attachment, desire or afflicted desire, anger and so on. But also what obscures our mind are the negative imprints generated in our mind as we engage in negative actions. So the more we purify our mind the more we remove those causes of suffering but also we get rid of some of the obscurations. And it’s necessary in establishing a daily practice in that these positive imprints ripen to bring happiness while we’re in saṃsāra but those positive imprints are also needed that merit is needed as a basis to gain the realizations that will lead us to achieve not only liberation but enlightenment. An enlightened being has perfect compassion, perfect loving kindness, perfect wisdom, perfect generosity, perfect patience, perfect presence.
So those realizations we have to cultivate those qualities by meditating, doing the meditation practices that will awaken those potentials within us. But for those meditation practices to work completely, fully, totally, we need merit. Many people don’t understand that. But this is something that is emphasized a great deal in the Tibetan tradition that as well as listening to the teachings and meditating on them, one has to have merit. The more merit, the more quickly one will be able to follow the spiritual path.
Part of the spiritual path is creating merit, but the actual path, one could say, is gaining these realizations, these transformative experiences. And to gain them, our mind has to be empowered by merit, just like the negative imprints in a sense obscure and weaken the mind, positive imprints clear and empower the mind even before they ripen and they ripen to bring all sorts of good stuff. You create merit by engaging in virtuous actions. The merit are the positive imprints from doing virtuous actions of body, speech and mind. Like we’re doing virtuous action now of listening to the Dharma, the Buddha’s teachings.
Hopefully with a bodhicitta motivation which we generated at the beginning. So this is putting, as well as whatever understanding we get of the teachings, is generating positive imprints. So we need to purify. Our daily practice ideally involves way behind schedule already. So we need to purify the mind, accumulate merit and as well of course we need to study the teachings, we need to meditate on the teachings.
We need a daily meditation practice. These are the three essential things as well as trying to be mindful. When we’re not doing formal practice we need to try to be more and more mindful of the Dharma, of what we’re trying to accomplish during our daily life. So we meditate in the morning and then part of our daily practice should be and a vital part of it is to try to be mindful of what we meditated on and apply it as much as possible in our daily life. There’s not much point meditating on something if don’t carry that into our daily life by being mindful of it and integrating it in our daily life as much as possible.
Right. Okay. So in establishing a daily practice we need to meditate. The best time to meditate I mean, practice involves many things. I mean, working with the mind.
So there’s indirect ways of working with the mind, but the most direct way is through meditation. This is the most powerful. It’s not the only way to work with the mind but it is the most powerful direct way to work with the mind. So the best time to meditate any time is a good time to meditate but the best time, the ideal time to meditate as I’ve said in previous courses to some of the people here is first thing in the morning as soon as one wakes up and His Holiness the Dalai Lama, like many other Lamas, says it is best to meditate early in the morning. If you wake up at ten o’clock in the morning, well, and meditate then, that’s great.
But it’s much better to meditate earlier in the morning. The earlier the better when it’s really quiet and still and peaceful. There are many reasons for that but I’ve run out of time to explain. Apart from it is just quieter at that time of day, there are also other reasons to meditate when early in the morning. Somehow if we get into the habit of it, the mind is much fresher and His Holiness says if we can start when we wake up early and we can meditate then it’s like we can grab our mind, grab hold of it and start to tame it before it gets out of control and all the usual rubbish starts to generate once again.
If we can capture it early then this is really good. If we can, it’s good in establishing a daily practice to have a place wherever you live, set aside where one practices, where one meditates. If one is really lucky, one can have a whole room to oneself to meditate where you can lock yourself away and meditate. If not just some space somewhere to meditate. And in the Tibetan tradition in all the four schools one is I try and avoid that term anymore because like I said there are differences between the four schools but they all emphasize these same things.
Go about them slightly differently but it’s all the same really. In a Tibetan tradition one is encouraged in meditating to have not only a place where you regularly meditate, not just meditating all over the place, the one place you make it really nice and clean and you set up an altar where you meditate. As I’ve explained in previous calls, I’ll just briefly make it again. The word altar actually has the connotation of a place where you sacrifice things. This is originally what an altar was.
Pacified the gods by killing an animal and offering that to some kind of god to keep them happy. You would benefit from this. But the Tibetan term that is translated as altar is ‘Cher Shyam’. ‘Cher’ is the word for Dharma, the Buddha’s teachings and Shyam means support, Dharma support. So this is a Choshyam, an altar, and it doesn’t mean it supports Buddhist things like statues and books.
It doesn’t mean a support in a physical sense, it means a support for one’s Dharma practice. How is that? It is a place where one has an image or images of the Buddha or Buddhas and that supports one’s practice and one has offerings in front of those images and those offerings are a way to accumulate merit and so that is a support for one’s practice and we need that support. We need the merit and we as ordinary people it very helpful to have images of the Buddha in front of us to remind us of what we’re trying do and practice, who is our source of refuge, inspiration and guidance. Is very helpful to have that reminder.
Also looking at the Buddha, an image of a Buddha, it’s a statue or a painting or a drawing or anything like that, is putting a positive imprint in the mind. And that will have future benefits. So all of these things are a support for one’s practice. So in establishing a daily practice I would encourage people if you can manage to firstly establish a place where you can make some kind of altar. Like if you can, you can have a big one like this.
And if you go to Tibetan houses, rich Tibetans have far more. They wouldn’t even look at this one, although they would because it’s got holy images on it, but you know, really rich Tibetans put their money in making incredibly beautiful altars, very carb elaborately carved and painted and gilded. Amazing, amazing things. But if you’re just poor or simple, you have something simple, just a little table or even a plank or something. And of course if you can afford it or you have the good karma, you can have many images of the Buddha and many many what these paintings are called thangkas in the Tibetan language.
One could have many thangkas, many statues, many images and so on. But at least according to the tradition it’s really good if you can have an image of the Buddha then you also have a I’ve got to stand up and do this. This is the only way for because I’m not sure if everyone here knows these things. Excuse me if it’s far too simple for you but some of the new people here I don’t know these things. But this here is called a stupa and symbolizes or any part of it has a symbolic meaning but overall it symbolizes the enlightened mind of the Buddha.
These stupas were first built soon after the Buddha passed away, his holy body was cremated and the remains were put in stupas. So they became something that developed in all Buddhist countries and they symbolized the enlightened mind of the Buddha. So the statue symbolizes the body of the Buddha, the stupa symbolises the mind of the Buddha, and over here we have Tibetan texts, the Dharma texts. So these symbolise the speech of the Buddha. The speech of the Buddha is condensed into the written word, which presents The speech of the Buddha is a reflection of the mind of the Buddha, the realizations, and through the teachings and oral teachings and the written teachings, we ourselves can gain these realizations.
So the idea is to have an image of the Buddha and on the left of the Buddha you put a stupa and on the right of the Buddha you put at least one Dharma text. It can be any Dharma text that you have. So if you’ve got a statue you use a statue or if you have a picture of the Buddha you can get for example a small stupa. There are many different kinds of stupas. This one is called an enlightenment stupa.
This one here is a Kadampa stupa that comes from the great Indian master Lama Atisha. This stupa here is a replica of the stupa in the city of Gyanse in Tibet. You can have an actual stupa or a photograph of a stupa and then you put on the other side a dharma text or several. So this is really good to have. You can just put it on a shelf or a table or you can make some nice kind of cabinet altar.
Something if you can manage if possible as a Dharma support. And what the tradition is to so if you imagine just an altar here and you have the statue of the Buddha, a stupa and the texts, the idea is then to make some offerings to the triple gem symbolized by the Buddha and the stupa and the texts. Of course the Buddha doesn’t need offerings, but from our side we make offerings to the Buddha as a way of showing our respect, our gratitude for the Buddha teaching us. Also by making offerings this is a practice of generosity so this is one of the ways to start developing our mind, to free our mind of self-cherishing. It’s one of the first steps in reducing our self-cherishing, is one of our greatest obstacles to following the spiritual path.
Generosity is an essential practice to engage in, to train the mind, to try to establish a daily practice of being generous. Because apart from the formal sitting down aspect of Dharma practice, there’s all these things of putting into practice in daily life whenever there’s an opportunity. The opportunity of practicing generosity, morality, patience, perseverance, etc, etc. Practicing compassion in whatever way one can, practicing loving kindness. So all of this grows actually from generosity because also generosity helps us to develop if we give something to someone it makes them happy to some extent and that it it helps in our development of loving kindness, wanting is wanting people to have happiness.
Yeah? And the more we develop love towards others, we develop compassion to them, not wanting them to suffer. If we give something to someone to make them happy, then we will also want them not to be unhappy, to suffer. So it’s all linked, it all goes together. So although we find it sometimes very difficult to give to other ordinary people, it’s much easier to give to the Buddha.
We all like the Buddha. Hopefully that’s why you’re here because we feel a connection with the Buddha. So it’s a practice of generosity, reducing our self-cherishing and it puts positive imprints in our mind. Those positive imprints that merit is the basis for being able to follow the spiritual path, gain all sorts of realizations. Practicing generosity is really important and a simple way to start that process is to make offerings to the Buddha and so there is this practice of offering these set of water bowls, having set of bowls filled with water and the water symbolizes different things so the tradition is you have either eight bowls or seven bowls and one of which and another you place one of the bowls with a light either as in the case here an electric light because it’s less dangerous or you can have a candle or just something to symbolise light, like a crystal or something, you can put a crystal instead of an actual light.
But it’s good to have actual light if you can manage it, because it is a subtle dependent arising cause for the development of wisdom. Light in all traditions, all religions symbolises some kind of intelligence and wisdom and clarity. And that’s what we’re trying to develop. We’re trying to develop or allow that natural potential of our mind for clarity and insight and wisdom to awaken. The potential is there.
For that to fully awaken we have to purify our mind, cultivate meditation and so on. But what helps is there’s all sorts of things from complicated to very simple things. One simple thing we can do is just offer lights to the Buddha. Because everything is interconnected, offering light creates a cause for wisdom to develop, especially if we do it with that motivation. In a way, establishing a daily practice in the Tibetan tradition, what practically everyone and his dog did in Tibet and still does is this practice every morning.
For example, I went to Tibet twice, the first time was in nineteen eighty six and then I went in nineteen eighty seven something, I can’t remember. And the second time I went, I a large group, went with my teacher, Lama Zopa Rinpoche, who is this lama here, and forty other people. At one point was just with a small group of people and we went to one holy place of Lama Tsongkhapa and we met up with a nomad who helped us and we stayed overnight in his tent in his tent, like in virtually every tent of every nomad, on the main tent pole was a little plank of wood, and there was his altar. There was a picture of his holiness, the Dalai Lama, which could have put him tortured by the Chinese if they found it, and the little set of bowls. Everyone does this practice.
So all the Tibetan lamas encourage us, if we are following the tradition, do this, to have an altar and do the water bowl offerings as a daily practice. I personally highly recommend it. I don’t know why, but I do. If you go to any high lama in his personal room, in his monastery, wherever he lives or her, they all have altars, they all have water bowls. This is an essential Tibetan Buddhist practice.
What we get into that, yes it’s coming. So what the bowls of and of course we can all afford water, right? Flowers in the West are extremely expensive but everyone can afford water. Among the Tibetans those who are very rich had very expensive bowls made of silver, gold, all sorts of stuff. If they were poor they were just usually copper.
Sometimes people couldn’t afford the whole set. For example very ascetic monks doing retreat in isolated places. Monks in Tibet traditionally had a wooden bowl which they drank their Tibetan tea out of. So one of the traditions of these monks would, after that, have their morning tea, they’d clean the bowl, fill it with water and put it on the altar. That was it.
But in the West we can all afford some kind of bowls, least some plastic bowls, but if you can invest your money better than buying shares, invest in Dharma practice, I recommend. So the first bowl symbolizes water for drinking because these eight offerings symbolize basically way of looking at it is it was custom of how one greeted a guest in ancient India. If someone came along and visited you the first thing you did was offer them some drinking water, having travelled, then you wash their feet. Is drinking water, second is water for washing the feet, the third is flowers so you offer them a flower garden, garland, this is a tradition that still exists in India, get these garlands of marigolds put around you as a greeting, not all the time of course. This is perfume so you make the place smell nice for the guest.
The point is in our practice when we sit down to meditate we should try and feel that the Buddha is present in front of us and we are inviting the Buddha to be present in front of us to bless our mind. So that’s why we make these offerings to the Buddha. Even if we don’t meditate, if we have the Buddha, an image of the Buddha in our house or in our room, then we should try and feel when we wake up in the morning, there’s the Buddha, so I make offerings to the Buddha. Before we feed ourselves, we should make offerings to the Buddha. So this first bowl symbolizes water for drinking, washing the feet, flowers, incense, then light.
This next one is perfumed water which we imagine being offered to the heart of the Buddha. Then the next one symbolizes food, and the last one is music. So now what I’m supposed to do is explain to you oh, yes. What is it time? Oh, okay.
That’ll give me time to prepare after the break. Any questions so far? After. Or your choice, but yes. You wash first, clean up a little bit, spruce up and then yes, because you present yourself nicely to the Buddha.
We’ll get to that. Lower rims, step you know, we haven’t filled them up yet and you’re wanting to empty them. Okay, so we will take a ten minute break, cup of tea, coffee, self-service down the end of the hallway. Okay. So I’m just going to explain very briefly how the water bowls because, of course, there’s a particular way of offering the water bowls.
It’s not just anything haphazard. It’s good to follow the tradition. This is what all the lamas do. So firstly, think this is actually this bit maybe it might be unique to my teacher Lama Zopa Rinpoche, but since he is someone super special it’s good to do what he does because then you get to be like him eventually.
So the first thing is so here we have eight bowls or what we’re going have instead of one bowl we’re going to have a light okay. Although there is a tradition of how to do everything, within a tradition you can also be very creative as well. You follow the tradition but you can do your own personal elaborations on it. But anyway the first thing is before you fill the bowls with water is that you offer incense to them. This is to purify because Tibetan incense is made up of all sorts of wonderful herbs and substances so it’s considered a great has great purifying qualities so you just very quickly put in offer a little bit of incense smoke to all the bowls.
Right so then you put the incense away. Also what I say is before the bowls are filled you don’t have them empty on the altar on your little whatever your altar is. This is because this is considered inauspicious to offer nothing to the Buddha and they give me illustrations of this in the teachings but there’s a story if you know about the great yogi, Milarepa, when he first met his guru. The tradition of course is always to make offerings at all auspicious occasions and so it’s very important when you meet the Guru and especially when you request teachings from the Guru to make an offering. Not that the Guru wants it but again from our side it’s showing that we value the teaching so we make an offering as a way of requesting.
Marpa at the time was extremely poor so all he had he’d saved his money and bought a copper pot but he didn’t have any more money so he gave the copper pot, the empty copper pot to his teacher Marpa. So Marpa was very inauspicious to offer something empty, took a stick and hit the pot and he said because of that and made this very loud sound he said because of that auspiciousness you will become incredibly famous which he did but he said because you offered the Guru an empty pot you will be incredibly poor your whole life which he was. Anyway, anyway one offers incense to the bowls. What the tradition is you know of course you’re standing here like the Buddha’s here, stupa, text, whoops Oh sorry. Even before that.
Slowly. Go back. We haven’t incensed them. Oh no, no. Doesn’t matter.
The bowl should be very clean right then. Nice bowls clean. So then you incense them. So you fill the first bowl to the brim. Alright?
And you can also say Om Ah hum Om Ah hum as you do that. And then you fill the second bowl, you take the second bowl and put most of the water in the second bowl. So there’s just a little bit of water in the first one. So then you can put the first one down because it’s got something in it. Not full yet, but at all, you practice mindfulness and you don’t do that.
Just to save time, then you take the second bowl, put most of the water in the second in the third bowl so that there’s a little bit left in the second one and put that and so you continue like that fill it filling the bowls so that there’s a little bit of water in each of them. So once they all got a little bit of water in them, then you can straighten them up so they’re nice and straight. Imagine these are all you know have water in them and you’re supposed to have the distance between the rim of the bowls is about the length of a rice grain, not the narrow side the long part of the grain. Then once that’s all organized you fill them with the Om Ah Hum Om Ah Hum Om Ah Hum So just you don’t fill it completely but not too low down you don’t want to have a you know a poor offering ideally when you fill the water it shouldn’t be noisy. It should be sort of because you’re offering to the Buddha.
So how should you offer? You try to imagine that you’re offering this incredibly blissful water for drinking, blissful it generates bliss in the minds of the Buddha. And it’s not just a one Buddha, you’re offering to billions of Buddhas, If possible. If you can offer to one Buddha it’s okay but we can imagine trying to offer to many Buddhas because there’s infinite numbers of Buddhas symbolized by Śākyamūni Buddha. So there was oh no, this should be four, sorry.
This is not the right way, this is just four. Drinking water, water for washing the feet, flowers, incense, light, perfumed water, food, music. Right? That’s it. Now Om Ah Hum is the essence.
Essence. The three syllables which are for blessing anything because symbolizes the body, is the speech, and is the mind. So you do that for blessing. No. And I said you fill the first one up completely.
Yes. And then you put most of the water from the first into the second, so there’s a little bit in the first. So then you put most of the water from the second into the third. And, yeah, so there’s a little bit in the second. It’s only gone to four though.
No. No. No. Just to save time. I mean, I should have done yeah.
Yes. You’re imagining. Not visualizing. Yeah. The whole lot.
Yeah. Yes. Right? And if you want to, it’s will just keep it like that simple water there’s no time one can you can put flowers the flower one for example you can put food in the food one like that. Okay.
The flowers, can you can float flowers on water. With the food one, you either don’t put the water in and you fill it with food like sweets or something like that. Or another thing you can do is instead of filling the whole thing with food, you fill it with rice and then you put some food on top of the rice. Yeah, like a biscuit or a piece of fruit or something like that. You could do that.
But it’s the way of practicing generosity, but it’s also using your body to actually do it rather than just imagine it. So you put the energy of your body into this practice, you put your speech into it by saying Om Ahum and you use your mind by actually you’re actually making an offering but also you on the basis of a very ordinary offering of water you imagine that the water symbolizes these wonderful things. Can offer many sets of bowls if you want to. Can offer more than one set is good, at least one set. If you can’t offer one set because of space or time or you forget the whole practice or you don’t agree with the practice but you can see some benefit of making an offering, then you could have just one bowl and fill that.
But this is the tradition. And it also links with tantric practice because in tantric meditations you visualize making these offerings all the time. So to start off learning the simple way of doing it is really good. Of course in addition to that you can have bowls of flowers, bowls of fruit, other things, offerings as well. You can have light some incense and have and so on.
Any questions on that so far? No, but that’s the best. It was made of good substances, natural substances. Yes, support, yes. Our Tibetan incense is made by nuns at our nunnery in Nepal, so you’re helping them.
They’re doing a wonderful job. They like the incense themselves, It’s made from local products. It’s very good stuff. It’s very good. This one.
None. Yes. Up to you, whatever works well. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so at the end of the day empty the bowls.
So you empty them not from the beginning, you empty them from here, right and so you empty water into there visualizing that right so there you dry the bowls so the tradition is you do it three times clockwise. Yes. Clockwise. Which is outwards. So you imagine that this is dispelling all of your ignorance attachment aversion and getting rid of it all and then you go three times anti clockwise which is sort of inwards motion imagine that you’re bringing in all the good qualities into your mind.
Right? So this is exactly yeah it is just ritual but it’s making something meaningful. Many people really dislike ritual and they say it’s pointless but if you check we all have rituals in our life from the moment we get up, even the way we get up. We probably have a ritual of how we get up, how we put on our clothes, what you put on first. We probably all dress more or less in the same kind of we go about dressing.
We probably do it more or less the same every day. And what we do first and second and third. So we ritualize everything naturally but here these rituals are much more meaningful and they’re yeah. Oh, I haven’t got to that yet. Why haven’t I emptied the vows?
You already think I’ve I’ve got a Buddha who can do everything simultaneously. We’ve just emptied the first bowl, right? So how do we do the same? Empty, dry them upside down, right? So then you have a bowl of water.
What do I do with a bowl of water? The tradition is you don’t drink it or anything like that. You pour it in a clean place like on your garden but not somewhere you don’t put it down the sink or down the toilet, down the bathtub. You put it in a clean place where you’re not going to walk on it. You know, like feed it to the flowers to the in the garden.
So do you do it in a plant? What do people normally do? I do. I I put on plants outside. Yeah.
Sometimes you have to I fortunately, I’m the ground floor. Sometimes you have to run down, you know, flights of stairs and chuck it out windows onto people. No. Joking. If you want to you could do that, you can put the food offering out every day more merit but one could leave that for a few days.
The water you should do every day freshly every day. Yes you can, but there is a mantra that you should say before eating it to avoid the karma of looking like you’re stealing from the Buddha? The food? Well you could, you could put it in sort of like for birds and animals or particularly birds to eat. You shouldn’t give it to dogs and chooks or anything like that.
In trees, on higher places, so birds, flying birds, flying birds can eat them. That’s considered okay. It goes out. Ideally, you leave it. But if you if you if you’re worried about, you know, for for safety reasons, can put it out and light it at another time.
Like, if if you leave, I must confess I always leave my lights on when I go out. But I use tea lights and I check that nothing’s going to fall down even if there’s an earthquake. Yeah. Yes. I shouldn’t have said that should I?
Yes, yes, yes. Yeah. Don’t blow it. It’s better better not. Yeah.
Okay. Sounds just like superstition to many people but if it’s from a tantric point of view it’s because your breath is connected to the subtle winds of your body and the mind so you don’t waste your wind energy that way. Before we run out of time, this is really good to do if you feel it’s meaningful. If you don’t feel it’s meaningful it’s okay. But this is definitely the Tibetan tradition.
In Tibetan countries all over the world there is a tradition of having altars of images and making offerings like if you go to a Thai temple you will see statues and flowers and fruit offered. You won’t see the set of eight water bowls. This comes from the Tibetan tradition because it actually comes, although it’s become something that all Tibetan Buddhist practice, it actually comes from the tantric tradition, which is the secret most advanced teachings of the Buddha, but it got integrated into common practice and everyone is encouraged to do this. Definitely making offerings to the Triple Gem is a very basic ritual daily practice in Buddhist monasteries, temples, in all Buddhist countries and in Buddhist homes. So in establishing a daily practice I would highly encourage people to try to do this as much as they can in whatever way.
At least some offering, having an image of the Buddha making an offering. Yes. Yeah. That’s why they’re doing it. The Buddha doesn’t need any of this of course.
The Buddha doesn’t need it. For most people I don’t know how many people here have taken refuge but when one takes refuge formally one of the again this may sound like pure superstition but one of the commitments of taking refuge is to train to think that whenever you see an image of the Buddha such as that statue or the painting of the Buddha behind the statue that you’re not looking at a statue but that is the Buddha. Because then by making these offerings it becomes much more meaningful. By making prostrations instead of just prostrating to a statue, we imagine that we are actually prostrating. The Buddha is really here, present.
And one is making offerings to the actual Buddha not just because the Buddha mind is omnipresent. It is omnipresent. Having the statue just for our limited mind makes the omnipresent Buddha mind become something more tangible, something more palpable. Another question? Yes?
No, well if you’re not going to do anything else, if you’re going to sit down and meditate you don’t need to because you dedicate at the end but if you’ve got to rush off to work or something and you’ve only got time you could sort of quickly yeah. Just the other thing I just quickly want to explain tonight and first yeah is how to prostrate because again the idea is you have an altar, you make some offerings and that is accumulating some merit and the reason we want the merit is so that our meditation will bear fruit in the best possible way. So again in all Buddhist traditions, not just Tibetan tradition, the custom is that before doing practice or the custom is like when you come into a meditation hall, a temple where there’s an image of the Buddha, one makes prostrations to the Buddha to show one’s respect, to acknowledge the superior wonderful qualities of the Buddha, to recognize that oneself is a little bit lost and needs some help. So please Buddha. So this is a great it purifies the mind, it helps accumulate merit and it helps in the practice of developing humility.
Just very quickly I think I’ve told this before but when I first connected with the Buddhadharma which was at Chenrezig Institute in nineteen seventy six in Easter of nineteen seventy six. I’d been there before but had a bad experience and ran away, made a vow I’d never come back but I did. And to stay at the place, there was only five people there at the time and there was hardly anything there, just tin sheds and everything. The Gompa, the meditation hall had been built but it’s nothing like it was now. So anyway, was a nun who was the director, a Canadian nun.
So to stay there you had to attain enlightenment meditations. So everyone started the meditations with prostrations and then they would sit down and meditate. But I didn’t prostrate. There was no way I was going to do this ridiculous thing. Know, humiliate myself, especially in front of all these strange images there and all that stuff.
So I stood at the back while they prostrated and waited for them when they did it. I would sit down. I stayed at this place for ten days during my Easter break and not prostrating until I think about the last day it really got to me and I realized that this was basically my pride. If these guys could do it, why couldn’t I do this? And it wouldn’t really kill me if I did it.
And so the I think it was I can’t remember if it was the last morning. It might have been the day before the last day I was there. In the morning and it was all dark because there was no electricity, we only had candles, so I was at the back so I knew they wouldn’t see me and I’d be humiliated. So I prostrated and I did it with some I can think, I can honestly say I did it genuinely with some humility or attempt to be humble and recognise that I was suffering and I hoped the Buddha could help somehow. And I think that act changed my life, actually, because, yeah, my whole life changed after that.
Yeah. Because it changed in a good way. It changed in a good way. Sometimes it’s really easy to prostrate with me kind of mindlessly and with not much much meaning. But then it it it it really it was extremely difficult for me to do.
I was I was extremely embarrassed because I I thought they’d all turn around and look and say, nah. You finally did it. Of course, they weren’t unaware of what I was doing and couldn’t care less. But it was very difficult for me to do this and so somehow it really changed my mind. So I highly recommend doing prostrations.
But try to do it meaningfully. So I give all Buddhist traditions not just in Tibetan tradition. There is a custom of doing prostrations in the different traditions there are different ways of doing it so I just briefly explain the Tibetan way. So there are three types of prostrations the simplest one is this I think it’s called the Anjali Mudra of prostrating. My teacher, Lama Zopa Rinpoche, says whenever you see an image of the Buddha it’s really good to prostrate like that.
Skies of merit are created, Rinpoche says, you do it with the right motivation and with refuge and everything. So the meaning of the prostration is that the left side symbolises the female side of wisdom, the right side is the male side of believe it or not, compassion. You bring in the two things together, which is wisdom and compassion, which are the two essential ingredients of Buddhist practice. The two wings that we fly to enlightenment, which is wisdom and compassion or wisdom and bodhicitta. So the two hands together creates that space so that symbolizes emptiness, true nature of phenomena.
It just symbolises it because this is the ultimate aim of the Buddha’s teachings, is to realise the true nature of our self and all phenomena, which is that true nature is called emptiness, the lack of inherent existence, which is symbolised by space, it’s not actual space. But as I mentioned before, with the empty bowls you don’t just offer something empty, you put your thumbs inside to symbolise a jewel offering to the Buddha. And then have your fingers slightly separated because the Buddha himself, the holy body of the Buddha, has rays of light between his fingers. By doing that it creates the cause a very small small small cause for when one becomes a Buddha that one also will have those rays of light. Now put your hands above the crown of your head and this is said to help create the cause to achieve the uṣṇīṣa, the crowning golden top knot of the Buddha.
Then you place your hands at the forehead and thinking of that to purify your body and to achieve the pure body of a Buddha. Then you place your hands at the throat to purify your speech and achieve the pure speech of a Buddha. Then at the heart chakra to purify the mind and achieve the pure mind of a Buddha. So then as a monk I should unwrap this robe but if I do it you can’t see things properly so I’ll leave it like that. So then oh, okay.
Yeah. So second type of prostration is the short prostration. So then you then you place your then you place your hands on the ground, then your knees, and then your forehead. And then you so no. Don’t do it.
Better. Yeah. Oh, we could do it together sometime, but not tonight. So the tradition is you do that three times. Yeah.
To the yeah. To the body, speech, and mind. And finish that way. So that’s the short prostration in the Tibetan tradition. First one is this one, then there’s the short prostration.
And how do do it? The idea is to try and do it well, gracefully, because you’re prostrating, you’re paying respect to the triple gem of Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. And they say you shouldn’t have your fingers spread out when you put them on the ground but close together. And once you’re trying once your forehead touches the ground, you should start to stand up quickly. You shouldn’t sort of hang out there down there like resting or having a little snooze or something, but one should try and get up quickly.
That symbolises getting out of saṃsāra quickly and bringing mother sentient beings out of saṃsāra quickly. So the third way of prostrating in the Tibetan tradition is the long prostration which comes from the tantric tradition. So it’s just a the first part is like and then you Like that. Try again. This bit here is an optional extra.
So those are the three ways to prostrate in the Tibetan tradition. Do either the short or the long prostration. That’s good to do just before you sit down. Made you set up the altar, have a nice clean place, traditionally you should sweep the room first, then good. Stay clean.
Stay oh. Very auspicious. So, yeah. After. We could do twice, could do before and after but you know this is preparation that yeah it comes next yeah it’s the third one third step is yes you make the offerings then you can sit foot before you sit down to meditate you make the three prostrations well at least make minimum of three prostrations.
So that’s about all I’ve got time to talk about tonight. So this is very simple for some people. Some of you are all very familiar with it. Some of you may not know any of it at all. But is the problem with this course, are maybe some people completely new, some people who have been doing practice, so some people may know all of this, some people may know ninety percent of it, sixty percent, fifty percent, I don’t know.
Hopefully just by hearing it again it’s just reminding you what to do and just checking whether it was correct. So I had to keep it fairly brief. One could elaborate on all of these things a bit more. Has everyone collected the homework sheet so far? Oh, I think we’ve run out of homework sheets.
Does everyone have their copy? You’re the only one? Can I just read it with someone else because we don’t have any more at the moment? Oh, there’s a spare one. Okay.
So just oh, okay, hold it. Is what we’re going to go through, but not at the moment. Until we start that, I’ve made a simple Śākyamūni Buddha meditation. In a couple of pages. So does everyone have a copy of that?
That’s different. Which one do you want? That one? Okay, just quickly. The third question says do you consider yourself Buddhist?
Yes and if yes have you taken refuge? If no, if you don’t think of yourself Buddhist it says do you consider committed to another religious tradition or not committed to any tradition? So I’m not interested whether you were a Catholic or a Protestant or something else before but not anymore. I’m only interested if you are following something now. Just to give an idea, if you don’t answer these questions it’s okay, but it’s just to help me know who I’m teaching so I can try and fit people’s minds.
To take refuge means you just have to put no. But to take refuge is of it’s the Buddhist version of getting christened, I suppose. It’s to commit oneself to following the Buddhist path, the Buddhist teachings. Secondly, the review is what I ask people to do is to you took some notes, maybe you didn’t but just to review what we covered during the class so hopefully something is remembered. Is what traditionally Tibet, or not just in Tibet but in the Tibetan system, when someone like for example when the lamas teach what the monks in a monastery were supposed to do is then go back to their room and review what they had been taught.
So it would stay in the mind. So I’m asking you to try and review what you’re taught because there’s not much point just coming here and hearing this and then forgetting it all. I mean, it’s better than, you know, it’s better than nothing, better than watching some television programmes. But the purpose of listening to teachings is to try to retain it as much as possible so that one can use that teaching. The more we can remember it, the more we can access it and use it in our life.
So that’s why I encourage people to take some notes or listen to the recording at a later time. So I’m also asking people to just mention briefly what they found interesting and helpful but also what they found difficult to understand. Don’t tell you what you find difficult to practice because we all find the Dharma difficult to practice. It’s more like what you find difficult to understand or difficult to accept thinking oh this too weird and strange, this is a lot of superstition. I I can’t relate to that.
So I’m I’m very interested to know what you think of what you’ve heard, whether that was interesting and useful and I can relate to that, or I don’t know, you know, this was just nonsense, or I didn’t understand it, or it was too complicated, or whatever. You don’t to agree with everything, but would be better if you did. That was the reading. Many people here have been doing some of the Discovering Buddhism so they know, have the background. So I’ll try to explain for the new people as we go through.
But if you could read the section on the eight point Vairocana posture, which includes the eight point of the posture is this breathing what is called the nine round breathing exercise. So I encourage people, if you don’t know that, to read it because it’s part of the homework to do that breathing exercise. So the daily meditation is to do the try and sit in the eight point Vairocana posture, do the nine round breathing, and then you’ve got that Śākyamūni Buddha meditation, not this one, the complicated one, but you’ve got this yeah, that one. So if you can go through that, do that as much as you understand. I will try to explain it as we go through.
You can dedicate the merit if you feel comfortable. There is the prayer in student material on page thirteen, I think. Yes, there’s the dedication prayers one can use. I think that’s it. Also as the daily meditation practice I didn’t mention, but if you can start setting up an altar and experimenting, doing the water bowl offerings, this would be great.
Because even if you’re sinking, oh, I find this very strange and superstitious and peculiar, That is a thought, that is an opinion, but it’s not based on doing it. So why not try doing it and see what effect it has? It might, yes. Also maybe you need to do it more than once to get an effect. But especially I presume that you’ve come to this course because you have some connection with the Buddha.
If one sees that the Buddha is this amazing being and has taught, given these amazing teachings that have been so beneficial to so many people for two and a half thousand years, oneself feels connected to the teachings and feels that they could be of great benefit to me, then one way of thanking the Buddha is to make some offerings. We thank our friends. We just had Christmas where people gave presents to people presumably because they like those people and want to, in some way, express their affection for those people because that person has been kind to me. I appreciate their existence. The fact that they exist is kind of nice.
So here is the Buddha. So in the same way, the Buddha’s presence is something very, very special. The Buddha’s teachings are incredibly precious. They can free us from all suffering. There is no way we can repay the kindness of the Buddha.
But we can try. We can start just by making these simple offerings and trying to do it with the best motivation, the bodhicitta motivation, and do it as nicely and beautifully and creatively as possible. There’s a lot worse we could be doing. Truly, the great lamas do this simple practice. If it’s good enough for them, why not us?
Okay, so thank you very much. Hope to see you next week, and we can dedicate the positive energy we have generated tonight. Page sixteen sorry, page twelve. Due to 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 bodhicitta not yet born arise and grow.
May that born have no decline but increase forevermore. Okay, thank you very much. Also if you didn’t get it, there is an outline of what I’ll try to be covering in each talk. I am not sure if there are any more copies over there. Looks like they have also disappeared.
Does some people need this outline? You’re all okay with that? Yes, there’s just this one copy if you’d like to take that. Sorry. So if okay, so we can finish with for those people who feel comfortable with three prostrations to the triple gem.