Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 107-minute session from week four of a karma series, Ven Thubten Dondrub addresses what many students find most difficult to accept in Buddhist teaching: the stories of seemingly disproportionate karmic consequences. He examines why certain karmic results appear harsh or unfair, emphasizing that the Buddha did not invent these outcomes but rather perceived them as truths about how reality works. The bulk of the teaching focuses on purifying negative karma through the Four Opponent Powers—regret, reliance on refuge and bodhicitta, resolve, and remedy—explaining why regret differs from self-defeating guilt and why this practice is essential regardless of whether one believes every detail of karmic doctrine. He then introduces the foundational tantric practice of Vajrasattva, describing in detail how to visualize the deity on the crown of the head while reciting the mantra and imagining white light and nectar purifying one’s negative imprints in the form of black liquid flowing out of the body. Dondrub emphasizes that this daily evening practice—traditionally reciting the long mantra at least twenty-one times—is a core discipline of Tibetan Buddhist training, recommends the three-month retreat if possible, and assigns specific homework to contemplate and purify particular negative actions each day of the coming week. Aimed at practitioners new to or developing a relationship with Buddhist practice.
File metadata (for organising)
File: Karma week 4.mp3
UUID: 2290f32d-2022-42ac-af08-ffc6ccdb7979
Teacher: Ven Thubten Dondrub
Collection: DB Karma (Ven Thubten Dondrub)
Date: 2018 (exact day not recorded)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 107.3 minutes
Words: ~13,441
So as usual there’s oh, anyway, welcome. Welcome to, class four of our five classes on all about karma. So, as usual, there’s still a lot to cover, so, I won’t go I won’t talk a lot about the motivation other than emphasising, trying to have a strong, clear motivation at the beginning is really important, and trying to make one’s motivation as sincere as possible and the best possible motivation. And of course, in the Mahāyāna tradition, there is no better motivation than bodhicitta, wanting to awaken one’s Buddha potential, achieve the enlightened state, to be in a perfect position, to perfectly repay the kindness of mother sentient beings. So wanting to do that, of course, arises from recognising more and more deeply how much we depend on other sentient beings, on all sentient beings always have, always will and also recognising that they are suffering in cyclic existence and the vast majority are completely helpless, they don’t even know they’re in cyclic existence, they don’t know what causes it, they don’t know how to get out of it.
So we have had the good fortune to have met the Buddha or getting to meet the Buddha Dharma and hopefully developing some faith in it, some understanding of it. And this opens up the possibility you know, to be free of every kind of suffering and to achieve every kind of happiness and to make every moment of our, of every life as meaningful as possible. So we’re incredibly fortunate. So, and we have Buddha nature so we can achieve enlightenment. So thinking about these things we can try and direct our mind in that bodhicitta thought, at least trying to generate what my teacher Lama Zopa Rinpoche calls the effortful bodhicitta.
It’s not actual bodhicitta but it’s some approximation of it that can arise in the moment if we strongly think about the causes for it. So there’s the traditional prayer we say page twelve if you’d like to join in and if you think it’s meaningful worthwhile then to make the prayer more effective we think of the Buddha in front of us seated on the lion throne lotus sun and moon as embodying all the Three Jewels of refuge the Buddha, the Dharma, the Sangha and we try and think of all sentient beings surrounding us starting with our parents on either side trying to have that awareness that these beings you know they can change from being friend enemy stranger etc etc but essentially they’re only kind but only and only suffering. So to achieve enlightenment to benefit others and to benefit ourselves we have to follow the path to enlightenment and to be able to follow the path successfully we have to understand that path so an essential aspect of the path in fact the very basis of the whole path, the spiritual path is understanding the law of cause and effect. It contains within it all other aspects of the Buddha’s teachings.
So for that reason will stop one day. So for that reason we generate this thought that I will study the law of cause and effect and if I develop faith in it then I will put it into practice in my daily life. 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 thinking the Buddha is pleased with our motivation we imagine the Buddha now coming to the crown of our head and then when directly above our crown thinking the Buddha dissolves into blissful golden light so that that light can then pour down into us blessing our mind to be able to understand the teachings especially in this case the teachings on the law of cause and effect, blessing our mind to be able to put them into practice correctly and blessing our mind to be able to eventually gain a stable correct realisation of the truth of all aspects of the law of cause and effect.
So then we can reinforce that positive state of mind by just briefly doing the nine round breathing exercise and one can combine that with visualising white light coming in with each in breath and then breathing out all one’s negativities and negative imprints in the form of black smoke with each out breath. So by doing this we allow our mind to become a little bit more calm, clear, concentrated so we can use that level of mind to listen to and think about the Buddha’s teachings tonight. Okay. Thank you very much. So, mainly what I want to talk about tonight is purifying negative karma because this is an incredibly important topic.
But just before that, just a couple of things in relation to the homework. A lot of people, some people made the point that some of the stories in the reading are very heavy, which they are, and they are from the sutras. So there are many stories in the sutras, horrific stories of having done some action then this is the karmic result. So some people seem to be pretty upset by those and saying they seem very, what’s the word, or out of all proportion and in some cases unfair but, and yes one could say that but what one has to try to do if you’re trying to open your mind to the Buddhist teachings and check them up, what Buddhism claims is that the teachings come from this enlightened mind, Yeah. This mind that is pure and unmistaken and the the teachings are not something made up by the Buddha, like the existence of hells.
The Buddha didn’t think, oh, I’ll I’ll invent a religion and it’ll have some hells in it just to scare the wits out of people so they behave properly. It’s not like that, oh the Buddha didn’t create the hells. What one should try and understand is that things exist and they weren’t created by any individual entity, the Buddha or a theistic god, oh theistic god, a creator god. Things have come about because of the collective minds of all sentient beings. The things exist in things do exist and the enlightenment enlightened mind is able to see those things.
So the Buddha sees things and not only sees them but how they came into existence. So the Buddha’s teachings are basically about, if you don’t want this, I can see there is this in the world, in the universe. There are such things that you cannot see but I can see them and they’re pretty horrible. And if you don’t want to experience those things, these are the causes so avoid those causes. And then there are all these other things exist like the God realms but even better there’s nirvana and even better the state of enlightenment.
These things exist. If you want those there are causes from them, these are the causes, that’s it, that’s what Buddhism is about. And in the ordinary world if there are so many things that look completely unfair and disproportionate day by day, Yeah. Maybe this is not a good example to give but I could recently a good old, what’s her name, Megan Merkel just got engaged to Prince Harry and wore this dress for a picture which cost fifty seven thousand pounds. Yeah, fifty seven thousand pounds.
Most many people will never see anything like that much money in their life and yet this lady, oh, she’s a very nice lady, have no complaint, but you know doesn’t it seem a bit fair that someone can spend that much money on a dress for a picture and then there are people starving. It’s all out of all proportion. Or you can lie in the sun, you can go sunbaking for one hour and you can get cancer that will kill you. So it’s not fair from one point of view. But that’s life.
And that’s what the Buddha is saying, there’s this and there’s that. And some of it is horrible and it’s very easy to create the cause for it. Because, sorry, the bad news is we tend to think even if we accept that there’s hell that you have to do something really really really terrible to get born in hell, but you don’t. It’s very easy to create the causes to be born in hell according to the Buddha. You don’t have to be Hitler.
Right, the ten non virtues, any one of them is a cause for hell, the Buddha says. Seems pretty unfair but that’s what the Buddha saw. He didn’t make it up. Or maybe the whole thing is made up, don’t know but I believe it’s not. That’s what you have to work out.
Like it’s true, I don’t want to believe many of these things, they’re horrible, they’re really really horrible, gruesome. But it’s really about what our mind just in this life our mind can torment us. I don’t know about yours but mine is pretty good at tormenting me you know, over the most ridiculous things, you know, ridiculous things. Anyway, I can’t say much more and, yeah, and it’s true, some of the, quite honestly for myself too, it’s very hard to believe some of the stories, they’re just like fairy tales but I don’t know if this helps but I will get on to that. I think this point was the same.
I had the good fortune or the good karma, the first teaching I received was a month teaching from Lama Zopa Rinpoche-la, teaching on the whole path to enlightenment and which some of it was also given by the amazing Lama Thubten Yeshe. So I was incredibly fortunate. And at the end of that month I thought I’d understood it all but, I hadn’t. And then I read a book by, now I can’t even remember the name of the Geshe, Geshe Wangyal I think his name was, Wangyal. And it’s a book called The Door of Liberation and in there it has various sections in it and one section is about stories of karma, illustrating karma.
And I read these and although on one level I found it hard to believe that they were literally true, as, as what? Analogies or symb, I don’t know what the word is, symbolic or just illustrations of karma. They had a really profound effect on me. And I remember one of my favourite stories of karma is about this, well I can’t remember all the details now but you can read it, but it’s about this woman who, what happened? Anyway she was married and I think she had two children and she was travelling somewhere and her two children died and then her husband died and so because this was India she was buried alive, know, I think she had the choice of being burnt alive, know, in the Sati tradition, I don’t if you know about that, they used to burn widows in India until quite recently but The Buddhas stopped it.
But anyway, but anyway so she was buried alive but then, some robbers dug her body up because they wanted to steal some jewellery she had on her and she was still alive so she was forced to marry the robber chief and then he died so she was buried again and then she was dug up again and then she said I’m fed up with this and she became a nun became an arhat. I thought that was a great story and somehow it’s very hard to believe in various ways, although this nun has a particular name and there is an Arhat by that name, it is meant to be this Arhat, this woman when she became an Arhat told this story of what led her to renounce everything and become a nun. She was just fed up with being dug up and getting married to some other jerk that she didn’t want to really get married to. So yeah, and then it’s supposed to have illustrated something she, I can’t remember what, that she had done in previous lives that she therefore had to experience suffering. Sometimes you can just take the stories as a way of illustrating something.
Anyway. I I did I talk about wise fear here in this class? Fear? To have because I get confused I teach on Thursday nights so I it was definitely on Thursday nights I talked about wise fear? So someone was a bit upset that there was a lot of kind of, like, being motivated, the teaching seemed to be the basis of motivating to do things by fear.
And this is true, this is true. But what I try to point out is that from my understanding there are two kinds of fear. And one kind of fear is just simply based on ignorance. It’s what we as ordinary deluded people have and it’s also really an expression of what we call the eight worldly concerns, which is that we crave ordinary happiness. We don’t think of it as ordinary happiness but it’s just ordinary samsaric pleasure and the more we crave at that we fear suffering and we crave getting stuff and the more we crave it we fear not getting stuff or losing stuff and we crave being accepted and liked by people and whatever and the more we crave that we fear rejection and criticism blah blah blah and we crave you know being praised and the more we crave that we fear being criticised.
But all of those fears are just worldly fears that don’t benefit us in the long run. They don’t even benefit us anyway. We’re of not being liked, we’re afraid of looking too thin, too fat, too tall, too short, too this, too old fashioned, you know, just too old, too ugly, too this, you know, too that. We are so, you know, we have so many fears, these are useless, useless fears and often lead us to do negative things. Whereas there is another kind of fear which is fearing things that it is valid to fear.
And that fear encourages us to avoid that suffering. We need that kind of fear and the trouble is we don’t fear some of those things at all. In fact we don’t understand a lot of the suffering that we potentially can experience. We don’t know about it, we don’t know its actual causes and therefore we don’t fear it because we’re completely blind to it. But having that fear is helpful and it’s not like a neurotic, you know, kind of, what’s the word, You know hysterical kind of fear is just the calm fear that recognises this is suffering and there’s a cause for it and it encourages one to avoid it.
We need that And this is part of the methodology of the Buddha to say there is this suffering, there is this cause for it and therefore you should fear that. If we don’t fear our own suffering, how are we going why will we avoid it? Right? Some people say, Oh, we don’t need fear, just have to have love for people, that will encourage us to do good things. But we don’t even have love for ourselves.
We have self-cherishing. If we had love for ourselves we’d practice the Buddhadharma a hundred percent all the time because that’s the actual cause of happiness. So if we don’t even have love for ourselves it means we don’t have it for other people. We would like to but we don’t have it. We have a little bit, know, something.
So we have these two things, of course we have to be motivated by these what we call positive things but this fear of suffering is also a positive thing, it’s a good thing to have but we need both. Anyway, that’s enough on that. At some point, I I don’t know if you’ve had I should have put this in the in the tonight’s discussion topics, but maybe we can just add it. I don’t if you’ve discussed in your discussion topics yet idle gossip. What is idle gossip?
Because it says this is, you know, this is one of the ten non virtues which can put you in the hell realms, in the lower realms. I must admit I find this very difficult to believe also. I can believe with the others but this one, but that’s something to discuss. What is idle gossip and how can it be so bad? Is idle gossip just chatting?
Or what is it? What is this negative idle gossip? Anyway, I’ve I’ve rambled on. Does anyone have a question so far that would like to get off their chest? You’re also polite.
Yes? Can we make a a decision about, whether we think that, we should do something or not? From last week’s readings, it seems as though it’s about the fear of karma, I guess, to some degree. And I’m just wondering where ethics comes in there. If you are an ethical person, quite often people rely on their ethics to make a decision about whether they think something’s right or wrong as opposed to a karmic.
But that’s what Buddhist ethics are. Buddhist ethics are the law of is based on the law of cause and effect. This is the view of what is genuinely ethical. And it’s an ethical standard that I try to say is I believe something that is universal and applicable at all times to all beings. It’s not just a personal ethical standard or a cultural or national or ethic, ethical culture ethical standard.
It is something completely universal because it’s based on how the mind works and reality as the Buddha perceived it. That certain things whether we believe it or not have this effect. You know, like there’s all these debates about, know, you’ve want debates and so called scientific presentations of, like eating eggs is bad for cholesterol and then sometimes later they say, Now it’s okay to eat but, you know, new studies show that eating eggs is good, it doesn’t harm your cholesterol. Then they say, New studies have said, It actually is extremely bad for your cholesterol. So there’s all these different views about things presented with various arguments but there is some actual reality but we don’t know.
There is some reality about how eggs affect cholesterol but it seems from the worldly understanding that it’s changing whereas in the Buddhist teaching we were encouraged to follow the Buddhist teaching because they don’t change. Certain things if you do them they will always have this effect. That’s why they’re a refuge. One of the next course but one of the modules is refuge in the triple gem so the triple we take refuge in the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha but actual refuge is the Buddha but the actual refuge is the Buddha’s teachings because it’s practising those teachings which will protect us from suffering and lead us to happiness and then within the Buddha’s teachings what is the actual, the rock bottom, I don’t mean that in a bad way, but the most fundamental refuge of all is the law of cause and effect, that is our refuge. That is what protects us from suffering.
You know, our belief and practice of it, that is what leads us to happiness, that is our refuge or supposed to be, can be. So, okay. So what we need to do if we want to follow the Buddha’s teachings, if we start to develop some faith in them, trust in them, then what we’re trying to do is accumulate merit because that merit, those positive imprints are the basis of worldly happiness, why we remain in saṃsāra. We do want some worldly happiness, it’s better to have worldly happiness than obvious suffering but also that merit is the basis for gain, the more merit one has the more easy it is for the mind to connect with the Buddhadharma to understand it, to practice it and realise it. So in order to gain the realisations that get us a good rebirth, get us out of saṃsāra, lead us to enlightenment, we have to meditate on the various topics, we have to gain these particular qualities of, you know, realising impermanence and death and loving kindness and compassion and generosity and wisdom and all these various things.
And so we have to meditate on these things and put them into practice but for those meditations and practice to really, you know, be the most powerful, the most effective, it depends on merit. So we need that. So it’s the source of every kind of happiness, worldly happiness but also the happiness of liberation and enlightenment. And then, so we need to do that but also we need to avoid engaging in negative actions and, there are various ways, so just check. So that means avoiding negative actions as much as possible.
So to do that we have to know what are negative actions. So this is why we need to know about avoiding as much as possible the ten non virtues. Practising mindfulness in our daily life of what is negative, being able to recognise if we’re engaging in those things and avoiding them as much as possible. But also what we have to do is we have to try to use this precious human rebirth as much as possible to purify the negative imprints already existing in our mind because even if by some miracle we haven’t engaged in any negative action in this life, but we have, we all have, and we not have, not only have in the past of this life but are doing so in the future and we will, all of us including myself, will in the future of this life engage in negative actions. But even if we hadn’t, we have had infinite previous lives where we have engaged in all sorts of negative actions.
Basically without hope this is not getting too depressing for you, one should understand that because there’s been infinite past time we have been born in, one could imagine that in that infinite past time, beginningless past time, we have been born, reborn in every possible situation, all the good ones but also all the bad situations where of course in all those negative situations it’s very easy to engage in negative actions. Or put it another way, it’s extremely difficult to avoid engaging in negative actions. It’s very easy if one has lots of food to eat and you know a good income, a regular income and accept a house to live in blah blah blah not to steal. It’s very easy to, you know, to not steal. But if you don’t have any food, you don’t have a regular income, you don’t have a place to live, you know, it’s very easy to steal.
It becomes very easy. You may not want to but people don’t steal necessarily because, well anyway, sometimes people like just to stay alive, have to. We live in a fairly safe country but there are places where, or even in Australia, which can be pretty dangerous and if you go, if you’re there in those dangerous places, I mean among dangerous human beings, I don’t mean just crocodiles, but you know, then if you live in those kind of environments then it’s very difficult to avoid all the things that happen, you know. And we’ve been there, we’ve been there, we must have been. We’ve done everything imaginable.
We have murdered people, raped people, stolen from people, chopped them up, tortured them, everything you can think of that you would think I would never do that. We feel all, you know, so wholly about, well what this person did, how disgusting, I would never do that. We have done it. All of us have done every imaginable horrible thing in past lives. So we have the imprints.
Fortunately some of those imprints have already ripened but we don’t know what ones are like metaphorically speaking sort of close to ripening. Or how strong the imprints are that could suddenly pop up that cause us to do something or lead us to do something. That’s the bad news. We have also by the way lots of to counteract that so you don’t freak out. We have many super fantastic positive imprints too, we’ve done wonderful things in past lives so we have those imprints in our mind too.
But we don’t have to worry about those, they’re not a problem. The problem are those negative imprints. So we have the greatest freedom now to purify them, so we should. Because the more time we spend on purifying, the more we create the opportunity to, well the situation where we don’t have to experience all that suffering and of course we can be motivated to do that not simply you know wanting to avoid suffering from myself but if all this horrible negative karma ripens then while I’m suffering I can’t help anyone and they continue to suffer. I can’t repay the kindness of Mother Sentient Beings and while I’m suffering I will probably cause even more suffering to others in that state.
So out of bodhicitta motivation we can develop this wish to purify our mind because also one can discover that the very nature of the obscured mind, the mind obscured by delusion and negative karmic imprints is that mind is very hard to work with in a spiritual way, in a virtuous way. The more we obscure our mind by following our delusions and our, you know, and engage in negative actions then our mind gets weighed down. It doesn’t go in a virtuous direction. It’s more and more difficult to direct it in that way. Whereas one can experience, I think anyone who’s done, tried to do some Dharma practice especially to do a retreat, one discovers that even one even if one is not able to do retreat very well yet and we’re not a great meditator, which is me, know after forty years as a monk I’m still you know I know I can’t meditate for peanuts, know, I’m pretty hopeless.
And I’m hopeless in all this stuff. And please don’t think I’m being modest. I’m not being modest. I’m just speaking the truth. And some people think, oh, that’s terrible, then if he can’t do it, then I’m doomed.
But don’t, it doesn’t follow like that, I just happen to be a really thick as a brick person whereas you’re different. So don’t worry, don’t worry. So and where am I? Yeah, so even myself I have done some retreat and one discovers after, at least for a short time, the mind is more interested in the Dharma, mind is more happy to practice the Dharma, the mind wants to practice the Dharma more because the mind has been purified a bit, even a bit. That mind becomes more flexible.
This is one of the actual mental, virtuous mental states that one needs to be cultivated which is it sounds kind of strange but it’s this flexibility of mind. It is a virtuous mental state because if the mind is flexible in wanting to do virtue where there is another mind state which doesn’t want to do it. People can party for hours and hours and hours and stay up for hours and hours but listening to the Dharma people nod off, know, or you meditate and you go like that after a few minutes. That’s that inflexible mind, that’s the obscured mind. I also have had the experience of sitting up here talking to people and sometimes because of what things you’ve spoken to, spoken about with a person or they’ve asked a question or something, you know they have a particular thing going on in their life or mind and you think, oh they need to hear this and so the next week you talk about that thing and guess what, they’re not there or actually when you come to the topic they’re asleep.
It’s fascinating, it’s fascinating how this, of course this applies to me too, but it’s fascinating that the mind blocks out what you know, you just gone. The very thing you need to hear that would really help you, you’re asleep, you’re not there. That’s the obscured mind, we need to purify that mind. That was a long introduction. So how do we do it?
Basically there is one method, there is one method which is applying which has anyway, this one method which is applying what are called Four Opponent Powers. So if you turn to page twenty two of your student material they are set out there. And these Four Opponent Powers, it is said in the teachings these four opponent powers if applied practiced properly, sincerely, strongly together can purify any negative action even the most extreme negative action can be like murdering one’s parents, you know, harming the guru, etcetera, etcetera. All the extreme negative karmas, all of them, everything can be purified by applying the four opponent powers. So these are the power of regret, the power of refuge in bodhicitta or this is often said to be the four R’s, the power of regret, the power of reliance which is relying on refuge in bodhicitta, the power of, Determination.
Determination. Oh, can’t think of the next ah. Anyway the power of determination, determining to do, not to do the negative thing in the future, what would that be with an ‘R’? Resolution Resolution Resolve, yeah the power of resolve and then the power of remedy which is doing a virtuous action to specifically counteract the negative action that one is purifying. So these are the four opponent powers.
So one needs to apply them as quickly as possible, as strongly as possible, as genuinely as possible and as continuously as possible. Because we should understand that although every kind of negative karma can be or the imprint from the karma because karma means action, you know the action’s done so you can’t undo the action but once the action is done the imprint is there and that can be purified. But although it can be purified we should not fool ourselves into thinking one can purify easily. Yeah. It’s very easy to create negative karma.
It is much more difficult and takes more time to purify it but it can be purified and we should. Right. And those four opponent powers purify the four ripening you know the four results of a complete negative karma the ripening result, the results similar to cause, the result similar to the effect and the environmental result. All of those can be purified by applying the four opponent powers. So also one thing to understand is that a lot of people seem to think that purification means just simply that you do this practice and the negative imprint is completely eliminated.
But it doesn’t really mean that, it could happen, that could happen but if this is not actually full of water but if you imagine this jar was full of water and just as an analogy this jar full of water symbolises one negative imprint. Of course karmic imprints aren’t physical but let’s for the sake of it and the water inside this jar symbolises the potency of that negative imprint and it’s completely full right, that imprint is full of this potency. So if it’s not purified it will ripen and the full potency will pour out in some horrible kind of suffering that will last a long time. Yeah, so what purification means is that you, depending on how strong the purification it is and how long you apply it for, you use up some of that potency. So if you know, if the purification is really super powerful you could use up the whole potency so there’s no suffering result at all or you may use ninety percent of it up, eighty, seventy, fifty, you know only maybe you purified ten percent of it, yeah.
But in general, again this is in general, in general, when we purify a negative imprint it does bring some suffering but nothing like what it could do. So the traditional examples are something like you may have killed a person in a past life but by which would not if not purified this could lead to rebirth in one of the lower realms particularly possibly a hell realm but by purifying it one experiences in this life a terrible headache. Yeah. So that’s much better than being reborn in the hell realms but there’s still some suffering, right? So, if you don’t believe me I will quote from Sūtra.
Oh I didn’t I’ve lost the oh no. Here we go. This is the Diamond Cutter Sūtra, which is one of the Prajñāpāramitā Sutras, is one of the most famous sutras in the world and is one of the basis of Zen Buddhism. So in this Sūtra it says, Subhuti, who is one of the disciples of the Buddha, whatever son of the lineage or daughter of the lineage takes up these words of a sūtra like this, memorizes, reads and understands, they will be tormented, will be intensely tormented. Why is that Subhuti?
Because whatever non virtuous actions, of former lifetimes that were committed by those sentient beings that would bring rebirth in the lower realms, due to torment in this very life, those non virtuous actions of former lifetimes will be purified and they will also attain the enlightenment of a Buddha. So it’s saying that if you read this Sūtra because it is directly from the mind of the Buddha, this is so virtuous that it will purify all sorts of negative karma created in past lives. And as a result, one will be tormented in this life because one’s negative karma will ripen as some torment in this life. So when that torment comes this is good, this is a good sign that one is being purified. Are you all about to run out?
You have a question? It is saying that by reading this you’re creating good karma and this will purify your negative karma and because your negative karma is being purified you will experience this suffering in this life straight away. It’s only held out of that? No, no it will be purified yeah. Now we’re getting to that.
I’ve just started. I’ve just started, Right, okay so the four opponent powers, they’re all important to apply, to apply strongly and sincerely and not just one time but depending on what one’s trying to purify. It should be done continuously, know regularly. Oh by the way just yeah, when one does this practice one can be focusing on a specific thing that one wants to purify that you know that you’ve done and you don’t, you know, feel bad about it so you want to purify that. But even one can purify anything, even the stuff we don’t know we’ve done because by logic we can know I’ve done all the, like I mentioned, I’ve done all these terrible things in past lives.
So you just think about that, I want to purify everything but also specifically this. So it works like that, yeah. It purifies specific things that you know about and general things that you don’t know, you know, you don’t have any memory of but you can logically know one has done. Does that make sense? Yeah.
Okay, so all of these four factors are important but of all of the four the most important one is the power of regret. Yeah, that is the single most important factor to generate and it’s important to understand there is a difference between regret and guilt because guilt is again like this neurotic fear is a type of ignorance, it comes from ignorance and the nature of guilt is like the mind becomes extremely unhappy but it tends to, you know, I exaggerate this just to make the point but it’s a bit like you think, oh I have done this bad action, know, Oh, I’m such a bad person because I did this bad thing. Oh, why am I a bad person? Because I did a bad thing. Why did I do a bad thing?
It’s because I’m a bad person. Why am I a bad person? Oh, it’s because I did a bad thing. Why did I do a bad thing? It’s because I’m a bad person.
So your mind spirals down and what is the result? Oh, I will always do bad things. Why? Because I’m a bad person. Oh, there’s no point trying to be a good person because I’m a bad person.
Why? Because I did a bad thing. I might as well do another bad thing because I’m a bad person. Meaning there is within guilt there is no energy to do something positive. The mind just goes down, it just goes down and black.
Whereas regret is a type of wisdom that simply recognises scientifically that was a negative action, that is going to bring a lot of suffering to me, oh that’s unfortunate, I shouldn’t have done that. I won’t do that. And within that, within that genuine regret there is embedded in that a wish not to do it again. Isn’t there? It’s like you know you’ve got a headache, open the you know the, what do you call it, cabinet, medicine cabinet, take a pill you realise it’s poison and it wasn’t the pill you meant.
You don’t feel incredible guilt about that, oh I’m such a terrible person for taking the wrong pill, you just think oh that was dumb, that was a mistake, now I’m going to get really sick or possibly die because I took the wrong pill. I won’t do that, I’ll be more careful in future of what pill I take. I’ll check more carefully next time. Alright. Of course with regret there is some, you know, are also unhappy, you’re not happy, right, so there is some unhappiness but it’s not this kind of neurotic self pity poor I am so terrible person, right.
This is what we need to cultivate is this regret that just simply is willing to recognise yes because this trouble with our self-cherishing is we don’t want self-cherishing, our self-cherishing thought never wants to say I’ve done anything wrong. I never do anything wrong because I’m perfect. Right? I’m wonderful. Other people do wrong things all the time but me, no.
And you know, people say this is a wrong thing but when I do it it’s okay because it’s me doing it. So what you know our self-cherishing never recognise, so we so we have to cut through that and recognise this is negative, it will have a suffering result. So this is, know, this is sad that I’ve done this. And we can develop that regret from an ordinary point of view of just from now I’m going to suffer but we can also develop regret from the point of view and want to purify from the point of view that while I’m now I’ve obscured my mind some more I’m going to suffer because of this, then I’m, this is postponing my ability to practice the Dharma to benefit sentient beings, to advance on the path so that’s really unfortunate. Yeah, it’s doubly unfortunate.
I’m going to suffer and sentient beings are going to continue to suffer because I can’t be in a, I’m not in a position to help them. So then, so these four opponent powers don’t come in any particular order but I accept I think regret would come first. One would have that sense of regret and then the sense of the power of resolve not to do the action again. Right? And this particularly counteracts the karmic result of having the habit to do the same thing over and over again so one makes the resolution not to do the action and many Lamas including my teacher Lama Zopa Rinpoche make the point that it is not very skilful to say I will never do this action again because especially if it’s something this negative action is something that we know we tend to do regularly anyway.
Because if we say I’ll never do it again, I promise I’ll never do it again, we’re just probably going to break the promise and then we’re going to feel guilty, not regret but guilty and we’re just going to give up. So we have to be wise and develop a resolution, I will avoid this action for a particular period of time. And my teacher says even that period of time can be very short because you make it a period of time which you feel comfortable that I definitely can avoid this action for this period of time. But of course once that period of time is up and one succeeded in avoiding that action then one should rejoice and make another resolution to avoid it for a similar period of time or maybe a little bit longer period of time and in this way one builds up the habit of avoiding that action, training the mind. And of course what is possible to happen especially if one has some strong negative habits is that one makes the promise not to do it and we break the promise.
We promise ourselves, we promise the Gurus, the Buddhas and so on, but we break it, we fail and we do the action, the negative action again. So what what what happens then? We give up? No, we don’t. We have to just apply the four opponent powers again.
And if we we fail again, we don’t give up. We apply the four opponent powers again. And if we fail again, we don’t give up, we apply the four opponent powers again until they start to work. And as I think I’ve said before, as my one of my main teachers, Lama Yeshe used to say, one day clean clear and two days clean clear, three days clean clear. Like that.
We can’t give up because our mind never stops. We have to purify our mind and we can do it. Others did it, we can do it. We’re not any different from all the beings who became Buddhas. So then there is the power of reliance which is relying on refuge and bodhicitta.
So why this is important to apply as purification is that if one checks all the negative actions we engage in are done because either we have no idea that they’re negative or if we do, well put it this way, from a Buddhist point of view, why we engage in negative actions is that we either we have no refuge at all in the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha, we don’t believe in the Buddha’s teachings about the law of cause and effect or even if we have refuge we’ve at the time we’ve forgotten it. We’ve ignored, we’ve forgotten it or ignored it. Because as I said, when we take refuge, the real refuge is the Dharma and within the Dharma the fundamental refuge is, the very heart is observing the law of cause and effect. You know, some people might think, Oh, the very heart of the Buddhadharma is the teachings on emptiness, they’re the highest teachings, I only have to follow those. Or, you know, Tantra is the highest teaching of the Buddha, I only have to follow Tantra and the highest Tantra is the highest Yoga Tantra, I only have to worry about that.
Rubbish, that’s not correct at all. The very heart of the Buddha’s teachings is the law of cause and effect. If one’s not observing those none of the other stuff works. Just doesn’t work. If one’s not observing the law of cause and effect one has no understanding of emptiness.
One may think one has but you know if one has any understanding of emptiness it has to be based on the truth of the law of cause and effect. They’re inextricably interconnected. So the law of cause and effect is the heart of the Buddha’s teachings. Nothing works without following those. Because however much we start to understand the higher teachings if we keep engaging in negative actions and fail to purify our mind we’re just we’re doing it with an obscured mind.
An obscured mind can’t understand emptiness or you know a continuously ever increasing obscured mind can’t understand emptiness certainly can’t realise it, can’t develop the depth of meditation necessary to penetrate into the reality of these things. Yeah. So yeah. We need this, we need to reaffirm our refuge which means reaffirming our belief in the law of cause and effect and reaffirming our intent, our commitment to practising the law of cause and effect. Because when we take refuge what refuge is, is it is understanding, my understanding of what refuge is, is that it’s recognising by coming in contact with the Buddhist teachings we recognise we’ve got a mind, the mind is the source of all our happiness and suffering and I need to take care of my mind in order to avoid the suffering and cultivate the potential for happiness, so I need a method and I need a perfect unbetrayable method and that is the Buddha’s teaching.
So refuge is Lama Yeshe used to use the expression, oh you do refuge. You know, the normal expression is you take refuge or you have refuge, but having refuge or taking refuge means you have to do it and doing refuge is making this commitment moment by moment to take care of the mind using only the Buddha’s methods and the main method is the law of cause and effect. Because all the other methods are actually connected to it, they’re tied up to it. So we have to, so to purify our mind we have to reaffirm, strengthen our refuge in the Buddha Dharma Sangha, particularly the Dharma. And also, the power of remedy, power of reliance is trying to regenerate, reaffirm our bodhicitta because again if we check all negative actions that we engage in, possible negative action, is because we are following the self-cherishing thought.
We have this wrong view of self which we’re holding on to as being true and real, we grasp of this wrong view, we’re not even conscious of it but this is what we’re holding on to and how we cherish ourselves. self-cherishing sounds like a good thing but it’s actually a bad thing and because how we cherish ourselves with self-cherishing, we don’t cherish ourselves with love and compassion but by following attachment and anger and pride and jealousy and all the disturbing thoughts which leads us to engage in negative actions. You know, as I always say with the action I repeat myself completely, but a little mosquito lands on you, this tiny little mosquito, you know it sticks this teeny little thing into you which causes a little itch, a little tweak you know, and the self-cherishing can’t bear it and you go whack, you kill it, you take the life of a sentient being because it has caused a moment of irritation. That is the self-cherishing thought. It doesn’t consider, it’s not capable of thinking this is a sentient being, this sentient being has Buddha nature, this sentient being wants to be happy, doesn’t want to suffer, this sentient being has been my mother.
All we think of is this thing is causing me suffering. What is the quick easy way to get rid of it? You kill it. And that’s why we still engage in sexual misconduct, lie, all of these things is it’s all the self-cherishing thought about this wrong view of me that needs something to happen or something to stop immediately, quickly, easily. That’s why we steal all the things.
So the very, what is the opposite to self-cherishing? bodhicitta. The mind wanting to cherish others more than self. So as much as possible we try and reinforce that mind as much as possible, commit ourselves to that path as much as possible. So the more strongly sincerely we do that the more strongly we do that and that generate that power of reliance on refuge in bodhicitta then the more we purify our mind.
The more regret the more the more resolve to avoid the action the more the power of reliance then the more purification occurs. And then the final, when do I stop? Wendy? Nine minutes? No, eight minutes?
So then the final of the four opponent powers is the power of remedy. So this, the basis of those first three, one makes the commitment to do a virtuous action or a series of specific, a series of virtuous actions to specifically counter purify the mind, to specifically purify a particular negativity or to purify everything that one’s done in this and past lives. But it’s that virtuous action is done specifically to purify it not to accumulate, you know what one can do virtuous actions either to accumulate merit or to purify, right. So it’s like one can go out and take a job either to you know, know, one’s already got a job for one’s survival but then you take a second job because you could take it either because you want some more money to save for a holiday or you have a debt and you need to pay that off so you take the second job to pay off the debt. So doing virtuous actions to purify is like paying off a debt.
It’s not piling up merit for future happiness, it’s to counteract the negative imprints. This is why the tradition we follow here is called the Gelug tradition. Gelug means virtue and tradition. This is the tradition of Lama Tsongkhapa because Lama Tsongkhapa emphasised how important the practice of morality is as the basis of the spiritual path. Especially this is important in the Tibetan tradition because the Tibetan tradition includes the Tantric teachings and the Tantric teachings are really quite some aspects of them are really quite out there, quite controversial in various ways and can be quite easily misunderstood and were and have been and are misunderstood.
This is why Je Tsongkhapa emphasised that to engage in tantra, one has to lead a very virtuous moral life. So also Lama Tsongkhapa emphasised that rather than putting a lot of energy into purifying the mind it’s better not to engage in negative actions in the first place because then you don’t have to get a second job to pay for the debt, you can get the second job to accumulate more merit, more holidays, more good rebirths, you know quicker out of saṃsāra, quicker to achieve enlightenment. Didn’t that wonderful analogy make sense? Am I making sense? Am I making sense?
Yeah? I mean you don’t have to believe it but just like within this Buddhist view this the logic, yeah? Oh I hope you believe it too but anyway. Right, so then as it goes on, so one can do as you say any virtuous action as you know with this conscious motivation to purify some particular negativity once done or just to purify in general but there are in the teachings it’s pointed out there are six particularly or six categories of particularly virtuous actions, powerful virtuous actions so it’s best to concentrate on these because these are really powerful ones and therefore will bring about the greatest purification. So in that list I should have put the list together in a different way but number four is meditating on emptiness.
So of those six specially virtuous, powerful virtuous actions that is the most effective. If one is able to correctly meditate on emptiness this is the greatest purification but of course the problem for us is we don’t understand emptiness so then it’s for us it’s not so effective. But this is why it says in the Sūtra again these things can be very hard to believe but in the Sūtra, Vajracchedika Sūtra, the Diamond Cutter Sūtra which is about the emptiness, it’s about the highest teachings of the Buddha. This is why it says by reading this, putting these imprints about the nature of reality in your mind even if you don’t understand them it is so powerful this brings about incredible purification. So if one is actually able to meditate properly on emptiness, that the person who engaged in the negative action, the negative action, hold it, the person, the action and the object of the action, all of these they exist but they don’t inherently exist.
If one is able to meditate on that correctly, know, understanding that, that definitely is the most powerful purification. But even trying to do that is purifying the mind for sure because it’s all, you know, everything is a graduated path. One doesn’t instantly understand the teachings on emptiness, emptiness, one develops you know the understanding, well one develops the understanding of all of the different teachings step by step. So you have to style out you know. So even those beginning meditations trying to work out the meaning of emptiness actually is very powerful for the mind because our mind has never thought about this stuff before So it’s really bringing, it’s really shaking up the mind a great deal.
I mean I think this is what happens when we meet the Dharma for the first time. It’s so revolutionary, something we may feel a strong connection with and think I’ve always, oh yes that makes sense, I’ve always kind of thought that but now you know it suddenly all becomes very clear and it makes a huge impact on the mind. Unfortunately we think that that’s going to continue forever but that initial whammy effect on the mind doesn’t last but it is there. So that’s good. So anyway that one, meditating on emptiness is the most powerful.
But So number one is repetition of the names of the Buddhas but also the reciting of mantras maybe you should add that the reciting of mantras and the names of Buddhas. So even reciting Om Mani Padme Hum the mantra of Avalokiteśvara, the Buddha of Compassion, this is also said to be incredibly powerful. It’s specifically about for generating compassion but also it is purifying the mind because trying to generate compassion is one of the best you know virtuous things one can do so it’s really purifying the negative mind, the self-cherishing thought that leads to all our negative actions. So reciting Om Mani Padme Hum, reciting any mantra can be very good, reciting the names of the different Buddhas can be very helpful. Like in the Chinese tradition there is a Pure Land practice of Amitābha of reciting the name of Amitābha Buddha.
This is done particularly specifically to be reborn in Amitābha’s Pure Land but also by reciting it with faith then this is also purifying the mind a great deal. But within that first category of virtuous actions of reciting the names of Buddhas and mantras, there is a very specific practice which is reciting the names of the thirty five Buddhas of confession and making prostrations to them. So how much time have I got? What is it? Eight thirty.
Yeah. Alright. Okay. So no. Oh, no.
What? This is the discussion. Could we have a shorter discussion tonight? Because I have to talk about how to pure, you know, Vajrasattva practice and how to prostrate to the thirty five Buddhas, this is really important. At least if I can explain the Vajrasattva practice tonight.
This is the Buddha Vajrasattva. This is really the best purification practice of all. Oh no I shouldn’t say that but it’s a good one, a very good one to do. Just before we break, a question? Anything?
Anything I can clarify? Well, yeah, I don’t know if we need to put it in two concrete baskets like that but in general the all the effort you’re going into purifying is that it’s not creating merit so much. It is merit, know, you call it meritorious, it’s virtuous but it, yeah. No but that’s good, yeah that’s what one, yes. That’s what one’s supposed to do, yeah to purify at the beginning because like there’s also the practice of doing the seven limb puja so you know the seven limbs which is condensed in the prayer but you can do a very elaborate practice of that.
So that seven limb prayer has some aspects which are purification and some which are merit. So that you know, the lineage lamas advise to do that at the beginning of a meditation session because you do a bit of purification and a bit of accumulation of merit because you need both to have your mind working best. Because very quickly, sorry, my wonderful analogy like if someone wants to you know be a top athlete, I’m not in any category to talk about this but you know, you need to be what, you need to have a skill in the sport right? You need to be physically healthy and you need to be physically strong. So in my little analogy is we’ll leave about the skill for the time being but purification practice is making your mind healthy and merit, accumulating merit is making your mind strong for the practice.
When you when we do a practice of meditating you need, you know, your mind healthy or like when you’re doing something with your body it needs to be healthy but it also needs to be strong. Like if you’ve had a disease and then the disease goes away you’re healthy again but you’re weak so you can’t do much. So if you purify your mind and meditate it’s good but if you don’t have much merit it’s very still hard to meditate and gain the insight. So one needs to purify the mind and accumulate merit and the more we do both the more our practice will really flourish. Now I stop, thank you.
So please, group one here, group two there if you want to grab something to drink grab it first and there’s your questions. Please remember to put in your homework, collect the old homework. I’ll just explain this. So of the six special virtuous actions, one of them is doing the Vajrasattva practice. So this actually is from the tantric tradition and it’s particularly for purifying negative broken tantric commitments.
So since these are the highest commitments one can take in Buddhism, the karma associated with them is the most powerful. So since this practice can purify broken tantric commitments it means it can purify everything else, you know, below that. So this is an extremely powerful practice to do. So for it to have the greatest effect of course one should receive the initiation from a qualified practitioner, what’s called the jenang of this practice. But even without that one can do it and it’s still beneficial and of course if one actually has taken refuge then that’s very important as well, one has taken that then it becomes more powerful as well.
So basically Vajrasattva, so in Tantric Buddhism there are many deities which is used as a term, so all the deities are enlightened beings, they are all manifestations of the enlightened mind and they represent a particular aspect or quality or power of the enlightened mind that one can focus on. So in this case the Vajrasattva, vajra, you know, sattva means being, you know, like a human being, a being, a living being, a sentient being, although Vajrasattva is not a sentient being as a Vajrasattva is a Buddha. And vajra literally means, what does it literally mean? It means a stone or actually it literally means a diamond but a diamond is something traditionally that is pure and perfect and indestructible so the diamond being Vajrasattva symbolises or embodies the absolute purity of the of our mind, the utter natural purity of the mind. So this is what we’re trying to connect to when we do this practice so one visualises the deity Vajrasattva on the crown of one’s head and basically what it involves is you apply the four opponent powers, you think of particular negative actions done in this life but also recognise that we’ve done all the ten non virtues and other negative actions in past lives.
So then we visualise Vajrasattva on the crown of our head and we recite the mantra of Vajrasattva and as we recite this mantra we visualise this purifying white light coming down into us and eliminating all of those negative imprints. So it’s particularly a visualisation practice and it’s a way of sticking to something but visualise, it’s a way of changing our mind. So tantric practice involves a lot of visualisation, imagining things very strongly. Can you hear okay? Just there it’s okay.
Oh maybe I can leave it there all the time. No, I can’t. Just buzz. Right, so one visualises that Vajrasattva is seated on a pure white lotus, so the lotus symbolises the mind of renunciation just like a lotus grows out of mud and it is untouched by it, then our mind is in saṃsāra but can rise above that totally unaffected by it. And then on the lotus is a white moon disc, so the white moon disc symbolizes the mind of bodhicitta and then one visualizes this incredibly beautiful being, this Buddha Vajrasattva with a hollow body of white light.
So it’s not something solid but it’s a hollow body, of like a balloon you know there’s the shape of the being which is created by this white light and inside is completely hollow. So one visualises that on the crown of one’s head and one tries to make you know, and don’t worry if you, because you know I’ve been doing this for forty years and still can’t visualize Vajrasattva for much, so that’s not important. I mean it’s good if you can, it’s fantastic if you can, but the main thing is to try to do that and you focus on that as much as you can that the you generate the faith that the Buddha Vajrasattva is on the crown of your head seated on this incredibly beautiful white lotus, this white moon and Vajrasattva has an incredibly beautiful youthful body of white light. It is said that the deities have bodies of like a sixteen year old youth or like Tārā is like a sixteen year old girl. So very young and extremely beautiful, very pure and then so Vajrasattva is seated with his leg crossed in the vajra position, often called the Lotus posture but that’s a Hindu term so the Buddhist tantric term is the vajra posture and so drat, I haven’t prepared for this at all, what a lousy teacher, no I don’t, we, no, so in, actually you have a picture but you can’t see it, oh you can, yes good, there’s a picture of Vajrasattva, a line drawing.
So he’s seated with his legs crossed in the vajra posture and so in his hands, in his right hand, that’s his right hand isn’t it, he’s holding a vajra so the vajra symbolises the indestructible mind of bodhicitta, you know there’s many meanings of this but basically for our purposes now one can think of, so he’s holding the vajra at his heart symbolising that Vajrasattva has this mind of great compassion, great love, the bodhicitta, the mind constantly working for the benefit of all sentient beings and in his left hand he’s holding a bell so the bell symbolises the wisdom realising emptiness because a bell you know, yeah, oh anyway there’s no time to go into that now, Anyway so the bell symbolises emptiness. So bodhicitta and emptiness are the two wings on which one flies to enlightenment. These are the two on the basis of renunciation one achieves enlightenment because of the combination of bodhicitta and emptiness. So Vajrasattva is the very embodiment of those qualities. So one visualizes Vajrasattva with a very beautiful smiling face, the lips are a deep red color, the eyes are sort of long and narrow with the iris a deep blue color and his hair is also like a very deep blue and some of it is tied in knots, in five knots above the crown of his head and half of his hair is hanging over his shoulders And then he’s wearing a crown with five points and these symbolize the five wisdoms, these five points on his on the crown symbolize the five wisdoms of a Buddha and he’s wearing these long these big earrings and many like three strands of necklaces, jewel necklaces and jeweled armlets and bracelets, he has a jeweled belt and jeweled anklets.
So all these ornaments symbolise or embody the six perfections that bring about enlightenment which is generosity, morality, patience, perseverance, concentration and wisdom. So these are the six ornaments of the enlightened mind. So his body is ornamented by these six types of jewellery. Okay, and then he’s wearing this lower robe of many different silk like robe of many different colors. And also there’s this kind of like long scarf over his shoulders and billowing out.
What else? So this is the deity Vajrasattva on the crown of our head. So then we try to imagine that at Vajrasattva’s heart, at the heart chakra in the centre of his chest at this level here, there is a tiny moon disc hovering in the centre of his body, right. And on this moon disc going around, standing around on the edge upright, on the edge of this moon disc are the hundred syllables of the Vajrasattva mantra. So these syllables are white in color and they’re radiating out this light and nectar, this white light and nectar, blissful nectar.
Okay, so as one recites the mantra one imagines that this light and nectar radiates out from the mantra and goes down his body and comes out through the lower part of his body and then enters through the crown of our head and fills our whole body. So there are three visualisations one can do to purify the body, speech and mind. So I’ll just go through those a bit later but just briefly to give you some idea the mantra, where has the mantra gone? Where is it? Oh yes, on page one.
So the mantra is, it’s pronounced this way, this is written out in the Sanskrit but the Tibetan people pronounce it slightly differently so it goes something like this and you can chant it. You can chant it out loud a little bit but then normally mantras are recited very quickly and very quietly. You’re supposed to chant the same mantras so that you yourself can just barely hear them but no one else. But one can also chant chant it out loud but of course if you chant it out loud it takes much longer to do. But it goes something like this, Okay.
Yeah. So the common pronunciation is written down below. Yeah. So one can chant it out loud, you know, at first or just, quietly to oneself sort of like, Like that. Okay.
And you may think this is very difficult but you can memorise this very quickly, really it can come very quickly. So it’s best to recite the long mantra. So I’m encouraging people to try and do this practice each day and recite the long mantra twenty one times as you’re doing it. There is a cheat version which is the short mantra which is on the next page which is Om Vajrasattva hum but please don’t do that unless you really can’t bear doing the other one. Please try and learn.
Anyway, if you as a few people are interested in Tibetan Buddhism and following it, then there are some very basic practices that all the four traditions encourage, like just absolutely fundamental practices and this is one of them. Every practitioner of Tibetan Buddhism is encouraged, supposed to do this practice every day. Usually at the end of the day because in order to purify whatever negativity one’s done that day but also everything else. So the idea is to, and that’s what I mentioned in the homework, like normally I’ve suggested to do the homework meditations in the morning but this one is best to do in the evening, know, maybe just before you go to bed or anywhere just sometime in the late afternoon, evening as late as possible but when you’re still awake and alert to do this, to purify what’s done in the day and whatever. So this is one of them and there is a retreat one can do which takes about three months where you recite this mantra a hundred thousand times.
So quite a lot of students in the FPMT have done this practice, some have done it many times, this retreat of three months. I’ve managed to do it once, a long time ago. If you have the chance to do it I would highly, highly, highly, highly recommend it. This is one of the things that Lama Yeshe when he was alive tried to get his students to do as soon as possible to do this practice. In the good old days in the nineteen seventies it was very easy to just chuck in your job and go off and do a three month retreat.
Is much more difficult these days. But if you can manage it’s really really fantastic to do this practice. It really pure you know, it really does have a very beneficial effect on the mind. Really gets the mind into the Dharma. When our retreat centre in Kangaroo Island, the group retreat centre facility is fixed up I really hope that we can have this retreat run every year if possible.
Okay, so in purifying the speech, firstly one purifies the body. So you make this request to Vajrasattva to purify, you know, you develop the regret, you generate refuge, bodhicitta. It’s all set out here but I think it makes some sense what you do. So firstly you generate the strong regret for things done that you know today, this life but also by logic what you’ve done in the past. So firstly you focus on the negative actions of body, of killing, stealing, sexual misconduct and so then you make the request of Vajrasattva on the crown of your head to be purified of all those negative imprints and you think Vajrasattva happily responds by sending this light down into you a nectar as you recite the mantra.
And as you recite the mantra you imagine this white light nectar coming into your body filling your whole body and as it does so it pushes out, you imagine all the negative imprints take the form of this black liquid, right. So yeah, and then so this, I haven’t made up this practice by the way. This is from the Tantric tradition which has been practiced for over a thousand years and it is one of the vital practices of Tibetan Buddhism. It’s a preliminary to doing advanced tantric meditation, yeah, and retreat. So as the white light and nectar fills you, you imagine that your negative, these negative imprints from killing, stealing sexual misconduct leave your mind in the form of black liquid and it’s pushed out by the white light and nectar and it leaves from the lower part of your body and just disappears.
And so you try to imagine that your whole body becomes filled with this blissful white light and nectar. Yeah, so this is one of the things about Buddhism and Tantric Buddhism and see one’s trying to purify negativities not by feeling miserable but by feeling blissful. This is one of the key things, you try to imagine this your whole body and mind is just completely blissful, completely blissful and the more you can do that the more purification. But don’t worry if you can’t, don’t get hung up about oh I can’t do this, I can’t do this bit and I can’t do this bit properly, it doesn’t matter, just, the main thing is to try, yeah, because the Buddhas are helping, the Buddhas are here, the Buddha is always on the crown of our head, right? The Buddha has always been on the, excuse me while I scratch the Buddha, the Buddha has always been on the crown of our head.
The trouble is we don’t know it, we’re not aware of it, we don’t take advantage. So by visualising the Buddha in this aspect, you know, it’s channeling the Buddha, know, our dopey little mind is waking up to the fact, yeah. And so it’s really important if one can imagine that this incredible bliss is coming into the mind which is there already right, the mind is naturally blissful when it’s not obscured. Okay, so that’s what you do. So one recites that, so you recite seven mantras for that.
Then, yeah, so then at the end of that you think now I’m, I have, it’s very important to think when you finish the seven mantras and that visualization, I have definitely purified my mind of those imprints. One tries to put that thought strongly in the mind. Yeah. And then one requests Vajrasattva to purify all the negative imprints of today, this life, past lives of having engaged in the four negativities of speech, of lying, harsh speech, divisive speech, meaningless gossip, idle gossip. Again you think Vajrasattva happily responds and so as you recite the mantra this white light and nectar comes in fills your whole body and particularly this time you think that as the nectar, blissful white nectar fills up your body like a cup being filled, negative imprints of speech manifest in the form of this horrible black liquid floating on the blissful white nectar and it’s pushed out through the crown of your head, this black goo, horrible disgusting black goo and again disappears and again at the end of the seven mantras one whole being is filled with this blissful white light nectar.
And again at the end of the seven mantras you think now I have definitely purified my speech, the imprints of negative speech. Yeah. And then one makes the strong request to Vajrasattva to purify the negativities of mind itself of covetousness, ill will, wrong views in from this life, past lives and so on. And it, you think Vajrasattva happily responds as you recite the mantra and this time you imagine that from the syllables, each of the syllables is like these bolts of lightning flash out and as they do so all these negative imprints just instantly disappear. Like as the Lama say, it’s like you walk into a dark room and you turn on the light and the darkness is just gone instantly.
And again at the end of the seven you feel that your whole, so as this you’re reciting the seven mantras again your whole body is filled with this blissful white light nectar. And so at the end you think now I’ve purified the negatives of mind and now my mind is completely purified, completely purified. So then you apply the opponent power of resolution, I will not do these actions, so think of specific ones that you know, that you are trying to deal with, I won’t do this one for this period of time, I won’t do this one for this period of time. You’re promising the Vajrasattva on the crown of your head. So if you have a Guru in this life of course you think Vajrasattva and your Guru are inseparably one and you’re promising Vajrasattva who is your Guru who is oneness with all the Buddhas.
You’re making this commitment to all, so one can’t lie. You’re telling, you’re promising the Buddhas that you know you’re going to avoid those actions. And then you think the Vajrasattva is extremely happy and shows this by dissolving into this incredibly blissful white light that comes down into you and again you bliss out. And dedicate the merit. So one begins with the first two opponent powers of regret, refuge bodhicitta, then you think Vajrasattva appears because of your regret, because of your refuge, because of your bodhicitta out of great compassion from the dharmakaya Vajrasattva manifests on the crown of your head then you, yeah, it’s all set out there, okay.
So please try and do that, so in relation to in the homework it says like on the tomorrow to think about just particularly killing, any killing you’ve done in this life of you know like animals and insects and whatever, fish and think, well I’ve done it in past lives, I must have done it in past lives. Yeah. And then the next day. So set out the particular thing to think about. But also there may be other kind of lesser negative things you are engaging in that you would really like to stop and purify, so you can also do those throughout the week as well each day.
Right. There was just something else in the homework I wanted to mention I think. Oh and the other thing is, so once you’ve finished this, each day hopefully, then, before you do the full dedication just then also just briefly or maybe you want to spend a long time rejoicing in all the good things you did that day, rejoice. Or if you saw somebody or some people do something really good, virtuous, helpful, kind, rejoice in their virtue because we get merit from it as well. But particularly rejoicing in any good things one’s done, know keeping one’s refuge commitments if one’s taken refuge, keeping any of the five lay vows or just you know avoiding the ten non virtues whatever or any particular kind thing you did that day to rejoice, rejoice.
That’s really important. So this is what all the Lamas say in all the four schools to try and do this every night. Develop, you know, apply the four opponent powers to what negative things done during the day and to rejoice in the good. Then one can have a good sleep, a virtuous sleep. And one’s sleep becomes virtuous.
Then one wakes up refreshed and bounces out of bed with the bodhicitta motivation. Okay. Once again I apologise that I never cover anything during the class. There’s just too much to cover and to explain it properly. But this unfortunately this course had to be was very short it should have been longer but just because of the nature of the things we have to fit in before you know because some of us are going to Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s retreat in Bendigo in April and I would encourage if you can to go for the first two weeks or some period of the first two weeks to make contact with a truly great master of the Gelug tradition, one of the most special beings on this planet.
There is no doubt that Lama Zopa Rinpoche is the real deal. Yeah. So to get a chance to receive teachings from someone like this is extremely rare and precious and mind blowing. Rinpoche will definitely blow your mind one way or another. May not be the way you want but it will happen.
So yeah. Okay, so we’ve created some good merit tonight. Good merit, yes. There’s only good merit. Some good karmic imprints.
We’ve created with yes. So we can dedicate. We can dedicate this if you’d like to join in. Page thirteen, I think it is.