Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 72-minute talk, Venerable Thubten Dondrub introduces the fundamentals of Buddhist meditation to a group meeting at an FPMT center. He establishes that effective meditation requires three pillars: correct motivation at the session’s start, sustained mindfulness throughout, and a dedication of merit at the end. He distinguishes between concentration meditation, which holds a single object without distraction, and analytical meditation, which uses logical thinking to cultivate understanding and emotional intelligence. Dondrub then walks through the two main obstacles that derail practice—mind becoming dull and sleepy, and mind becoming tense and overextended—and uses the Buddha’s guitar-string metaphor to explain the balance required. He introduces a simple breath meditation with visualization: inhaling white light representing Buddha’s wisdom and compassion, exhaling dark smoke symbolizing negative thoughts and karmic obscurations. The session closes with guided practice, posture instructions, motivation generation, and a question period addressing karma, subtle mind, and the center’s Diamond Cutter Sūtra recitation on Sunday mornings.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 2017 11 03 Meditation 3rd Nov.mp3
UUID: 6af33790-a07c-476c-87e6-13e1485b0065
Teacher: Ven Thubten Dondrub
Collection: Meditations (Ven Thubten Dondrub)
Date: 2017-11-03
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 72.0 minutes
Words: ~6,333
So I think normally this class goes for an hour and a quarter to a quarter past twelve. That’s been the tradition. But if you don’t mind, just today we’ll just make it an hour. I’m not feeling so great this morning. So we’ll just have an hour.
So I’ll just talk a little bit about some, about meditation, then we can do a simple, my goodness me, you’re very far away. I’m so far away. And why that’s scary? Oh, it’s because the chairs are so far away. Anyway, need a telescope to see people.
Right. So maybe we can begin with the refuge prayer, is that what people do? We can do maybe twice in Tibetan and one time in English, so the prayer is on page two. I go for refuge until I am enlightened to the Buddha, Dharma and Supreme Assembly. By my merit of giving and other perfections, may I become a Buddha in order to benefit all sentient beings.
So I’m not quite sure what the Geshe has talked about, but I just sort of like to talk a little bit about the basics of meditation and then we can do a simple meditation. So in the Tibetan tradition, I think the things that are most emphasized in meditating is that firstly it’s good to have the correct posture to try and put effort into sitting correctly in the right posture. But much more than that, what is particularly emphasized is that at the beginning of the session, whatever kind of meditation one is doing, the really vital thing is checking one’s motivation and trying to make one’s motivation as correct and positive and strong and sincere as possible. My teachers have all basically argued that if one doesn’t have the right motivation then what you do that is labelled meditation is not necessarily very beneficial. So it’s really worthwhile to put effort into generating the right motivation at the beginning.
Sometimes we tend to rush through that and see that as really not very important that the meditation itself is the main thing, but to make it as effective as possible, it’s really important to try and have the best motivation. And the other thing is that at the end of the session to dedicate that the positive energy, whatever positive energy or understanding one’s generated, to dedicate that in the really best way. And so of course in our tradition we try to dedicate that to achieving enlightenment for the benefit of all beings. So there are many kinds of meditation within the Tibetan Buddhist. Well, these days many practices are labelled meditation, all sorts of things are labelled meditation, but maybe from, and they’re all okay to do, they’re not harmful.
But in the Buddhist tradition, meditation is really about working with the mind with the aim of being able to understand one’s own mind more and more, particularly in order to be able to understand or recognise those aspects of our mind or ways of thinking and perceiving that cause us suffering and problems and lead us to be conditioned to harm others. So that means recognising our disturbing thoughts of anger and attachment, pride and jealousy and so on. And so those disturbing thoughts are very easy to recognize in other people when other people are being angry or attached or so on, but actually it’s so much more difficult to acknowledge our own disturbing thoughts. We don’t really like to acknowledge that we have them or that they’re very strongly present in our mind. So this is what we’re trying to do.
Because the ultimate aim of meditation in the Buddhist system is to help us to become free of suffering, not just temporarily or partially but completely and forever for our own sake, for the sake of others. And not only to become free of suffering, but by becoming free of suffering then we can eventually achieve genuine, lasting, undeceiving happiness. So this is the real aim of Buddhism, of meditation in the Buddhist tradition. These days meditation is used for all sorts of things, for healing, for just relaxing, calming the mind, dealing with stress. And all these things are good to do, and maybe you’re coming to do that for that purpose, that’s fine.
But I’m just trying to say, as probably the Geshe has mentioned to you, that the real aim of meditation is, has this much deeper, longer lasting, all encompassing purpose. The various terms in Buddhist languages that we translate as meditation really means mental cultivation, cultivating the mind. That’s what it’s really about, cultivating the mind. Right. So in cultivating the mind there are different kinds of meditation techniques.
There are two broad categories of meditation, there is concentration meditation where one takes one object and tries to focus the mind on that object continuously without any kind of distraction. And the other kind of meditation, which is particularly emphasized in Tibetan Buddhism, especially the form of Buddhism that we follow, the school of Buddhism we follow here, which is the Gelugpa school, which is analytical meditation. And many people don’t recognize that as meditation, but it involves thinking about things. Many people think that meditation just means stopping all thought. But it’s not.
Meditation does involve trying to overcome all negative thoughts, but positive thoughts, directed logical positive thoughts are something that we can really cultivate, are really important. And the founder of our tradition, Lama Tsongkhapa emphasizes that one of the greatest qualities of the human mind is our intelligence, that quality of intelligence. And meditation can help us cultivate that quality of intelligence, which is, intelligence is really about being able to in a very basic way, intelligence is that mind which is able to or that quality of mind which is able to distinguish what is right from wrong, what is harmful from beneficial, what is meaningful from meaningless. And it’s by developing that quality of intelligence of making the right decisions that will move us away from suffering, recognizing that this state of mind is harmful, meaningless, destructive, recognising this state of mind, this way of behaving and thinking and so on is really constructive and creative and meaningful. It’s the more we cultivate that emotional intelligence that is going to really help us in this life, just in our ordinary life, but especially in our spiritual life moving away from suffering towards greater happiness, moving away from causing suffering to others to being of real benefit to others.
Right. So in meditation there always has to be an object, right? Some people think you just close your eyes and something will happen and you just wait for some special spiritual thing to explode in your mind or the Buddha will start talking to you or something like that. But meditation does not involve that. Meditation involves having an object which you have to have decided on before you start meditating, what your object of meditation or topic of meditation is going to be.
And ideally it’s good to know why that object is a good object, a useful object to meditate on. Because the more you understand the benefit of meditating on that particular object, the more energy you will have to try to stay on that object. Because I assume most of you who’ve been coming here regularly for this class, I’m not sure, or do meditation yourself anyway. What happens when we try to meditate is that we have the object, our mind starts focusing on that object but it tends to move away. It gets distracted.
There are so many things that stop our mind focusing on the object. So one thing that helps us stay on the object is having that understanding of how beneficial it is for the mind to stay on that object. Right. Very simple point, but it can be very effective. That’s why the motivation is so important as well.
That the stronger the motivation is, the sincerer the motivation is and the more one recognises that the motivation is something that I’m doing something or trying to do something that is incredibly or potentially incredibly beneficial for myself and others now and in the future, the more we have that motivation that also gives us energy to do the practice properly. Because again many people meditate in order to relax and overcome stress and anxiety and so on, but it’s important to realise that when we meditate it does require considerable effort. It should be done in a relaxed way, but you don’t just completely relax. Close your eyes and just flop. Meditation actually requires continuous effort.
Proper meditation requires continuous effort. Right? It’s a mental discipline. It requires discipline. And the more we can be disciplined in the practice, the more genuine result we will get from it.
I used to, before I was a resident teacher here in Adelaide, was a resident teacher at another FPMT centre in Perth called Hartley Buddha Centre, and there was a very nice guy who used to come to class there who would regularly fall asleep in the meditations and think that was terrific, that was so relaxing. But of course falling asleep is not good meditation. It’s, you know, the mind becoming dull and sleepy is a truly great obstacle to genuine meditation. Because what we’re trying to do in meditation is to waken up the mind, not make the mind or allow the mind to become duller and sleepier, but to make the mind really clear and alert and really, really awake so that we can be more insightful about everything, about ourselves, others, everything.
So meditation involves taking an object, understanding the value, meaning of that object, the benefit of that object and then putting effort in to trying to keep the mind on that object as much as possible in a skilful, energetic but not sort of stressed out way. There’s this famous story in the Buddha’s life about the Buddha explaining that learning to meditate was like playing something like a guitar properly, because if you have the strings too loose, it sounds horrible, and if the strings are too tight, then eventually they’ll break and snap. So in the same way, if our mind is too loose, if our concentration is too loose, then nothing really is happening, it’s not really very beneficial. But if we focus too strongly, put too much tension into it, then instead of, you know, our mind becomes very tense and is not very beneficial. We can’t work with our mind in that state.
So we have to experiment and this is not something that you just do in one session, it’s like a lifetime project of working out the right energy to put in, too much, not too little. And we have to do that, you know, only we can do that through trial and error in our meditation. Because meditation is a practice, it’s something that we have to practice, it’s not something we can just sit down and be perfect at straight away. It takes a lot of time and it also varies, sometimes it works well, sometimes it doesn’t. The mind is always changing and is influenced by so many different things.
So anyway, in the process, in the meditation session, in order to try to keep the mind on the object for as long as possible, then we have to practice mindfulness. So mindfulness is that mental factor that is not just awareness, because awareness has no kind of moral quality to it. As my teacher says, you know, burglars and murderers need to be very aware, you know, when you’re, if you’re sort of breaking into a house to steal things, you have to be really, really aware of what you’re doing, to be really quiet, check that other people are not there and so on. That’s not being mindful, it’s being aware. Mindfulness is awareness that is combined with the moral quality of understanding what is going on in one’s mind.
Is it virtuous or non virtuous, meaningful or meaningless, harmful or beneficial. Mindfulness practice has become very popular in this world now, but much of it is not what is real mindfulness according to the Buddhadharma. It’s just about being aware. And being more aware is good, but what we need to do is develop, if we really want to have a better life, a life with less suffering, more happiness for ourselves and others, we need to practise mindfulness, which is awareness combined with understanding what is going on in our mind, whether it is beneficial or not, harmful or not, whether the disturbing thoughts are operating or not, whether the virtuous positive states of mind of love and compassion, patience and tolerance and so on, whether they are operating. That’s what mindfulness is about generally.
And in a more specific way in meditation, it’s about mindfulness is that mental factor that understands whether the mind is staying on the object or not, whether something else is starting to take over the mind. And of course, in Buddhist meditation and anything that deserves the title of meditation, the object of meditation should always be something virtuous or something neutral. It should never be something non virtuous. Concentrating on something non virtuous is not meditation. It’s the very opposite to meditation.
And if you check up, it’s very easy or relatively easy for our mind to concentrate quite well on non virtuous things. It’s much more difficult because we don’t have the habit so much of concentrating on what is virtuous. As I often say, and also once more, the Tibetan word that is translated as meditation is gom. And that’s why a place like this is called a gompa, a place of meditation. And the word gom actually means to habituate or to become familiar.
Meaning to familiarize the mind or habituate the mind. So what meditation is trying to do is to habituate the mind or familiarize the mind with what it’s not normally habituated and familiar with, which is virtue. Sorry to say that, don’t mean to insult you, but just in general speaking, this is the case. That what we’re trying to do in meditation is to undermine our negative habits which tend towards, you know, ego and self-cherishing, disturbing thoughts, and also a mistaken perception of things, and we’re trying to habituate our mind with what is compassionate and patient and persevering and virtuous and meaningful and wise. That’s what Buddhist meditation is about.
It’s deconstructing all that is, you know, what we habituated with in this and all past lives and helping to familiarise our mind with a whole new set of ways of thinking about ourselves, others, the world. Right? So we need mindfulness to do that, to, the mindfulness, we place our mind on the object and then mindfulness helps us keep it there by, it detects whether the mind is staying on the object or not or getting something else is coming along that is not so good. And it’s also important, I don’t think I’ll ever have anything else to say about meditation after this wonderful talk. Don’t know what I’m going to talk about next week. No, I think I’ve lost my point.
I just had a point to make. Oh, yes. So it’s also important to understand when meditating, to do it really well, to train our mind to do it properly is that we take one object and in the meditation session, however long that meditation session is, whether it’s five minutes, fifteen minutes, an hour, whatever it is, you stay only on that object, we don’t suddenly decide, oh, bored with that, I’ll change to something else. We’ll never discipline our mind if we chop and change. In the one session we stay on the one object.
And what can happen is that you may be meditating on something and then, you know, people tell me these stories that they start thinking about the Buddha instead and they visualise the Buddha and the Buddha is appearing and talking to them and all sorts of things. So they think that was a wonderful meditation because the Buddha appeared and blah blah blah, but that wasn’t the original object of meditation. So that’s bad, when the Buddha appears to you when the Buddha is not the object of meditation, that is not a good sign, that is a distraction. Meditation means taking one object and sticking with it, no matter what other things pop up in the mind. Sounds a bit counter intuitive, but that’s how it has to work. One has to stay with the object.
And even though it looks like some other positive thing is popping in the mind, if it’s not the original object, in this situation, in this meditation session, that positive object has become a distraction, has to be let go. And that’s what mindfulness should detect and help do, to let go of that. Has that got you worried? Okay. So this morning what we’re going to do is just a very simple meditation on the breath, on watching the breath.
So the breath is a neutral object, it’s a very boring thing, but in another way it is an incredibly meaningful thing to meditate on simply because by watching the breath is one of the easiest kind of, simplest, easiest meditation objects you can choose because it’s already there, we don’t have to manufacture it in any way. We are always, while we’re alive, breathing in and out. And our mind and the breath are associated. When the mind is agitated, our breathing becomes agitated. If our breathing becomes agitated, our mind can become agitated.
So if we calm our breathing, our mind itself can tend to calm down. So it’s beneficial in that way. But just the mere fact, just the fact that it is an object that is relatively easy to stay with by simply observing the breath, even though it’s not something obviously wonderful and entertaining and spiritual, just by keeping your mind on that one can learn to discipline the mind, to let go of all other things, all other negativities, right? And when one is agitated in life, some disturbing thoughts are arising, one way to calm them, relatively easy way, is to just sit down and start observing the breath. Because the mind can only do one thing at a time and the mind can only be in one state at a time.
You can’t be happy and sad at the same time. You can’t be peaceful and disturbed at the same time. You can’t be angry and kind at the same time. It is impossible. Right?
So if one is agitated, the mind is agitated like that, that’s our mind. The mind is agitated like that, if you just focus on that, your mind will continue to do that, stay like that, and maybe even increase. But if you then try to move the energy of your mind away from that to observing the breath, there is less energy feeding that. Yeah? Because the energy of your mind is going into observing something else and taking interest in that thing which is the breath.
Yeah, and so because the mind can’t, the energy of the mind can only, you know, stay on one place, it can’t feed this agitation so much, so it will quieten down. So the more you can keep the mind on the breath or a virtuous meditation object, the more that negativity is pacified. And the mind returns, starts to go back to its natural state. That’s what we’re trying to do. Okay?
So in this meditation, what we can do to make it a little bit more effective as breathing in both nostrils in and out, one can imagine as one is breathing in that one is breathing in white light, very beautiful, peaceful white light. You can imagine that it’s coming from the Buddha, you don’t need to visualize the Buddha, but you can imagine that that white light that you’re breathing in is coming from the Buddha. It’s a manifestation of all the Buddha’s wisdom and compassion and it fills your whole being. As you breathe in, it just pervades your whole being. And you imagine that it enables your mind to become more calm and more clear, more peaceful, more joyful.
Right? And then with each out breath, we can imagine that we’re breathing out whatever negative feelings, thoughts we’re experiencing at the moment, but also any kind of problems, fears and worries, difficulties we’re having in this life. We imagine breathing all that out in the form of this kind of really disgusting black smoke. And it just disappears, it doesn’t hang around to pollute other people, it just completely disappears. So if you believe in the Buddha’s teachings on karma, that our mind is obscured by many negative karmic imprints, one can imagine breathing all of those out as well, all one’s disturbing thoughts of anger and attachment and pride, jealousy, fears and worries.
All the obscurations in our mind, everything, all kinds of sickness and causes of sickness, you imagine everything that is weighing down your mind. Because I don’t know about you, but sometimes you can really feel like something is actually, I mean the mind itself isn’t something physical or solid, but somehow, sometimes you can really feel as though your mind or your whole being is just weighed down. So imagine all of that, taking the aspect, everything that’s weighing down on your mind, obscuring your mind, saddening the heart, you imagine that all taking the aspect of this disgusting black smoke and you breathe it out. So you replace that with this white light. So try and do this really strongly.
Use your imagination, really focus on that. As you breathe in, breathe in this white light, then breathe out all the garbage, all the suffering, confusion. So you can focus on all the garbage, all the confusion, suffering in your life, or if you’re having a particular problem, difficulty at the moment, just maybe focus on that and you imagine breathing all of that out and all the causes of it within your own mind, within your own life, your own being. Alright. This is what we can do.
We can begin by sitting comfortably in the correct posture as much as possible. Most of you are sitting in a chair so it’s best not to lean against the back of the chair as much, but hold your back upright and trying to center your upper body so that it’s not leaning to the left or right forwards or backwards. And placing your right hand on top of the left with the thumbs lightly touching and your hands resting in your lap just below your navel. You can lift your shoulders up a little bit and then relax them and tuck your chin in slightly to position your head so that it’s not tilted down or lifted too high. And have your mouth lightly closed and the tip of your tongue resting at the back of the top row of teeth at the palate.
Have your eyes it’s best to meditate with your eyes just a little bit open, directing your gaze just a short distance in front of you, but not actively looking at anything. So just spend a little time checking your posture. So then just spend some time generating a strong, good motivation, thinking that I’m going to do this meditation of focusing on the breath as strongly as possible. I’m going to put effort into disciplining my mind to do what I want it to do, to stay on the breath, observing the breath, doing the visualization as a way of beginning to train my mind, as a way to begin to subdue the disturbing thoughts and create the space for all my positive qualities of love, compassion and wisdom and so on, to become manifest and stronger and stronger. And I’m going to do this not just for my own sake, but to eventually be in a position where I, because I have strong control over my mind and the disturbing thoughts, to be in a position not to cause harm to others, and to be in a position to be of vast benefit for others.
So try and generate motivation along those lines as much as you can. So then start by just being aware of the breath coming and going. Don’t start the visualization yet, just simply begin observing the breath coming in and going out. And as you start doing that, also make that strong determination that I’m going to be really mindful, just keeping the mind on the breath. I’m not going to follow any of the disturbing thoughts, get distracted by sounds or thoughts or pains in the body, I’m really going to put strong effort into focusing on the breath.
So now one can begin the visualization that with the in breaths, imagining this very calming, blissful, white light coming in as you breathe in with each out breath, breathing out all disturbing thoughts, fears and worries, problems, difficulties of the mind. Breathing all that out in the form of this thick black smoke. So we can bring the meditation to a conclusion, firstly by making a strong determination to be more and more mindful in our daily life of the state of our own mind in order to protect ourselves from our own harmful thoughts and so that we can encourage those positive states of mind. And to then dedicate the positive energy we’ve generated, whatever clarity of mind we’ve created. May this become a cause, lead us to become freer and freer of disturbing thoughts, for our positive states of mind to become more and more active and powerful, until eventually enlightenment is achieved for the benefit of all kind suffering sentient beings.
So then we can relax the posture and open our eyes completely. So any questions about anything? It doesn’t have to be about what I said today. It can be anything you’ve been thinking about really. Well, to create a complete karma, a complete karmic imprint, good or bad, you have to have four factors. One is the object, one is the motivation, one is the doing of the action or the way you do it.
And the fourth one is the completion, which involves also whether you’re happy you’ve done it or you regret you’ve done it. So if you have all of those factors complete, you’ve created a very complete imprint. Good or bad. No, there’s four minutes. Don’t be shy.
Aren’t we supposed to have a lot of big discussion now, normally? Yeah. We’re just talking about the gross level of mind. Yes. At this stage I wouldn’t worry about the subtle and very subtle levels of mind.
I think one thing to understand is that the gross mind, which sounds like it’s a very bad mind but it just means it’s the coarsest level of mind, that mind itself has many levels, you can talk about subtle and very subtle levels of that mind. So like I said I think last night or at some point, for example when we’re really angry, that is the grossest level of the gross mind. That’s when the mind is really like that. But for example, if one is able to meditate well and concentrate well and you’re meditating on loving kindness really well, then your mind is going into quite a subtle level. The gross mind is at a very subtle level.
Or for example, one is able to meditate with some concentration, some degree of concentration on the nature of phenomena, the true nature of phenomena. If one is able to do that, then the mind is becoming quite, you know, really subtle. But it’s still the gross level of mind. The subtle and very subtle levels of mind can only be experienced by someone who is doing very advanced tantric practice. Pardon?
I won’t sweat it too much. Yes. Can you meditate on the sensations that you have in your body and at the same time, you know, just follow your breath the way that Sorry. And at the same time? Follow the breath the way sometimes you know, some people say that meditation should start with being aware of the body sensations.
And What if your mind’s becoming very agitated from doing the practice, that’s not a good idea. That’s not. Certainly you can, there are body awareness meditations which we can do at some point. I was actually thinking to start with that one today but it certainly isn’t designed to make the mind agitated, it should do the very opposite. But yeah, I think that’s all I can say. Well, on Thursday nights I’m teaching a course called the Graduated Path to Enlightenment.
So those teachings are set out in a whole series of meditations that are designed to lead our mind to enlightenment and those meditations, analytical meditation where you think about a particular topic in a logical sequential way. For example, one of the first topics in that system is called the meditation on the precious human rebirth. So that involves recognising that we have not only an ordinary human rebirth, but we have a very particular kind of rebirth. You try and see, do I have this very special kind of human rebirth where I’ve met the Dharma, I have faith in it, I have the freedom to practice it, I have enough good health of body and mind to practice it, I have teachers and Dharma friends and so on. So you analyse and check that you have those things.
And then you think about what is the meaning of having a precious human rebirth, how I can take advantage of that. So you recognise these things, you check over and over again, you analyse these things. Or there are meditations on death. Not a very happy topic but it’s a very important one where you give yourself reasons why you will definitely die. Many reasons to think why one will definitely die and how it could happen at any time and what is going to benefit at the time of death.
So you think about these things. And one aspect of this analytical meditation is also checking your own mind, how you react to something like, for example, in developing patience, there’s meditation on patience and one aspect of the teachings on practicing patience is the teaching that your enemy is your best friend. The enemy is the best friend. The best friend you can have is your enemy. So then you can check in meditation, do I really believe that?
Yeah. You check up, do I really accept that? Do I really believe that the enemy is my, because you can, you know, we can all nod and say, oh, that’s very nice, yes, I’ll try and do that, I’ll love my enemies, you know, that’s good, good little Buddhist. But deep down, do you really believe that? You know, I think that’s absolutely stupid.
Why would I, you know, why is the enemy the best friend, that’s ridiculous. I don’t believe that, why these Buddhists are rubbish. So you have to check that mind but then you have to try and see, well actually the Buddha taught that so maybe there’s some truth in it so how is it possible to come to the conclusion that actually the person who most wants to hurt you is the best person you can be in contact with. How can you possibly, how could I possibly believe that? What did the Buddha, and so you know you check the arguments and think, oh well maybe, oh that’s difficult to do but maybe it’s correct, yes if I could do that that would be good.
You go something like that. But it’s all set out, yeah, the arguments are set out, so you try and go through those and it has to be done again and again and again. And as one does it, you know, may think, oh yes, I completely believe that and agree with it, but as you do it again and again you also discover, you know, your hidden little doubts and fears and worries and disagreements and one needs to try to overcome those. In the Gelugpa tradition that this center is connected with, the Lamas, the monks who study in that tradition in the great monasteries, they do a lot of debating which is where they debate these things with, you know, with each other. So this is said to be a form of meditation.
But in ordinary meditation as an individual you debate this in your own mind in a sense. A bit, yes, if I can behave myself. I have many good intentions but I end up talking too much. But yes, we will try to meditate on it each night, each session a bit but also you will be encouraged to do it yourself during the week. Yes, yes.
Well, it is very difficult to do for most people. You shouldn’t expect that it’s just going to pop up there and stay there. You’d be very lucky if you could do that. It is practice, it’s something that one really has to work at. But if it is causing a lot of problem, just focus on the breath.
Here we, you were just talking about visualizing white light and yeah. Yeah. I think the only thing I can say is that maybe need to do it more gently, maybe have too much expectation that something terrific is going to happen. But maybe just do it in a more, just try and do it in a very simple way. You know, you don’t have to flood yourself with white light.
Just a little bit, just a bit of, a little bit of, or maybe like a torch light or something, just a bit of light you know, doesn’t have to be dazzling, pristine white, but you know just a bit of light you know. Or just, even just think white light is coming. I think I wanted too much perhaps. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
But yes, things like that happen to people for sure. So can visualization meditation. Yes, of course. Of course. Yes.
All Dharma practice changes your karma, yeah, or your karmic imprints, modifies, changes the conditions, purifies. Specific things to purify one’s karmic imprints and so on, but any good thing you do changes the situation, starts to modify things. As I said, just taking refuge starts purifying all your negative karma. When you sincerely, from your heart, take refuge in the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha, that begins to purify everything. Maybe one more little question?
I don’t know. Well, the Diamond Cutter Sūtra you’re not reciting the names of Buddhas much, it’s just in the Sūtra itself the Buddha says that even reciting one verse, one four line verse of the Sūtra purifies enormous amounts of karma, creates enormous amounts of merit. It’s very difficult to explain how this happens, other than one is, it’s all related to the power of the Buddha and the truth of what the Buddha spoke, that the Buddha taught these sutras, some of these enigmatic sutras purely for the purpose of people in the future reciting them to purify their mind. And so the motivation for us on Sunday is to repay our Guru’s kindness? Yes, yeah, yeah, long life and to be free of obstacles.
But basically that means for us to purify our mind so the Guru, we create the cause for the Guru to stay and appear in a healthy way to teach us. So what we’re talking about in case you don’t know is that on Sunday mornings at eleven o’clock we have a reciting of the Diamond Cutter Sūtra. This is one of the Prajñāpāramitā Sutras which is the most profound teachings of the Buddha on the nature of reality. It’s a very short Sūtra, we recite this combined with another prayer written by Lama Tsongkhapa, the founder of our tradition, so it takes altogether about an hour and I give a tiny commentary each time, we only started last week, about some explanation of the sūtra. You’re most welcome to come along.
Ten thirty. Ten thirty. No, it’s in English. It’s in English, yes. No, it’s definitely in English.
Okay, think that’s it for, so we have to, we can formally dedicate the merit. I ended up going over the usual. I’m feeling better. So if we’d like to turn to the dedication prayer on page nine, is that it? Oh no, just page three. Here’s page three. We’ll do this in English. Through the merits of these virtuous actions may I quickly attain the state of the Guru Buddha and lead all living beings without exception into that enlightened state.
May the precious Bodhi mind not yet born arise and grow. May that born have no decline, but increase forevermore. So, people are now welcome to stay for lunch and we ask a donation to cover the cost of the lunch. Up to you what you donate. Anyway.
Thank you.