Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Ven Thubten Dondrub teaches the mind training tradition, focusing on the five powers to be cultivated at the time of death. He explains how to develop familiarity with the lion posture—lying on one’s right side with head pointing north—to maintain awareness of bodhicitta and remember the Buddha in the final moments. He discusses phowa, the transference of consciousness practice, sharing a historical account of Tibetan lamas who performed this during the communist invasion of Tibet, and describes traditional signs of success. The teaching then shifts to the concept of integrating all Buddhist teachings into one thought: bodhicitta. Dondrub emphasizes that Dharma practice must actively oppose self-grasping and self-cherishing; if meditation or prostrations inflate the ego rather than reduce it, one has missed the point entirely. He anchors this in the three types of wisdom—from hearing, contemplating, and meditating—and warns that using authentic teachings incorrectly can paradoxically strengthen the delusions one seeks to overcome.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 2013 11 14 Mind Training.mp3
UUID: aee45929-9805-4de0-a067-99d6ba1a51ae
Teacher: Ven Thubten Dondrub
Collection: Mind Training (Ven Thubten Dondrub)
Date: 2013-11-14
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 34.5 minutes
Words: ~3,848
Of the five powers at the time of death. So, again, this is referring to being familiar with bodhicitta, maintaining that awareness of bodhicitta as one is dying. And to help that, it says, the power of familiarity concerns physical actions such as lying on your right side, your right cheek resting on your right hand, your head pointing to the north with your ring finger stopping the breath from your right nostril and your left hand on your left thigh. So this is what is called the lion posture. So this is the posture that the Buddha adopted at the time of death.
So the power of familiarity is to familiarize oneself with that posture as one’s dying because that helps one to think by lying in that posture as one is dying, it helps to remember the Buddha. To be familiar with the Buddha and by remembering the Buddha we remember bodhicitta. So it helps us to die in that very virtuous state. So, as you probably all know, in the teachings, we’re encouraged to adopt this posture actually every night when we go to sleep. Ideally to maintain this posture the whole night, which from my personal experience is very difficult if not impossible to do. But the lamas say at least when you first get into bed it’s very good to adopt that posture at least just for a short time to put the imprint in the mind.
So you lie on your right side with your legs outstretched one above the other and you block your right nostril with that finger like that. So this is to block because that blocks the wind energy that is associated with attachment. So that reduces one’s attachment, the active delusion of attachment. So this is good to do to have a good sleep, a restful, virtuous sleep.
But especially at the time of death, you sleep with your left hand stretched out lying on top of your left leg. And also you can visualize that you put your head in the lap, you imagine that the Buddha is sitting on your pillow and so you put your head in the lap of the Buddha. So this is great protection as you’re sleeping, but it’s also especially really great to be able to adopt that, especially in the last moments of death.
Often you read in the life stories of great yogis and practitioners that they die sitting in the vajra position. So that’s also good to do, but that’s kind of very difficult. But the Buddha himself adopted this posture to die in. We have a nice statue in the shop of the Buddha in that posture. And in Kushinagar, the place where the Buddha manifested leaving this earth, leaving the body, there is a very large reclining statue of the Buddha in that posture. So we can try and do that as we are dying.
Also within that power of familiarity it talks about in other situations keeping the mind familiar with bodhicitta and developing the thought to die for the sake of sentient beings, to take rebirth for the sake of sentient beings. And if one can, if one has the ability as one is dying to practice tonglen, as one is dying, imagining that whatever suffering one is experiencing or difficulty one is experiencing as one is dying, one imagines that by experiencing that oneself may no other being have to experience fear and suffering as they are dying. So then one’s death becomes incredibly virtuous and meaningful.
So, as I quoted last week, this section is finished by the author saying: There are many marvellous instructions on the transference of consciousness such as the practice of phowa, this forceful transference of consciousness where one trains to shoot one’s consciousness directly into Amitābha’s pure land. I think I mentioned that when Lama Yeshe taught this at Chenrezig Institute many, many years ago, I think it was nineteen eighty one, something like that.
Lama mentioned that, of course, he lived at Sera Monastery when the communists invaded and took over Tibet. And at one stage, they bombarded, of course, Sera Monastery. It was bombarded. Can you imagine five thousand monks were living there? And the communist army just let their cannons bombard the monastery. So many of the monks were killed, but many escaped. And Lama said at that time, many of the lamas escaped, but some were very old and it was too difficult. You know, there’s this incredible confusion and whatever. And Lama Yeshe said himself that he saw some of these lamas just sit in the vajra position and do the phowa and just leave their body. They just went.
Because you are not allowed to practice this at other times. It’s only when you are actually about to die or in some kind of dangerous situation that you can actually leave the body because otherwise it becomes like suicide which is considered a negative action from the Buddhist point of view. So that’s the most famous kind of transference of consciousness, this powerful practice, which is not unique to the Tibetan tradition. It also exists in the Chinese tradition. I read a book many years ago written in the nineteen thirties by a man who I don’t think he was Buddhist either. It was just a book of travels, his travels in China in the nineteen thirties. And he said he was in some small town somewhere in China and that the local monastery had been conducting a phowa retreat, a transference of consciousness retreat. And they had a custom because what happens if you’re able to do this practice properly, one of the signs apparently of success is the fontanelle, the fontanelle actually opens again. Because when we were little babies, that’s super soft, isn’t it? That’s where all the bone joins and it’s very, very, very soft. So any yeah, there’s a hole.
So this opens and a little bit of blood comes out. And so the master conducting the retreat to show for those people who actually succeed, they take a long blade of grass and they stick it in there. And so all the successful ones who’ve got this big blade of grass sticking out of their head walk in a parade down the main street of the village. So he saw them. You know, there’s this line of practitioners parading down the street with this big blade of grass sticking out of their head to show that some of them may have cheated and used super glue, but otherwise it’s interesting. So anyway, I’ve got off the track slightly.
So our author, Atisha Namgyal Chopel says: There are many marvellous instructions on the transference of consciousness, but this is the most wonderful of them all, meaning this practice of applying the five powers at the time of death. So we should work on it. And of course to be able to apply the five powers at the time of death we need to practice the five powers during our lifetime as much as possible.
So then the third of the five precepts or factors of training in bodhicitta is the next one which is called the Measure of Having Trained the Mind. So under this heading, the third precept, the measure of having trained the mind, there are a number of one line instructions of advice. One of Chögyam I think it’s actually Pema Chödrön who is a nun in the Kagyu tradition. She was a disciple or is a disciple of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche who is this very amazing, very controversial Kagyu Lama who lived at the same time as Lama Yeshe, died just a little bit before Lama Yeshe passed away. So she called them slogans, Buddhist slogans. So these are very helpful to remember to encourage us how to practice throughout our life. So these are in the root text, seven point mind training.
So the first of these says: Integrate all the teachings into one thought. So in a nutshell what that really means is the one thought is bodhicitta. Try to integrate all the teachings, relate them to developing bodhicitta. So if one, you know, is I think everyone here has some familiarity with the Lamrim teachings, the teachings on the graduated path to enlightenment. It sets out how we achieve enlightenment by first training to renounce this life, renounce saṃsāra, then generate the wish to achieve enlightenment. So even the practices and teachings and meditations related to renouncing this life, which is really for our own purpose. We need to renounce this life in order to get a good rebirth so we don’t suffer. That’s the dominant motivation.
But underlying that, what is the idea? To get a good rebirth so that one can continue to practice in order not just to achieve liberation, but to achieve enlightenment for others. So even meditating on the precious human rebirth, meditating on impermanence, death, the lower realms, refuge, karma, all of those things which in an immediate way are about benefiting oneself, they are really also inextricably connected with generating bodhicitta. One wants to meditate the underlying motivation for understanding the precious human rebirth, impermanence, death, refuge, karma, all of this is not just to get a good rebirth, not just to get out of saṃsāra, but to be able to achieve enlightenment. But to achieve enlightenment, one first has to get out of saṃsāra. To get out of saṃsāra, first we have to get a series of good rebirths, which means not falling into the lower realms. So when we die at the end of this life, we need to get a good rebirth. So we want a good rebirth to benefit all sentient beings. Even though our immediate aim, our most direct concern is me, I don’t want a bad rebirth, I don’t want to suffer, I want a good rebirth. But underlying that, or can be, if we’re training correctly in the Lamrim, is to achieve enlightenment for others’ sake.
So understanding that is beginning to integrate all the teachings into one thought. Trying to do everything with the understanding this is leading to generating bodhicitta, achieving enlightenment for the sake of others. And very specifically, the commentary here says, since all the Buddha’s teachings and the commentaries to them were meant to subdue the misconception of self. Why? Because that’s the root of our suffering. Right? So the essence of the Buddhist teachings is to help everyone become free of suffering. And more than that’s the very essential point. But the Buddha not only wants us to be free of suffering but the Buddha also wants us to experience peerless everlasting happiness as well. That is enlightenment.
And anyway, since that misconception of self is the conception that is to be eradicated or exhausted, we should examine whether the activities of our body, speech and mind favor and encourage the misconception of self or oppose it. And here it’s meaning particularly we should examine whether the activities of our body, speech and mind that we are engaging in in relation to Dharma, you know, we’re supposed to be using our body in the practice of Dharma, we’re supposed to be using our speech in the practice of Dharma, we’re supposed to be using our mind to practice Dharma. So we should check, are these practices encouraging, favor and encourage the misconception of self or oppose it? If we find that they favor it, in other words, if we discover that we are using our body to do a Dharma practice such as prostrating or making water bowl offerings or mandala offerings or whatever, or we are using our speech to say mantras or recite texts, but we find that instead of reducing our sense of self, it’s increasing our sense of self thinking, oh, look, I do so many prostrations. Aren’t I a great practitioner? I’m so holy. Other people look, I’m doing more than they are. You know? I can do them faster. I can do them better. I’m not sweating. They’re all sweating. I’m so holy.
Then this is just increasing the sense of self, the very opposite to what it’s supposed to be doing. So if that’s the case, then we’ve missed the point of hearing, contemplating and meditating on the doctrine. So why I particularly list those three things hearing, contemplating, and meditating is because this is associated with what are called the three types of wisdom. There’s the wisdom that arises from listening to the Dharma. Before we ever heard the Dharma, we were completely ignorant in a sense. We may have been very smart and educated, but we were ignorant as to what was the cause of our suffering, what is causing our suffering, what is the real cause of happiness. We were ignorant about our mind and its potential. We were ignorant about saṃsāra and karma and everything. But just through the power of hearing the Dharma, a certain degree of wisdom arises.
Liberating insight arises and by contemplating those teachings which is the reason to listen, by contemplating them which is referring to doing analytical meditation such as what some of us did on Kangaroo Island or what hopefully everyone here does in their own homes regularly, then a deeper level of wisdom arises because we develop through doing analytical meditation, we develop correct or we can if we work at it a complete correct conceptual understanding of the teachings. For example, before we met the teachings, we never thought about impermanence or permanence. Unknowingly, we are believing and grasping that everything is more or less permanent. And we’re not even really conscious of that. But then we hear the teachings and the teachings say everything is impermanent. So just for the sake of argument, you’re all very highly intelligent and I’m sure you’ve had a profound understanding of this, but just take someone who maybe is not very bright and they hear the Lama or someone say, ‘Actually everything’s impermanent.’ They think, oh, yeah, everything’s impermanent. I don’t know why. I don’t understand that. But, you know, oh, I agree because this nice person said so. Oh, I thought everything was permanent, but everything’s impermanent. I better be you know, I shouldn’t be so attached.
So one has some helpful wisdom there. It’s not based on any real understanding, just blind faith. This is the Buddha’s teachings. Buddha’s a good guy, looks nice, shiny gold, and this Lama or monk or nun or they’re nice and they seem a good person and they seem intelligent and they’re saying this. Oh, everything’s impermanent. But then by doing some analytical meditation on this, one starts to understand, oh, yes. You know, things are impermanent because of causes and conditions. And yes, that’s true. Yeah. Now I get it. Yeah. Oh. Well, yeah. So some deeper wisdom develops. And even if some smart aleck comes along and says all this Buddhist stuff about everything being impermanent is rubbish and you think, oh, yeah, not really. You’re wrong. I know that things are impermanent. I’ve got reasons to believe it. Whereas if you just have blind faith in something and then some smart person comes along and says, ‘That’s rubbish!’ You get all confused, lose faith, run away, join another religion or something, or give up the whole thing. It’s all nonsense.
So what we need is this deeper wisdom that’s not just a blind faith, but arises from logic by thinking, contemplating. But finally comes the wisdom of meditating. Here I mean, analytical meditation is meditating, but here meditation is referring to doing single pointed meditation in a state of calm abiding. And it’s then that this conceptual understanding of things, particularly, finally, we develop in relation to the wisdom teachings of the Buddha about the nature of reality. Firstly, the Lama says everything is empty and we think, oh yes, everything is empty. I haven’t got a clue what that means, but yes, that sounds good. Everything is empty. And then you do some analytical meditation on it and you start to get some idea that, oh yes, things look like that way, but just because they look that way they don’t necessarily mean they are that way. They could be existing otherwise and one’s wrong views start to break down and so on and one starts to develop a correct conceptual understanding and then on the basis of that correct conceptual understanding, that wisdom from contemplating, then when one develops calm abiding, then that correct conceptual understanding can become the basis for a direct perception. Like the direct perception that things are impermanent. But eventually the direct perception that everything is empty. It doesn’t inherently exist. So that destroys ignorance finally.
So that’s what we are trying to do. So we are not trying to strengthen the sense of ‘I’ that ignorance creates. We’re trying to reduce it. So if our so called ‘Dharma practices’ are increasing the sense of self, we’ve missed the point of hearing, contemplating and meditating on the doctrine. If, however, the things we do with our body, speech and mind oppose it, and that is reduce our sense of self, that is a sign of a successful practice of the doctrine. And that we, this term doctrine is really not so, it has some kind of nasty connotations really. Anyway, that’s the term they’re using here. And that we have engaged in authentic mind training. This is the scale against which the practitioner should be weighed. We should ensure that we are not disappointed when subjected to such assessment.
So all the teachings should be integrated into this one thought actually combined two things bodhicitta and emptiness, of reducing our self-cherishing and reducing our self-grasping ignorance. And of course the more we can reduce our self-cherishing the more we will be able to reduce our ignorance. Because our self-cherishing reinforces our ignorance. So if we let go of that it becomes easier to undermine our ignorance, the grasping itself, you know, that egotistic attitude. Yeah. So in that sense, one could say there’s just that one thought. Am I making sense? You don’t have to agree if I’m just making confusion.
So then it goes on to maybe we should stop here, it’s almost time. Anyway, it’s a very important point to really check how our practice is going. Just doing things, just something that is labeled Dharma doesn’t make it Dharma. It depends on the actual motivation we’re doing it and the effect. So if the effect is not going against our self-cherishing and our self-grasping, then it’s not really Dharma practice. So we need to really look a bit more honestly into what we are doing and why we are doing it and how we are doing it. Because it’s really a pity if the Dharma which is this amazing precious system of eliminating all causes of suffering we actually use it in a way that it becomes a cause for more suffering. Like taking a medicine that is able to heal every kind of sickness and we take it in a way that it makes us more sick. That’s really a disaster.
Okay. Thank you very much. We can finish here for tonight and we can dedicate the merit. And we can particularly try and dedicate the merit of tonight and whatever we do. We can particularly think of the people suffering in the Philippines at the moment. And I haven’t heard so much news about Vietnam, but the situation in the Philippines is really, really awful. So we can dedicate for those people who have died to achieve the very best rebirth, for those people who are suffering because of having lost family and friends and houses and possessions and their livelihood and so on, that at the very least, they are able to maintain good state of mind. And may they be able to be quickly benefited. So we go to page eight. Do the dedications first. Page eight.
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 bodhicitta not yet born arise and grow. May that born have no decline but increase forevermore. The object of refuge of myself and of all transmigratory beings in all our lifetimes is the embodiment of the Three Jewels, the all encompassing three refuges in one, the Guru, the wish granting jewel, his holiness, the Dalai Lama, the master Padmasambhava, the Dharma king Songtsen Gampo and Trisong Detsen, the abbot Shāntarakshita and the numberless holy beings who preserved and spread Buddhadharma in Tibet and the Tibetan people who practiced and served Buddhism so faithfully for a thousand years, as well as those who along with many others died sacrificing their lives for Tibet and his holiness. May all their positive wishes be fulfilled immediately.
Due to their limitless kindness, the sun of Tibetan Buddhism has now risen in the West, which was a dark land. But now that I have met with the Dharma, I have received the perfect human body, enabling me to lead a meaningful life. Our refuge and savior, the supreme one, his holiness, the Dalai Lama, and the Tibetan people have been so kind to us. Remembering this, we make the following dedicating prayers. May all his holiness, the Dalai Lama’s wishes be successful immediately. May the snow land of Tibet achieve pure freedom and develop the Buddhadharma even more than before in Tibet, and may all mother transmigratory beings achieve enlightenment quickly.
Savior of the snow land teachings and transmigratory beings who makes extremely clear the path that is unification of emptiness and compassion to the lotus holder Tenzin Gyatso, I beseech, may all your holy wishes be fulfilled and in honoring the Three Jewels, savior of myself and others, your disciples, please, please live long. Lord of Dharma, who in accordance with the various dispositions of those to be subdued, makes clear in the light of your well spoken advice, the sacred Ganden tradition essence of Buddhist teachings are foremost and holy Lama to you who are supreme. Oh, Lama, please, please live long.