Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 104-minute teaching, Ven Thubten Dondrub introduces Vajrasattva practice as a core method for purifying negative karma through the four opponent powers: regret, reliance on refuge and bodhicitta, strong resolution to change, and virtuous remedy. He explains the tantric deity Vajrasattva—symbolizing the mind’s indestructible purity—and guides students through its visualization: the white form seated on a lotus and moon disc at the crown, holding a dorje and bell, adorned with jewels representing the six perfections and five wisdoms. The practice involves visualizing white nectar and light pouring from Vajrasattva into the body, purifying negative imprints of body, speech, and mind by imagining them departing as black liquid. He stresses that success depends primarily on sincere regret, bodhicitta motivation, faith in the method, and concentration—not perfect visualization. He discusses why retreat practice is vastly more effective than daily sessions, recommends receiving formal initiation from a qualified guru, and encourages attempting the traditional three-month Vajrasattva retreat in a group setting if possible. Aimed at Tibetan Buddhist practitioners seeking systematic purification work.
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File: 2014 01 22 Ven Dondrub – 01 – Vajrasattva Practice 22-1-2014.mp3
UUID: 0aa98f06-df51-4390-b924-1ab1d4bb8c31
Teacher: Ven Thubten Dondrub
Collection: Practices (Ven Thubten Dondrub)
Date: 2014-01-22
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 104.5 minutes
Words: ~7,491
Have you got one of the teaching things for me? Just so I’m doing the same thing. Thanks. So we just if we open to page seven of the teaching prayers we do the refuge in bodhicitta. So we can try and generate as much as possible the right motivation for being here.
So the bodhicitta thought wishing to achieve enlightenment in order to be able to be in a position to perfectly repay the kindness of all suffering mother sentient beings. So we think of the Buddha in front of us as our source of refuge surrounding us are all the kind suffering mother sentient beings. And we can think that in order to achieve enlightenment I have to gain all the different realizations. So in order to gain the realizations I have to that involves meditating on the teachings but for those meditative practices to succeed to bring about the realizations I not only have to accumulate merit that empowers my mind to gain the realizations but I have to free my mind of all the obstacles to gaining those realizations. So I need to purify my mind and one of the most powerful ways to purify the mind of any kind of negative imprint created by any kind of negative action is the Vajrasattva practice.
So for this reason, I’ll study this this practice. I go for refuge until I’m enlightened to the Buddha, Dharma, 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. Thinking the Buddha is pleased with our motivation for wanting to purify our mind then we imagine Śākyamūni Buddha comes to the crown of our head and dissolves into blissful golden light. That light pours down into us, blessing our mind.
So then briefly we can do the nine round breathing exercise to help develop a calmer, clearer, more concentrated mind so that we can use that mind to listen to, think about the teachings on Vajrasattva and also to be able to engage in the actual Vajrasattva meditation practice. Okay, thank you. So in the Lamrim Teachings in the section dealing with the law of cause and effect it talks about how we need to purify our mind of the negative imprints created by negative actions of body, speech, and mind in this and past lives. And the essential method to do that is the applying the four opponent powers. So last Wednesday, I talked about those.
I just just in I can’t remember if everyone here here tonight was there last night last Wednesday. But just briefly to remind you what they are, they are the the first one is the power of regret, which is the most of the four, it’s the most important, although we need all four. We we need to apply the four opponent powers altogether strongly, sincerely, with as much concentration and faith as we can and to apply the those opponent powers as soon after we recognize we have engaged in this negative action as possible. Because according to the teachings the karmic potency of these negative imprints increases all the time. So if we don’t cut that in potency then it gets really difficult.
So that’s important. So there’s regret, not guilt, but regret. I won’t go into any detail tonight about these things. If you’re if you’re not familiar with these, maybe I can talk to you about it at some some time again. But anyway there’s the power developing the sincere power of regret which is a type of wisdom that comes from simply recognizing something is negative and it can only bring suffering to oneself.
Right? Then I So the sense of regret. Then the second opponent power is these are not necessarily in order but then is the power of reliance which has two aspects relying on our refuge and relying on the power of our bodhicitta. So when it says relying on the power of our refuge it doesn’t the refuge in the triple gem so that doesn’t mean just somehow the Buddha will come along and get rid of our negative imprints but our refuge is a personal thing that it having it depend however much faith we have in the Buddha and in the Buddha’s teachings that will induce us hopefully to actually put into practice the Buddha’s method. So that’s the real refuge of practicing the methods.
And the essential thing to do is to, you know, have that mind that is determined more and more to avoid negative actions and engage in virtuous actions. So even just that mind that sincerely develops the wish to avoid negative actions, that is a purifying state of mind. Right? Because much of the time in any life we don’t have that mind that wants to engage in negative actions. We’re quite happy to engage.
We don’t know what negative actions are. Even if we do, we are often, because of our self-cherishing, quite happy or willing at least to engage in them. And it’s very easy not to engage in negative actions when there is no the conditions but once the conditions are there we have this because of our self-cherishing and habit unfortunately we have a tendency to be okay to engage in negative actions. So developing a mind that that really more and more sincerely doesn’t want to do that no matter what is is is a completely contrary state of mind to what we’ve had during beginningless saṃsāra. So it really is undermining that negative state.
So it helps purify. Did that make some sense? Right. So the other aspect of that power of reliance is relying on our bodhicitta, not someone else’s, but however much bodhicitta we have the wish to cherish sentient beings and so on. Which involves having the wish not to again that also involves the wish not to engage in negative actions that harm ourselves especially harm others.
So that’s a great protection and purification and of course in most lives we have never even heard the word bodhicitta, let alone not know what bodhicitta means, let alone have aspiration to follow it. Cultivating some kind of what my teacher Lama Zopa Rinpoche calls ‘effortful bodhicitta’ because we shouldn’t delude ourselves into thinking we’ve got bodhicitta because I think quite a few people seem to think I’m not saying people here but over the years I’ve met people who seem to think that they’ve got bodhicitta. bodhicitta is even more difficult to generate than developing the wisdom understanding emptiness. So it’s not just being a nice person or kind or it’s more than being compassionate. That’s the essence of it, but it’s a step beyond compassion.
Anyway, if having admiration for bodhicitta and trying to direct our mind in that direction and practice it in whatever ways we can. Again, this is something that we in beginningless time, have rarely beginningless saṃsāra, we’ve rarely done. So it’s a great purification to be able to even try to cultivate the thought. So that helps purify the mind. Then there’s the opponent power of resolution, which is making the strong resolution, commitment, determination to avoid negative actions in the future, especially the ones that we know that we are doing, that we’re engaged in.
So we have to make that resolution. And again, my teacher, Lama Zopa Rinpoche emphasizes it’s it’s pointless to say I will never do this action again because especially if it’s it’s strong habit. We just have to be honest and recognize that we will do it, but in the future, but if we put real effort, we can do it less and less and less. So we decide that I’ll put really strong effort for this period of time and not do the action so then you make that resolution to the Buddhas. So you make the promise to the Buddhas not just to ourselves but to the Buddhas so that helps break the continuity.
And the idea of course is if we are successful in keeping that commitment then we don’t just decide oh now I can break that negative action again’ but we try and make the commitment to follow that avoidance for a similar period of time or even a longer period of time and build up step by step like that. And if we fail to keep the commitment, as I said last week, then the only solution if we fail to keep our commitment to avoid a negative action is to apply the four opponent powers again, to have regret, to reestablish the sense of reliance on on the triple gem in bodhicitta, and to make a more realistic resolution, maybe a shorter period of time. Right? But try again. And if we fail, what?
You know, again? We can’t give up. The only thing is to apply this method of the four opponent powers again and again and again. Right? And so the last of the four opponent powers, these are not necessarily in order, but the one I want to talk about now is what we’re doing now is the power of remedy, of doing a virtuous action, a specific virtuous action to counteract the specific negative actions we want to purify.
But also, as I explained last week, this practice of applying the four opponent powers works for the negative actions we know we’ve done, but also we can know by logic, by inference, that we’ve done every kind of negative action in past lives because because, you know, there’s beginningless past life no. No. What’s the word? Infinite past lives, therefore, infinite opportunities to be in a situation where we’ve murdered people, tortured them, raped them, everything, you know, stolen, you know, everything that we criticize other people for and say, I would never do that. Actually, we have in past lives.
So the negative imprints from those some of them have ripened but some haven’t. And we never know when the conditions come when those imprints are going to ripen again. So by inference we can understand that we’ve done all these things. We have the imprints so we need to purify them. So the specific virtuous action we do as a remedy works for the ones we know and the ones that we can only know indirectly by logic, by inference.
Yes. Don’t know if this gets confusing, but I’d like to try and explain this point, if I can. As I understand it, when we engage in virtuous actions oh, sorry, start again. When we engage in negative actions, negative imprints are created in our mind, with our consciousness. And say, just for example, in one day, we we engage in a quite negative action.
We generate a negative imprint as a result. In the very same day, we engage in a a good virtuous action, and we generate a positive imprint. But those two imprints don’t wipe each other out. Both imprints are there, and when the conditions come, they will ripen, you know, at various times. The negative imprint will bring suffering.
The positive will bring some happiness etc. Right? So we have piles of both negative and positive so they don’t balance each other out. But in this case when we do when we’re applying the four opponent powers consciously and we do a virtuous action, that virtuous action the whole point is that that virtuous imprint or that energy does wipe out some negative imprints. That’s the whole purpose of it.
Right? No. Okay. Normally, as we’re going about our life, create positive and negative imprints. But the positive imprints don’t wipe out the negative ones.
It’s only when we apply the four opponent powers and specifically do a specific virtuous action to counter, to consciously purify the mind that some of those negative imprints are eliminated or reduced. Right? Well, not just Vajrasattva. Vajrasattva, this is the point I’m trying to get to, is one of the most virtuous practices we can do to purify the mind. But one can do other ones like the prostrations to the thirty-five Buddhas.
So, anyway, in that category of doing a virtuous action to remedy the negative imprints, to purify them, in the Lamrim it explains there are six particularly virtuous actions one can do. These are good to do at any time to accumulate merit, but also because they are so powerful they are very good to practice as purification. Right? Am I are you with me? Yeah?
So one of them is the one we did last week which is doing the prostrations to the thirty five Buddhas and another one is Vajrasattva. This is another of the practices. So the practice of prostrating to the thirty five Buddhas comes from the Sūtra tradition. The Vajrasattva practice comes from the tantric tradition from the the vajrayana. So to do this practice completely to bring about its greatest effect we should receive an initiation by a qualified lama so that we can do the practice.
But in fact, all tantric deities, to practice them, one should. And in the past, one could only practice them with having first received an initiation from a qualified practitioner. But these days because these are the degenerate times and people aren’t often qualified and so on. But because some of these tantric practices are so beneficial the Lamas encourage us to do them without the initiation. Right?
To some extent. This is the case with Vajrasattva at least as a daily practice there were various levels of the Vajrasattva practice to engage in the simplified version which we’re going to do. It’s good to do. It’s okay to do it without the initiation. Of course if we’ve got the initiation it will be more effective for our mind.
So because it is from the Tantric tradition I can’t explain everything about it because to get the proper explanation you have to have the initiation. And I would encourage people, anyone who is genuinely interested in following the Tibetan tradition to receive the Vajrasattva initiation from a qualified lama, but especially a lama that you feel connected to, not just anybody, because that lama becomes one of your gurus where you have the commitment to see them as a Buddha. So this is the most one of the mow it is about the it is the most, strongest karmic connection you can make with anyone. The relation with the Guru helps us create the strongest karmic, good karma, but also the worst negative karma. So the practice we’re doing here is a simplified version of the actual meditation practice.
But still it’s very useful and it’s highly encouraged as I’ve said many times already to do this in all the four traditions it’s encouraged that we do this every night. To recite the long mantra of the Vajrasattva deity twenty one times at least to try and do that every night because it’s almost guaranteed that every day we engage in some kind of negativity, natural negativities or we transgress the vows that we have taken. So just a little bit more specifically, the practice of the thirty five Buddhas, confessing prostrating to the thirty five Buddhas, that practice is particularly taught in the context of purifying the bodhisattva vows. So the karma associated with the bodhisattva vows is millions of times greater than the karma associated with just ordinary behavior, ordinary actions. So that means if doing the prostration to the thirty five Buddhas can purify the broken bodhisattva vows, this means it can purify lots of negative karma because breaking the bodhisattva vows is very heavy.
But this comes from the tantric tradition which is even more advanced so doing this properly with a sense of strong refuge etc etc especially doing it with having received the initiation from a qualified practitioner then this can definitely purify anything. The early days of the development of the FPMT organization when Lama Yeshe was alive and everything started from him. At the Kopan courses that were held every year, the month long Lamrim meditation courses that were held every year at Kopan monastery in Nepal. At the end of that month long course Lama Yeshe always gave the Vajrasattva initiation to the students and encouraged them to do the three month retreat because this is one of the essential practices in the Tibetan tradition that we are encouraged to do in our life if we can. In the good old days when I was young and first met the Dharma, it was fairly easy to do three month retreat.
Easy in the sense of finding the time to do them because in those days you could just chuck in your job if you had one at any time and get one, another one easily. These days it is so much more difficult and there is so much more stress and people work so hard and long and have so many commitments so it’s much more difficult. But I would encourage people to think about planning if you can at some point to try and do the Vajrasattva, three month Vajrasattva retreat where one recites a hundred thousand prostrations hundred thousand mantras. Because it takes three months to do more or less. Some people do it much faster, but, you know, I can’t imagine how they do it.
In the little group I did, I was, of course, the last one. There was only three of us, but I was the I was left all by myself to finish. Anyway, only a couple of days. It took me longer. Anyway, The other thing is to try and do it in a group because it can be quite difficult of keeping the discipline of practice for three months.
And of course, it can be a wonderful experience, but also because you’re purifying stuff and you have to think about all the rotten things you did in your life, it can be can be no. That wasn’t the point I was making. It can be a little to be honest. It can be a little heavy, difficult. Things can come up, you know.
So if by oneself one could be easily encouraged to run away. Whereas in a group it’s much more easy and one of course there’s always difficulties. Like everything in Samsāra, things have their good and bad sides. Doing practice in a group, there are the negativities that you can get annoyed by people’s behavior and they’re making noises and this is and that. But actually, despite all that, being in a group gives some energy.
We may not be conscious of it at the time, but actually it’s so much easier to be disciplined and so on when a group of people are doing the same practice. Doing Vajrasattva retreat, it’s pretty important to do it in a group. So a few FPMT centers around the world do the retreat every year like the Mahāmudrā Centre in New Zealand does it, Tuśita retreat centre in India does it, and also Kopan monastery does it every year. They hold it every year. When our group retreat facility in Kangaroo Island is built, would be great if we could conduct one there or even regularly.
That you know anyway that got a little bit off the point but that is but of course the ideal way to do that retreat, that purification, one hundred thousand Vajrasattva is to do it in a retreat but you also can like with the thirty five Buddha practice do it as a daily practice Accumulate the hundred thousand. Well, it could. Yeah. But, of course, because you’re doing it so briefly and to be honest, charitably, if we’re honest, which we should be, sitting home at night for fifteen-twenty minutes or even less doing Vajrasattva, having worked all day, the mind is pretty agitated, it’s not very focused and concentrate. So the power, unfortunately, isn’t that great.
It’s still worthwhile to do, important to do, but the the beauty of retreats is even for the the ordinary person who may not have much ability to concentrate the mind, in a retreat your mind settles down much more. You know, just taking our own mind as an example, compared to our daily life, our mind in retreat is much more settled. We are much more concentrated. And there are there aren’t the distractions that come every day in a retreat that come in ordinary life. So meditation even we may think, oh, my meditation or retreat is, you know, is a joke, it’s not very good at all.
It’s far stronger than in our ordinary life. And so it’s having much more impact. And to do it so the longer we do a retreat, generally speaking, the more effect it will have. Because the mind is calming down. A friend of mine who is a I think I’ve mentioned this before, a Swiss monk I know who is I think just from past lives is you know he has quite a strong imprint I think of doing meditation.
He’s a really good meditator and he did a two or three year retreat at Osel Ling retreat in Spain and he said it took him one year to for his mind to really get into the retreat. Yeah. Yeah. And especially when you’re you’re you’re you’re more attuned to meditation, you’re also more attuned to how agitated the mind is. So that’s why any kind of retreat is like even like doing a one day retreat is better than doing a twenty minute meditation.
Any meditation, any practice is good. Trying not trying to put you off doing that or think, oh, it’s not worth doing. It’s it’s all incredibly important. But the more time the more we can be in a conducive environment, and for, you know, a period of time. I mean retreat is a vital part of Dharma practice.
Lama Yeshe always used to say try to find, like something like at least a week a year to do retreat. At least a year. I I mean, sorry. At at least a week every year to to to to do retreat either by yourself or in a group. And of course, it’s if one hasn’t done much meditation or retreat before it’s always good to do some retreats in a group first so you get some idea and confidence and then one can do individual retreats.
It’s not such a good idea generally to do individual retreats first without any experience of what it’s all about. Anyway, I think I’ve got a bit off the topic. So Vajrasattva practice itself, most of it it’s it’s it’s more or less explanatory in here, but okay. So Vajrasattva, the deity Vajrasattva, there are about three different versions of Vajrasattva that I’m familiar with. There possibly are more but this is the basic one and Vajrasattva Vajrasattva literally means something like the diamond being or the adamantine or indestructible being.
So one could say that Vajrasattva symbolizes the indestructible natural purity of the mind which we all have. So this is what we’re trying to connect with. It’s not the pure mind that engages in negative actions, it’s the obscured mind. This one, the mind that’s obscured by disturbing thoughts that engages in negative actions. So we have to in a sense try to connect with that indestructible pure nature of our mind and the minds of the Buddhas and so that’s what Vajrasattva represents.
So we visualize Vajrasattva on the crown basically we visualize Vajrasattva on the crown of our head. Imagine this light and nectar coming from Vajrasattva into us causing all those negativities to leave the mind. And so an essential part of tantric practice is faith. The more faith that the tantric practices are the teachings of the Buddha, the most profound teachings of the Buddha, that they really work, that all the great masters relied on them in the past, the more and and so having that faith and the faith that it is working, you know, the more faith, the more it works. The less faith we have, the less it works.
But also the way things work in general is we may not have very much faith at the beginning but by doing it our faith can increase. It might decrease, but sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. Hopefully, it will increase. Because also partly why we don’t have so much faith is our mind is obscured.
The more we purify our mind, the more we create the condition where our faith will increase. I have done, believe it or not, many years ago the Vajrasattva retreat. And I remember in one session, towards the the end of one session, I was absolutely desperate to go to the loo. But the rule is that, you know, that that when you do the retreat strictly, you shouldn’t, you know, take a break in the session. You shouldn’t leave.
You have to sit there. So or or if you do, you can’t count all those mantras in that session, and the sessions go full anyway. So I was sitting there in kind of agony doing the thing, and, you know, I’ve been thinking all along how how, you know, I can’t visualize anything. This is you know, nothing’s happening. And then, it got so desperate I had to run out and leave that session.
And as I did so, I suddenly realized that I had gone from one state of mind to something much grosser. That in fact, actually, while I was doing the practice, even though I thought I wasn’t doing it very well at all, I was in a much different state of mind than I thought I was. I was in a much purer I’m not claiming it was anything very special but something was actually happening that I wasn’t really aware of as I was doing it. But when I stopped doing that I realized, oh wow, actually my mind was quite, know, to what it normally is, it was quite concentrated and focused. Although I didn’t think I was really visualizing Vajrasattva, something was going on, something good.
So why did I say that? I don’t know. There was a reason. Oh yes! While we’re doing these practices we may not think much is happening but purification is happening.
It does work, arising dependently on many factors, things happen. So by doing the practice some purification occurs and so if we stick with it, because our mind does get purified a little bit, then that is a condition where our faith in all aspects of the Dharma can increase. One of the things that Lama Yeshe always used to emphasize is that if you practice and you keep going, don’t have to do it a lot. You know, take on big slabs and then get, you know, overwhelmed. But if you just keep practicing, you know, step by step, then you get the taste of the Dharma.
This is what Lama used to talk about, the taste of the Dharma. And if you get some taste, then you know it’s true because you’ve tasted it. You know, people can say this is delicious when you can think, oh, maybe it is delicious, maybe it’s not. But if you taste something yourself, you know, oh, it is delicious. And then you want to eat it again.
So if we taste the Dharma, allow ourselves to really taste it by practicing and giving, you know, not for five seconds, five seconds practice doesn’t get, you know, enable us to taste the Dharma. But if we give it a chance and get the taste, then we know, you know, this this this is good. This works. And so we will want to do it some more, and our faith will increase. And as our faith increases, the desire the wish to practice will increase.
And the more we practice the more taste so it in theory snowballs. So, yeah. So it’s important to try and cultivate this faith in the practice that it’s a valid practice, that if I do it, it will affect me. It will benefit me. That’s really, really important.
That’s an essential aspect of how Tantra works. Not the only I mean there’s many many aspects of Tantra, but arising dependently, you know, depending on how much faith, because the Buddhas are there, perhaps we receive the initiation or some explanation of the practice and we’re trying to concentrate and we have the other opponent powers operating our regret and etc etc then depending on all these things, things happen. One other thing is important that when we do the practice, if we have a guru, especially the root guru, it’s always important to think of like the Buddha or the tantric deities as being the same as the guru. That actually what know, we have a human guru if we if we do have a human guru, who the human guru really is is Vajrasattva. Because Vajrasattva is a Buddha.
The the the enlightened mind manifesting in this aspect, which is the aspect of purification, the power to purify. The enlightened mind has the power to purify, so the enlightened mind manifests as that deity that embodies that. And that is that is the true nature of our Guru. Yeah. Whoever our Guru is or will be is inseparable from what Vajrasattva is.
So that’s important if you have the Guru to think like that. So we visualize Vajrasattva on the crown of our head having a firstly, there appears a white lotus, many many petals, then a white moon disc, and then Vajrasattva is seated just above the moon disc. And we imagine that Vajrasattva has a hollow body of white light, nothing solid. It’s all light. And that light, the lotus, the moon disc, Vajrasattva’s body, all the clothing, the ornaments, one should try and have a sense that all of that is the mind, the enlightened mind.
It’s the manifestation of the enlightened mind. So it’s all transparent or translucent, you can see through it we try and imagine or visualize that it’s incredibly beautiful so that our mind is happy to stay on it and concentrate on it. So we think of Vajrasattva with the legs crossed in the vajra position and then the what is it? The right hand is holding a vajra this is a vajra at the heart like that. So the vajra has many symbolisms in Tantra.
Basically, it symbolizes the mind of bodhicitta. That that’s the most simple ordinary interpretation. There are more profound interpretations, but it symbolizes bodhicitta and also the indestructible nature of the mind, the pure indestructible nature of the mind, is inseparable from bodhicitta. And then Vajrasattva is holding in his left hand the bell, which is resting on the left knee. So the bell, of course, symbolizes wisdom because the sound of a bell arises depending on this thing hitting this thing.
A sound doesn’t inherently exist from its own side independently. It only exists arising dependently on many things. This, this, the movement, somebody or something to move it, the airwaves, then someone listening, someone who can hear the sound. You know. So all of those coming together, the sound exists.
The sound doesn’t exist independently, separately from those things. It can only exist. The only way the sound is can exist is arising depending on all those factors. So the bell symbolizes the true nature of all things that everything is actually empty of inherent existence. So these are the two essential ingredients of the path to enlightenment: bodhicitta and wisdom.
Vajrasattva’s lower body is adorned with a silk like robe. So we say you can say silk or silk like because but it’s not really silk because it’s the mind of the Buddha manifesting in what appears to be a piece of clothing, something incredibly beautiful. And then he has these also scarves over his shoulders, and his hair is a deep blue color. And so half of it is kind of tied in knots above the crown of his head, and half of the hair is hanging over his shoulders. And then, what else?
Okay. So then he’s also wearing these jeweled ornaments. So the ornaments symbolize the six perfections of a of a Buddha or you know, you know, Bodhisattva practices the six perfections, and that leads to enlightenment. So the six perfections are like the ornaments of the enlightened mind, just like ordinary people like to put jewels on their body. But the real ornaments of the mind are the generosity, morality, patience, perseverance, concentration and wisdom.
The Buddha is so all tantric deities are depicted this way with these ornaments. So he wears a five pointed jewel crown. So the five points sort of five kind of yeah. Or jewels on the crown or something. These symbolize the five wisdoms of the Buddha.
Don’t ask me what the five wisdoms of the Buddha are. I can never remember. But one there’s the all encompassing wisdom, the wisdom of equanimity. What else is there? No.
No. No. No. Not not wisdom. The mirror like wisdom.
Yes. Come on. Oh, yes. Oh, very good. Wisdom of discrimination and and there’s one oh, oh, the all encompassing wisdom.
Yeah. So these five. Then there are jewel these, you know, jewel earrings, long round earrings. Then there are three strands of of jewels. There’s one of what do call them?
Necklaces. So one that’s sort of close to the throat, one at the level of the the breast, and one hangs down to the level of the navel. And then the then also there are these jewel bracelets no. Armlets and bracelets, then a jewel belt, and, also, you can see that he wears these jeweled anklets. And so all the deities are depicted like that.
Also, the body is a pure white color because that symbolizes the, again, the purity of the mind. Yeah. There’s a more profound explanation, but I can’t mention that. But, anyway, the simple explanation simple symbolism. So okay.
So then at Vajrasattva’s heart, we we try and imagine in so his body is hollow, And at the heart chakra in the center of the chest is, not quite the center, but, is a a white moon disc. And standing on, upright in the center so so you imagine that’s the moon disc. Moon disc. So standing in the center of that is a the syllable which you can try and visualize the Tibetan version if you know how, or it’s okay just to visualize a, you know, Western alphabet, white in color, standing vertically. Yeah.
Well, it’s in his heart. He’s holding the dorje here in his body, in the heart chakra, Not that physical, the heart chakra, which right? So that symbolizes in tantric parlance, that is called the the wisdom being the wisdom being. So that symbolizes the, again, the very essence of the mind of that that deity, of that Buddha. And then what we try and visualize that a circle around so there’s the at the center and then around standing upright around the around the the the lotus disc sorry.
The moon disc at his heart are the hundred syllables of the Vajrasattva mantra, and these are radiating white light and white nectar. Yes, we’re getting to I’m just yeah. Yes. Okay. Also, maybe you could turn to that.
So, the this the mantra is on page what is it? Page nine of the text. The Vajrasattva meditation text. So the mantra is in Sanskrit. I think I’ve explained before that just like we Australians speak pronounce English differently from the English speaking people who originated the language, so the Indian masters brought Sanskrit to Tibet and, you know, spoke you know, pronounced this the mantras properly, and the Tibetans tried to learn that and probably maybe originally they could pronounce them properly.
But with time, you know, pronunciation changed. Generally speaking, roughly speaking, the way this mantra is pronounced these days, there’s variations, but it’s something like this. It goes, OM Vajrasattva Samaya Manupalaya, Vajrasattva Tvenopa Tishtha, Dridho Me Bhava, Sutoshyo Me Bhava, Suposhyo Me Bhava, Anurakto Me Bhava, Sarva Siddhi Me Prayaccha, Sarva Karma Sucha Me, Chittam Shriyam Kuru Hum, There is also a short Vajrasattva mantra that you can recite, which is OM Vajrasattva HUM. So if you’re doing this practice at night, the best, and I highly highly highly recommend, especially if you’re starting this, starting means for the first twenty years, one should do the long mantra. If but if you if if for some reason you’re super tired or you don’t have you you know, you’re in a hurry for some reason, you could do the short mantra.
But if you do the short mantra, you have to do twenty eight times. But then the long mantra is much better. And in the long retreat, you you have to do the long mantra. The short one doesn’t count at all. So on the top of the next page, it gives the actual meaning of the mantra, which is helpful to know, but I must confess, after being a Buddhist monk for thirty six years, I still you know, I don’t remember the meaning of the mantra.
Because, again, the main thing is to say the mantra and concentrate on it and especially with the faith that is purifying the mind. Because, you know, one can get caught up into in the intellectual meaning of the mantra and just lose the whole point. But, of course, it is helpful to know generally what it’s saying. So it says, You, Vajrasattva, have generated the holy mind of bodhicitta according to your pledge or samaya. Your holy mind is enriched with the simultaneous holy actions of releasing transmigrated beings from saṃsāra.
Whatever happens in my life happiness or suffering, good or bad with a pleased, holy mind, never give up, but please guide me. Please stabilise all happiness, including the happiness of the upper realms. Actualize all actions and sublime and common realizations, and please make the glory of the five wisdoms abide in my heart. So we have the potential of these five wisdoms, so we want to for them to really awaken. Okay.
So that’s what it actually means. But the, you know, the the main things to do is to try to visualize the deity, to visualize the nectar coming in, and to focus on saying the mantra and trying to keep the mind, you know, as concentrated as possible, right, because that makes it more powerful. But but of all those things and and to have that regret wanting to purify the mind, knowing one’s engaged in negative actions, having that sincere regret, really wanting to purify the mind, and wanting to purify it, not just to avoid suffering, remember, but from the Mahāyāna perspective, wanting to purify the mind so one can free the mind of the obstacles to following the path to enlightenment so I can benefit all sentient beings. That’s that’s the main purpose of this practice. Not it’s not just to be free of suffering, but to free be free of obstacles so I can really quickly benefit sentient beings.
So, one of the great masters, when he gave a commentary on this practice, said, that’s the most important thing to fight. Don’t worry about whether you we can visualize the deity properly or not. That’s not the most important thing. The most important thing is to have those thoughts of regret, wanting to purify, wanting to purify for the sake of others, and having the faith that it is working. That that’s the most important thing.
Of course, if you can get the other things going, it’s you know, it’s bet you know, it makes it more powerful. But if you if you can some people can visualize very well, but if there’s no regret, no real sense of doing it for the sake of others, it’s not much at all. Whereas some people can’t visualize at all, but they have this strong faith and the right thoughts and motivation, so that’s much more powerful. That’s what it’s really about. And why we why we’re encouraged to ultimately do a hundred thousand is because, hopefully, having done a hundred thousand, one of them will be done properly.
Because if we could recite one mantra properly, that purifies everything. If we could actually visualize Vajrasattva with all the nectar coming and recite the mantra with pure faith and pure concentration, that’s it. But we can’t do that. That’s why we have to do a hundred thousand. And as Lama Zopa Rinpoche says, also a reason why one counts mantras and does a hundred thousand prostrations, a hundred thousand mantras, etcetera, etcetera, is in order to rejoice.
I think that’s a great explanation to rejoice. And just to remind you, in case you haven’t heard, Lama Yeshe gave, from from my understanding, the best explanation of how mantras work, which is he once said I think it was actually when he was explaining the Vajrasattva practice, because I had the good fortune to receive this initiation from Lama Yeshe twice twice. I got it from Lama Yeshe twice. And so Lama Yeshe said that it’s like a tuning fork, that tuning forks have different frequencies, and whatever whatever in a room has the same frequency as a tuning fork, when you hit the tuning fork, that that object will vibrate. So mantras, if if one can say them really well, but the main thing is to say them with faith and as much concentration as possible, they are the main ingredients.
But if one can really get it going properly, then it has a certain energy, a certain vibration related to the mind, and it causes that aspect of the mind to wake up. So that’s what we’re trying to do, that we’re trying to access that pure, the the natural purity of the mind which can swamp all this gunk, just get rid of it. But the way to do that is visualize this light and nectar coming into us, and we think that causes and that light and nectar is the pure mind of the Buddha, the mixture of great wisdom, great compassion, and we imagine faith that this forces these negative imprints to leave the mind in the form of black liquid. Yeah. Well, there are three visualizations to do.
The first one in purifying the negativities of speech no. Of body. You think the the the those negative imprints leave the mind in the form of black liquid. The black liquid pours out from the lower part of our body and disappears. Just becomes totally nonexistent, And our whole body becomes filled with this light and nectar.
Then to purify the speech, you imagine the negativities leave the mind in the form of black liquid, and that comes out through the crown of the head. I mean, white light nectar is coming in, but at the same time, this horrible black liquid is pouring out through the crown of the head. And so the whole body gets filled again with white light nectar from like a cup being filled. And then the third one is when we purify our mind of the negative actions done with the mind, then we imagine that these bolts of lightning come from all the syllables and just instantly all the negative imprints created by the mind itself, such as covetousness, ill will, and wrong views, it just is gone. And the the analogy that’s always given is just like when you walk into a dark room and turn on the electricity, just the the darkness is gone just like that.
So that’s what we try and visualize. And there is a fourth visualization one can do, which is where where all three things happen simultaneously. That you’re purifying your body, speech, and mind. So you think the black nectar is leaving from the lower part of the body through the crown and simultaneously. But I don’t think we’ll do that one tonight, but we’ll just do the first three.
So are there any question? I think I’ve covered everything, basically. But the main thing is always to try and integrate it with the four opponent powers. But Rinpoche has set it out all here. So maybe we can take you know, if there’s no question, we’ll take a short break, tea break, and then we’ll do the practice.