Archive Result

;;;;Soundfile 19920105GRJHNLLR 6

Speaker Gelek Rimpoche

Location Netherlands

Topic Lam Rim

Transcriber Jess Willyard

Date 1-25-2022

Like you know among the Buddhas, Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, you the Manjushri are the best wisdom ever possible. Likewise, you are my supreme field of merit, like Tsongkhapa, who has the best wisdom ever possible! Like comparatively doing it.

And the second round, not only comparing between the Tsongkhapa and Manjushri, et cetera, but you do have, you do possess the of Manjushri, you do possess the quality of Avalokiteshvara, you really possess the quality of Vajrapani. So not only you are comparing, but you have it.

And third round, is not only you’re saying you have it, but you are inseparable then that of Avalokiteshvara. You are inseparable in that Manjushri. You are inseparable that of the Vajrapani. So, you better make me quickly become like you!

Et cetera, et cetera there are a lot of other activities you can do through this.

They are there, so you can read that commentary, and they’re there. And those of you here, they can read that. And, I’m saying you can because, we don’t have much time to talk here that much that’s why.

So through this Ganden Lha Gyema it is not only good at the beginning, but also it is the practice you have to do during the period of whole practice, whether you have highest tantra sadhana or no sadhana, that’s what you have to do. And this is the practice even at the end of achieving enlightenment, you’ll be leading all other people through this. So this is the important beginning, important in between, important even afterwards. So one should never leave that out.

0:03:55.9

It’s not like that you promoted stage, so stage you say, oh now I’m not doing Ganden Lha Gyema anymore and I’m going to the stage doing of Vajrayogini, doesn’t go that way.

It’s not necessarily I’m talking about Ganden Lha Gyema, I’m talking about Guru Yoga.

And it happens to be the Guru Yoga of Ganden Lha Gyema what we are doing here.

So out of this, you can do all sort of, if you are interested in doing healing work, you can do through this. If you are interested in making rain, there’s a Tibetan rain maker, you can do through this. If you want to stop rain, you can do through this. If you want to conquer the evil spirit. If you want exorcism to be done, performed, you can do through this.

Even you are scared at night walking by yourself, you think that somebody’s following you, say Migtsema.

And if you build a habit, you know, whenever, whatever difficulties you have saying this, you can build now, it’s very useful.

One of my teachers called Kyabje Lhatsun Rinpoche was great old teacher. Always, Kyabje Rinpoche falls asleep during teaching a lot of times. Everytime Kyabje Rinpoche says whenever he falls asleep or anything happens, he wakes up he says…

He’s sort of always right on either Mig Me Tse Way Ter Chen Chen Re Zig or Yamantaka’s mantra Om Hrih Tri Witita Nana Hum Phat, said either one of them. So he goes on that.

That’s ok everybody can hear it accept one or two so that’s, if you miss a little bit doesn’t matter.

So even if you have sudden death, or sudden something, if you can think of Migtsema and saying through Migtsema, it is certain that your immediate next birth will be good. So even you have sudden death or something. But if you can arrive, whenever you have doubts, whenever you have difficulties, or fear or something, you can switch on Migtsema as habit. And if we have sudden death you’ll be able to switch on Migtsema in that case, your future birth will be good!

So now the next, let us jump to the dissolving system.

0:08:54.9

Now the dissolving system here what you have to do,

Oh glorious and precious root guru

Come take the lotus and moon seat at my heart

Three times. The first time if you have two disciples, Tsongkhapa, two disciples will merge inside of Tsongkhapa through right and left shoulder, becomes one.

And within your body, at the middle of the center of the heart chakra. And the eight petaled heart opens. And the first the throne comes down, sit on the heart lotus. The second time when you repeat, lotus and moon comes down. And finally the supreme field of merit comes down, it makes it small, like an inch. And then dissolve to your heart level, stay there. Not dissolve, just staying there. And not only staying there because not only, it’s not you are staying there because you are forced to stay there, but are happy to be there.

And then, heart petal closes. Yet, some kind of cloud thread continuously going through the heart petal from your crown and link to the Tushita pure land.

So it’s sort of a good omens that when you have connections to the pure land has not been cut out.

That’s about it!

0:12:20.5

And then you just, this is purely pray:

In life after life….and next two verses. Purely I’m praying for it.

Or maybe dedication. The difference between the dedication and the prayer is only whether you have some material to be dedicated. So here you do have material to dedicate because do have learning. Could be dedication too.

Ok. Now the next is Lam Rim.

0:17:43.5

(Long Life Prayers for Gelek Rimpoche and Protector Prayers)

(Everyone talks about scheduling for a bit.)

0:29:44.4

But truly speaking, it is not by Tsongkhapa. It is Lam Rim which means a stage of development which is all the enlightened beings have experienced.

The essence of the Buddhas experiences are taught by Buddha expressed through words, which basically divides, you can divide. Like, two ways.

The two divisions when you make, there’s a lot of divisions. You can find three divisions, a thousand divisions, five divisions, all of those different divisions you’ll find. And when you make the two divisions, you make it from the subject point of view, not the wording point of view.

And that is profound teachings and and broad teachings.

Word in Tibet for profound we use “saba” (?), and for broad we use “dashawa”, variety. Which, in another words, profound ones are deep in wisdom, and broad ones we are dealing with non wisdom activities. I mean it’s not non wisdom, but sort of love compassion etc. method point of view.

0:32:26.3

So the essence of all this Buddha’s teaching in one sort of text, known as Pranjaparamita, which has direct expression and it’s meaning, and indirect meaning, explanation of it’s meaning.

The direct teachings and meanings, and dealing with the profound teaching. And the indirects are called paramita teachings.

So indirect teachings, what do they have? They have three knowledges, four actions and the result.

Three knowledges are: the knowledge the Buddha mind, the knowledge of the path, and the knowledge of the base.

Four actions, now let’s not deal with that. And at the end the result comes. The result stage.

Basically, three knowledges are the dealings with the three mind stages, and by different actions they’re probably Lam Rim practices we covered the different four actions, and that leads to the result stage.

So what you basically have to think here is the base, path and result.

So base is our ordinary level today. That is two truths.

Relative and absolute. And path is method and wisdom. And the result, two kayas. That is rupakaya and dharmakaya. Rupa is form, dharma is mind.

So, but sometimes we find three kayas, four kayas and all this. Don’t get confused. When you go truth, you go two, two, two. Base two truths, path two method and wisdom, result two kayas that way. If you want to go three, then there is three way of going, there is four way of going, doesn’t matter. A little bit easy.

So our ordinary everyday happening things with us, the pains that we experience, the joys that we enjoy, sorrows that we carry, et cetera, whatever. The feelings we are getting, you are encountering, you’re experiencing, whatever we have that, that is relative truth.

So all of those, which truly does not, truly speaking, doesn’t have inherent existence.

Inherent existence meaning they are existing independently by itself without having help depending from anywhere.

0:39:05.9

So you can almost say independent existence. Independent permanent existence.

Yeah, the moment we know the existence is dependent. So then you are beginning to see there is no independent existence.

So basically, that is our stage today.

So the point here now is the what we call it dualistic mind, wrong view whatever you label we are putting in. What’s happening is, we could not really be able to see the true existence.

So by not being able to see the true existence, so you become ignorant.

So out of this ignorance will begin to grow the delusions. How? Because when we see that I as a solid entity, that solid entity will bring from I will bring mine.

So from that mind, you know first, so the first you introduce, this is me, this is me, this is I. And so you get some kind of close cling on it.

So from this then, this is mine. You being to possess. And then it becomes my friend, and my belongings. The clinging attachment comes in. So then you see, some other person’s claiming on it. It’s not a 100% mine yet. Then you dislike it. So the hate is developed. You get angry, anger develops. So by this possessive of my liking and disliking makes the continuation of our life. So once you continue our life, then we don’t have control anymore on the life. It is automatic machine keep on running continuously till we collapse. So during that, what’s happening with us is we are born, we experience life, we die, that circle has been continuing. So now the purpose, the one of the major purpose here is to stop the circle. The man made circle. So this circle, continuation of the circle is called samsara.

0:45:50.5

And when you are able to stop that circle, and you are out of that system, and then it’s called nirvana. So that’s here the division comes samsara and nirvana.The samsara is where there are a lot of sufferings. And nirvana is joy and peace. But both nirvana and samsara are (inaudible).

(tape flip)

…out of this samsara. The samsara is full of fear. And the fear, constant fear we have. Fear of losing. Fear of dying. Fear of lonely. Fear of disgrace. Et cetera, you name it. So anything that is fear, fear of not getting what you wanted, fear of getting something what you don’t wanted to get. That is the basic samsara problem. And then the nirvana is peaceful and joyful state, yet it is not problem free. So the Lam Rim, these should not only out of samsara, and also out of nirvana too. So in normal Theravadin Buddhist teachings, you will only hear getting out of samsara, you will never hear getting out of nirvana.

0:48:49.4

So in Mahayana tradition, the samsara is not only problem, the nirvana is also problem. Samsara has the fear of losing, and nirvana has the fear of stuck.

To stick somebody, you can’t get out, stuck there. Alright.

Now let’s begin with this. So this path, the sort of freeing of this individual from these two fears are the basic experience of enlightenment.

And so the teaching is called Prajnaparamita. The Prajnaparamita has been organized, sometimes organized up down, sometimes organized, Prajnaparamita when you really go through, read it through, it’s sort of, I hate to say it, but it looks like disorganized.

It’s not really disorganized, it might have been better organized, who knows. So what do they do, first they talk about enlightenment. And so that people begin to interest. And that leads to the path reversed, reversed on it. The path leading to that, instead of this way the keep them reverse order. So Atisha, what he did is, he descended in opposite direction. From today what can we do. From that manner he presented, rather than over there and how do I get that. Then do this, how do I get that to this, you know?

0:52:11.5

So Atisha wrote a root text here called Lam Dre (?) it’s the path, Lam Rim path or path Lam Rim or something.

Audience: Lamp of the past enlightenment.

Rimpoche: Yeah, some of you have teaching on that….(inaudible). Path of lamp or lamp of the path? Lamp of the path.

So on that basis, Tsongkhapa, Tsongkhapa’s very interesting on the way Atisha is leading the, Atisha’s way of leading individual to that path.

So one of the letters that Tsongkhapa wrote to one of his teachers, he said, I found the way, Atisha’s style of leading the individual through path is very effective to the Tibetans at that time.

So he said I follow that order.

So following that order he wrote three different types of Lam Rim. One very detailed Lam Rim, called the Lam Rim Chenmo, the big Lam Rim, and then one medium Lam Rim, and then the one short Lam Rim. So big Lam Rim, small Lam Rim, and (inaudible) Lam Rim, or big, medium and small one.

So these big, small, medium Lam Rim, all three, essence teaching, the subject has no shortage of vast or medium, but the words we need.

Today what you’re going to follow, the shortest Lam Rim. And that also we are going to make short. How? We’re going to skip few of those prayers in the beginning. So on the one hand, we can not skip completely, because, if I skip completely, the oral transmission will skip too. So just read the first one, the first verse.

(Rimpoche reads first verse)

So when you look at this translation, the first thing that’s missing is Namo Guru Manjughosaya, so praise to the Manjushri is missing on the top.

The reason why Guru Manjushri is mentioned is Tsongkhapa had a number of different living

gurus, however he had difficulty, lot of difficulties, and finally he’d been able to contact the Manjushri as person to person, so he considered Manjushri as his guru, living guru, so that’s why Namo Guru Manjughosaya comes in.

And what Manjushri taught Tsongkhapa is the Three Principles of the Path. That Three Principles of the Path is the essence, the backbones of Lam Rim. When Tsongkhapa wrote the big Lam Rim, one day Manjushri joked, and he said my teachings are not good enough so you make big long one. Though Manjushri was joking, Tsongkhapa took so seriously, so seriously they keep on explaining no, your Three Principle Path is my backbone in here. So the Namo Guru Manjughosa, that’s what goes on, then followed by praise to the Buddha, because the Buddha is the real source of the spiritual teaching of this, so that’s why you have to do Buddha here. Then next verse is: (reads oral transmission)

I prostrated before you Maitreya and Manjushri, supreme spiritual sons of these peerless teacher, assuming responsibility to further the Buddha’s enlightened deeds. You support emanations to the Conquerors’ words.

So this is praise to the Maitreya and Manjushri.

So you may be thinking Manjushri’s here, Manjushri’s over there. Why? I thought this was Namo Guru Manjughosaya, so no above the Manjushri as teacher, here Manjushri as his own stage.

As mentioned here, supreme spiritual sons of these peerless teacher, the peerless, equivalentless, the Buddha, outstanding teacher, and whose spiritual sons outstanding one is the Manjushri and Maitreya.

1:00:22.7

It’s not because of the Manjushri and the Maitreya the only two outstanding disciples of the Buddha, but there’s a reason why they mention these two here. And that is Manjushri, from Buddha to the Manjushri, or the profound, profound teachings lineages start. And Buddha to Maitreya et cetera through which brought aware, rather the detail by the paramita has been concluded.

So two outstanding lineages are coming and these are the two, the source of the two lineages here. (Rimpoche reads transmission again)

So the next is:

I prostrate before your feet, Nagarjuna and Asanga, embellishments of our Southern Continent. Highly famed throughout the three realms, you have commented on the most difficult to fathom “Mother of the Buddhas” according to exactly what was intended.

So the Nagarjuna and Asanga are, both of them, are outstanding early Indian Sanskrit scholar, not only outstanding, it is already professed in the Buddha’s own personal professes.

So what’s happening is though it was up to 4 to 600 years after death of the Buddha, the dates of the Nagarjuna and Asanga are up to 4 to 600 years later, but both Nagarjuna and Asanga had story like (inaudible) Nagarjuna was looking for Manjushri and Asanga was looking for Maitreya. And finally both of them able to contact Maitreya and Manjushri. I’m cutting long story short. And contact Manjushri and Maitreya, and be able to brought the continuation of

profound and detailed teachings of Prajnaparamita in life again.

And that’s why two of those are called the opener of the road.

1:05:15.3

So, and also they are outstanding eight Sanskrit scholars in India at that sort of, not that period all together but around for that period. It’s called two excellents and six ornaments.

That’s why this word of embellishments of Southern Continent, that’s embellishments, what does embellishments mean? Ornaments that’s right.

Eight people are known as, eight scholars are known as two excellents and six ornaments.

So out of those eight of them Nagarjuna and Asanga count on the top. Ok, so now the next is: (reads transmission)

I bow down to you Dipamkara Atisha, holder of the treasure of institutions as seen in, instructions, that’s right you can’t hold institutions (as seen in your Lamp for the Pathway to Enlightenment). All the complete, unmistaken points concerning the paths of profound view and wide spirit action, transmitted intact from these two great forerunners, can be included within it.

That’s it, so that is Atisha. So now the lineage continues from Buddha and then Maitreya, Asanga, and all this, and also the Buddha Manjushri Nagarjuna and all this, and so both of those lineages now combine in one individual it is Atisha. So the lineage goes like this right, one two three and then finally at the level of the Atisha they combine together. And Atisha was the one who brought over to the Tibet in 1100s during this teaching. That’s why Atisha is special importantness it’s shown in here. But otherwise the lineage is continuing. If you look in the bigger Lam Rim or short one during the Lam Rim teachings, they do have a Lam Rim lineage separate.

(Rimpoche reads more)

Now the next is:

Respectfully, I prostrate before my own two spiritual masters. Why call it two? I don’t know. In Tibetan says, I bow to all my gurus. And I do not know why here two comes in.

Ok, alright now this is the Tsongkhapa’s teachings you are referring to. And in Tibetan there’s no two here. It is bowing to all the teachers of the Tsongkhapa, or to, for that matter, for us, all our spiritual teachers. And I think this is must be the translator who likes to make little emphasize how it’s edited.

Respectfully, I prostrated before my own spiritual masters You are the eyes allowing disciples to behold of all the infinite scriptural pronouncements, the best food for those of good fortune to cross to the liberation. You make everything clear through your skillful deeds, which are moved by intense loving concern.

So, why I’m reading both in English and Tibetan because to try to make your oral transmission complete. And after sometime probably the oral transmission will go in English and no longer in Tibetan, but that’s why I’m doing this both two together.

Alright, I suppose we have to stop here, otherwise we’ll be our dinner will be overcooked.

1:16:37.4

(Rimpoche reads Tibetan)

The qualities of the paths stages, the path to enlightenment, every transmitted intacted, by those who have followed in order both from Nagarjuna and Asanga, those crowning jewels of all erudite, this says erudite. What does erudite mean?

Audience: Learned, very learned

…erudite masters of our Southern Continent and the banner of whose fame stands out above the masses. As (following these stages) can fulfill every desirable aim of all nine kinds of beings, they are a power-granting king of precious instruction. Because they collect the streams of thousands of excellent classics, they are indeed an ocean of illustrious, correct explanation.

Atisha’s text makes it easy to understand how there is nothing incompatible (?) in all the Buddha’s teachings and makes every scriptural pronouncement without exception dawn on your mind as a personal guidelines. It makes it easy to discover what the Buddha intend and protect you as well from the abyss of the great mistake. Because of these (four benefits), what discriminating person among the erudite masters of India and Tibet will not have his or her mind be completely taken by these stages of the path (arranged) according to the three levels of motivation, the supreme instructions to which many fortunate ones have devoted themselves?

Although (there is much merit to be gained from) listening to or reciting even once this brief manner of Atisha’s text in which can be included the essential points of all scriptural pronouncements, yet it is certain that you will amass even greater waves of beneficial collections from actually teaching and studying the sacred Dharma containing within. Therefore, you should consider this point (for doing this properly).

So up to here the benefits of the Lam Rim and it’s qualities, so if we have a lot of time we should be able to talking about the benefits and qualities, but we have very limited time for this. And also it is quite clear, quite clear all the benefits of…also. So we will not I don’t think we have to make clarified much except the last point which it says:

And the last point is protect you as well from the abysses of great mistake. Now how does that work. The idea is by knowing the Lam Rim, you probably get rough idea what’s right and what’s wrong. Although it’s very difficult to say what is right and what is wrong, lot of people claims to know what is right and what is wrong. It is very difficult. Right? Do you agree? You have to because some people, I mean you look at it. People will tell you all sorts of things. Some people will say the national feelings, national feelings are great. And some people will say that’s terrible, that is…

Audience: Patriotic

Rimpoche: Patriotic is not bad word. If your national feelings are so strong, where did the Nazis come from? Yeah, so…

Audience: Fascism

Rimpoche: (laughs) He’s a German so…

Audience: I’m use to that Rimpoche.

Rimpoche: And then sectarian fundamentalistic, all of them, we have problems. On one hand they say it’s good on the other hand they say it’s bad.

So not only in our everyday life which we are dealing by our self on our news. That is also very difficult to make it out what is what, you know? What’s right and what’s wrong, it’s very difficult.

It is so difficult so, during the Buddha’s period and I don’t think, it’s came to that point nobody will make any decision, nobody will say anything, or everything left for Buddha to decide.

So when Buddha about to die, and then the disciples says hey please don’t die. Yeah yeah yeah you have to die ok, if you’re going to die then who’s going to tell us what’s right and what’s wrong, what to do, what not to do?

Before that, just before we go that far, all these monks, Buddhist monks and nuns have 364 different rules what they are suppose to observe anyway. So all of them can’t argue (?), because somebody’s doing something different. So then they goes and asks Buddha what to do. And Buddha said well, the first time it was excused. And thereafter it can not. If you do this, this is that, this is that, this is how that all go.

1:27:11.2

And when Buddha about to die, and he said, if it’s closer to what I said, it can be done, and if it’s distance from the things that I have said it can not be done. Then you consider it can be done. And it is close to can not be done, and distance from can be done, then consider that.

So that gives lot of room for people to interpret. Then it’s holiday. And then corrections. And all sorts of things come so it is good or bad, can or can not be done, it is very difficult. In one hand it’s really difficult to make it out. If you don’t think, it’s easy. If you really think carefully it’s difficult. So the benefit out of Lam Rim, is the hope to be able to somehow gain the wisdom to be able to discriminate, whether it can be done or not.

So basically, by doing that one can prevent one’s self creating a bad karma. Particularly karma of ignoring the religion’s points and sectarian views, fundamental powers or fundamental trips. So here when they say Nechu Chenpo (?) the great mistake, before that abyss…the great mistake here is directly dealing with insulting other religions by using, let’s say, by using Buddhism as a reason and insulting or looking down towards Hinduism, Muslim, or Eastern Religion using as a reason looking down the Western Religion. The Western Religion using as a reason looking down on the Eastern Religion. Vice versa.

Even I’m on the Buddhist, using Mahayana as a reason insulting Hinayana. Even in the Mahayana, using Vajrayana as reason and insulting other Mahayana Sutra alone. Even among the Tibetan Buddhism using the exclusive points of the Tsongkhapa, and insulting Kagyus and Nyingmas and all those. These are the, when they say great mistake, they are referring to that.

1:32:12.9

(Rimpoche quotes in Tibetan) Buddha himself has said, if you destroy all the stupas or the temples in the world, if one person destroyed all of them and compare with that nonvirtuous karma and somebody who’s insulting a religion, if you compare them and they said insulting any religion is much more heavier than that of destroying all the stupas of the world.