Archive Result

;;;Soundfile 20040505GRJHNLTa06

Speaker Gelek Rimpoche

Location Netherlands

Topic Tara

Transcriber Sally Tittmann

Date February 14, 2021

[Dutch, White Tara visualization meditation, prayers]

0:45:33.8

I think we have done the purification part, unless you have some questions, because they are quite important points. In everybody’s daily practice.

[DT]

Audience: I wonder about the significance of the sounds, along with the text of the chants. What is the difference between the buddhist chants and the hindu chants? The texts are quite often the same, but the melodies are different.

[DT]

GR: Right. For the mantras, the sounds are important, I was told. For the rest of them, the sound is not that important. If you consider between the sound and the understanding, the thought, behind the sounds, the thought behind the sounds, and the understanding are considered much more important than the sound itself. The hindu tradition, I know nothing. I shouldn’t be commenting on it. But, for hindus, the chants are much more important, also, because the chant is to please the yidam or god, whatever, whether it’s Shiva or Vishnu or whatever — Lakshmi, or Ganesh, whatever —

[DT]

So, for the Tibetans it’s not that important. And also, the chant can change in different languages. I don’t think the mantra can change. Mantras are not supposed to change. Even if you translate, and give the meaning, but mantras are not supposed to be said in the translated language.

0:49:42.2

So, if you are really looking in any language, the mantra’s original is mostly Sanskrit, or Bawo, anywhere. It goes through with any language, any culture that changes, the mantra travels through. Even though it doesn’t sound ok, but even then it is ok. If you listen to the Tibetans’ way of saying mantras with Sanskrit scholars, they are horrified. Really! Horrified. Like pragnanaparamita. Every non-Tibetan says, “pragnanaparamita”. The Tibetans will not say pragnanaparamita. The Tibetans will say, “tangyaparamita.” They will not say tangya, they will say tanjaparamita. So what happens is pra, in Tibetan is pronounced as ta, rather than pra. And the rest of the other languages, it’s pronounced as pra. The Tibetans will say tra, so it’s very obvious vajrayana. Vajra. Tibetans will never say vajra. They say benza. So, when Tibetans say benza, it means vajra. When you say vajrasatwasamaya, they will not say vajrasatvasamaya, BENZAsatvasamaya. So, that’s the thing. Even though it’s not correct, it’s ok. They give you interesting examples. There’s a great scholar in the Sakyapa tradition, called Sattyapandita. Perhaps one of the most outstanding Sakyapa teacher, Sattyapandita, and then there’s another siddhi — I forgot his name — a Tibetan siddhi. So, two of them went… the last anti-buddhist hindu scholar who came to challenge the buddhist traditions, buddhist and Tibetan, happens to be two of those things together. Sattyapandita is the great scholar, and the other guy is a powerful yogi, siddhi, so, it is left-over old Indian style of debate, early during the Buddha’s life, and about a few hundred years after that, they always have debate between anti-buddhist and buddhist people, and whoever loses the debate, they are supposed to join the other group. And that’s what they make it, what the bet is. They bet the whole monastery, or the whole school, so whoever loses, if the anti-buddhist hindu master loses, then all his followers and monasteries, everybody, the buddhists will grab them, shave their head, and put the buddhist robes on them, and make them into buddhist temples. And the monasteries…

0:53:55.0

[DT]

So, when the buddhist scholar loses, the whole disciples and the whole monasteries change over. That is the old Indian system. And sometimes they bring the rulers of the land, and elders of the land as witnesses. And they just switch over there and there. And they are always followed, the debates are always followed by some magical competitions, always. It has been since Buddha’s time. Probably the last thing that had happened about this is with Sattyapandita and — I still don’t remember the other guy’s name — So they went there, and they debated, Sattyapandita did win. So they tried to catch that guy, because they wanted to cut his hair and put the red robes on him. And before they could catch him, he flew, so he flew in the air, and Sattyapandita started looking at this siddhi guy, now it’s his job to catch the guy. So he got some kind of dagger, you know they carry these daggers, he got a dagger in his wrist, and he looked around and he started flying. He can’t fly. So he looked for the shadow, and then found the shadow and took the dagger out, and said a mantra, and put the dagger on the shadow of the mantra, with the mantra saying, and put the dagger on the shadow on the ground, the guy fell down.

0:57:21.9

[DT]

So the Sattyapandita listened to the mantra, to what he was saying. The mantra is supposed to be saying, Pratzala, pratzala saliye soha or something, and the guy doesn’t say pratzala, and doesn’t say tratzala, so the guy said, chale chale chaliye soha, so Sattyapandita is very impressed at what he’s doing, but at the same time says, oh my god, if he says this mantra correctly, how powerful he will be. So he talked to him, and said, “How did you say your mantra?” and he said, “Chale chale chale soha!” So then Satttyapandita told him, if you say it the Sanskrit way, you should have said, Pratzale pratzale saliye soha. Or, if you are saying it the Tibetan way, you should have said “Tratza tratza saliye soha.” But you have your own way of just saying, “Chale, chale, saliye soha.” So, it’s not right. He is such a stubborn person. Under normal circumstances, he would not have listened or paid any attention at all, but since he’s Sattyapandita, he was willing to entertain a little bit. He said, “Are you sure? You know what you are talking about?” And he said, “Sure, try!” So, whenever he says a normal thing, and he gets his dagger and puts any wrong, or anything, it goes through, the dagger goes through. So with his doubt, and he learned from Sattyapandita how to say it, and he tried, and the dagger didn’t go through! It started coming back!

1:00:46.8

So he looks at Sattyapandita and said, “Narayam Penza chalichuli, taya benza chalichuli.” Before I also ??? the chale chale, in the future I’m also going to say chale chale.

[DT]

So, what happened, is the mantra, you need certain trust, certain belief. And without which it never works, even if it is correct.

[DT]

Like the Heruka mantra. The Tibetans will say, “kara kara kuru kuru…jdfljlfjlfjel ???” you know, but when you really listen to the Sanskrit people, they say, “shomaya, shobaya, vishayavishay,” but the Tibetans will never say “shobaya shobaya.” They say, “chope hope hara huru.” But it works.

1:04:08.5

[DT: “It’s pronounced differently by Tibetans and Sanskrit-speakers.”: hilarity]

GR: So that is to answer your question.

Audience: inaudible… why 7?

GR: There is a reason for it.

There’s a great thing. You have to be able to say: you don’t know. You have to say it. You are not fully enlightened. So, you must say it, you don’t know. And you don’t know, you must say you don’t know. Some people are hesitant to say, “I don’t know.” You have to go around and around about, and that’s not right. You have to say, “I don’t know.” What wrong with that?

[DT]

Audience: About purifications, if one has done something that one feels bad about, but one would do it probably again in the same situation, is there a possibility to purify?

GR: Yes. Suppose if I am walking — oh yes, I remember — if you are walking in the middle of Amsterdam and someone starts to knock you down — I remember that, and I tried to hit him as best I could. I did! I hit the person as best as I could. I was lucky. It was in the middle of Amsterdam, across the street from the railway station, just behind the, there’s a hotel there, called the Victoria, near the Victoria, I was walking, and I was chased by two junkies, and it was very cold weather, and I ran as fast as I could — it was many years ago! — and … it’s so funny, then there’s one building coming out like this, and I was running, and there was no way I can go, so I had been blocked there. So I looked back whether they have guns. That is the first thought I had, did they have guns? I looked back, and I don’t see guns. Maybe they have a knife, I wasn’t sure, so I cannot go anywhere beyond that. I waited and I hit one with the whole swing of my body, straight away. The guy fell down! So I tried to grab him, and I was going to hit him again, and the second guy, I didn’t forget him, and I looked at the second guy, and he ran away, so I tried to grab this one, and tried to hit him again, and he was sort of taking his hand and pulling like this, so I did let him go. I didn’t hit him again. But I did hit him. And finally he was able to jump out of there, and crossed the alley, and from the other side, he’s doing like this [gesturing?] to me — I never understood what he meant. I never understood, whatever it is. So then I was scared, I took a taxi, and the taxi told me, you are just beyond here, and I said, no, I’m willing to pay, so I payed 5 guilders then, and the taxi driver took me around and dropped me to the hotel. And it happens to be such that the taxi guy was reading Trungpa Rimpoche’s book, in the taxi! It’s so funny. So if I had to hit again, I will. If I can!

[DT]

1:10:35.9

So, you do it again, because otherwise you have to suffer, but the hitting part you purify. Yes, there is repentance there, but, if the circumstances you probably repeat, you do it again. So, I guess that’s ok. Does that answer your question?

Audience: ??

[DT]

Audience: We were talking about purification, and you remarked that in the Christian or Catholic tradition, you can go to the confession box and George Bush or James Bond might be on the other side, I noticed that you mentioned that. It stayed with me that you noticed it like that, and I was thinking about my experience in purification in the Catholic church, where I was brought up, and I have not looked at the steps in the purification and the confession in the Catholic church, and the first step of regret is the same. The second one is to open up in relation to the other person, who is very accepting. I experience this when I was 10 years old, I told the priest that I had stolen money. So that was a big step, to tell in the confession practice, and that was a very important part for me in this experience, and then the next step is to accept that you ???, and the last step is also to purify, in a Christian way, that you can find a penance or task. Maybe there’s not so much to focus on love and compassion, though the acceptance during the confession from the priest, and has been in my experience, especially in that situation, with very little ?? impact. So I was thinking about your remarks on it, and what I would experience in it, and I still can use when you were telling about it, so I’d to make up ???

[DT into Dutch]

1:14:52.4

By any means, it’s not a criticism for Catholic tradition, and its system, but it was sort of half-jokingly saying it. And it’s not George Bush. There is a movie showing James Bond on the other side, because I saw it, that’s why I brought that up. But the reason why I brought it up is the compassion in buddhism is a little gentler than you are speaking to a person about it. There’s a very interesting way, and I don’t mean any criticism of the people who really confess directly, to the people who heard [those] seeking forgiveness, and if that works well, it’s excellent, there’s no problem. But also in the Tibetan tradition, the buddhist tradition, what they do is, and we do have the confession, and people say it, and say it in the prayer form, all together. There’s like 258 downfalls for the monks, and all of them, and they start with one, they all say it together, and from your heart you are really making the confession, and you are open, and you are telling the whole public gathering together, but yet you are not making individual, so it’s very sort of really making it, telling it to somebody, but it’s sort of the old system, they all do it, openly, together. So I was trying to, — even I left out how they used to do that one, so it doesn’t mean any criticism under any circumstances, so I do not want people to misunderstand it as criticizing there. It’s not criticism. And it is part of the movie too. Honestly I saw the movie too.

1:18:52.8

[DT]

I presume there’s no more questions now?

So whatever it may be, so again, I said it earlier. It is a matter for the individual to do it. And so I think that you have to do it, you have to do it by yourself, or you can do it in public, whatever you want to do. That is fine. But this application of the four points, along with antidote action, which is really necessary, and repeated, until you have a sign of [being] purified. Signs of [being] purified are, normally considered, if you get a dream of taking a shower, swimming, or the sunshine is coming out of a solar eclipse, or a lunar eclipse, or getting out of a cloud, and not only once, but repeatedly, a number of times. When you are doing purification as your major point, at that time, if you get repeated dreams like that, and sometimes even if in your dream you are taking a shower, and then undesirable,… some insects, or some unimaginable amount of dirty laundry water coming out of your body and washing it away. These are considered dreaming stage of purification.

1:21:58.5

[DT]

So, the question is, how long do I have to purify? So, you purify until you get a sign that you have been purified.

[DT]

GR: What is next?

Hartmut: “I rejoice in all virtues.”

GR: The question is do you rejoice in all virtues or do you rejoice in the person who creates the virtues. (I don’t want to debate???, anyway.) So, next is rejoicing.

[DT]

Why rejoicing here? Rejoicing is an easy way of accumulating merit. Normally when you are accumulate merit you really have to work hard. But this is an easy way.

tibetan

“Without putting much efforts,

small efforts, great merit collection is rejoicing.”

[DT]

1:25:23.8

You know, our usual habit is, when somebody does something good, then we get jealous. Especially a peer, somebody who is always equal to someone. And when that person does something good, we always feel, you know, some people — some people, not always! — feel jealous. Do admire, yet also jealous. Jealousy is a big problem, for a lot of people.

[DT]

Sometimes there is jealousy between husband and wife. Not that they are looking for somebody else, but sort of jealous between each other.

[DT]

And jealousy between parents and children. And just people. Among the sangha, among everybody. Among the teachers, among the sanghas. And of course the politicians! So, it is one of our negative emotions. Jealousy is a thought, and it is a negative emotion. It is an emotion, it is a thought, it’s an emotion: it’s a negative emotion. And as I said, it’s very easy to develop, very difficult to get rid of. Very difficult to get rid of because it touches the ego. It all touches the ego. And whenever you say, “I’m better than you,” it’s always there. People always have that. I don’t know whether I can say people always have it, but many, many people do. So, the teaching tradition says that that is something you have to change…

[DT]

1:28:42.1

…because jealousy becomes expensive to the individual and it loses a lot of virtue and makes the individual uneasy, unhappy, even unhealthy. So, to overcome that, or to counter that, if you learn how to appreciate. Appreciate their virtue, appreciate their thought, appreciate their deeds. Don’t let our skeptical thoughts take over the sincere attitude of the other people.

[DT]

Yes, there is the danger of some other agenda or something, but however, we must give the benefit of believing people unless they are proved to be wrong.

[DT]

Even in normal human way, they will say you are innocent until you are proven to be guilty.

So, our habitual patterns or our addictions always bring the skeptical points first. And we entertain that. And I think that’s the point of where we have to be careful.

So, once you don’t have the skeptical viewpoint, then it’s easy to rejoice, and appreciate what they’ve been doing.

[DT]

1:32:23.1

So, from the appreciation, rejoicing grows. So, there’s a lot of benefit from this, from the spiritual viewpoint.

[DT]

And that is, according to the teaching tradition, if we rejoice in somebody equal to our own development, our own standard, that we get double [corrected a couple of minutes later to equal] benefit.

[DT]

And somebody who is higher than us, and then we get half of the benefit. And somebody junior and lower than us, we get double the benefit.

So that is why it is very beneficial, and an easy way to develop positive karma.

[Rimpoche itching his ear…]

OK, there is not meaning here, I’m digging in my ear, I’m sorry! There’s a horrible itch in here, that’s why! One time, Dilgo Khentse Rimpoche went to New Jersey, and he started digging his ear, and then the question came, what is the meaning of digging his ear! I’m sorry. It’s filthy. But it’s nice and informal, right? I won’t do that in a formal ceremony, digging my ear! Please forgive me. It’s really itching badly.

[DT]

That’s a culture difference. I know in the west if you dig in your ear, and dig in your nose, it’s dirty and filthy, you’re not supposed to do it, but I have bad habits. Forgive me. Being very Tibetan — sorry!

[DT]

1:36:33.0

So I think that’s about enough for rejoicing.

I don’t mean you should rejoice about me digging in my ear!

What is next?

Hartmut: “I request you to remain until total enlightenment.”

GR: OK, now this is not just dharma, this is dogma. So, I don’t need to explain much.

[DT]

Then?

Hartmut: “I request wise and compassionate guidance.”

GR: Yes. Seeking guidance. Seeking guidance is important because normally, unless you ask for teaching, they don’t give you teaching. No teachers will come and say, “Can I give you a teaching?” Probably you’d say, “Hell, no!”

[DT]

So, why do we practice asking every day for teachings? What happens is, when you finally become fully enlightened, even at the 11th hour, you need the final instructions.

[DT]

The teachers who are enlightened beings. Or, the enlightened beings in the form of teachers will finally appear to you, and give you the final teaching when the time is right. For that reason, in daily practice we use that as well.

DT]

1:39:32.0

And then, it must be the dedication. The dedication is one of the most important things, again. It is safeguarding your positive karma. It is safeguarding our virtues.

So, we have covered the seven limbs — which I should have done yesterday, and I was falling asleep in the afternoon, so I couldn’t think straight, so I skipped all of those. Sorry about that.

[DT]

So, yesterday, I talked about putting the mantra in the heart of Tara in front. Today I’m going to talk about putting the mantra in your own heart. When I’m saying mantra in my ow heart, which means when I’m practicing, when you as a practitioner are generating yourself in the form of a yidam. I’m talking about that.

[DT]

1:42:17.8

So yourself in the form of Tara. At your heart level, instead of all these internal organs, you have light nature, white chakra, with eight spokes, as we talked at Tara’s heart yesterday.

[DT]

There’s a center hub, right? When they have the wheels like this, that’s the center hub. And that is the mood disk. And they have rims — three of them. And yesterday, we said that at the center of the moon disk, you have the letter TAM. Now it’s not at the heart of Tara, but you yourself, in the form of Tara, you have that.

[DT]

Normally you say letter TAM, T-A-M in green, but in White Tara it is white. And then OM. OM TARE TUTTARE TURE MAMA AYUR PUNJE JNANA PUSHTIM KURUYE SOHA.

Then, TSIP GELA (???) TARE TUTTARE TURE SO SHIVE YINDU GHE.

So there is eight spokes, just like yesterday. So each spoke, one letter is standing: TA, RE, TU, TA, RE, TU, RE SO, and that is clockwise. Then, inside that, you have AH, AH, I, I, U, U, RE, RE, LE, LE, I, I, O, O, and AH, that is counter-clockwise. It’s Sanskrit vowels.

[ST]

1:45:45.2

OK, now, I have to make this clear to you. The AH, I, AH, the AH, AH, I, I, AH, YONKOR, counterclockwise. KHA KHA KHANA is clockwise. And YIDAMA is also clockwise. That is according to Tartar ??? Rimpoche (Gelungta??), the regent of Tibet. There are many, you know? Every different lama has a different system. Some are going counterclockwise, some are going clockwise, and all this, and not even as Sakya or Kagyu or Gelugpa make a difference, but each Lama makes a difference. So normally we do this in the easiest way of doing the White Tara practice, in initiations, and longevity, is Talongtaase ???, Tara Rimpoche’s document. So according to this, this is going like that.

[DT]

[audience repeating, inaudible mostly]

What you say is what he told you: the Sanskrit vowels are counterclockwise, Sanskrit consonants are clockwise, and the essence mantra is clockwise.

[DT]

1:49:05.2

But for many of you beginning, right now, you know, clockwise, counterclockwise, even when I say Sanskrit vowels, you don’t even know what that is, so really, that’s AH, I, U, E, O: the vowels, the usual vowels. But then AH I U E, and that doesn’t become AH I U, it becomes AH U I, something different, right?

So, in English, normally we use A as AH, but in English we write A as Ay, then you write E as the letter E, then you write U as the letter U, and A — no, A is the letter E, and E is the letter I. So in Dutch it becomes AH, U, something different.

???

That’s fine. That’s the Sanskrit vowels.

Now, the consonant is like A, B, C, D. KHA, KHA, KHANG KHANG CHA CHA CHA CHANA, TA TA TA TANA, PA PA PA PAMA, ZA ZA ZA ZAWA, SHA ZA AH I YA. (Ooh! There’s no SHA ZA AIYA. That’s Tibetan!) RA LA SHA SA HA AH. That’s the Sanskrit, actually Sanskrit alphabet. It’s called consonants, right?

Why Sanskrit? Because old [all??} mantras are Sanskrit.

[DT]

Why you use vowels and consonants? Because there is no Sanskrit without Sanskrit vowels or consonants. It is the inclusion of everything. Nothing is excluded.

1:51:57.3

And that’s why, you can’t have every mantra collected, so you collect all these alphabets. And without alphabets, you cannot have anything else.

[DT]

And you collect all the vowels. Without the vowels, there cannot be sound. And that’s why also, the most important vowels is AH. Without AH you cannot make any sound at all. So whatever sound you make, you have to make AH as the life of the sound. Whatever you say — UU, II — whatever you say, there has to be AH. Even if it is RA RU, whatever you say, there has to be AH. There is no sound in the world where there is no sound involved.

[DT]

As long as the human beings make the sound! Machines may make a lot of sounds, you never know!

So, that’s why AH is considered the life of the mantra.

[DT]

Ah me ,….. che de

Tibetan

So if you keep on talking about the AH, and Manjushri NAMASANGHIT —this is Sanskrit, MANJUSHRI NAMA SANGHIT. The Manjushri tantra, which is sort of the root of all wisdom tantra. There are pages and pages explaining what does AH mean.

1:54:06.3

[DT]

So this chakra, these wheels that we imaginatively build up, is called the life chakra. Or, you may call this mantra chakra. Chakra really means circle. The word chakra is actually — you know, Tibetans will never say chakra. Like Chakrasambhava for Heruka, Tibetans will say tsatrasambhara. Never say chakra. They say tsatra. So Tibetan Sanskrit is hopeless!

[DT]

Now, in your visualization, if you can clearly think those mantras are, word by word, consonant by consonant, vowel by vowel, it’s great. Even if you can’t think that, at least you can think the TAM. And that’s me, and right in front of me, in front of my eyes, my face, my nose, is the big OM here. And then when I start looking , I see TA RE TU TA RE … all of them I see up here, and then when you look a little bit outside that — and now you yourself is gone deeply inside that letter TAM, though your physical body as Tara, but you have gone inside the letter TAM, so you are seeing there, and you look a little bit beyond, and you begin to see those Sanskrit vowels and consonants, and the mantras, the essence mantra, and all of them. You may not recognize each, word by word, but the circles are there, red light and white, and all that.

1:58:04.7

[DT]

So that much is enough for the generation of the mantra mala, or chakra male within you. Then, on your crown, you yourself as Tara, and on your crown, you have your guru in the form of Buddha of Infinite Life. In the Sanskrit name that buddha is known as Amitayus. Red in color, one face, two hands in a meditative state, and holding a vase of life treasure, and it’s supposed to be a golden vase. It is filled up with the nectar of longevity. This Amitayus buddha, wearing a lot of beautiful silk dresses, having a number of jewel ornaments, sitting down, cross-legged, which is known as vajra style, but in the west more known as lotus style. That Amitayus’s heart level, the seed syllable of Amitayus is the letter HRIH.

[DT]

2:01:41.1

Light radiates from the Amitayus, the light is red colored. And the red is the color of attraction. Red color is also the color of attachment. And that red color attracts my own strength of life and life energy, that might have been taken or stolen from me by non-human powers, or some human powers. Some of them might have forcefully been taken from me, some of them just stolen from me; some I might have paid not attention and they disappeared or were lost; some might have scattered. As well as the essence energy of all five elements. As well as the life strength, luck, energy from all enlightened and non-enlightened living beings. Likewise all the dignities of every existence. And wealth. And blessings of gurus, buddhas, and boddhisattvas. All multi-colored, rainbow style, collected.

2:05:30.7

Not only collected in the form of light, but also in the form of nectar as well. And they all dissolve into the vase that Amitayus Buddha is holding in his hands. And, from that vase there is a tremendous amount of nectar overflowing. A white-colored nectar, a lot of it coming. And it comes from my crown. Remember, Amitayus is here, and it is overflowing, it comes throughout my body completely.

[DT]

It comes through my head, throat, and goes down to my heart level. And all of them dissolve into the mantra chakra at my heart level. And all of this living mantra started generating more light, more liquid, throughout, throwing, it ??? growing, overflowing. Fills up my body completely, and it also overflows and washes even outside of my body, and what they are washing inside and outside is the negativities that I have accumulated from the limitless beginning. Plus the illnesses. Plus the obstacles that might have reached to me by other means of others’ power. Or, by my own karma. And all of them pacified, not only purified, pacified. And they disappear, separated completely out of my system once and for all.

[DT]

2:09:21.1

And my life. My luck. My broken commitments. All of them are rejuvenated, purified, revitalized. Through this, I have obtained siddhihood of immortality. And then you can go with the mantra, like, OM TARE TUTTARE TURE MAMA AYUR PUNJE JNANA PUSHTIM KURUYE SOHA.

[DT]

So that’s what you should visualize. And then, shorter, OM TARE TUTTARE TURE SOHA. The shorter mantra.

All right, I think I’ll do up to this much today. And, as I said yesterday, you should try to think those visualizations, once, today in the evening, once, tomorrow in the morning.

[DT]

Audience: If I am not visualizing myself as Tara, may I visualize myself as with Amitayus on the top of my head?

GR: When you are not visualizing yourself as Tara, you should be visualizing the guru Amitayus above the head of the Tara in front of you, and every activity mantra mala, everything, at the heart of the Tara, and somehow you are under the protection… It’s like an umbrella above you, and the Tara is almost like an umbrella. You can bring it over, or leave it in front and duplicate it over, or whatever. Use it as an umbrella, other than using yourself as Tara. And I think that sharing this information, I don’t think it is any problem, but whenever you can use yourself as Tara, you can use them; until then, you use that as an umbrella.

[DT]

2:13:44.0

Audience: In the visualization of the three rings, do you visualize it inside yourself?

GR: If you are in the form of Tara, yes.

Audience: And if ??? in front of you?

GR: Ah. Yourself in the form of Tara? At the heart level, moon disk, at the center of the moon disk, the letter TAM, and OM in front of TAM. Now you are functioning from TAM, rather than from this big body. And you are inside TAM, and the TAM is your body. So that is why I said OM is right in front of you. Because, you know, in the vajrayana system, whatever you produce, small or subtle, and then you go in that, and you become smaller and smaller. You occupy the smaller subtle body as possible. That doesn’t mean you don’t have the big body. You do have the big body. By using the subtle body inside, it is functioning outside as well. That is always the system. In the case of Vajrayogini, those who are practicing Vajrayogini, you have those deity mandala, and you have those, and you have the letter NADA, the squiggle, writing down there, and then finally you are getting just a little squiggle, nothing else, so everything else, there’s an extra little big thing going on, so because you are occupying the deeper inside of all, and that’s why it is functioning… The reason why I say the OM is right in front of you, don’t think your face, think in front of you as TAM.

[DT]

2:16:53.8

Audience: She is curious if we are going to discuss Tara’s qualities, like love, and how that connects to attachment.

GR: I don’t know if it connects to attachment or not. I think we did talk yesterday, talking about hand implements and all this, sort of some qualities we did mention. I don’t know whether we can really talk every quality, there’s countless qualities in there. She understands. But you can translate.

Audience: What do PUSHTIM and KURU mean?

GR: PUSHTIM KURUYE SOHA. Life, wisdom, luck, fortune, all may increase. PUSHTIM KURUYE SOHA means increase.

[DT]

2:19:46.9

And, you are sort of praying for increase, with me in the name of Tara. Because you say OM TARE TUTTARE TURE MAMA AYUR PUNYE JNANA PUSHTIM KURUYE SOHA. MAMA is self, I think. AYUR is life. JNANA is wisdom. PUSHTIM KURUYE SOHA: may increase. Luck, fortune, all of them may increase. So, in the name of Tara, with Tara’s mantra, you are praying that luck, fortune, life, wisdom, all may increase. PUSHTIM KURU: increase, I think.

[DT]

You see, I also have habit PUTTIN KURU, I should instead say PUSHTIM KURUYE SOHA. That’s the Tibetan way of saying. They like PUTTIN a lot. PUDDING — carrot cake, cheese cake!

OK, so you can have a lot of PUDDING!

2:22:02.6

Audience: Tara meditation is too difficult for me. How do you do it? I mean, especially if you’re a beginner. I’m sure you have people around you; it’s all beautiful, but… it’s very difficult. How do you do it in a simplified form?

GR: Very simple! The simplest: think of Tara in front of you; keep on praying! And remember, Tara is your own Tara, and your and yours only Tara, because you created for you.

[DT]

And you are not simply just praying, wishing, wishing, wishing. But you are doing the wheeling-dealing business by saying the mantra.

[DT]

Not only just wishing, but also saying the mantra itself, it becomes much more powerful. And then you can extend it a little more than that: a few of those things that we said. And then extend another more, extend another more, and then within a very short time you will be able to do all of them, and everybody will be able to do all of them. Within a very short time. I’m talking about a week or ten days.

[DT]

2:24:30.3

And I mean a week or ten days of practice, I don’t mean…

Actually it’s a very good question. That’s the meat of the thing. And a very good translation, I must say!

Thank you. And thank you everybody.