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20040828GRAAWT1

((Intro Kathleen: Welcome everybody here this morning. Today we are doing a combination of blessing ceremony and workshop. A few words about Rimpoche:

He is one of the last lamas to be trained in old Tibet. He was recognized at the age of 4 as the reincarnation of a teacher from the past. He was taken to a monastery and began very rigorous training till he was about 19 years old, at which the Chinese Communist take-over forced him to leave Tibet for India. He continued teaching in India and also edited many rare Tibetan manuscripts. Then he was asked by his teachers to come to the west and teach the dharma to western populations. He came to the US in the mid 80s and in 1987 founded Jewel Heart, which is now a world-wide organization. We have chapters in our headquarters here in Ann Arbor, but also in Cleveland, Chicago, New York, Lincoln Nebraska and a strong group in the Netherlands, as well as Malaysia and Singapore. Rimpoche is very busy traveling and giving teachings.

The particular practice he is teaching has been one of the major core practices in the Jewel Heart body of teachings. Since the very beginning Rimpoche has been teaching the practice. It is truly deep and profound and as complicated as it could possibly be – or it can be presented in a way that is simple, straight forward and very accessible for anybody. You don’t have to be a Buddhist to do this practice and benefit from it. Because of this, this practice is one of the corner stones of Rimpoche’s deep wisdom. It does have both, the full path to enlightenment, as well as being accessible to the public. We are very fortunate to have Rimpoche here today teaching this and we are very excited. Please welcome Gelek Rimpoche

0:05)))

A: Tara Blessing

Hello everybody. Today we will have two sessions. The morning session will be the Tara blessing and the afternoon session will be more practice-oriented. Here is the idea behind the Tara blessing. Usually first you have an initiation and then the explanation of the practice. That is the traditional Tibetan customs. There is a longevity initiation, there is a real Tara initiation. All those different initiations are there. The moment you talk about initiations, there is commitments and all sorts of very serious, heavy involvements. We want to benefit large numbers of people who are very interested in Tibetan Buddhism and ways of giving teachings like this and get benefit out of it. At the same time, there are people who don’t have to have those heavy commitments. So we need a medium level of building a connection and benefiting from Tara practice. So that’s where the blessing comes in.

The idea of a blessing is nothing new. It is in the tradition. Yet it is a little bit away from the heavy commitments. So we are introducing this functioning of the Tara blessing. It works extremely well. It works almost like an initiation, although it not an initiation. But it is close to that. It is almost like having all the benefits, but not having the commitments. It works out in that way.

There are three things happening in this blessing.

First I will introduce you to Tara.

Secondly I will give you a guided visualization meditation

Thirdly the mantra transmission.

First: the Introduction

Tara is somehow very famous. Everybody likes Tara, everybody talks about Tara. Everybody also knows that she has something to do with healing and all kinds of activities, but it is not absolutely clear what it is. So I like to give you the introduction of who is Tara and what she does and why she is special and particularly at a time like this.

I like you to hear me say clearly and loudly and cleanly: Tara is a female Buddha. A number of people think that Buddha has to be a man. But if you translate “Buddha” it means “enlightened”. And that means the person is all knowing, has total knowledge. So females are eligible to have total knowledge and to be enlightened. That’s why Tara is a female buddha. All buddhas have not been buddhas right from the beginning. In the beginning they were just like us, with lots of difficulties and problems, mentally, physically and emotionally. Becoming an enlightened Buddha is the terminology used very strongly in Buddhism. As a matter of fact it is the goal of Buddhist practitioners, particularly that of Tibetan – or vajrayana practitioners. Becoming a Buddha is the goal.

The Buddha stage is something you will obtain. It is something you work for and earn. It is not something that is a ready-made stage that is awarded to you or something that you can buy. It is something you work for and earn. All past buddhas, including our official Buddha, Shakyamuni Buddha, have earned this. Similarly Tara. Tara has earned her buddhahood. So she is a female Buddha. Somehow there are many more male buddhas than female. That is something very funny in the Indo-Tibetan culture. Buddhism came up in early India and in that culture at that time the male superiority was culturally accepted. Therefore, to benefit more people, somehow more male buddhas are there. In many cases, many people, just before becoming buddhas, even if they were in female bodies, wanted to change their body and become a Buddha in the male form.

In the case of this female Buddha, there was a girl named Yeshe Dawa, that means Wisdom Moon. She somehow connected with the Buddha of compassion, Avalokitesvara. She committed herself to be helpful to the people. She committed to the service of the people. At that time she first generated perfect motivation of compassion and love. Love and compassion are the best motivations. While introducing Tara I also urge you to generate that mind, the mind of love and compassion. If you have good knowledge of the mind of love and compassion you should use it, if not, then simply think, “I am not doing this for me alone. I would like to do this so that I gain some sort of power to help myself and others in order to benefit all people.” If you generate that thought it will be a good motivation. It will be the way of Tara, the Wisdom Moon girl, had generated her motivation.

With generating the motivation I mean that she had totally dedicated her life and the lives thereafter to what she was going to do. That is the motivation I am talking about. I am not talking about what I am going to do for the next hour. Of course we have to begin our motivation by thinking what we are going to do for the next 8 hours or so. But that is how we should motivate. Tara did dedicate all her life and lives to serve the people. She said that there are so many buddhas who would like to function as buddhas in the male physical form. But she thought, “I would like to stay in the female physical form and contemplate all my efforts and become a budhda in the female physical form and thereafter I would like to function in the female physical form all the time. That is her commitment and that is why I say she is a female Buddha. She had achieved whatever she had wanted to achieve. And after she became a fully enlightened Buddha her achievement is totally equal to the Buddha we know, the Indian prince, who became a Buddha in India and to any other Buddha. So she functioned ever since then as Buddha.

Now the question comes: how did she appear in the physical form we see today? You can see at my back the beautiful drawing of White Tara. There are a number of forms of White Tara, but how did she achieve that particular physical form?

This is the historical explanation. Buddha Avalokitesvara, the Buddha of Compassion, in other words the compassion of all enlightened beings in the aspect of Avalokitesvara worked very hard to serve and liberate people. We, the people are of course great, but we the people also have so many problems. If we don’t have problem, it should be we, the enlightened ones. But it is we, the people. We do have a lot of mental, physical and emotional problems. The commitment of the buddhas is to serve and liberate and ease the pains we go through. The Buddha of Compassion was so busy with that and working so hard. He started crying and saying that a pair of extra hands would be quite useful. This is a hindu-buddhist mythological story. So a tear fell from his eye and he picked the tear up with his hand and threw the tear drop away from him and from that suddenly Tara appeared in that very female physical form and said, “Hey, I am here to keep you company and help you do the work.” So light nature wisdom of the mind of Tara and Buddha of Compassion joined together and physically appeared as Tara.

There are many manifestations of Tara, the green, white, yellow, red, blue, black Tara and so on. Mostly known are the 21 aspects of Tara. There are also 16, 8 or 3 aspects. But today this practice is done through White Tara. All Taras are extremely kind and compassionate and so close to us. It is almost like they are always looking for an opportunity to help, except we don’t give them any openings to help. Apart from that it is always there. The compassion of the enlightened ones and especially Tara is like a hook. They really want to hook the people and pick them up. Their hook is swaying around everywhere where there are people. But when we don’t open our ring of open-mindedness, then no matter how many hooks swing our way there is nothing they can hook on. If they hit you on the head you are going to get cut, right? So they don’t want to do that. So the opening is always necessary and important. The moment we give a little opening, their compassionate hook is swinging over our head, ready to hook us and pick us up.

Particularly White Tara is very specialized in healing and development, mental, physical and emotional. There are many traditional stories and also stories from today. You can read them in the Tara Book. But that is basically who Tara is. So here I am introducing you to Tara and I am introducing Tara to you. The introduction here is actually building the connection. It is the connection between us as individuals and Tara who represents the total enlightened society to us. In other words, this is a bridge for you that leads you to heaven. That is the introduction to Tara. It is not like saying, “Hi, this is Tara and this is you – bye bye”. No, in normal American language it is a ticket to heaven.

So what do you expect to do with this? We would expect you to keep and not flush it down the toilet. How to you keep it?

The Second Step

Out of the three steps we are now moving to the guided meditation, the second step. Yes, you have a picture of Tara and you can see that. However, a picture is just a picture. It is a very artist’s creation. A Swedish woman has drawn this picture for me about 15 years ago. She drew it on a piece of cloth. In reality, from a mystical point of view, that is real Tara. But practically speaking, it is a drawing, just a picture, not really a living being, at least for our mind. That is because we more delusion-oriented than wisdom-oriented. If we are wisdom-oriented we will see that as living Tara who will perhaps talk to us. We can ask questions and she can answer. That does happen in reality when our delusions go down. It actually, literally happens, not as a hallucination. It is a vision. There is a big difference between these two. It has to be quite clear to us. To make it wisdom and personal contact to ourselves, we have to build our own Tara in our own mind. Your Tara is built by you, for you and it is yours and yours forever. That is the important point.

One of the most important techniques of meditation is visualization. It is very interesting. Today scientists are very much involved with that. They are looking into that day in and day out and unprecedented amounts of money, like in one case a $250 million grant to one professor in Wisconsin – are spent to study the mind. That just happened last month. That is a wonderful thing. Five, six, seven years ago, I saw on TV a Harvard professor claiming that he had found the most effective way of remembering and understanding and studying. What he described was visualization! I was sitting there saying, “Hello, we have known this for thousands of years” and he claimed that as a discovery and called it ‘imagery’. So it is one of the best ways of learning in the spiritual way, so that it is not just learning but that you become that.

So this the visualization where you build your own Tara.

I would like to give you a guided visualization of Tara. All of you are familiar with meditation. Please relax and first establish the motivation that “for the benefit of all beings I would like to connect, learn and practice this to help myself, my family, my circle, my fellow citizens and all human beings and all living beings.” When that thought is generated that will be a strong motivation throughout your practice and life. You should have that thought influence every action you are taking.

Visualize right in front of you in space a lotus and moon cushion. Tara’s signature or “seed syllable” is the letter TAM and that appears in the middle of the lotus. That TAM is radiating light that reaches to all enlightened beings and particularly to the great Tarema, the mother Tara. Their blessings are collected and dissolve to the letter TAM and that TAM suddenly transforms into the physical form of Tara. She is white in color, with one face and two hands and the left hand is at the heart level. Ring finger and thumb join together and the other three fingers stand up. Between ring finger and thumb she is holding the stem of a flower. That is a unique, very special flower called utpala. The flower opens at the level of her left shoulder. It has three branches, one in the middle is blooming – a thousand petalled utpala. At the right side is a bud that will open up and at the left is a fruit. That represent the past through the fruit, the present through the blooming flower and the future through the flower bud. Not only that, it represents the past enlightened ones, present enlightened ones and future enlightened ones.

Her right hand, outstretched over her right knee, while showing the palm of her hand to us signifies giving the gesture of invitation to those who are suffering, who have no help and no protection. She says, “I am here to help you. Join me.” The raised hand with the raised three fingers represent Buddha, Dharma and Sangha, stands for refuge, which is protection.

White Tara has seven eyes, the two usual ones, then the third eye, plus two hands in the palms of the hands and soles of the feet. She is decorated with lots of beautiful jewel ornaments. It is not that she requires jewel ornaments, but meditating jewel ornaments on her helps us to bring more wealth, more money, to ourselves. She is not a drawing or picture. She is a three-dimensional living being. We have created her from a seed syllable and she is loving, caring and kind, absolutely ready to help anyone who seeks help, whether they are fit or not fit to receive help. There is no discrimination. She is looking at you [that means each and every person is thinking that] with kindness, ready to speak to you. You are looking at her profoundly happy to be able to see here. It is wonderful she is there and you are ready to receive her blessings and help.

That is our visualization of Tara. This is only our visualization. So we must invite the wisdom being. So far we have created the commitment being.

The next is we invite the wisdom of Tara through invocation. We have that in Tibetan. Originally it was written in Sanskrit during the Buddha’s life time. It was translated into Tibetan:

MA LÜ SEM CHEN KUN JE GÖN JUR CHING

DÜ DHE PUNG GYE ME ZÄ JOM ZÄ LHA

NGÖ NAM MA LÜ YANG DHAH KEN JUR PÄ

CHOM DHAN KHOR CHÄ NÄ DHER SHEG SU SOL

You who destroy all evil forces

And who know all things perfectly,

For the sake of all beings,

Please come to me.

We will chant that accompanied by music. Chris McCall, a wonderful friend and singer will sing it for us and John Madison will accompany her on the viola. In your visualization from the heart of the Tara you have built light goes out to the “heavenly abode” of Tara herself and that wisdom being is invited in the form of light. It can be white light or 5-colored rainbow light. It is your choice. That light dissolves to the visualized Tara and is happy to be one and remain there forever. Please visualize that while we chant.

Chanting Chris McCall and viola John Madison: Invocation

Through this invocation it is not just your imagination any more. The actual wisdom being has been invited. That is really the icing on the cake.

After inviting the most important person in our lives, not only this life, we would like to do some spiritual practice. We don’t just invite somebody and let them sit there, saying “I am busy.” You can’t do that. So we do a contemplating practice. The practice most recommended by the enlightened beings is the 7 limbed practice.

First and foremost you welcome the person. Then the way of welcoming in traditional Buddhist culture is actually, as many of you know, in the Eastern culture, by bowing down. Even in the west we will smile and shake hands or give a hug or whatever, according to your culture. If you are a very conservative person you touch the fingernails and shake. If you are more liberal you give a hug. In the eastern traditions we bow, by body, speech and mind. The next is we make offerings. It is like asking the guest, “You may be too tired. You may like to drink something or eat something. Would you like to have something?” In a way it is traditional culture. On the other hand it is an activity. By bowing down to enlightened beings we create tremendous positive karma. By making offerings to the enlightened beings it is the best generosity. That creates a tremendous good fortune for us spiritually, karmically. That will translate and is translating even into actual economic terms – money – too. It is really true.

The third one is purification. What is our problem? Negative karma. When that materializes we have problems of suffering, illnesses, difficulties, mental, physical and emotional. That’s negative karma. But that is definitely purifiable. We can destroy positive karma too. So we need protection. Negative karma can be purified. Purification is very important in our life. We should purify all wrong doings, not only those we remember but also those we don’t know from all our lives. Whatever we have, we are here to purify with sincere thoughts and the application of four powers. The thought is: I purify the wrong things I did anywhere, knowingly and unknowingly, not only in this life, but also in lives before, for which I was and am responsible. That is one of the most important among them.

The next, the fourth, is rejoicing. These are some kind of spiritual tips we can give you. Rejoicing is very easy to do, yet it has a tremendous yield. If you rejoice in whatever good things others are doing you gain merit. They work hard, you get benefits. It is the best investment, really. No risk. You don’t have to work hard, just rejoice in everybody’s good work, whatever they are doing. Keep on rejoicing. Can you imagine what happens if you rejoice in Buddha and Buddha Tara and the activities of His Holiness the Dalai Lama and those of Nelson Mandela, Dr. Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi, Mother Theresa? There are plenty of resources available.

Plus all the other great people who do great things. We can name a few, but there are zillions of people who quietly mind their own business in their home and are just straight forward Americans, mid- Western people who do everything. They are all fantastic. We should rejoice in all of them.

Then we request Tara to remain forever. We created the image, invited her and now we request her to remain forever. After remaining, what can she do? Give us guidance, help us. Finally, the seventh is dedication. I dedicate my positive karma for the benefit of all beings. Why dedication? Dedication guarantees the safe guarding of positive karma. As I said: positive karma can be destroyed. By what? By hatred. Safeguarding that is dedication. So these are the seven limbs and they are a very usual practice in Jewel Heart and when Chris sings you have to visualize. The first thing: I bow down…you have to visualize that you respect Tara in body, speech and mind. Physically you can bow, but if your mind is not involved it doesn’t work, that’s why body, speech and mind all together. Thereafter the others all like that.

Chanting Chris McCall and viola John Madison:

Seven Practices

I bow down in body, speech and mind.

I offer the best I have to give

both real and imagined

to fill the space between us.

I regret and purify all transgressions.

I rejoice in all virtues.

I request you to remain until total enlightenment.

I request wise and compassionate guidance.

I dedicate my merit for the sake of all beings.

So, today Chris and John performed the Seven Limbed Practice, but you can do that by yourself, with or without singing. Singing is nice. But if I have to sing, I can’t sing. But I can say it.

Meditation is definitely the method. There are many ways of meditation. Meditation simply means focusing. Focusing here can be on anything. In the west people mostly think it means to sit down and think something. But there are lots of ways and means of doing it. Particularly, one most important meditation is to keep the mind busy, visualizing and thinking, keeping the speech busy saying mantras, keeping the physical body active by sitting. Then body, mind and speech are working together. That is the greatest meditation you can do. In the west meditation really becomes keeping your mind open and things like that. That’s about it. But that’s not so great. The greatest is the combination of body, speech and mind, keeping them intact together. Keep your body in a pure state, keep your mind in a pure state, keep your speech in a pure state. These three purities are together, which is very important meditation. How do we keep these pure?

The mind disengages from thinking about impurity. The speech disengages from impure activities. The body disengages from impure activities. How do we disengage? By keeping the mind busy meditating on a physical body like Tara or your own mind or another subject of practice. Disengage your speech from impurity by saying mantras. Disengage your body from impure activities by keeping it clean and sitting in the position of Buddha Vairochana, the seven ways of sitting. Even if you can’t do that it is fine. “Sit on the ground and if the ground is not there, sit on a chair” – in the words of Allen Ginsberg. He then said, “First thing to do is keep your backbone straight” and then keep your mind engaged in breathing exercise. What does that do? It takes your mind away from the impure into at least a neutral state. You cannot transform from very strong obsession or hatred straight away into positive mind states. It is difficult. So take it into a neutral state by breathing meditation. That’s why in the west breathing meditation is so popular.

With the seven limbs you have visualized and said the words – or Chris sang on behalf of us and John played – and our thoughts were put in.

Now we have to do the mantra. The question is what is mantra? Many people don’t know what mantra is all about. They have an idea. Some people say it is the name of enlightened ones. That is not really a pure eastern tradition, not is is purely vajrayana. Even in the judeo-christian tradition I have seen people using Hail Mary and so on. Believe me, that’s a mantra. Why are you naming enlightened ones? Because that protects you from fear. It protects you from hatred, from obsession, from jealousy, from getting hurt. That’s why it is mental protection. But is every name a mantra and does it help? That’s a different question. Kids have a mantra called “Mom” and it does help. Doesn’t it? Here you try to use a totally enlightened being like Tara – fantastic, a woman who is totally enlightened and capable. Her capacity is unlimited, beyond the sky. The sky is the limit of her capacity. And she is kind, compassionate, totally committed, dedicated. That is Tara. Using her mantra is OM TARE TUTARE TURE SOHA.

OM is the general beginning of a mantra for everybody. Actually, the sound of OM is the combination of 3 syllables: A – O – M. It stands for the body, speech and mind of all enlightened beings in general and in this case particularly Tara. TARE TUTARE TURE – these syllables represent the Buddha’s teaching on the Four Noble Truths. That is the Truth of Suffering, the Truth of the Cause of Suffering, the Truth of the Cessation of Suffering and the Truth of the Path to the Cessation of Suffering. Although it doesn’t say it is the Four Noble Truths, it really is.

Kor wa le dröl Tare ma – the one who liberates from the suffering of samsara

Samsara is the suffering, the suffering of suffering, the changing suffering and all of those.

Tuta ra ye jig je dröl – who liberates from the eight fears. Here the eight different negative emotions are the cause of suffering.

Ture nang wan am le dröl – This ture represents the cessation, being free from all pains. That is total liberation. How can we liberate ourselves? By practicing OM TARE TUTARE TURE SOHA. The last syllable SOHA gives us the foundation: the foundation of your body, speech and mind may lay in my body, speech and mind. Combined together it also represents union. Some mantras don’t end with SOHA but with HUM. HUM represents union and SOHA represents laying the foundation. Your foundation lays in my foundation and becomes oneness. That becomes the union. So basically, when you say OM TARE TUTARE TURE SOHA it includes all the principal teachings of Buddha. There is no better and bigger mantra anywhere. There are lots of other reasons.

I am going to give you the mantra transmission. I am going to say the mantra and you are going to repeat after me. So it is not only the physical body introduction but also the speech – or mantra introduction.