Archive Result

78

20101010GRGRMB5

Transcriber Hartmut

00:00

Welcome, this is supposed to be a practice session, but the practice you are going to get is still in the process of getting printed. It will still take at least half an hour. So we can change the question and answer session from the evening to now and have the practice session in the evening.

00:300

Audience: in the Medicine Buddha visualization are the 7 siblings already present or do you build the stack up from the bottom?

Rimpoche: I think we first build the stack from bottom up.

Audience: Should we be visualizing something while saying the mantra?

Rimpoche: Yes, I will have to talk about the mantra itself and I will talk about that at that time.

Audience: What is the specific function and healing characteristic of each of the Medicine Buddhas and what commitments have each of them made to help us?

Rimpoche: I was hoping to talk about that, but it doesn’t seem to happen this time. We will do another Men-la workshop in Jewel Heart. It won’t work if I do it somewhere else, like at the Men-la Center. There Thurman specifically tells me to do this and that. If we do it in Jewel Heart I will be able to do it at that time. That’s a little complicated. I tried to put it in yesterday, but it didn’t work. There is too much to do in too little time.

Audience: Are there images of the 7 Medicine Buddhas and their postures that could be made available to us while we are studying?

Rimpoche: You can look into websites like Himalayan Arts and so on. Just type in Medicine Buddha and you will get a lot.

Audience: But then you may get other traditions’ images and the visualizations may be different.

Rimpoche: Maybe, but actually, the 7 Medicine Buddhas should be the same, whether they come through the Kargyu, Gelug or other traditions. Some people came to this retreat because they googled Medicine Buddha and this came up – already in February. It linked through to the Garrison Site, which linked through to Jewel Heart and the details were posted there. So maybe just google Medicine Buddha or Men-la.

Now there is so much information. It is not like 20, 30 years ago. Even in the late 70s, early 80s people told me, crying that there was not a single Buddhist resource available for 100 miles in every direction. Now you can just google everything. That’s very good.

Audience: Is there a point in this practice where it is appropriate to engage in analytical meditation?

Rimpoche: Building up each of the 7 buddhas, with their faces, eyes, hand gestures, dress, cushions, body color, etc, is analytical meditation. Once you have built up the full image completely and you focus on it that will be concentrated meditation. Every meditation you hear from me is about both. Both are there. Building up the 7 Medicine Buddhas in itself involves both, analytical as well as concentrated meditation. When I introduced you the power point, there is no analytical meditation involved. You can just see it. But when you are creating the image in your own meditation you are not looking at a picture. In every meditation teachings, particularly in GOM, I am saying that you are not looking at a picture. If you look at a picture and try to meditate you are training your eyes, not your mind. The mental image is the real image. That has to be built through analytical meditation and completed through focusing meditation. Both go together and work that way.

Audience: Are there specific Medicine Buddhas for specific world problems and ailments? Which one should we go to if we want help with sciatica – as we want to help with yours?

Rimpoche: Well, thank you so much for your concern. I asked those buddhas, who was specialized in treating sciatica and none of them answered me.

Audience: How do the Three Principles relate to the three yanas?

Rimpoche: I don’t know. Do they relate? The First Principle relates definitely to the hinayana, no doubt. The Second Principle is also relating to the Mahayana. There is also no doubt. The Third Principle doesn’t directly relate to some third yana.

In the west, often people name hinayana, Mahayana and vajrayana. But that is not the tradition at all.

0:15

Traditionally, when you count the 3 yanas, you count 2 hinayanas – sravakayana and pratyekayana and 1 mahayana, also called buddhayana. That’s how the three yanas were originally introduced in Buddhism. Sravakas were the direct monk disciples of the Buddha. Pratyakas came before Buddha. According to the abidharmakosha, upper or lower, in the time when there is no official Buddha, there are the pratyeka buddhas, self liberating buddhas. Before the official Buddha appears, most of the pratyeka buddhas go away. The disappear. They will no longer live. Many of them will fly up in the air and drop themselves down. They know it is time for them to leave from this world. In Varanasi, the place where Buddha first taught is the place called Deer Park. That sounds quite beautiful. But before deer park there is a word called trang sung hung wa ri dag ki ngag. “where the sooth sayers dropped in the deer forest” – that doesn’t necessarily mean deer but any wild animals. Somehow the translations turned the wild animal forest into a deer park and withdrew the soothsayers falling down. This is where Buddha’s first activities took place near Varanasi. So the sooth sayers dropped in that area with reason and purpose. It looks like some tragedy, but these were people who knew what they were doing. Even if it seems a little tragic, their purpose was to facilitate the activities of Buddha.

Then the buddhayana is what we also call Mahayana. It is divided into two:

Pure sutra aspects

Vajra aspect

Also, it is not the case that they don’t count hinayana, Mahayana, vajrayana. That is known, but more done from the perspective of the individual practitioner. I don’t know where it started in the west and who started it, but it is now commonly known that way. When you google it, you probably find that.

Audience: Wikipedia has it correctly actually, just the way you said.

Rimpoche: Well, now you know and you are backed up by google. Back to the question of Three Principles and Three Yanas: the wisdom is probably relating to all three yanas. There is no difference in the wisdom of the hinayana and Mahayana. It is the same wisdom. The difference in vajrayana is the mind that is observing. So this is how the Three Principles relate to the Three Yanas.

Audience: How would you use this practice to help people who are dying or in other therapeutic situations?

Rimpoche: You could visualize and do the practice and dissolve the Buddha to yourself, the healer or therapist and say the mantras and think that Buddha Medicine is working through you for the individual patient as needed. That is one way. Whatever you do, especially the health care professionals, working particularly with healing aspects, the number one issue is the good motivation and there is no better motivation than bodhimind. That is the good motivation, honestly. Secondly, if you do a little lojong practice that will be very helpful. Then if you have healing buddhas like Medicine Buddha, White Tara, Ushnishavijaya, Amitayus or Jamgön Lama Tsongkhapa’s longevity practice or any field of merit, that will be the icing on the cake. The most important thing is the individual’s mind.

Once I asked one of my old friends, a Tibetan incarnate lama, who is a very good healers, once about how to help somebody I knew who was not well. He suggested to blow air into her vagina very close! I said, ‘That’s not going to be easy or comfortable.” He said, “You can do it, but if you raise any attraction or attachment, it won’t work at all.” So this is half joking, half true, but in reality it is true. So that’s what it is: if you have any attachment or attraction, it won’t work. So any healing you do, you have to let go any self interest and attachment, otherwise it doesn’t work. It seems that a number of health care professionals are here, trying to utilize this opportunity. That’s why I wanted to say that. Whether it is physical desire or otherwise, it doesn’t work. You need pure motivation. Attraction makes the motivation impure. The pure motivation counteracts all that.

0:31

This includes thinking, “If I do this healing well, I will become more popular. Then I will make more money and more patients will come.” Thinking that interferes with your healing. Any of those kinds of minds qualifies to be impure motivation.

Audience: How do we know which color to send to help others?

Rimpoche: White is pacifying, yellow is prosperity, red is power and dark blue is wrath. Green is multiple activities. But it can differ. In the case of Tara green is multi-purpose. You can also use rainbow color, in which case you combine all the pacifying, prosperity, power and wrath and multipurpose. Jesse Jackson had that rainbow coalition. It depends for what purpose you are doing it. That is your responsibility. You have to know. If you need more pacifying, you use white. Healing is normally focused on pacifying than on prosperity. It is not building strength, but getting rid of disease and illness. But the individual judgment is necessary to make that decision.

0:35

That’s it for questions. If you want to say the Medicine Buddha mantra aloud you can probably say it the same way as the long Avalokitesvara mantra, the NAMO RATNA TRAYAYA…. My feeling is that it will work.

For the explanation of the mantra: there are two kinds. One is out of the Medicine sutra and the other comes out of the normal medicinal practice tantra. These differ quite a lot. If I keep on talking the other one it might not serve much purpose. That’s why I am going to explain the second option, from the Explanation tantra of the Medicine Buddha tantra.

The first option is quite different. It goes like that:

Tayata gumi gumi ami emini eminimi he

Mati mati sapata tathagata Samadhi atti trida

Samyak trati ate mate pale pakpa shodane

Sarva papham nashaya mama Buddha Buddha (mama Buddha is the pratyeka buddhas)

Bodhi tata me umi kumi Buddha kyetra pari

Shodane dame nidame meru meru meru shekare

Akala mati parani buddhi subhudhi Buddha

Atti tridinam Buddha tritina rakchen dun

That is very long and different.

In reality it comes like nyi yur – sleep sleep. That means ‘give up – give up. So it goes:

Give up, give up, wisdom wisdom, then 7 tathagatas concentration bliss, learned one, offering one, protecting one, purifying one, one who destroys the negativities, pratyeka Buddhas, buddhas, beautiful ones, bad ones, pacify. Perfection of Buddha land, make very strong sound, the mountains, mountains, mountain peaks, protect from untimely death, lady Buddha, lady Buddha, who has well achieved, buddhas bless - all the gods protect. All the buddhas and bodhisattvas, please pay attention to me. Pacify, pacify, pacify my doubts, wrong thoughts, pacify, well pacify my illnesses and diseases, complete, complete, complete all my wishes, the lapis lazuli light destroys all negativities. Lay the foundation with me.

This is the sutra aspect, which will probably not make any sense to us. Now the Medicine tantra. Medical tantra and sutra is slightly different than usual sutra and tantra. The medical doctors will tell you that this is part of the Buddha’s Collected Works. That’s true. However, we treat the Medicine sutras and tantras slightly different than the usual dharma sutras and tantras. In any case, the mantra from the medical tantra is easier and much better. It relays easier.

This mantra has a long and a short one:

Long mantra:

OM NAMO BHAGAVATE, BEKADZE GURU BEDURYA, TRABHA RADZAYA, TATHAGATAYA, ARAHATE SAMYAKSAM BUDDHAYA, TAYATA, OM BEKADZE BEKADZE, MAHA BEKADZE BEKADZE, RADZA SAMUNGATESOHA

Short mantra:

TAYATA, OM BEKADZE BEKADZE, MAHA BEKADZE BEKADZE, RADZA SAMUNGATE SOHA

OM – that can mean auspicious, sometimes also means prostration, respect. You have heard me giving the meaning of OM broken into three different letters A O M, body, speech and mind. That’s one thing. But in a simple way it also means auspicious. I don’t know if the Tibetans say it, but Ladakhis do. In their normal conversations they do say: “chak tsal gyiu – I prostrate to you”. That’s instead of saying “Hi, how are you?” or “Good morning” or “Good evening”. chak tsal gyiu” is old Tibetan. And OM does that work too, like in OM MANI PADME HUM – that is the lotus and jewel mantra. So, “I prostate to you, oh lotus jewel” and HUM means union.

Just like that, here OM can mean prostration, but here it means auspicious, because the next word NAMO means prostration. That’s what we use when we say NAMO GURUBE, NAMO BUDDHAYA, NAMO DHARMA, NAMO SANGHAYA.

BHAGAVATE - that is in Tibetan chom dän dä – one who has destroyed all obstacles – chom and one who has gone beyond – dä.

BEKANDZE – medicines

GURU – that means lama, right?

BEDURYA – the lapis lazuli one

TRABHA RADZAYA – (can also be read Prabha Rajaya) – king of light

TATHAGATAYA – well travelled

ARHAT – who has destroyed the inner evil forces

SAMYAK SAMBUDDHAYA – perfectly enlightened

TAYATA – like this

OM – auspicious

BEKADZE BEKADZE – medicine or medicine man, doctor or healer (Tibetan: män pa)

MAHA BEKANDZE – the great medicinal doctor

BEKADZE RAJA – King of medicine men (män pei gyal po) – that’s why the last bekadze is necessary

SAMUNGATE – the perfect one – yang dag par pa ma leg par she tso

SOHA - lay the foundation properly

0:50

This is how traditionally Tibetans translated from Sanskrit. It is not like today. Today we will read the word and say what the equivalent is in English or any other language. We can consult dictionaries. When the Tibetans translated the Sanskrit texts into Tibetan, they had to create another complete system called dra. It is tibetanized Sanskrit. But they cut out all the Sanskrit words. Before they get to that they do what we did earlier when we translated: sleep sleep, auspicious, etc. Then they will write each of them in the Sanskrit script. Then they will sing that in higher tunes or lower tunes. Certain syllables that come with certain things, they remove those things and create another syllable in that place and then it comes out like the short mantra OM BEKADZE BEKADZE….. That’s after a lot of cutting, adding and removing, transforming the letters, etc. I don’t know how to do it. But during my period Kyabje Ling Rinpoche was expert at it. Lots of the Ladakhis and Kinnauris are quite good at that. That’s why the translation becomes perfect. It sort of went into a different language completely. It is like we have in the west, when you write the “e” the other way round and put dots on it – more than diacritical marks. It is like Wylie for Tibetan, the system that Profession Wylie devised. It is not only for pronunciation but for the understanding of the language itself. Among Tibetologists today – not only Americans, but including Japanese and everybody else, probably the best speaker of Tibetan language, who can not only read, but speak and write notes in Tibetan hand writing, is Melvyn Golstein. Goldstein doesn’t read Tibetan like we do. He doesn’t need a dictionary. He put everything in that linguistic language and then retranslated that into normal English. He probably speaks the best dialect of Lhasa and also the eastern dialect, and Amdo dialect and so on. He knows all dialects perfectly. If you close the door to his room if you didn’t recognize his voice, you wouldn’t know whether there are not three or four Tibetans talking. He is that good. He used the Wylie system. He was Wylie’s student too. That made it perfect for him to translate.

So the traditional Tibetans had created this language, between Sanskrit and Tibetan, and that’s why that other mantra sounds completely different. That one boils down to this one.

What is this mantra really saying:

Auspicious, I prostate to the Buddha who has completely destroyed all obstacles, who has all the qualities, who is well travelled, who has destroyed all enemies, who has perfectly transformed into perfect enlightenment – the guru of medicine, the king of lapis lazuli, I prostrate to you.

I say like this: auspicious: doctor, doctor, great doctor, king of doctors, lay the perfect foundation within me.

That’s the meaning of this mantra. To reach to this level to this level they did this three, four times, circling around. Allen Ginsberg, when he wanted to translate Tibetan poetry into English, he didn’t just go by the meaning. He showed me a word and asked what it meant. Then after he got all the meanings, he retranslated them again.

He did for example the translation for:

OM SVABAHVA SHUDDAH SARVA DHARMA SVABHAVA SHUDDO HAM

Nature empty, everything pure, naturally pure that’s what I am

It took him a long time. He counted how many Sanskrit syllables there were. He counted the Tibetan words and he changed the words up and down and the final outcome was this. The Tibetans didn’t have any other media. That was the translators’ job. Even then, many translations didn’t come out the same way, even though they had that system and way of doing it. That’s why, if you try to find out the meaning of a Sanskrit mantra in Tibetan, they took so many twists and turns and finally it came out like what we see.

So that’s the meaning of the mantra. So I tried to break it down a little bit. Forget about the sleep sleep business. It really circles and I don’t even know how to twist and turn that to come up with the shorter meaning. Luckily others have already turned and twisted it and made it available for us.

1:03

It is a little bit early, but we will stop here. So now we know the meaning of the mantra and I hope we will be able to do the practice in the last session tonight.

On Sunday morning I briefly have to talk to you about the 3rd Principle and also we want to do the practice together again. I have to put everything in at the last minute but that’s how it is. Thank you

1:04