Archive Result

Soundfile: 19950225GRAV3_01.mp3

Duration: 17:17

Speaker: Gelek Rimpoche

Location: Ann Arbor

Transcriber: Kimba Levitt

Topic: Avalokiteshvara practice

… down there. And the purpose of the light is to empty those places. So your light penetrates to those lower realms and filled up. And just by the touch of the light, every beings in there been freed and even flew away from there to the pure lands.

So we can say OM MANI PADME HUM together.

[LEADS CHANT 0:00:53 - 0:02:21]

[PAUSE 0:02:22 - 0:02:35]

So then you're not only emptied all the lower realms and you sealed the door of the lower realms. And light withdraw and dissolve to yourself.

OK. Now, talking to you, if you want to do this detail, you can do the different hell realms. Like even the Tibetan buddhism have eighteen different hell realms. So, the hell realms you can go each one of them. Or you can go to the hot suffering hell realms one time and close them and then go to the cold one. And then go to the hungry ghost level. And then go to the animal realm and close them. You can do that way. Now the next — or, since we did all three together, if you are busy and don't permit schedules, then you do that.

0:03:43

And now the next is the upper realms: that of the human realm — human sufferings, and demi-god sufferings, and god realm sufferings. That's not capital G god; it's small g god. Sufferings. All three together. Same thing.

Light goes out from our body, remove all the sufferings of the human beings in this country and underdeveloped nations (or they call it developing nations, right?) Developing nations. So all of those. And then the demi-gods, their jealous and the god level their biggest problem is laziness. Because they sort of — OK. Anyway, the laziness is their biggest problem. So, free them and free. You don't have to close those but you can free all their sufferings.

[LEADS CHANT 0:05:01 - 0:06:12]

[PAUSE 0:06:13 - 0:06:25]

So, we can continuously read here. This is simple dedication.

0:06:37

[LEADS THE GROUP RECITATION: "By the virtue of this practice, may I quickly attain the noble compassionate state. …

GROUP FINISHES RECITATION 0:07:11]

RIMPOCHE: OK. That's that. That is the Avalokiteshvara simple practice. But within the OM MANI PADME HUM, when you are saying — the Tibetan buddhism has something which never had been here, this part of the world, is saying mantra and meditating together. In the traditionally, or whatever, the moment you say 'meditate,' you think you have to completely keep quiet and silent. It is true to a certain level you do, but not right now. To certain level you do. You know why? Not only you keep quiet, but when you say the mantra (we learned this), when you say mantra and you don't say it with sound. You hold. You hold your breath. You hold your thoughts and yet you say the mantra within you. But, the thing is visualization and saying mantra has to go together. The Tibetan practice, which has never been done in this country much except the Tibetan buddhism. Maybe I'm wrong. You know, I'm just talking about it. I'm guessing. Don't take me granted because my knowledge is this much what this country is concerned. But you have to do together.

At the double purposes. Not only — beginning it's hard. Hard to meditate and say mantra together because you don't know what the word is. You don't know big problems and all this. But, when you get used to it, you can do them together because first you have to visualize the mantra. First you have to learn the mantra and then learn the visualization. Once you do it, you do it together. The combination of it helps work double. Not one, but double. Meditation alone works one and the mantra adds up the additional power on that. And then, if you have sort of nice way of sitting and then you have adds up the body, mind and speech — all three together and it adds up lot. So the Tibetans always you have to say something from the mouth and think and meditate together. And that is the Tibetan buddhist way.

So here even I introduce you how to say OM MANI PADME HUM here, but then since morning we talked all this stages. Different things we talked. You can visualize them. You can visualize them, meditate them, comprehense. Once you comprehense, then you have solid thing. You have practice combined together with Avalokiteshvara ritual. And that's all you need it.

[PAUSE 0:10:16 - 0:10:23]

I think I'm going home now. [LAUGHTER]

AUDIENCE: Thank you Rimpoche.

RIMPOCHE: I'm sorry. A little bit too early but any — whatever it may be, I'm going. [LAUGHS] Unless you people have questions.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

RIMPOCHE: All right. OK. Some people have questions. All right. Go ahead.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

RIMPOCHE: One minute. One thing I have to say, tomorrow, those of you who are coming back tomorrow, you have very similar to this dealing with Tara. Tomorrow is more living rather than dying. Today we try to die and tomorrow we try to live.

OK. And lama and deity? Lama is lama; deity is deity.

AUDIENCE: [INDECIPHERABLE]

RIMPOCHE: Both. Lama — truly speaking, the word 'lama' is a translation of 'guru' in Sanskrit. That's what it is. In the West, you know, everybody who wears robe, they started calling lama. That's the Western notion. But traditionally old Tibet, the — those who are fit to be guru called lama. Old Tibetan tradition. Actually, lama means guru. Guru means — you know what guru means? Heavy. Heavy. Big, fat guy. [LAUGHTER] Heavy with quality. Not with fat. Heavy with quality. That is the guru means. OK. Thank you. You.

AUDIENCE: [INDECIPHERABLE]

0:12:35

RIMPOCHE: OK, now the earlier, the dying stage, which I talked to you about it. You can visualize those steps but you may not be able to visualize steps combined with sadhana is restricted. Sadhana, some sadhanas, restricted. That's what I meant. Basically these eight steps you can practice. I don't think there's a big secret about it.

Yes lady?

AUDIENCE: Just before you said that to deal with anger so that [INDECIPHERABLE], is there any place for anger at all?

RIMPOCHE: I'm sorry?

AUDIENCE: Is there any place for anger?

RIMPOCHE: Ohhh. That is a big question. Yeah. The thing is, a lot of people will think anger has advantage. And you say you express anger and all this. But to me personally, anger does have certain advantages, however, it's very expensive spiritually. Extremely expensive. To feed the anger you cost a lot of positive karma. It's very expensive. However, however, the compassion can do everything what anger had benefit people. If you have — like social injustice if you have to fight. If you fight with compassion, not only it works, it lasts. It can do things. Gandhi always fought with compassion. I don't think Gandhi fought with anger for the social injustice. That's my thoughts. Yep.

0:14:29

AUDIENCE: I have two questions. My first one is, is it OK if you're meditating [INDECIPHERABLE] … to think OM MANI PADME HUM without saying it aloud [INDECIPHERABLE]. And the second question is when you were doing OM MANI PADME HUM, it seemed like you were never taking a breath. You were just exhaling. [INDECIPHERABLE].

RIMPOCHE: I'm sure I'm doing it. I'm breathing. I'm still living so, [LAUGHS]. But it's OK. If you can read OM MANI PADME HUM without any breaking down, I mean losing the — if you're OM is missing, or NA is missing, or something, then it's a problem. Without missing, if you read it, it's even better than saying loudly. And if you hear it within yourself, that is another way. Kriya tantra has all these qualities of listening your own — not really listening to your own sound, but inner sound. Inner sound of the sort of hum — you call 'hum?' Mmmmmm? Right. You call hum. The inner hum of MANI if you're listing to that, that's OK. But if you sort of try to say the — you yourself is saying OM MANI PADME HUM, you try to listen to that, and that might not be a great thing to do but nothing wrong with it. But if you can listen to the inner hum of the OM MANI PADME HUM. That goes to almost all the mantras.

0:16:07

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

RIMPOCHE: No, no, no, no. The hum — I'm not talking about the HUM. The rrrzzzz sound. You know? Mmmmhhhmmmm sound. Within inner sound. If you listen to that. That's what I mean the hum. Not the HUM AH HUM or the OM MANI PADME HUM, but the whole zzzzzz sound, you know, within the inner sound if you listen to that.

Sir.

0:16:35

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

RIMPOCHE: For this Avalokiteshvara, no. You can do it. Without initiation you can do it. For this. This particularly made for without having an initiation.

AUDIENCE: Can do it?

RIMPOCHE: Can. I did not say cannot. I said can. OK?

I guess that's it. Thank you so much and I'm going home.

AUDIENCE: Thank you. [CLAPS]

[ENDS 0:17:17]