Archive Result

Session 4

To resume: in your visualization you have in front of you Manjushri in the form of Tsong Khapa, but in reality your own root guru. To his right, again your own root master, but in the form of Avalokitesvara who actually appears as Gyaltsab je. To Tsong Khapa’s left is Vajrapani, in reality your own root master, appearing in the form of Khedrup je. Thus we have Tsong Khapa and his two disciples. Why Manjushri, Avalokitesvara and Vajrapani? These are also known as the three systems of enlightenment. Every enlightened being exists on the level of ultimate wisdom, compassion and capability or power. Manjushri is the embodiment of wisdom, Avalokitesvara is the embodiment of compassion and Vajrapani that of power. These three are known in Tibetan as rig sum gon po. They are three major ways how enlightened beings exist and function. Your major focus will be the central figure, Tsong Khapa who is wearing saffron colored monk robes, a golden pandit’s hand. His two hands are in the teaching mudra, joined in front of his heart. From his hands two stems of lotus flowers go out and the petals open at his right and left shoulder. The petal to his right carries the sword, which represents Manjushri’s wisdom, the wisdom of all enlightened beings. The left hand petal carries an old-fashioned, Tibetan style text. This is supposed to contain the prajnaparamita, the teaching on the Transcendental Wisdom, written down in form of a book. So you can get the information through the book and wisdom makes you understand it. That is the meaning of the two hand implements carried on the lotus petals.

Both Gyaltsab je and Kedrup je are shown with one hand in the teaching mudra, and the other holding a text. Again, this is representing the teachings on the basis of a book.

The invocation is done as explained earlier. These three representatives have come for me and me along, to be my Supreme Field of Merit, to be my protectors, objects of refuge, subjects of accumulating merit, objects to receive blessings from, in other words, my total needs are satisfied from these sources of all happiness, all joy, all wisdom, compassion and power. They are also the sources of healing and any protection you need, from evil spirits included. They are the sources of wealth too. They providc a base from which you can really work. They are, what we call in Tibetan ‘The collection of all goodness’. They are like the wishfufilling jewel. This source of all goodness has come and become oneness with what I have imagined before me. This object of refuge is my guru, my yidam, my Buddha, my Dharma, my Sangha, my Dharma protector, my Dakas and Dakinis. From now on, until I become totally enlightened, I will search no other refuge than you.

Guru Yoga is very important, because it is the basis of all spiritual practice, including all the yidams you may wish to practice, whether it may be Tara, Vajrayogini, Yamantaka, Heruka, Hevajra, Guhyasamaja, Kalachakra, etc. In reality they are all the guru, but taking different forms according to the various needs and purposes. That is the case for ourselves also when we die. This will be our guide for everything. We totally depend on the guru to become independent.

Out of the Sevcn Limbs we have first made requests.

O Venerable gurus, with white smiles of delight,

Seated on lion throne, lotus and moon, in the space before me,

I request you to remain for hundreds of eons in order to spread the teachings

And be the supreme field of merit for my mind of faith.

Based on my profound faith I request that the source of my good karma, good merit and everything may remain for hundreds of eons in order to teach and guide people, lead them to the level of enlightenment. If you translate it directly, it says, ‘to spread Buddhism’. In Tibetan that is okay, in English may not be. It sounds like a Buddhist missionary who wants to have Buddhism everywhere. That is not how it is meant. Rather it means to lead as many people as possible to the total stage of enlightenment. That does not mean you have to build Buddhist centers and temples everywhere and make everybody Buddhist. Rather it means to give people the opportunity to become Buddha themselves. It sounds the same to say ‘spread Christianity everywhere’ and ‘spread Buddhism everywhere’, but in the case of Buddhism that means to lead all sentient beings to the level of Buddha.

Then you make the praise. You admire their body, speech and mind qualities. Not only you admire these, but you generate desire to attain them for yourself. You begin to seek these qualities.

Your mind has the intellect that comprehends the full extent of what can be known. Your speech with its excellent explanations becomes the ear ornament for those of good fortune, your bodies are radiantly handsome, with glory renowned,

I prostrate to you, whom to behold, hear or recall is worthwhile.

You recognize, ‘The most important quality is to hear about you. That makes it very worthwhile for people to remember you. Your qualities are so extraordinary that seeing you, hearing about you, remembering you is worthwhile.’ It is not only worthwhile, but it helps to inspire people, clear their doubts, travel through the practice, deliver the goods, simply by being in their presence, hearing and remembering them.

Then we make offerings.

Pleasing water offerings, various flowers, sweet fragrant incense,

Light and scented water, this ocean of cloudlike offerings,

Both actually arranged and mentally created,

This ocean of cloudlike offering I present to you, Oh Supreme Field of Merit

The most important offerings are the mentally created ones. These you can multiply. Lets say you are offering one beautiful flower. That will be multiplied not only millionfold, but so much that there is no empty space left.

There is a story. It was some time in the 13th or 14th century. There was a master and his disciple. That disciple just had got a great horse. The master said, ‘I want your horse.’ With great difficulty, the disciple was finally able to give it. Along with that he also gave the master an apple. Eventually he attained great spiritual development and was able to travel through many universes and Pure Lands. This person, in every Pure Land, he passed through, he saw a horse and an apple along with that. So this person was supposed to have accumulate the merit of having given a horse and apple to every single Pure Land available. From our point of view we just give one horse and one apple. But it can become so many and the benefit can become so huge. Therefore, offering is a very good practice for us, especially those of us who are not very well to do financially. Everything we can give, no matter how simple it may be, even if it is just a piece of fruit, a flower or incense, if you give it to your master, that is great. Otherwise you can offer it every day on your altar. You can put a clean, clear glass of water, a clean, fresh flower. You shouldn’t have the attitude, ‘Oh, this flower from yesterday still looks quite good, so I don’t have to put a new one today’. Offering is the practice of generosity. You are also offering to the Supreme Field of Merit. This is much more important than anything else. I am just making the conclusion: every possible offering you have seen and you can imagine fills up all of space. The whole ground is filled up with offering. The total space is filled up with the objects of refuge. Then you make music offerings. You are bringing joy to the objects of refuge, to their minds, to their ear consciousness and so on.

Now comes the purification.

Whatever non-virtues of body, speech and mind

I have accumulated since beginningless time,

And especially any transgressions my three vows,

I confess over and again with fervent regret from my heart.

What makes something virtuous and non-virtuous? How do we know what is good and what is bad? These are the issues we have to deal with. We are limited for time here, but you can read about all that in the lam rim literature at the preliminary level. It is also in the Gaden Lha Gye ma transcript. It is hard for people to say what is right and wrong. I would draw the line at whether or not it hurts anyone, including oneself. Then that action becomes a negative action. An action is negative if it gives you a negative result, and positive, if it is bound to give you positive results. Whatever I do to you, I will get back. It doesn’t just go away without giving a result. It is not lost. Whatever I do to you will become my karma. If I do something good to you, it will create good karma for me, if I do bad, that will create bad karma for me. We have a lot of negative karma in store. What do we do with that? Do we just say, ‘I did it, and there is nothing I can do now. It is gone, past.’ That is what we normally think, particularly in western cultures. We say, ‘Well, I can’t take it back any more’. Others will take pains to go back to the person they harmed and seek forgiveness. In that regard the judaeo-christian tradition may not be that great. It is not that bad either. At least they tell you that you have to do something. It is not the greatest thing, because they will give you a guilt trip. It is good in the sense of bringing awareness, but bad in the sense of thinking in terms of punishment. That is quite common in western culture throughout. The normal, common people keep on thinking that you have to punished because you made a mistake. That is not right. Who is punishing whom? There would have to be somebody who is really perfect to give the punishment, and there is no such person. I can’t help thinking that we spent years to punish President Clinton. In the process one speaker after another had to resign. So who is punishing whom? Punishing is the wrong way. To me it has to be correction. I would hope that prisons could really become correction centers rather than punishment pits. Particular capital punishment is so bad. You can do nothing worse than that. You can do nothing more than that. Since you have killed the physical form there is nothing else you can catch and punish. Capital punishment is the maximum we can do and all we really do is kill yet another person. Our culture is bad in that respect. It does not look for a remedy, but just wants to punish. By killing another person you are not bringing the first person back. On top of that the satisfaction of the family of the victim is also very unhealthy. ‘He killed my son and now he has died too. Wow, it’s done.’ That just creates another negative karma through rejoicing in the next killing. That is a bad part of our culture, particularly western culture. In terms of capital punishment, I think the United States is the only country that still has it. Of course, various dictatorships and communist countries have it, but other than that, I don’t think anybody has. No European country has it, not even the homeland of Hitler. I mean Iraq has it and Iran, and these are the countries we consider to have bad regimes. In Malaysia you get executed for drug dealing. In the planes they make announcements, saying that an air hostess will come round with a garbage bag collecting any drugs, because if you are caught with them you get capital punishment, no questions asked, even if the drugs are just for personal use.

So purification is not a question of punishment or saying that you are sorry. Truly, what it is about is making changes in behavior. Regret is the most important part here, because without regret you have no reason to make changes. The stronger the regret that we can develop the stronger the more powerful the purification will be. It is all based on the strength of the regret. Again, this is not about feeling guilty. To me guilt implies feeling hopeless and helpless. You think that there is nothing you can do. You just sit there and wait to get punished. That is a very wrong attitude. It is just stupid and unwise. What you need is change. You realize that what you did was wrong and you don’t like that and therefore you will change it. Changing is the key. If you don’t change it, you will automatically repeat the same thing again and again. It will be the same as when little kids are doing something wrong and then say, ‘I am sorry, I am sorry, I won’t do it again.’ It means nothing. It is totally useless. 5-6 year old children do that. I think we have to act slightly differently. We are supposed to be a little more mature.

There is an example for that: Three fellows go to a restaurant. They all eat the same food together. One dies from eating that food, the second is getting sick and the third one does not have any symptoms yet. But now he has a tremendous amount of regret about eating that food and will do everything he can to correct that. That is important. That sort of regret is recommended. Anything we did wrong hurt somebody. Even if we hurt an animal it is suffering tremendously.

Sometimes we can’t help it. An animal that is going to die and we put it to sleep, even if we do it with good motivation, so that it won’t suffer any more, it is still a negativity. Although we are doing that in order to be helpful, at the same time we commit the negative karma of killing. We have no choice. Evcn though we may have done the right thing we create negative karma too. Even mercy killing is killing. That does not mean you should not do it. It is an awkward situation. If you can’t help it, you have to do it. But then, whatever negativities you accumulated you have to purify. It is not a done deal. It is not a helpless situation. You can always purify. Buddha gave the example: sometimes there are so many clouds in the sky that you can’t see the moon, stars or the sun. But then the clouds disappear. The moon remains pure and now you can see it shine again.

Just like that, every negativity – and also every positivity – is temporary just like a cloud. Don’t think that only the negativities are temporary and the positivities are permanent. They are both like clouds – very temporary. There will definitely be a time when you clear those and the sun or moon shines again. What can you do about it? Get some nice, favorable winds that push the clouds away. That is what purification does.

Purification is done on the basis of applying the Four Powers.

The first is the power of the fundamental basis on which you can work. Then there is the power of regret. Then there is the power of the commitment not to repeat the action. And then there is the power of the antidote action. All of them are equally important.

The power of the base means some sort of service or compensation. If we kill a squirrel under the wheels of our car or hit a possum or a little rabbit trying to cross the street, we may think that there is nothing we can do for that animal or person. You may have killed this person in this life, but they are not annihilated. That person continues to exist. So what to do? You generate compassion, give love. Giving love doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to go there and pat the animal and kiss it. That is nice, but rather cheap. The true love and true compassion is mentally generated. You can also do something else. You can dedicate your positive karma to that being. That is a great gift, a great compensation. Dedication is not actually part of the four powers, but compassion and love is. This is in case the person you have hurt is not an enlightened being. If the person is an enlightend being you can’t say, ‘Oh, you poor thing’, but you have to take refuge. Taking refuge and generating ultimate, unlimited, unconditioned love and compassion build the first power, the power of the base.

In a practice such as Gaden Lha Gyema, you are saying the refuge and bodhimind prayers at the beginning and by saying the migtsema you are also applying the most important antidote power. The same, in principle, works when you are saying the regular Jewel Heart prayers. Also all your spiritual practice serves as an antidote against negative karma. Otherwise, why would you do it? Why do you do your sadhana, your guru yoga and so on? Because they happen to be antidotes against all negative actions. So these elements are already part of the practice. What we are really lacking is sincere regret. If we kill a possum on the road and see how it jumps up three times and then dies, you will have some regret there, because you directly see it happen. But there are a lot of indirect actions and their consequences that we don’t even know about. Each of us indirectly contribute to the allied planes bombing Afghanistan. Actually, they didn’t manage to kill that many Talibans. In one way that is good. At that same time it is a great waste of money and resources. I was a little surprised to hear some days ago on BBC that apparently Osama bin Laden is very much alive and 98 per cent of Al Quaida is still intact. That has been admitted by American commanders in Afghanistan. They tried not to make a big deal about that failure, but they had to admit it. My thoughts were, ‘What the hell were we throwing all these bombs down there for? Where did they land?’ In a way it is good. Although we threw a lot of bombs we didn’t kill so many. Think about the world wars and how many people got killed there. We did contribute to all these. This is indirect karma.

If George Bush goes into Iraq and kills the Republican guards, we indirectly get the negative karma for these killings. These are indirect karmas we don’t know about. We have to pay taxes. We can’t avoid it. That contributes to military actions as well. This is indirect karma. If you think you can be perfectly right, it will never be possible. When you do purification you do it for all negativities: for the ones you directly remember, for the ones you did indirectly, but don’t even know about, for the ones you directly did but forgot due to time, conditions, changes in life and changes from life to life. Who knows what we have done in previous lives. There is no way we can guarantee that each and every one of us has not been a general in World War I or II or whatever. World War III has not come yet. Hopefully it won’t come. If we think of all that we can develop strong regret and don’t let slip through those we don’t know or don’t remember and indirectly contributed. We take the opportunity to purify all of them. Use your mantra recitation, meditation, your practice of helping others and saving lives, be generous. Any positive karma helps. Keep your morality intact for a day. Be patient, enthusiastic, generate a little bit of wisdom. Dedicate all of that to purification. That is how it becomes an antidote. In Buddhist terms you normally have the dedication at the end of the practice. That is not what I am talking about here. I am talking about earmarking them for those purposes. That is dedication. And at least have a mind of not wanting to repeat these actions. That does not mean that we can prevent doing them again. We are still under the control of our negative addictions. But as much as we repeat, that much we purify. We are just like kids that have to learn to get up and walk. As many times as they fall they try to get up again. They do it 300 times a day. That is what they did before walkers were introduced. Now they don’t even fall down at all. We are at the laymen’s stage. We do repeat these actions. That does not mean that we lost. We do lose it because of our negative emotions. But no matter how many times we lose we should try to gain again, even if we have to try 300 times a day and even sometimes 3000 times. Every time you do the purification you have to think and believe it, at least for a short period, that you have actually purified. This is a Vajrayana technique. You are not cheating yourself by doing that. It works. There will be a time when it becomes reality.

It is true in this world today. A lot of our imagination becomes reality. Today’s science fiction is tomorrow’s life. We have seen it again and again. In the material world and the non-material world it is the same. People say that when you think positive, things will go in a positive way. If you think negative, they will go in a negative way. That is true. Sometimes people tell me that you shouldn’t think negative thoughts, because they might materialize. We are thinking of these negative thoughts as objects of destruction. In Vajrayana this is used a lot. That is why it is good to think at least for a minute or so that ‘I am now completely pure.’ Then repeat the purification many times. One time purifying does not really purify everything. Constantly doing it every day goes a long way to making it happen. Remember, if you save drops of water in a bucket, the bucket will eventually fill up. So constant continuation is important.

Q: If I promise not to repeat an action like mercy killing but get into a situation where I have to do it again, is there any bad karma I get?

GR: Nobody volunteers to do mercy killing. The conditions come together and you are involved. You can’t help it. You don’t want to repeat that. But if the situation comes up you can’t help it – unless you are a vet and have to do it all the time. Negative thoughts like hatred, anger, jealousy, and so on, we also don’t want to repeat but we do, all the time. Mercy killing is vivid to us and we feel uneasy when we have to do it. But negative karma is with us all the time with everything we do. From white lies on, we have everything and repeat it all the time. However, we have to say that we don’t want to repeat the actions, otherwise the purification is incomplete.

Q: What are the Three Vows?

GR: They are self liberation, bodhicitta and vajrayana vows.

Let me go back to the purification. I regret whatever negativities I have ever committed, known and not known. Often we don’t know, either because it was a long time ago or because we are indirectly involved. They also include actions that we may not have done by ourselves, but encouraged and instigated others to do. We may have paid for something or we may just rejoice in some negative actions that others do, join in with them, express satisfaction. Any negativity I have created is bound to give me negative results. I don’t want that. I therefore want to purify that in the presence of Guru Je Tsong Khapa. By having generated love and compassion as well as refuge I have completed the power of the base. By doing practice such as the Gaden Lha Gyema, by praying, making mandala offerings and so on I provide the antidote actions. What I don’t like about what I have done develops very strong regret. I pray to the Supreme Field to help me to purify.

You can say Vajrasattva mantras at this point or migtsemas or OM MANI PADME HUNG. You can also do the 35 Buddha practice or the general confession, which is a shorter version. Strongly focus on the mantra and think, ‘All my negativities havc been cleared’. It is just like the darkness is cleared by light. It disappears completely and does not exist anymore. In that way I become pure.

The next verse is about rejoicing:

From the depth of our hearts we rejoice, O Protectors,

in the great waves of your deeds,

you who strove to learn the practice in the degenerate age

and who made your fully endowed life worthwhile

by abandoning the eight worldly feelings.

Rejoicing is a very quick and easy way to build positive karma. The opposite of that is jealousy. Jealousy and skepticism, being negative, these are the negative side of rejoicing. We have a great opportunity to rejoice. There are so many great people doing wonderful things. When someone is doing such great things as Mother Theresa and Martin Luther King, we don’t get that jealous, because it is way beyond our capacity. But when we see our neighbors doing something good we get jealous. We will say, ‘Yes, it is good what they did, but the motivation was not that good. There is an agenda behind their good deeds.’ That kind of reaction is jealousy. Even if that person has a calculated agenda, a particular ulterior motive, even then it is better to rejoice. The negative karma of having a manipulative agenda is their problem, not mine. Let me rejoice in the positive things that are done. Let us not rejoice in wars. It is fine to rejoice in a war on drugs, because only the drugs get killed, but better don’t rejoice in a war where someone gets killed. That doesn’t mean that you have to be carrying the banners and shouting outside in the street, ‘NO WAR’. If you do it, it is all right. It is a good thing. But you don’t have to do it. But let us not waste our good energy by rejoicing in wars where killing is involved. Killing is killing, no whatever what kind of killing it is.

We think of ourselves generally as gentle, kind, innocent, generous people. But if we are hurt, we get equally bad. At the end of World War II there was a big debate in America about whether to participate in the war or not. People did not agree. Many people thought that it didn’t matter whatever happened elsewhere. That was no reason to go in as well. Then Pearl Harbor came and everybody pulled together and decided to go to war.

The same thing happened with the extremist Muslims. Until September 11th, it was not a big topic in the US. After that everybody said, ‘Get those terrorists’. That is our culture. It doesn’t even have to do with Bush. When we get hurt, we go after the ones who hurt us. That is the American character. However, we are also able to forgive. We don’t hold grudges for a long time. Look at Vietnam. We have good relations with Vietnam now.

In the 7th century Tibet had a very strong army. It was the only country in the area that Gengis Khan could not go into. Even then, the commitment at the time was not to hurt a single soul. But if anyone attacked, they vowed not to let them exist in this world. That sort of commitment became just a dream for the later Tibetans. We Americans have that sort of strong commitment today. We will not tolerate being attacked. Pearl Harbor and September 11th demonstrate that. But it has to be really bad harm. We don’t react that badly to other incidents. Can you imagine Clinton attacking Afghanistan or anybody else, just because these two embassies were attacked? People would not have gone along with that. But today people do go along with Bush because of September 11th. Sometimes it is very much like Dharma character.

In any case, rejoicing in good things is the best way to build more positive karma, because you will receive at least half the positive karma the person you rejoice in has accumulated. If we rejoice in the work that Mother Theresa has done we will get at leas half the merit that she got from working her whole life. We can rejoice in the good things Martin Luther King did and even Abraham Lincoln. He did not want to encourage the war deeds of the yankees over the confederates. Instead of saying, ‘Well done’, he said that it was terrible. That is what we should rejoice in. It is in our own history.