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20150504GRJHNLDelam7 (3)

0:00:09.1 Now, to continue where we left. In the Ganden Lhagyema we went up to the conclusion of the Field of Merit, but for the Six Preliminaries we haven’t done that yet. So, now the most important point of purification and accumulation of merit is the Seven Limbs, including mandala offering.

Present him the abbreviated version of the seven-part prayer and the mandala offering, and then think that all sentient beings, your mothers, who are present around you together in one voice supplicate him:

0:01:41.3 Now, we have the seven limbs prayer from the Jewel Heart prayers. You people have heard it so many times, but still. First is prostration. We couldn’t find a suitable, good word, so we used prostration. But actually it is remembering the qualities of the Field of Merit and admiring the qualities and seeking the qualities for ourselves, hoping that we will get the qualities. The biggest gesture of respect is touching the highest physical point of our body to the lowest point of the body of the Field of Merit, their foot. So bowing means touching the highest point of our body to the lowest of their body, presuming they are above me. That gesture is what Naropa introduced as two types of gestures. Both are Naropa’s. One is prostrating with five physical points of the body to the ground. The second is when the whole body touches the ground, flatly lying down. Each one of those has pre-gestures, such as folding the two hands together. Sometimes people pay attention, sometimes they don’t. There is a difference between Hindu and Buddhist gestures.

0:04:44.7 Hindus go with flat hands and fingers against each other. That’s the normal Indian gesture of Namaste. But Buddhists try not to have their hands empty – according to Tibetan Buddhism. I don’t know other Buddhist traditions. So we hold the hands together, but leave a hollow space, for something precious kept inside, with the two thumbs tucked into the hollow space, representing a precious jewel or something like that. With that we first touch the crown, which creates the most difficult to create, the ushnisha, that extra little bump on the Buddha’s head. It takes a tremendous amount of merit to create the ushnisha and to produce that you touch your folded hands to your crown. Then you touch the forehead and throat. At the forehead is the third eye in Vajrayana. In the sutrayana, the third eye is a hair curl at that point. Then you touch the throat. And that is the Buddha’s voice.

Sung dzin nyi du sung na yam

Tung pa nyi du so sor kor (spelling???)

Though Buddha speaks in one language,

Everybody will hear it in their own native tongue

That is the extraordinary quality of enlightened beings. We don’t. We speak one language and have to either have it translated simultaneously or one after another. So at the Buddha level Buddha speaks in one language but all listeners, without being translated, hear it in their own native languages. There are some things you cannot really imagine or scientifically say. But that is one of them. That is their extraordinary quality. Then there are 60 or so other qualities. Speech is also a point of very important mental connection. All this together is remembered by touching the throat. Then the third point (or fourth, if the forehead is included) is at the heart, the direct cause to create the mind of total knowledge; the mind that knows everything. Buddha’s extraordinary quality is total knowledge. Anything, if it exists, is known to Buddha, including if it will be existing. The simultaneous knowledge of past, present and future, as it is going to be, is known to a buddha. That is what this is all about. So the prostration again, has these three or four pre-gestures. Then you touch the five most important physical points on the ground: forehead, two palms and two knees. Tibetan Buddhism tells you to get up quickly. Don’t lie down there, resting or praying and resting together. Don’t do that. Tibetan Buddhism tells you that. Chinese Buddhists stay down a little longer and even turn their palms up, asking, “Give me”, honestly. They are asking “give me”, because they admire and appreciate Buddha’s qualities and along with that express that “I would like to have those.”

0:11:25.8 Tibetan Buddhism tells you that if you sit too long you will be born as some kind of funny creature or something. That maybe a little too detailed. But why is the full prostration going down with the full length of the body? One of the sutras says when you do the prostration, whatever the atoms of ground you cover, you create that much virtue. That’s why the whole body is trying to cover as much ground as possible. Those who that type of thing even go with their folded hands in front of their heads, to cover more ground. In old Tibet there were people who did these prostrations from their native birthplace all the way to Central Tibet. They prostrated all the way. For some of them even that was not enough. They did the prostrations sideways, one step at the time, all the way from as far away as Amdo, to Central Tibet.

0:13:10.5 I don’t think any Central Tibetans do that, because they are there already. Then the next is offering. We talked about offering earlier and talked about the quality of the offerings. But here I want to emphasize one thing: actually arranged and mentally fabricated. That is important, because how many offerings can we actually arrange? No matter how elaborate the offerings you may have, how much can you do? Not so much. The biggest individual family making offerings I saw in Derek’s house in Singapore, when I went there the first time. There were a huge amount of crystal bowls everywhere. He has a huge house in Singapore, called White House. He might have stolen it from Washington, DC, and the road leading to that house is also called White House Road.

0:14:56.8 There is a major highway and then White House Road comes. Everywhere these crystal bowls are filled with water, flowers and even the swimming pool is filled up with glass flowers as offerings. Later I came to know that Lama Zopa Rinpoche does the same thing. He also has huge bowls in his house in Uptos, CA. I went there when Ribur Rinpoche was staying there. Every step had offering bowls like this. There were four nuns who were only doing water offerings and nothing else. Their 24 hour job was making water offerings, filling those bowls, then emptying and cleaning them. There were four of them and they were not managing properly yet. That is all great, no doubt, but even then, how much can you do? Not so much. If you have a house full of offering, even then it is not so much. The lights in Lama Zopa’s place were all Christmas lights all over the walls, because there were also butter lamp offerings. Some people call my house Christmas house, but compared with that my house is not a Christmas house. I don’t even have a single Christmas light.

0:17:05.4 So what you can actually arrange is very limited, even if you can go that far. Even if we filled up every open space of this Jewel Heart center with offerings, including walls, ceiling and windows, how much can you do? Not that much. But mentally, you can do tremendous amounts of offering. The sky is the limit, right? That’s why: actually arranged and mentally created – or fabricated. The Six Session yoga says

dag po sung dang ma sung ngen

ngö shim yi che trül pa yi

jung nge she nam sa wa yi

na sog chü kyen gyat tso chö (spelling???)

Whether it is owned by somebody or not,

It is there, so whether physically there

Or mentally fabricated, everything you can offer:

Outer, inner, secret, suchness offering should be laid out.

Outer offerings are things like flower, water, incense, food, dress, 8 auspicious signs, 7 royal emblems, 8 lucky signs, anything external, or whatever, including the universal emperor’s wealth, control and power, everything, and every nation’s power, strength and capability, good and bad, all you can offer.

What right do you have to offer all that? Because it exists in the universe and everything whatever is the universe is the collective karmic result and we are here, so we have the right and are part of it, not equal rights, but we own part of it and you can multiply that, like Samantabhadra offering style. That is the outer offering.

Inner offering is anything physically connected, life, livestock and even ourselves, our life service, etc. Normally in Vajrayana that refers to something else. The most impure 5 substances and liquids are purified in quality, transformed into extraordinary nectar and multiplied. That means no matter how much you offer the quantity will not be reduced. That is the work of OM AH HUM. All of you know about OH AH HUM. These are the activities of OM AH HUM, body, speech and mind. It is purifying, transforming into something extraordinary and becoming oneness of the essence of all enlightened buddhas’ body, speech and mind and our body, speech and mind together. OM AH HUM has so many activities. I think most of you know, because the beatnik poets have been using OM AH HUM in every poetry. Everywhere you could read OM AH HUM and some people would just telephone me and say OM AH HUM. So that is very much used in the western intellectual world. There is a Dutch poet, Simon Vinkenoog. He also told me OM AH HUM, whatever that meant for him. Is he still alive?

0:23:57.5 Audience: No, he died in 2009

0:23:57.5 Rimpoche: Anyway, the blessing of offerings is also done with OM AH HUM and also the food blessing is good enough to be done with OM AH HUM. Also you can make an offering of your food, whatever you eat, whatever you drink. You don’t have to make a show business of it. Ram Das always does that and then everybody tries to do that. If you do it, there is nothing wrong, that’s fine. But it will be a little funny to make such a show in a public restaurant. But you can do offering through PHAIM. It is all a hand gesture, you can do it through mental activity. Whatever you eat, whatever you drink, the first offering to the enlightened beings is the advice of refuge, as you know. Also it accumulates tremendous merit. You make those offerings automatically, without showing much. Otherwise, it becomes show biz and not an actual offering. So don’t do show biz, but whatever it is, bless it and it becomes pure. Vajrayana practitioners have the commitment of never offering anything impure and that’s why OM AH HUM purifies and you don’t have to say anything else. The essence of all enlightened buddhas and have an actual blessing of yourself too. So all those and if you do it, it is good, because we eat at least once or twice a day. So if you do this every time, it will grow, like a drop of water every day fills up the bucket. That’s how it is.

0:27:02.6 Next is purification. This is very, very important. We talk about Lam Rim development and the Vajrayana development stage and completion stage development and all this spiritual development is blocked by what? The biggest obstacles are the negativities, in the sense of non-virtues, what we call sins. We don’t utilize this terminology much, perhaps for politically correct language reasons. So we use “negativities”, which block us. There are huge and there are light negativities. Huge negativities are things like killing a human being or tremendous crimes like rape and also stealing or robbing, directly or indirectly. Then also lying, extraordinary cheating or pretending to be some extraordinary being, whether you are or not. If you are, it’s a little better, but if you are not, pretending to be is mi chu la me zön – human dharma lama lying. That is pretending to be spiritually very advanced, but having no development. That is actually cheating people, yourself and others.

0:30:24.9 And that is horrendous lying. Particularly people can take advantage of innocent good people, because they have no way of checking or confirming, except asking somebody and somebody will say it is true and someone else will say it is not true. And then again, it becomes that way. So there is no way to really confirm, and knowingly misguiding people is almost worse than killing a human being, honestly. Then there are, according to the Buddhist dharma – or dogma – five limitless negativities: killing father or mother or both, killing an arhat, wanting to kill a buddha, then a sangha schism. I don’t think we will have the negativities of killing our parents and no one is going to kill an arhat or wanting to harm a buddha. They call it: drawing blood from a buddha. That doesn’t mean to draw blood in order to check the blood. They are not talking about that. Why do they call it such a funny name? Because theoretically, a buddha is not killable. You cannot kill a buddha. That’s why drawing blood.

0:33:15.0 But a sangha schism is very easy for us to get into. So one has to be very, very careful. Otherwise, out of those five we are not going to get very much. Otherwise, out of the 10 non-virtues, we get a lot, plenty of times, almost all the time. As you know, there are three by body, four by speech and three by mind. I am not going into detail, because that is about what to do and what not to do. You all know. All this and above that, most of us have vows. Although you may not be celibate, still you have refuge vows, many of you have upasaka vows, and that’s why many of you cannot drink. It is amazing among the western people. I know a number of them. They did not know they took the vows. They went to one of His Holiness’ teachings where thousands of people go. They attended something and at the end learnt that they had taken the upasaka vows, therefore they cannot have drink or not have sex and all that. So when they realized, the stopped drinking, honestly. Many of them don’t drink, even though they unknowingly took that vow. I don’t know if they are having sex or not. I have no direct knowledge. Indirectly, I know, because they have boyfriends and girlfriends. Anyway, it is does not necessarily mean not having sex, but just not with different people, only one. You promise to be monogamous. So they do that. Amazing, western people do that. Tibetans may take many vows and not pay attention to them. They don’t even know what happened. But the western people are great.

0:36:46.9 I don’t mean that the Tibetans are not good, but the culture is such that every Tibetan will go to a teaching by His Holiness and see whatever it is and it doesn’t matter to them whatever the teaching is. It could be the highest initiation of Highest yoga tantra. How many people go to Kalachakra initiations? 30,000 and not only to His Holiness in India, but also to other lamas in Tibet, like the late Guntang Rinpoche. He gave the Kalachakra and they say that 70,000 people showed up and there was this valley and they were a little afraid of what the Chinese government will say. So they reported that 20,000 had come. But a German population checker with some kind of machine said there were actually 70,000. So they reported 20,000 to China and they said, “Did you actually count?” They said no and it was actually 70,000. So that happened in Tibet under Chinese control. So the Tibetans, when they go, they go. They will only go to someone like the Dalai Lama or to any head of their own sect. If it is the Sakya lama, the Sakyas will go. No others will go. Gelugpas, I don’t know. They are the most hard-headed people. Even if the Ganden Tripa comes, not necessarily all Gelugpas will go. They are the most difficult ones.

0:39:20.7 When the Karmapa or Drikungpa comes, all Kagyupas will go. If you are Karma Kagyu you go to the Gyalwa Karmapa, and if you are Drikung pa you go to Gyalwa Drikung pa.

That’s about it. otherwise, Tibetans won’t move. Anyway, we were talking about purification as part of the seven limbs and particular the vows. So the Tibetans will go to the highest initiations given by anybody and many of them have no idea if they have taken vows. There is the saying in Tibetan, “The great lama has come, the bell has rung and that’s it.” But in the west the people do it with understanding. So when you take vows like that there are commitments. And we cannot honor all those commitments. Impossible, even if you are the greatest of the greatest. To be fully honoring them is difficult. I do remember, my memory was refreshed by one of these skits that Jewel Heart people played in Ann Arbor once. I do remember, Hartmut horse-riding on a little stick. Supa and many others were on stage and did you try to become witches or something?

Audience: It was Atisha’s caravan.

Rimpoche: I know. They go a little bit and stop and get off the sticks and purification has to be done. Again, they go for a little bit and they stop and purification has to be done. That is based on the story that I shared of Atisha, who while traveling with his caravan, suddenly everybody had to stop, because he said, “I have had a downfall. So I have to purify.” Atisha used to travel with a Buddha image. He said, “I get downfalls of self-liberation vows occasionally, of bodhisattva vows a lot and of Vajrayana vows it get them like snow storms.” If even Atisha got them that much, then all of us are sure to get them. No surprise. Remember, we are not Buddha yet, just maybe Buddhists, maybe not even that.

0:43:44.4 So everybody will make mistakes and and have difficulties. Nothing to be surprised about. But it is important to purify, because negativities are able to purified. Sometimes people will say, “I had an unfortunate incident and I hurt somebody and they died. I can purify, but I can’t bring that person back to life.” True, you can’t bring the dead person back to life, unless you are a medical [superhero]. But even then, the negativities of that killing can be purified. Negativities have one quality, according to Kyabje Ling Rinpoche: they are able to be purified, if you want to. Every negativity, no matter how tremendously horrifying it may be. Remember, the story of Angulimala, somebody who killed 1000 people and even he could become arhat. So everything is purifiable. 1) it is dependent origination and 2) it is empty in nature and 3) it is impermanent and changeable in nature. So every negativity is purifiable, although you cannot be the slaughtered being back. Even then it is purifiable.

0:45:52.5 Okay, so purification is important. You need four powers: power of base, power of regret, power of not repeating, and the antidote action. According to the Tibetan words, ten gyi thob, nyen pa kun du jö pai thob, nye par lar tö pei thob and I don’t remember the last one in Tibetan. The power of base is nothing but taking refuge and generating bodhimind. You may talk a lot more, but basically that’s what it is. Regret is regret. Powerful regret is necessary, as though you have eaten poison. If you have eaten poison, you are going to be very worried about it. You will have that much regret. If you have that strong regret of knowingly having done something wrong (unknowingly done is a different story), you will not repeat it again. So that is automatic. Then the antidote action is whatever you do. Although we talk about Vajrasattva recitation, serious practitioners normally do Vajrasattva recitation 100,000 times and migtsemas 100,000 times also. In the Ganden nying gyu tradition, we do normally 100,000 Vajrasattva and 100,000 migtsema.

0:49:05.3 Also 100,000 prostrations and circumambulations, from the physical point of view. And then, don’t forget Shantideva said,

dig pa thopai shin tu mi ze pa

de ne dzo pei jang chub sem men pa

ge chen gang gi se ni nam par gyur (???spelling)

The most powerful negativities are defeated

By no other than bodhimind.

Meditation on bodhimind will be a powerful antidote. Meditation on emptiness has no equivalent among antidote actions. And then building images, making books available, generosity, saving lives, all kinds of things you can do and they are not done in the sessions, but in between sessions. You cannot go building images in your meditation session or order them. The power of repentance is automatic, we already mentioned and I think that covers the four powers. And then, when you purify, you have to just simply say it to the Field of Merit. “I have done this and that, I remember and there maybe things I don’t know, whatever they are, I deeply regret and I want you to help me to purify it and I like to do this, this this. I may become blessed to become pure.” And that will do.

Now have coffee 0:51:46.9 end of file