The first part is making requests to the lineage lamas who have achieved this Avalokiteshvara yoga method. It then talks about requests to receive the realizations.

Please grant me blessings to be able to generate the mind renouncing all samsaric perfections and the thought wishing to release all the mothers, who equal space, from the ocean of suffering without being attached to the blissful state of peace for myself.

In the next verse, de zhin nyi dang is related to voidness of the buddha; drag tong ngag kyi dang is talking about the sound of the mantra; and yig dru is talking about the form of the letters in the empty sound of the mantra. The third one is appearing in the letters. Then, tsän pei zug dzog, the fourth one, is the complete holy body with signs and exemplifications; dam tshig gya is the fifth practice, the seal of the pledge; and tshän mäi lha drug is the sixth practice, the divine holy sign. And säl nang nga gyäl gyi is visualization of the deity without specifically concentrating on voidness, or shunyata. It means you concentrate on just the aspect of yourself as the deity.

I will give you a rough idea of the practice just from this outline. The voidness of yourself is oneness with the voidness of Avalokiteshvara. That then appears in the form of empty sound of the mantra, OM MANI PADME HUM; drag tong means empty sound. That then appears in the form of the syllables, which are then transformed into the holy body of Avalokiteshvara, complete with the holy signs and exemplifications. You then have the seal of the pledge and the deity of the holy sign. The clear view of the aspect of the holy body of Avalokiteshvara and divine pride of being the actual Avalokiteshvara, the divine pride, cuts off ordinary view and conception.

Please grant me blessings to cut off ordinary view and conception with clear view and divine pride.

This means meditating on the holy body of Avalokiteshvara with clear view and divine pride through those six practices.

Just from this prayer it is clear why we need the clear view of the holy body of Avalokiteshvara. Without the clear view we cannot cut off the ordinary view. The reason we haven’t achieved Avalokiteshvara is that we see ourselves in ordinary view. If we don’t cut off the ordinary view, there is no way to achieve Avalokiteshvara. What cuts off the ordinary view is meditating on the clear view of Avalokiteshvara’s holy body.

Why do we need divine pride? Again, the reason so far we haven’t achieved Avalokiteshvara is because of ordinary conception. Zhen-pa is ordinary conception, or belief. If you don’t cut off this ordinary conception, the ordinary belief that “I am this and that” and “This place is this and that,” there is no way to achieve Avalokiteshvara. So, what is the method to eliminate ordinary conception? The remedy is to meditate on divine pride. You think, “I am the actual Avalokiteshvara” instead of thinking, “I am the ordinary person, George.” You try to feel completely, “I am Avalokiteshvara.”

This will come afterwards, but I just want to mention that the way of feeling the divine pride, “I am Avalokiteshvara” is not seeing the self-existent I the way we see it now and thinking, “This is Avalokiteshvara.” The self-existent I is the object of ignorance; ignorance believes the I to be truly existent. The general I is born in the six realms, creates karma, and experiences suffering and, by following the path, the general achieves enlightenment and works for other sentient beings. You meditate that this general I is Avalokiteshvara, not the I as we now believe it to be. If possible, also think, “This is the future Avalokiteshvara that I am going to achieve.” This gives you a general idea of the way to feel divine pride.

Anyway, a little more detail might come afterwards.

After that there is one stanza that contains making request to achieve the four branches of recitation.

Please grant me blessings to be able to achieve all the realizations by depending upon the concentration of the recitation, which has four branches, and to complete the magnificent concentration by practicing the yoga methods of concentrating on fire and sound.

According to the text, the six practices start from the shunyata mantra, OM SVABHAVA SHUDDHA SARVA DHARMA SVABHAVA SHUDDHO HAM. “In essence, you, the object of meditation, the deity, and all existence become oneness in voidness.”

The absolute nature of yourself is devoid of self-existence. Just like that, the absolute nature of the deity is also devoid of absolute existence. It is saying that the absolute nature of the deity is not self-existent. You should think that the absolute nature of the self is inseparable from the absolute nature of the deity, Avalokiteshvara, just as water mixed with milk becomes completely oneness with the milk. This is what is called the absolute deity.

The meditation on shunyata is extremely important in any deity yoga. The yoga method of any deity should be possessed by the wisdom of shunyata. It is saying that all the deity yoga paths should be practiced with the wisdom of shunyata.

From what we have already said in talking about the meaning of the name, Vajrayana, you can understand that the wisdom of shunyata is contained there. The wisdom of shunyata is the foundation. Any deity yoga path that is not done with the wisdom realizing shunyata doesn’t become a perfect yoga method of the deity. For instance, if you are meditating on yourself in the aspect of the holy body of Avalokiteshvara, you do the practice with the right view of shunyata, or at least, if you haven’t realized shunyata, with the correct understanding of the meaning of shunyata. If you do the practice without meditation on shunyata, the deity yoga path that you are practicing doesn’t become a remedy to samsara. Even if you transform yourself as the deity, just that single meditation, without meditation on shunyata, does not become the remedy to cut the root of samsara.

Why doesn’t it become the remedy to cut the root of samsara? Because it does not become a remedy to the root of samsara, the ignorance grasping the I. Grasping the I means grasping the I as truly existent. Making it short, I usually say “ignorance grasping the I.”

Even if you don’t have actual realization of shunyata, at least to have right understanding of shunyata is of the utmost need. Without that, there is no way to practice the mantra path, the deity yoga path. Generally, without realizing shunyata, there is no way to cut off the root of samsara, the ignorance grasping the I, or believing the I to be truly existent. Since without realizing shunyata there is no way to cut the root of samsara, there is no way to escape. Without cutting the root, there is no way to liberate yourself from samsara. It is impossible.

Especially if you wish to practice Mantrayana and achieve enlightenment quickly, understanding the wisdom of shunyata is the main foundation.
If you going to make a vase out of clay, you first have to have the clay, the material you want to shape into a vase. You can actualize the vase. Without the clay, it is impossible. Like that, the whole deity yoga path has to be practiced with the wisdom of shunyata. It is extremely important to generate the wisdom of shunyata.

So, I don’t want to talk much, but the simple way to meditate on the voidness of the self that is oneness with the voidness of the deity Avalokiteshvara is to first meditate on the voidness of the self as the foundation. The voidness of the self doesn’t mean thinking that the self is non-existent. The voidness of the self doesn’t mean that the I itself doesn’t exist. You don’t meditate on the voidness of the self by thinking, “I don’t exist.”

First of all, to make it short and simple, the I exists. Trying to realize that the I doesn’t exist, that the I doesn’t exist even in name, is useless effort. This is meditation without result. We cannot make the general I, which exists in mere name, not exist; we cannot make it non-existent. No matter how much we meditate on “I do not exist,” even for countless eons, we cannot make the I not to exist, and there is no way we can achieve the realization of emptiness. It is impossible to realize the emptiness of the I that exists in name. It is impossible to make that I non-existent. As we cannot make the general I non-existent, there is no way to realize the emptiness of the I that exists in name. That I exists. That I dies and is born in the six realms, creates good karma and negative karma, practices Dharma, follows the path, and achieves enlightenment. That I exists. That I has been suffering during beginningless previous lives and by practicing Dharma, it can go to enlightenment. The general I, the I that joined this life from the previous life and will join to the next life, exists.

How does this I exist? It exists in mere name. If this I doesn’t exist, if it is completely false, a complete hallucination, like the beautiful fancy car with television and air-conditioning in your dream, there wouldn’t be karma. If this I that joins from the previous life to this life and from this life to the future life, that goes from samsara to enlightenment, is like that fancy car in your dream, if the I doesn’t exist even in name, there wouldn’t be karma. In that case, if there were no I, there wouldn’t be karma, the action of that subject.

If the I were just like the fancy car in the dream, none of the actions of the self would exist. My body, my brother, my house, my husband, my children, my parents—none of these would exist. Everything else would also be a complete hallucination. Nothing would exist. There would be no such thing as my material possessions.

So, in that case, there wouldn’t be karma, as there is no I.

It wouldn’t happen. No suffering would exist, and no pleasure. In that case, there wouldn’t be any existence of suffering and there wouldn’t be any existence of pleasure, for myself or for others. There would be no such thing as suffering and pleasure. Nothing.

In that case, if there were no I, why should we worry about our life? There would be no need to worry. You could just sit like a stone, with need to breathe, no need to move at all. What would be the point if there were no I? The movements of our body, speech and mind are made to stop suffering and to receive pleasure. So, if there were no I, no self, there would be no purpose for all your actions. There would be no need to have treatment, no need to incur a lot of expenses. What is the point of spending many million dollars, and even borrowing from banks, to have treatment? Since there is no self, what is the point of having treatment in a hospital?

Like this, many faults would arise. If you believed that the relative I does not exist, all these mistakes would arise. You would be doing all these things without any reason.

What happens if you stop your activities? Can even the person who believes there is no I live without working at all to prevent their suffering and to obtain their pleasure. As there would be no karma and no suffering, there would be no need to meditate. As there is no self, why would you meditate? To have peace of mind—for whom? You can’t receive peace of mind because you don’t exist.

A person who believes that the I does not exist has fallen into the extreme of nihilism. Aryadeva, the great pandit who achieved enlightenment in one life, said in one of his teachings, “A person who has fallen into the extreme of nihilism creates incredibly heavy negative karma, like having killed one hundred million human beings.” After that life, the person is born for many eons in the hell, Unceasing Suffering State, which has the worst suffering.

Therefore, we should be very skillful and very careful in our meditation on shunyata. Also, we have to be very careful in even explaining shunyata. If you have the wrong understanding of shunyata, or voidness, it is extremely dangerous. For instance, it is not meditating on shunyata when what appears to you is complete darkness, like empty space, without the appearance of the I, the body, or anything else. It is not like looking down on empty space from an airplane or a helicopters, with nothing appearing. That emptiness is not the emptiness, or absolute nature, of the self. While you are meditating on shunyata, if the emptiness you are meditating on is like looking down on empty space, you are not meditating on shunyata. That is not meditating on the absolute nature of the self.

Now, there are three ways of looking at the different minds that look at the I. There is the self-existent I. It is simpler to relate it to your own I. At the moment, the way the I appears to you and the way you believe it exists is the self-existent I, which is the object of the ignorance grasping the I.

When a meditator who has realized shunyata looks at the I, he sees that the I is empty of self-existence. He sees it as illusory.

And there is also the general I.

So, we are talking about two things: the self-existent I, which is the object of the ignorance grasping the I, and the general I, which is object of the thought that sees the general I. What we normally talk about all the time is the self-existent I. The emptiness of the I doesn’t mean that the I is empty of the I. The I is empty of what? Of the self-existent I, the truly existent I.

If the I is empty of the I, then the I does not exist. Because the I exists, the I is empty. If the I is not empty of the I, then how is the I empty? The I is empty of the I that doesn’t exist. If the I is not empty of the I that exists, what is the I empty of? The I that doesn’t exist. What is that I? That is the self-existent I that the ignorance grasping the I believes in. That self-existent I doesn’t exist at all.

So, the I is empty of the I that doesn’t exist. What is that? The self-existent I that is the object of the ignorance grasping the I.

I think I will stop here. You can get some idea of what we haven’t finished tonight by reading the notes from last year.

At night when you go to bed, there is a practice you do in order for the actions of your body, speech and mind to become virtue, retreat from the nonvirtuous actions. To do the yoga practice of sleeping with meditation on Avalokiteshvara, first clearly visualize yourself as Avalokiteshvara. You then gradually melt into white light from the top and bottom of the body. The white light then absorbs into the seed syllable HRIH, the seed syllable of Avalokiteshvara’s holy mind, at your heart. If you can’t visualize exactly the Tibetan letter HRIH, it is enough to visualize the light.
The HRIH then melts into light and gradually disappears, just like the rainbow fades away in the sky. Then, as you fall asleep, try to concentrate on the emptiness of the self-existent I.

If you don’t know how to recognize the self-existent I, simply think that the I that you now believe in does not exist. Try to concentrate in that emptiness, then try to fall asleep. If your mind wanders, again try bring it back to the point, then try to fall asleep. That is sleeping yoga practice with the right view. Try to fall asleep while your mind is concentrating in the emptiness of clear light.

If that is not possible, there are other simple methods to make your sleep virtue. Try to fall asleep while you are remembering Avalokiteshvara, who is standing on a lotus near your head. While remembering Avalokiteshvara, try to fall asleep. In that way it becomes virtue.

You can try to fall asleep with devotion to the guru-deity in this way or with another virtuous thought, such as compassion. You can try to fall asleep generating compassion for others or by generating bodhicitta. With that thought, you try to fall asleep. If you fall asleep with this kind of virtuous thought, no matter how long your sleep, it all becomes virtue. It is a special method to make your human life, even the nighttime life, meaningful.

I think that’s all. I think I will stop here. I will try my best to make sure that we do the rest the day after tomorrow.

[End of ninth teaching]