Commentary on "The Foundation of All Good
Qualities"
Khunu Lama Rinpoche |
|
| The great bodhisattva
Khunu Lama Rinpoche gave this teaching to the monks
and nuns of the International
Mahayana Institute at Boudhanath, Nepal, 14 February
1975. Translated by Lama Zopa Rinpoche and edited by
Nicholas Ribush.
This teaching was published in 2005 in the LYWA publication
Teachings From
Tibet. |
The
ultimate purpose of listening to teachings is to receive enlightenment.
Therefore, before listening to [or reading] this teaching
on the Foundation of All Good Qualities [Tib: Yön-ten-shir-gyur-ma],
it is necessary to cultivate the pure thought of bodhicitta,
the main cause of enlightenment.
We receive enlightenment only by practicing Dharma. Without
practicing Dharma, there’s no way to receive enlightenment.
Enlightenment can be received only through the practice of
Dharma.
There are two types of Dharma, outer and inner. Inner Dharma
means Buddhadharma; outer Dharma refers to the non-Buddhist
religions, the religions followed by non-Buddhists. Of these,
there are five divisions.1
By practicing outer Dharma, you can receive only temporary,
samsaric pleasures but you cannot receive enlightenment. To
become enlightened, you have to practice inner Dharma, Buddhadharma.
With respect to Buddhadharma, there are four schools of
philosophical thought: Vaibhashika [che-tra-mra-wa],
Sautrantika [do-de-pa], Cittamatra [sem-tsam]
and Madhyamaka [u-ma-pa]. These four schools encompass
the two main divisions of Buddhadharma, the Hinayana and the
Mahayana. Vaibhashika and Sautrantika are Hinayana schools;
Cittamatra and Madhyamaka are Mahayana. The teachings that
we should practice are those of the Mahayana; in particular,
those of the middle way, the Madhyamaka School, whose view
is the best, most perfect and pure. But while the view of
the Madhyamaka School is purer than that of the Cittamatra
and is that which we should study, when it comes to extensive
action, or skillful means, the teachings of the Cittamatra
and the Madhyamaka are the same. The Madhyamaka, therefore,
contains the best teachings on both profound view and extensive
conduct.
Lama Tsong Khapa’s The
Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment
(Lam-rim Chen-mo) elaborates in great detail
the steps of the sutra, or Paramitayana, path, but when it
comes to the Vajrayana, it states simply that we should enter
this path; it doesn’t explain the graded path of tantra
in detail, as it does the sutra path.
The short text by Lama Tsong
Khapa that we’re going to talk about here, the Foundation
of All Good Qualities, is rooted in the Madhyamaka teachings
and it is therefore very important that you understand it.
Verse by verse commentary
The first verse reads:
The foundation of all good qualities is the kind and venerable
guru;
Correct devotion to him is the root of the path.
By clearly seeing this and applying great effort,
Please bless me to rely upon him with great respect.
This verse, obviously, is about guru practice. All the good
qualities of liberation, the boundless state [Tib: thar-pa],
and enlightenment, the ultimate goal, depend upon the guru.
Therefore, it is necessary to find a perfect guru who has
all the qualities explained in the lam-rim teachings. Our
responsibility as disciples is to follow the guru’s
instructions exactly, offer service, make prostrations and
so forth. By following the perfect guru perfectly, we can
receive enlightenment. If, instead, we follow a misleading
guide, a false teacher, all we’ll receive is rebirth
in one of the lower realms, such as the hells.
Why do we need a guru? Because we’re trying to reach
enlightenment and don’t know what it is. The guru knows
what enlightenment is. Therefore, we need to find and then
follow a guru. Since the extremely kind and venerable guru
is the foundation of all good qualities—the good qualities
of liberation and enlightenment—the first thing we must
do is to find a perfectly qualified guru. Then we must follow
that guru correctly by making material offerings, offering
respect and service and doing whatever else should be done.
But the main thing, the most important thing, the essence
of following the guru correctly, is to follow the guru’s
instructions exactly.
This text, the Foundation of All Good Qualities,
although short, explains the entire graduated path, including
the six perfections, especially the perfection of wisdom,
and the necessity of entering the Vajrayana path. The next
verse, then, explains the difficulty of receiving a perfect
human rebirth. It reads:
Understanding that the precious freedom of this rebirth
is found only once,
Is greatly meaningful and difficult to find again,
Please bless me to generate the mind that unceasingly,
Day and night, takes its essence.
Since beginningless time, in numberless bodies, we have been
wandering through the six samsaric realms, but this is the
one time that we have received a perfect human rebirth. A
rebirth such as this, which is free from the eight unfree
states and possessed of the ten richnesses, will be extremely
difficult to find again. We can see how rare it is by meditating
in three ways: on cause, example and number. It’s hard
enough to find an ordinary human rebirth let alone one with
these eight freedoms and ten richnesses; the perfect human
rebirth is much harder to find than a regular one.
This perfect human rebirth gives us the chance of continuing
to be reborn in the realms of suffering or of attaining enlightenment;
it offers every possibility. Therefore, it is highly significant.
What we should use it for is attaining enlightenment—since
we have received a perfect human rebirth just this once, we
should use it to attain enlightenment. Therefore, the teaching
says, “Please bless me to generate the mind that unceasingly,
day and night, takes its essence.”
The next verse tells us that the perfect human rebirth is
not only difficult to find but also decays very quickly, like
a water bubble:
This life is as impermanent as a water bubble;
Remember how quickly it decays and death comes.
After death, just like a shadow follows the body,
The results of negative and positive karma ensue.
Death is certain, but when it will arrive is not. One thing
that’s for sure is that we are not going to live for
one hundred years. One hundred years from now, pretty much
everybody alive today will be dead. It is very important to
remember impermanence. The Kadampa geshes used to remember
impermanence all the time in order to avoid seeking the comfort
of the temporal life. They felt that if they didn’t
bring it to mind in the morning they were in danger of wasting
the entire afternoon, and if they didn’t bring it to
mind in the afternoon they were in danger of wasting the whole
night. By constantly keeping impermanence in mind, they were
able to prevent the meaningless thought seeking only the comfort
of this life from arising.
After death, our mind doesn’t come to a complete stop,
like water drying up or a flame going out. There is continuity.
Just as wherever the body goes, the shadow comes along with
it, similarly, wherever our mind goes, our karma comes along
too. You must have unshakably firm belief in this.
With respect to karma, there are the ten non-virtuous actions
and the ten virtuous ones. We must avoid the former and practice
the latter. Thus the teaching says,
Finding firm and definite conviction in this,
Please bless me always to be careful
To abandon even the slightest of negativities
And to accomplish only virtuous deeds.
In other words, “Please bless me always to be careful
in the practice of avoiding the ten non-virtuous actions and
observing the ten virtuous ones.”
The next verse tells us that no matter how much we enjoy
samsaric pleasures, there’s no way to find satisfaction
in them.
Seeking samsaric pleasures is the door to all suffering;
They are uncertain and cannot be relied upon.
Recognizing these shortcomings,
Please bless me to generate the strong wish for the bliss
of liberation.
Whatever beautiful objects we see, we’re never satisfied;
whatever pleasant sounds we hear, we’re never satisfied;
and it’s the same with all other objects of the senses.
No matter how much television we watch or movies we see, we’ll
never be satisfied. This is how it is, and all samsaric pleasures
are the door to samsaric suffering. No matter how many samsaric
pleasures there are, they are of no value. All past great
meditators and holy beings have recognized temporal pleasure
as a shortcoming of samsara; as faulty, deceptive. They have
never seen samsaric pleasures as valuable or good.
Led by this pure thought,
Mindfulness, alertness and great caution arise.
The root of the teachings is keeping the pratimoksha vows;
Please bless me to accomplish this essential practice.
With this next verse, we request blessings to succeed in
the essential practice of keeping the vows of individual liberation.
There are seven different levels of pratimoksha ordination,
such as bhikshu and bhikshuni, and keeping the pratimoksha
vows is root of the teaching and the main cause of liberation.
Supported by the pure thought of wanting to receive nirvana,
we should keep our precepts with great remembrance, conscientiousness
and care.
We shouldn’t be like those practitioners who say that
they’re focusing on tantric practice and therefore don’t
need to concern themselves with sutra practices, like keeping
the pratimoksha vows. We should observe whatever pratimoksha
vows we have taken with great care. First it is necessary
to generate the mind wanting to abandon samsara. Without renunciation
of samsara, we cannot receive even Hinayana nirvana—the
liberation of the Shravakayana and Pratyekabuddhayana.
Then, after generating the mind renouncing samsara, it is
necessary to generate bodhicitta. Without bodhicitta we cannot
receive enlightenment. Therefore, it is necessary to practice
bodhicitta. The next verse reads:
Just as I have fallen into the sea of samsara,
So have all mother migratory beings.
Bless me to see this, train in supreme bodhicitta,
And bear the responsibility of freeing migratory beings.
Look at yourself. Since beginningless time, you have been
suffering incredibly by wandering endlessly through the various
realms of cyclic existence—mainly the hell, preta and
animal realms—and just as you have been suffering in
samsara since beginningless time, so too have all other samsaric
sentient beings. Thinking in this way, cultivate bodhicitta,
or, as the prayer says, “Please bless me to receive
bodhicitta by understanding this.”
Clearly recognizing that I will not achieve enlightenment
By developing bodhicitta
Without practicing the three types of morality,
Please bless me to practice the bodhisattva vows with great
energy.
In order to receive aspirational bodhicitta, the thought
wishing to receive enlightenment for the sake of all sentient
beings, and the engaged bodhicitta, actually following the
path to enlightenment, it is necessary to practice the three
aspects of the perfection of morality—the morality of
abstaining from negativity, the morality of creating all virtue
and the morality of working for sentient beings. Although
this verse mentions specifically the three divisions of morality,
it also refers to the practice of all six perfections.
However, the following verse refers more specifically to
the last two perfections, concentration and wisdom.
By pacifying distractions to wrong objects
And correctly analyzing the meaning of reality,
Please bless me to generate quickly within my mind-stream
The unified path of calm abiding and special insight.
Here, Lama Tsong Khapa is saying that our minds are always
distracted by objects of the senses; for example, attractive
visual forms or interesting sounds. Our minds are always concentrated
on those. Calm abiding, or mental quiescence [shamatha],
is a kind of reversal of our normal attraction to sense objects,
the opposite of distraction—it is the control of single-pointed
concentration. Shama means peace; tha means
one-pointedness. This is to be combined with penetrative insight.
In Tibetan, the phrase yang-dag-par-jog-pa means
concentrating on absolute nature. In this prayer, Lama Tsong
Khapa asks for blessings to quickly achieve the path that
unifies shamatha and vipashyana. When we achieve this path,
we are close to enlightenment.
Up to this point, Lama Tsong Khapa has been talking about
the general training of the mind in the Paramitayana path.
Next, he talks about tantra:
Having become a pure vessel by training in the general
path,
Please bless me to enter
The holy gateway of the fortunate ones—
The supreme vajra vehicle.
In other words, he’s saying here,
“Please bless me to achieve the Vajrayana Path, which
allows me to receive enlightenment in this lifetime.”
If you follow the general, Paramitayana, path it can take
you a long time to collect the necessary merit and reach enlightenment,
as long as three countless great eons. Guru Shakyamuni Buddha,
for example, had great energy but it still took him that long
to receive enlightenment. If you follow the Vajrayana path,
it’s much quicker. If you fully observe the fundamental
practice of keeping the tantric vows and samayas,
or pledges, purely, the practice of Vajrayana can lead you
to enlightenment in one or perhaps sixteen lifetimes. It’s
like the difference between going somewhere by airplane or
train. The tantric path is like a plane; the Paramitayana
path is like a train.
There are two types of realization, or siddhi,
involved. There are the general realizations, of which there
are eight—such as the attainment of the sword, the attainment
of the eye medicine2
and so forth—and the sublime realization, which is enlightenment
itself. The foundation for attaining these two realizations
is perfect observation of the vows and pledges, as Lama Tsong
Khapa makes clear in the next verse:
At that time, the basis of accomplishing
the two attainments
Is keeping pure vows and samaya.
Having become firmly convinced of this,
Please bless me to protect these vows and pledges like my
life.
He says, “Please bless me to observe the vows and pledges
just as I take care of my life,” because he thinks that
in order to receive the “uncreated,” or effortless,
stage, it is more important to observe the vows and pledges,
the foundation of all realizations, than to take care of the
temporal life.
The next verse alludes to the four classes of tantra—the
Kriya, Charya, Yoga and Maha-anuttara Tantras.3
Then, having realized the importance of the two stages,
The essence of the Vajrayana,
By practicing with great energy, never giving up the four
sessions,
Please bless me to realize the teachings of the holy guru.
The main form of tantra that we should practice is Highest
Yoga Tantra, which includes father tantras, such as Yamantaka,
and mother tantras, such as Heruka and Kalachakra. This class
of tantra also includes the graduated paths of generation
(kye-rim) and completion (dzog-rim) stages.
One tantric teaching likens these two stages to a flower and
its smell. Without the flower, there’s no smell of the
flower; similarly, without the generation stage, there’s
no way to practice the completion stage.
There are different ways of dividing up the day into sessions,
like four sessions of six hours each, two in the day and two
in the night, or six sessions of four hours each, three in
the day and three in the night.
The next verse reads:
Like that, may the gurus who show the noble path
And the spiritual friends who practice it have long lives.
Please bless me to pacify completely
All outer and inner hindrances.
Here we pray for blessings for our gurus who show us the
noble path and our spiritual friends, who follow it correctly,
to live long lives, and for ourselves to be able to pacify
outer and inner hindrances. Outer hindrances are, for example,
external enemies—other living beings who harm us and
disturb our Dharma practice. Inner hindrances are such things
as the sicknesses that afflict our body and negativities that
afflict our mind. We ask for blessings to pacify all those
hindrances.
The last verse is:
In all my lives, never separated from perfect gurus,
May I enjoy the magnificent Dharma.
By completing the qualities of the stages and paths,
May I quickly attain the state of Vajradhara.
We pray that in all future lives may we never be separated
from perfect gurus, because the guru is the root of the path.
Even though there’s benefit in simply meeting a guru,
the actual purpose of doing so is to practice; therefore,
we pray to enjoy the Dharma through having met a guru and
to follow the guru correctly in order to realize the grounds
and paths and thereby quickly achieve the enlightened state
of Vajradhara.
That is a brief explanation of this prayer, The Foundation
of All Good Qualities, which, although short, is a very
precious teaching. It contains all the important, essential
points of the path to enlightenment. I received this teaching
from His Holiness the Dalai Lama in Sarnath.
*************
There are five great branches of knowledge: sound, logic,
hygiene, handicrafts and inner knowledge. Outer knowledge
has been well developed in the West. I’ve also heard
about Western psychology, which is the study of the mind,
but although I don’t know much about it, I’m sure
it’s not like the inner knowledge of Buddhadharma.
Also, there are other religions, like Christianity, and
they also have a kind of inner knowledge, but again, it’s
nothing like Buddhadharma. All the many non-Buddhist religions
have their qualities, but they’re not like Buddhadharma.
Within Christianity you find Catholicism, Protestantism and
so forth. They all have their own views, but they don’t
talk about view like Buddhadharma does; they don’t talk
about absolute nature, reality.
Non-Buddhist religions do have a kind of view. They believe
in the self-existent I—but this is precisely what we
need to abandon. According to Buddhadharma, the self-existent
I is the wrong conception that we’re supposed to get
rid of.
People in the West aren’t too concerned about future
lives. However, I’m not just saying that Christianity
is bad and Buddhism is good. If you study religion you’ll
come to your own conclusion. Through your own experience you’ll
prove to yourself that Buddhism is correct and other teachings
are not; you’ll prove to yourself what’s right
and what’s wrong.
Within Buddhadharma itself, there are the four types of
different doctrine that I mentioned at the beginning: Vaibhashika,
Sautrantika, Cittamatra and Madhyamaka. The view of the Sautrantikas
negates that of the Vaibhashikas, the view of the Cittamatrins
negates that of the Sautrantikas, and the view of the Madhyamikas
negates that of the Cittamatrins. Thus, even within Buddhadharma,
there are four doctrines whose views differ from each other.
In other words, as long as a view is imperfect, it can always
be negated, or contradicted, by one that is more correct.
Of the five great branches of knowledge, what you should
study is the fifth—inner knowledge; Buddhadharma. It
is very good, very pleasing, that you have come from the West
to study Buddhadharma at Kopan Monastery. The teaching of
the Buddha is the method whereby you can benefit all sentient
beings. Therefore, you should study it well and then, like
the shining sun, spread it in the West.
The Dharma that came from India to Tibet contains both sutra
and tantra. If you really want to understand all these teachings,
you have to become fluent in the Tibetan language, its vocabulary,
grammar and so forth.
Guru Shakyamuni Buddha received enlightenment through reciting
the mantra TADYA THA OM MUNÉ MUNÉ MAHAMUNAYE
SOHA. Therefore, you too should recite it continuously. Say
it twenty-one times with the TADYA THA at the beginning, then
continue reciting without it, as many times as you can. Reciting
this mantra once purifies 80,000 eons’ worth of negative
karma. This is a very powerful mantra.
I don’t have anything material to offer you to take
back to the West as gifts for your family and friends but
there is one thing that I can give you—this mantra.
This is the one thing I can give you to take back to people
in the West. In other words, you should teach this mantra
to others.
Therefore, staying at Kopan,
you should follow the guru and complete your study of Dharma.
Tibetan Buddhism contains great inner knowledge, the best
inner knowledge. By living at Kopan, you should complete your
study of Buddhadharma, inner knowledge. The more you study
Dharma, the deeper it becomes; it gets more and more profound.
The more you study other subjects, the lighter they become.
Lama Tsong Khapa wrote
several lam-rim texts, such as the Great Treatise on the
Steps of the Path to Enlightenment [Lam-rim Chen-mo],
the Middle-length Lam-rim [Lam-rim Dring],
and the most abbreviated version, A Concise Exposition
[Lam-rim Dü-dön or Lam-rim Nyam-gur],
sometimes also called Lines
of Experience. The subject matter contained in the
Great Treatise is explained in the intermediate version
and the subject matter contained in the intermediate version
is explained in the most concise one, the Lam-rim Dü-dön.
All these teachings are condensed in Lama Tsong Khapa’s
letter to his disciple, the Three
Principal Aspects of the Path. The teaching I have
explained today, the Foundation of All Good Qualities,
is a short lam-rim teaching in the form of a prayer.
Do you have any questions?
Q. When I study, especially emptiness, I think I understand
something correctly and keep going in that direction but later
on I see that my understanding was wrong and I wasted time
following it. By going off on these tangents, I prevent myself
from progressing more quickly in the right direction. How
can I relate to the experiences I have in such a way that
I don’t waste time exploring what turn out to be wrong
conceptions?
Khunu Lama Rinpoche. First, I can see that you are all trying
to do great, extensive Dharma work, and I will pray for you
to be successful and benefit the teaching of the Buddha. With
respect to your question, when you are studying or meditating
on emptiness, it is possible for fear to arise or for you
to realize that what you have always believed to be true is
wrong. However, fundamentally, what your mind should be avoiding
is the two extremes of self-existence and non-existence. Your
pure view of emptiness should be devoid of these two extremes;
it should be in the middle way. Then your view of emptiness
is correct. Even the conception holding emptiness is empty.
Q. I have a question about relative truth.
There are false relative truth and right relative truth. Is
it possible for a person who has the wrong conception of the
self-existent I to ever perceive right relative truth? There
are two ways in which a person can view something: as something
there or as something not there. For example, a person looking
at tsampa can see it as free from dirt or as contaminated.
There are two different ways of seeing it. As long as the
person has the wrong conception of self-existence, does that
prevent her from having the right relative view, from perceiving
right relative truth?
Khunu Lama Rinpoche. What is the right relative
truth of tsampa? When everybody looks at the tsampa, they
see tsampa. Not only that, tsampa has to be viewed through
intact senses; senses that are not defective. It is right
relative truth if it exists as an object of normal senses.
Also, when other people look at the tsampa, they see tsampa.
That is what we recognize as right relative truth.
For example, when you’re in a moving train, the trees
also seem to be moving. Sometimes you get this kind of wrong
conception. Or when a conjurer transforms inanimate objects,
like pieces of wood, so that they appear in the form of animals,
or when you see a white conch shell as yellow, those are wrong
relative truths because they are a projection of defective
senses. Also, it’s proven that they’re wrong because
they are not seen as that by other worldly beings, those who
have not realized emptiness.
Finally, according to the Madhyamaka scriptures, the “I”
that is believed to be self-existent by non-Buddhist philosophers
is also a wrong relative truth.
Q. Please could you explain the difference
between relative and absolute bodhicitta?
Khunu Lama Rinpoche. Absolute bodhicitta,
the realization of fully seeing ultimate nature, as the Madhyamaka
teachings explain, is achieved on the first of the ten bodhisattva
grounds. Relative bodhicitta is explained in Shantideva’s
Guide
to the Bodhisattva Way of Life. There are two types
of relative bodhicitta—aspirational and engaged. Aspirational
bodhicitta is the wish to attain enlightenment for the sake
of all sentient beings; engaged bodhicitta is actually following
the path to enlightenment.
Even worldly people, those who have not attained the path
of seeing, can achieve aspirational bodhicitta. As you know,
there are five paths—the paths of accumulation, preparation,
seeing, meditation and no more learning. Even those on the
first of these five paths can achieve relative bodhicitta.
The two types of relative bodhicitta are explained in Shantideva’s
Guide, and absolute bodhicitta has been explained
by Nagarjuna and also in certain tantras. Absolute bodhicitta
is actually ultimate nature.
However, since bodhicitta is the seed of buddhahood, like
the seed of a plant, it’s the main thing we need to
develop in our mind. Bodhicitta is what we should strive our
hardest to achieve. The Buddha himself said that all the buddhas
come from bodhicitta.
Q. Many of us will soon
be going back to the West. Since you mentioned that we should
take the Dharma back with us, what’s the best way to
present it?
Khunu Lama Rinpoche. You should try to teach
the Dharma according to what suits the minds of those listening
to you. If explaining absolute nature is appropriate, you
can follow the brief explanation in Lama Tsong Khapa’s
Three Principal Aspects or the more elaborate one
in his Great Treatise, which has more than one hundred
pages on emptiness. If you want to explain the method side
of the teachings, you can do so according to Shantideva’s
Guide, where he talks about the practice of the first
five perfections of generosity, morality, patience, effort
and concentration. You can also explain right view on the
basis of [the ninth chapter of] the Guide, if it
fits the minds of your listeners.4
In short, you should teach Dharma in the way that a doctor
prescribes medicine. Even if the doctor has the perfect medicine
for a patient’s illness, he can’t force the patient
to take it. That’s an unskillful approach. The wise
doctor treats patients according to their capacity. Dharma
should be presented in the same way.
Q. Our minds are always discriminating things like, “I
like him; I don’t like her,” and we’re usually
so unconscious that we’re totally unaware that we’re
doing this. Now I’m starting to realize that discriminating
in this way causes suffering. Since developing equanimity
is the first step to bodhicitta, how can we equalize our minds
in our everyday situations to avoid discriminating between
the people we like and those we don’t?
Khunu Lama Rinpoche. You should check in the following way.
If there’s an outer object that you think is good, bad
or ugly, try to see its absolute nature by analyzing every
atom. Mentally reduce the object you see as good to atoms,
take even the atoms apart, and analyzing it like this, try
to see its emptiness. Again, analyze the object you see as
ugly down to its atoms, analyze even the atoms, and, in this
way, try to see its emptiness. When you do this, you’ll
see there’s absolutely no difference between these two
objects. In your relative view you discriminate them as different,
but in emptiness, you don’t.
Q. How we can unite these two views—the relative with
the absolute?
Khunu Lama Rinpoche. The mere appearance of an object is the
relative view. That should be seen as illusory but at the
same time unified with emptiness. The relative view should
be one with emptiness. But that doesn’t mean that your
view of an object that you believe to be truly existent is
really true. This view and the view that sees the object as
illusory and empty cannot become one. This is very difficult
to realize. Therefore, it is important that you get as clear
an intellectual understanding of it as possible. First, understand
how things are dependent upon causes and conditions; you must
understand the born and the unborn, in other words, dependent
phenomena and emptiness respectively.
Q. Rinpoche, you said that we should teach people according
to their level of mind. How can we discern this? Do we have
enough wisdom to know if it is appropriate to teach Western
people who are interested mantras, visualizations and so forth?
Khunu Lama Rinpoche. That is hard to answer specifically,
but what you can teach is this. Visualize a white cloud in
the space in front of you at the level of your forehead. On
that is a large throne upon which is seated Guru Shakyamuni
Buddha in his usual aspect of a monk adorned with robes, with
his right hand over his knee touching the moon cushion and
his left in the meditation mudra. He is surrounded on all
sides by countless buddhas, bodhisattvas, such as the eight
great bodhisattvas, and arhats.
Powerful light rays emanate from Guru Shakyamuni Buddha
and the others and enter you and all other sentient beings,
who appear in human form surrounding you, purifying all the
negativities accumulated since beginningless time and bringing
all the realizations of the graduated path to enlightenment.
While visualizing this, recite Guru Shakyamuni Buddha’s
mantra, TADYA THA OM MUNÉ MUNÉ MAHAMUNAYE SOHA
or OM MUNÉ MUNÉ MAHAMUNAYE SOHA, as I mentioned
before. No matter which of these two versions you recite,
the visualization is the same.
Then make a strong decision in your mind that through this
purification, you and all other sentient beings have become
irreversible bodhisattvas, thus pleasing the infinite buddhas.
*************
From my side, I will pray for you never to be separated from
the guru in all future lifetimes, to complete the path and
attain enlightenment as quickly as possible. I will pray for
you to accomplish the entire Dharma and to have long lives
in order for this to happen. It is not sufficient for just
me to have a long life, as you have requested. You, too, should
try to live long. So, I will pray for that, but my prayers
alone will not be enough; from your side, you also have to
try.
*************
For a complete version of the root text, please
go here.
Notes
1. See Hopkins, Jeffrey :Meditation
on Emptiness, pp. 317–333, for details of the
non-Buddhist systems. [Return to
text]
2. See Khunu
Lama Rinpoche's commentary to Lamp for the Path.
[Return to text]
3. Action, Performance, Yoga and Highest Yoga Tantras. [Return
to text]
4. See His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s Practicing
Wisdom. Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2005.
[Return to text]
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