Teachings and Mitukpa Initiation, Taiwan 2007

By Kyabje Lama Zopa Rinpoche
Taiwan (Archive #1606)

Lama Zopa Rinpoche gave teachings and a Mitukpa initiation over two days at Shakyamuni Center, Taichung, Taiwan in February 2007.

Included here is a lightly edited version of the teachings given on the day of and the day after the initiation. All of Rinpoche's teachings are included here except the actual initiation, which is not appropriate to make public.

Audio recordings from the first day's teachings have been posted here, along with the unedited transcripts.

Day 2: Discourse

The person who does a deity retreat should be someone who has trained their mind well in the common path (that means in renunciation, bodhicitta and right view, based, of course, on guru devotion, on correct devotion to the virtuous friend), who has received the initiation of the supreme deity for which they’re going to do the meditation-recitation, who is abiding in the samaya vows and who, by listening and reflecting, has studied well the graduated path of the deity and cut all doubts.

Now, second, where to do retreat. Generally, it’s good to do retreat in the holy places of buddhas, including those where Buddha performed the twelve deeds; in any great holy being’s place; or in the particular holy places of the deity on which you’re going to do retreat. If it’s Heruka or Vajrayogini, for example, there are the holy places of those deities. The other thing is to do the retreat in places where your guru is living or has lived. By doing retreat in such holy places, you then receive blessings from the place; the holy place blesses your mind. It is like that for us ordinary beings, but not for great yogis with high realizations, such as the unification of clear light and illusory body.

If you do retreat or practice in such places, you receive blessings from those holy places, and your meditation retreat is effective for your mind. It is easy for you to give rise to devotion to the guru and the Triple Gem, easy to give rise to renunciation, easy to feel impermanence and death, easy to feel loving kindness, compassion and bodhicitta. It is also for your mind to be calm. You have fewer disturbances and fewer negative emotional thoughts, such as attachment and so forth. It is also then easy for you to realize emptiness.

If you can’t find a place like that, the text mentions that you should find a place in the mountains where there is good water and many flowers and other plants. It should be a beautiful place that you like and where your mind feels calm. So, if it’s not possible to find a holy place, you find somewhere you like, somewhere your mind feels calm and comfortable.

Those who have realized emptiness and bodhicitta, however, can do retreat in a place where there are spirits and things like that. Doing practice there is helpful for developing their realizations. But beings who don’t have those realizations won’t be able to practice in such places.

One point is that it shouldn’t be a place where the water or earth is harmful for your health. You can’t then do practice. It should be a place that has been blessed by holy beings; where there’s no harm from human beings or non-human beings, such as spirits; and where you can obtain the conditions necessary for Dharma practice, such as food and water. It should be somewhere where you don’t have to spend a lot of time getting water. It should also be a quiet place, isolated from noise, so that you can concentrate. Basically, the place should be in harmony with your wishes, with your mind.

Next is the time to do retreat, such as calm abiding retreat. For ordinary beings, whose inner elements are under the power of external elements, such as external planets, it is better to follow astrology. The astrology texts explain the best times to go on retreat and things like that. In the text that talks about preparation for retreat, it also talks there about which month and day you should start, which time of day to begin the retreat and so forth.

It’s different for someone who has realization of emptiness, and especially for someone who has not just realization of emptiness but the high tantric realization of clear light. However, even with the sutra realization of emptiness, you see things as illusory. Even though there is the appearance of true existence, you don’t hold onto it as true, just as the audience knows that the beautiful jewel palace, the beautiful man or woman and all the other kinds of appearances transformed by a magician are not true. There’s the understanding that there are no such things there even though there is the appearance of them. Like that, a meditator who has realization of emptiness sees all the truly existent appearances but at the same time in their heart they know that there are no such things there; they are all illusions, hallucinations. They see things as being like a dream, like an illusion, so external things cannot overpower their mind. That person’s mind controls external things, which means their mind is more powerful than external things, so external things cannot affect, cannot influence, their mind. So, even if they don’t follow astrology, it doesn’t affect their mind.

The time to do a retreat depends on which deity you are practicing.

At the beginning I mentioned that the qualities of the practitioner and how they should be someone who has trained their mind well in the common path. It could refer to having the actual lam-rim realizations of renunciation, bodhicitta and right view, but if you’re going to wait to do retreat until you have realization of the three principles of the path, for many people doing retreat may not happen even in this life. It’s not sure when it would happen. There’s a Tibetan term that describes the minimum motivation you should have for taking initiation and things like that. Even though there’s no actual realization of bodhicitta, you should at least have this motivation. With the actual realization, without depending on reasoning, your mind is effortlessly, spontaneously, in bodhicitta day and night, all the time. No matter whether you are eating, walking, doing your job or doing some other activity, all the time your heart is spontaneously wishing to achieve full enlightenment for sentient beings. The Tibetan term is like how a mother feels about her beloved only child when that child is sick. The mother loves her child so much, regarding them as the most precious thing in her life. When her beloved child is sick, whether the mother is doing her job or something else, in her heart all the time is the wish for her child to be better, to be free from the sickness. While she’s eating or walking, there’s this very strong concern all the time for her child to be free from sickness. An example of this Tibetan term is how a mother feels about her beloved child, feeling that they are extremely precious and most dear.

Even if you don’t have the actual realization of bodhicitta, you should feel about sentient beings the way a mother feels about her beloved child. This experience happens when you first reflect on how your own samsara is suffering in nature. You find it so disgusting, so terrifying, that you can’t stand to be in samsara for even a second. You want to be free from it; you want to be liberated from it. You then think of how other sentient beings are suffering in samsara and feel the same as you do about your own samsara. You then feel compassion for other sentient beings, seeing it as unbearable that they are suffering in samara.

Using reasoning, you also think of how they are so precious and so kind. You can use either the seven techniques of Mahayana cause and effect, as I did in the meditation last night. You think of how sentient beings have been mother and kind. You then feel about them the way a mother feels about her beloved child, seeing them as most dear, most precious. So, you see them in beauty, though this beauty has to do with how precious they are and has nothing to do with their shape. The Tibetan term is sometimes translated as “affectionate loving kindness,” but you could translated it as “the beauty of loving kindness.” You feel that sentient beings are precious and kind.

The other technique is equalizing and exchanging yourself with others, in which you reflect on the shortcomings of self-cherishing thought, the benefits of cherishing others and the extensive kindness of sentient beings. In that way you then see sentient beings as most precious and most kind. By reasoning and meditating in this way, you then feel unbearable compassion that sentient beings suffering in samsara. You also feel loving kindness for them, seeing that they are devoid of happiness and wishing them to have happiness. The special attitude of you yourself taking the responsibility to free them from all the suffering of samsara and to bring them to enlightenment by yourself alone then arises very strongly. The thought to achieve enlightenment then arises strongly, but only through reasoning and meditation. When you don’t meditate and don’t apply reasoning, you don’t have that feeling. So, this is the creative experience, the effortful experience. The other one is the effortless experience. When you take an initiation, you should have at least the effortful experience.

You can apply this in a similar way to retreat. The effortful experience of bodhicitta comes only when you go through this process of reasoning, first meditating on how samsara with all its suffering is disgusting and terrifying. What I am saying is that even if you don’t have the actual realization of bodhicitta, you should have at least this kind of attitude. It is also like that for retreat. You mightn’t have trained your mind well in the preliminaries and mightn’t already have the realizations, and it is only when you think of the reasons that you feel renunciation, compassion and bodhicitta; it is only then that you feel sentient beings are precious and kind. You then feel strong compassion for their suffering, develop loving kindness toward them and then the special attitude and bodhicitta. I think it’s good when it is like that.

So, I just wanted to clarify how a practitioner should be.

The time to do retreat depends on which deity you are practicing. Different deities have a special month or day to do retreat. There is the general advice from astrology, but if you don’t have much choice and you have to start on a different day because of your job or something else, you have to do some prayers and pujas. In astrology, there are quite a few prayers to recite to eliminate inauspicious times. You can read auspicious prayers to transform inauspicious timing. For example, there is the general text called [Namsar Namgye] that can be recited to bring the devas, nagas and various other beings into harmony with the time that you are doing activities. There is also a mantra you can recite to eliminate obstacles, or mistakes. You visualize yourself as Chenrezig or Vajrapani, then recite the mantra. There is also another powerful practice that came from Padmasambhava. It is called The Dependent Arising Eliminating Mistakes. You can do it when there are obstacles to doing retreat or other activities. There are elaborate, intermediate and short versions of this practice from Padmasambhava. It’s very powerful. There is another very powerful text called [Tak pa ser gyi do tin]. There are different texts that can be read. Even if you can’t read all these texts, you should do as many auspicious prayers to eliminate mistakes as you can.

You can also do the protector prayers, especially the tea offering to the de gyä, or eight groups of worldly devas. It is especially important to do that, because they are related to such activities as building a house or starting projects. They are important in many things and can cause obstacles. You make the tea offering and ask them not to bring harm; making the tea offering causes them to help you. So, you apply whatever methods to pacify obstacles and mistakes that you can. There are various things you can try.

Next is how to do the retreat. Before you engage in a retreat, you have to be careful about material things that you have borrowed from others that carry pollution or have spirits following them. You have to return such things or put them in other places. If you have such things in your retreat house, they become obstacles to you; they can make you sick. Many times people get sick because of spirit harm related to a spirit not letting go of a material possession.

The pollution can come from material things you got from a prostitute or a butcher, but the worst pollution comes when you receive something that belongs to a fellow disciple who has criticized, generated heresy toward or given up one of your gurus. The things that come from such a person are the most dangerous ones. If you have such an object in your room, it interferes with the development of your mind in the path to enlightenment, with having realizations. It also pollutes and degenerates your mind. It’s very, very dangerous. According to His Holiness Zong Rinpoche, if you even drink water in the place where such a person is, not only do you degenerate the qualities and experiences you’ve developed but you get reborn in the lower realms. Anyway, it’s the most dangerous one.

You can’t keep such things in your retreat house. You have to throw them away or put them in some place other than your retreat house. This applies to even statues or thangkas that you have received from such a person. Don’t keep them there in your retreat house. You must put them in another place. You can’t throw them out because they’re holy objects, but you can throw out ordinary things.

You should organize good clothing, firewood and all the other things you need for the retreat. (Here you don’t use firewood, of course.)

The person who is helping you in retreat should be devoted, respectful, clean and have a subdued mind. Especially if you’re keeping silence, the other person should be able to understand what you need and communicate by gestures. It’s very important that they have a subdued mind and that they care about karma and samaya vows. The person will then be careful and won’t cause you to engage in negative karma or give rise to anger or break your vows. The person will not be harmful and will be only helpful. If they have a subdued mind and care about karma and samaya vows, they will be in harmony with you in regard to conduct.

You yourself should attempt not to have distractions.

To be successful in the nearing attainment retreat, you do the retreat and the meditation-recitation to persuade the deity’s holy mind and receive the blessings of the deity, thus making you closer to the deity. In an effective, successful nearing attainment retreat, your meditation-recitation on the deity makes you nearer to the deity and to become the deity. That’s what is to be attained.

For success in this, you go for refuge; eliminate obstacles, which means purifying negative karmas and downfalls with Vajrasattva meditation-recitation, with recitation of the hundred-syllable mantra; attain the necessary condition, which means collecting merit through offering mandalas, doing prostrations and so forth; and receive the blessing of the guru through the practice of guru yoga, such as Lama Tsongkhapa Guru Yoga. In doing Lama Tsongkhapa Guru Yoga, you recite one hundred thousand times the migtsema, the requesting prayer to Lama Tsongkhapa, by looking at your own root guru as one with Lama Tsongkhapa, who himself is also Manjushri, Vajrapani, Chenrezig and Maitreya Buddha. There are stories that prove that Lama Tsongkhapa is the encompassment of all the buddhas. Lama Tsongkhapa performed unimaginable holy deeds and brought skies of benefit to sentient beings and to the teaching of the Buddha. So, this guru yoga makes you see that your root guru and Lama Tsongkhapa are one, that your root guru is Lama Tsongkhapa. That intense guru devotion causes you to receive all the blessings of the guru, and from the blessings of the guru you then receive the realizations of the path to enlightenment.

Before you do a deity retreat, there are preliminaries that you normally do to ensure success. You can read the profound sutras, especially those on the Perfection of Wisdom, or the Wisdom Gone Beyond, such as the Diamond Cutter Sutra. The Perfection of Wisdom teachings, which directly or indirectly reveal the subject of emptiness, are the heart of all the 84,000 teachings of Buddha. There are One Hundred Thousand Stanzas, in twelve volumes; Twenty Thousand Stanzas, in three volumes; Eight Thousand Stanzas, in one volume; and much shorter ones such as the Diamond Cutter Sutra and the Heart Sutra. Of course, the most extensive teaching involves reading the whole Tengyur. There are also the Arya Sanghata Sutra and Golden Light Sutra. Reading them brings incredible purification and collects extensive merit. These are not the only sutras; there are also many others. So, reading those profound sutras is one preliminary for a deity retreat.

Those who have been attending the retreat here at this special time when merits are increased one hundred million times have done prostrations with recitation of the Thirty-five Buddhas’ names before sessions, Guru Puja and also a nyung-nä. You have done unbelievably powerful practices, the best things to do. All those practices become very helpful for the Mitukpa retreat. This applies to those who have been here for the past few days, especially during this special time of Buddha performing the miraculous deeds.

Panchen Palden Yeshe composed the lam-rim text The Red Commentary (Ma Tri), which is the root text that forms the basis of Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand by the great enlightened being Pabongka. Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand is actually a commentary to that lam-rim text. The Happy Path, a shorter lam-rim text, presents more the way to meditate; The Red Commentary is more detailed and extremely effective. There in The Red Commentary, in regard to the three great meanings of life, it talks about the four special days when merits are multiplied a hundred million times.

So, it’s been unbelievable for those who have been able to attend the retreat here at this time. We have recited the Arya Sanghata Sutra, which then became one hundred million recitations. That’s really unbelievable. Just being able to read those profound sutras at this time has become an excellent preliminary to the retreat, so there is no doubt about the other practices we have done.

In regard to collecting merit, another practice you can do is making torma or water charity to the pretas. Offering service or making offering to the Sangha is another means to collect extensive merit, because Sangha are living in higher vows. The more vows Sangha live in, the more merit other sentient beings collect when they make offering to them. That’s why I say to Sangha that if you are able to live in your vows, you then become Dzambhala for other sentient beings, causing them to collect extensive merit and thus fulfill their wishes. From the merit, or good luck, they create by making offering to you, they are able to fulfill their wishes.

Another practice is making charity to sentient beings, to poor people or to animals. You can give food to fish or to ants. It doesn’t have to be only to a big animal. You can make charity to ants and other insects. There is a practice of making charity to ants that I thought to translate, but so far it hasn’t happened. You mix tsampa with a little butter and sugar then sprinkle it on the ants and their nest while chanting powerful mantras. I have seen it in one text, and it’s a common practice. Once you know the benefits of these mantras, which are powerful in purifying negative karma, you can then chant them when you give water or food to even dogs or birds. And it’s the same with even people. The Mitukpa mantra is one of the mantras of the five deities whose function is to purify negative karma. If you chant these mantras when a person dies, it purifies that person’s negative karma and transfers their consciousness to a pure land. The other powerful deities for purification are Namgyalma, Kunrig, Stainless Beam and Stainless Pinnacle. The mantra of Stainless Pinnacle Lotus Deity, OM PADMO USHNISHA BIMALE HUM PHAT, is also sometimes called the Wish-Granting Wheel mantra.

You chant the mantras on the food and then sprinkle it over the ants. When they eat the food and it becomes less, you again sprinkle more on them. It not only helps them to find food and stops their suffering of hunger, but most importantly here, because you have blessed the food with the mantras, it purifies their negative karma and helps them to have a higher rebirth in their next life. This is an incredibly skillful way to benefit them, to liberate them. There are also many other ways to benefit other insects or large animals.

Ants sometimes come into the kitchen to get honey or other food, even into the kitchens in high-rise buildings. Somehow they find and get into the food. Sometimes when you purposely make charity to them, they don’t eat the food. There were many ants one time I was staying in Singapore. I tried to give sugar to the ants by putting it on their trail at the edge of the building. I purposely gave them sugar but none of the ants ate it. It was very interesting. I think you have to have the karma for them to eat the food. Or maybe you need merit even for that….

Making Mitukpa tsa-tsas is a very common, very powerful way to purify negative karma. It’s very common to do this for somebody who has died, even in Solu Khumbu and Tibet. The family of the person who has died either make the tsa-tsas themselves (which is best because they themselves then also purify) or ask somebody in the area, such as a monk or nun who makes tsa-tsas for people who have died, to do it. It is also common to have tsa-tsas of the long-life deities made for people who have life obstacles. People offer money and then request for tsa-tsas to be made for somebody who has life obstacles or is sick and also for somebody who has died. So, it’s very common to make Mitukpa tsa-tsas for purification.

At the house where I live in Aptos in California, a number of Mitukpa tsa-tsas are made every day by a nun from Switzerland; she is the cook, and she herself also has a commitment to do tsa-tsas. At different times, different nuns are in charge of making the tsa-tsas every day, including a number of Mitukpa tsa-tsas, a stupa and tsa-tsas of long-life deities. A certain number of tsa-tsas is made every day, not only for purification but also for people who are sick or who have died and whose names have been given to me. The list of all the names is kept there in the tsa-tsa workshop, and the tsa-tsas are then dedicated for them. So, that is very helpful. Even though people mightn’t make a request for tsa-tsas to be made but just for prayers, it’s very simple to make tsa-tsas for them, besides just saying words of prayers for them. It’s very helpful for them.

As you have heard many times in relation to the Maitreya Project, when you make a small, thumb-size statue of Buddha, for as many lifetimes as the number of atoms in the statue you will be born as a king with much wealth and power in the human or deva realm and be able to benefit other sentient beings. There are also many causes of realization; from that root, you then achieve all the realizations of the path to enlightenment. Equal to the number of atoms, you also create causes of perfect meditation, of shamatha, in the form and formless realms. Again, that’s the basis for all the attainments of great insight and the wisdom directly perceiving emptiness of the arya, or exalted, path. It is this wisdom that directly ceases karma and delusion and the seed of delusion, the negative imprint. That’s how you achieve liberation. With that wisdom of the arya path, the wisdom directly perceiving emptiness and with method, bodhicitta, you then practice the paramitas and collect extensive merit. You are then able to cease even the subtle defilements and achieve enlightenment. However, equal to the number of atoms in a thumb-size statue or a tsa-tsa, you create causes to achieve the arya paths, to achieve liberation and enlightenment. So, it has unbelievable, unbelievable benefit if it’s dedicated for a person who is sick or has died or for the success of a project, such as someone’s business. You can also do protector prayers and pujas.

So, these are the instructions as to what you normally do before a retreat to ensure that the retreat is effective.

You should also have studied well the teachings on the deity’s path.

Another thing, especially if you are doing a three-year retreat or another long retreat, is to place the retreat marks. The instruction is that if you have a mountain behind your retreat house (I don’t know what happens if there’s no mountain), at sunrise, before the sun hits the ground, you put the retreat marks outside the house of attainment, or drubkang, in Tibetan. Drub means attaining or practice and kang means house, so “attaining house” or “house of attainment.” This name is very useful. The drubkang helps you to attain the path to enlightenment. Simply hearing or remembering the name drubkang, house of attainment, is very, very beneficial. It reminds you of the purpose of the house, of what you do in that house.

Outside, at some distance, you erect the retreat marks to make the border. For that you don’t need to generate into the deity. As I mentioned before, you don’t allow to come in people who have pollution, who are not pure in samaya. Such people would pollute the place where you do your practice. It becomes an obstacle so that you can’t develop your mind in the path. The main point, of course, is not to allow in anything that disturbs your practice.

You then clean inside and outside the house of attainment. This is also part of the six preparatory practices. It’s one of the six preparatory practices you do before actually meditating on lam-rim. I think the practice of cleaning is the first one; it is a practice of purification in which you think you are purifying all your delusions and defilements. So, you clean inside and outside the house, then fill it with the scented smells of incense. You then sprinkle the house with water mixed with the five nectars. I think five nectars refers to the cow pill, which is made from the dung of a cow that eats only a special grass. You gather the dung before it touches the ground, then mix it to make a pill. This is similar to what you do in the very beginning of making mandala offerings, where you put nectar containing the cow pill on the mandala base.

You don’t throw outside the garbage that you clean from the drubkang, the house of attainment.

Here it mentions the nekang, or abiding house. It could refer to the house where you abide, but I think here ne refers to where the guru, Buddha, Dharma and Sangha are abiding, where the merit field is abiding. As you collect merit and purify your defilements, you receive blessings from the merit field to attain the path to enlightenment and to be able to do the perfect work of liberating sentient beings from the oceans of samsaric suffering and bringing them to enlightenment, and the nekang is the house where the merit field is abiding. This is the house in which you visualize the merit field and every day make offerings, offer mandalas, do other practices and request for lam-rim realizations.

If it is convenient, you face to the south when you sit to do your meditation. I think this is here according to the practice of this deity that I’m using, but it is not the same with every Highest Yoga Tantra deity. You normally invoke Heruka from the southern side. However, you normally face to the west, which is the direction of Amitabha Buddha’s pure land. When you sleep, your head faces to the west, the direction of Amitabha’s pure land, and your feet are to the south. When you do meditation, if it is convenient, you face the west. In the text it says that if it’s not convenient to face west, you visualize that you are facing that direction.

You then draw a swastika and put it under your cushion. You can draw it on a piece of paper. The purpose of that  is that it helps to stabilize the meditation. There are two types of swastika. The anticlockwise swastika, the one facing towards the left, is used in Zen, I think, and was also used by Hitler in Germany. The swastika that we use to put under our meditation seat should be the one facing towards the right side.

Anyway, there’s one particular story in Lamrim Chenmo about a [Chinese] monk whose philosophy was that everything, including bodhicitta, is superstition. He came to Tibet to debate this and lost the debate.

It’s helpful to have a space between your meditation seat and the ground so that everything doesn’t become humid when you sit for a long time. It’s better for your health, and the seat doesn’t rot.

You should have a small cushion at the back to lift up your backside. It’s normally mentioned that the back side should be four inches higher than the front. That helps your central channel to be straight, which is a helpful condition for meditation.

In front of you, you should have a thangka or statue of the deity whose retreat you are going to do. The image should be a perfect one and be consecrated. Many people who buy thangkas from Nepal are not familiar with the deity. Even though the Nepalis make the statues and thangkas as a business to make money, they should study and follow the correct, traditional descriptions in the texts, which describe the aspect of the deities and all the implements. That would be more helpful for the people who are going to study the deity and use the statue or thangka for meditation. I think Tibetans mostly do that, but the Nepalese, since it is mainly for business, just make up something. When they paint mandalas, they just fill the whole thing up with many designs in gold. Tourists then come along and think, “Oh, there is so much work in this thangka.” Western tourists are attracted to that because it involves so much work. Besides that, the Nepalis smoke thangkas to make them look old. Or they bury statues in the ground, and after some time they look like they are old. I have seen many people who are not familiar with deities or mandalas pay a lot of money to buy thangkas just because there is a lot of work in them. Because the thangkas are wrong, with mistakes in the implements or things missing, they can’t be used for practice. They then bring the thangkas they have bought to the West or here to Taiwan. It’s also difficult to tell them that the thangkas are not correct because they have already paid a lot of money for them. It’s difficult to explain to them because it makes them upset or angry that they paid so much money to the people who sold them the thangkas. So, if you’re not familiar with thangkas, it’s best to bring someone from one of the monasteries who is familiar with the deity and the mandala and then buy what they recommend. You can then buy a correct thangka.

You see the thangka you put up on the altar many times, and if what you see in the thangka is not correct, you are looking at something that doesn’t exist. There is no such being; it definitely doesn’t exist. They made up something that doesn’t exist. It’s difficult to put such a thangka up if you’re using it for practice or for making offerings. It’s different if you’re just decorating a house.

Anyway, you should have a perfect statue or painting, and one that is consecrated

There are then the torma offerings. If you are doing a long retreat, one of fifteen days, one month or longer, and you are making traditional Tibetan tormas, they should have certain shapes and decorations in accord with a particular lama’s tradition. It’s not that you just create anything you like; there’s a tradition. In the Pabongka tradition, certain shapes have certain meanings. It’s better to follow the tradition of a great enlightened being or of your guru.

The whole torma can be made of butter or of tsampa mixed with butter with no water, so that it can last a long time without going rotten.

For Highest Yoga Tantra you mix in wine and also a nectar pill, such as that with the lineage that comes from Panchen Losang Chökyi Gyaltsen. When Panchen Losang Chökyi Gyaltsen blessed the pills, flames came out, which means they obtained the blessing. In the Sakya tradition there are also precious pills that have pure reference, or lineage. You don’t need those in the lower tantras, but you should have the five by five substances: five jewels, five grains, five medicines, five scents and five nectars. If you mix a mixture of those substances into the torma, it makes it  extremely powerful for success.

However, if you can’t make a traditional torma, you can use biscuits or bottles of honey. You just put three bottles of honey or something else that can last a long time. Afterwards, you can take it as a blessing and give it to other people. You offer as a torma something that you like, something that is delicious, not something of poor quality that you wouldn’t eat. His Holiness often emphasizes that a torma shouldn’t be something that you yourself wouldn’t eat; your own food shouldn’t be much better than what you offer as a torma. You must make the torma of the richest, best ingredients. As I mentioned, one meaning of torma is destroying your miserliness; so if you use rich, costly substances, offering that is an antidote to your miserliness; you are destroying your miserliness. In Highest Yoga Tantra, there are the interpretive meaning of torma and the definitive meaning of torma. The definitive meaning of torma is the transcendental wisdom of nondual bliss and voidness, which destroys your ignorance, the root of samsara. That’s the real torma that you offer. That is another meaning of torma.

Again, in the torma you can’t put tsampa or other substances from people with pollution or broken samayas or vows. If you use such substances, making offering of that torma will become an obstacle; it won’t be pure. It has to be checked. The offering has to be pure in that way.

Here, the central one is the torma offering to the main deity, Mitukpa. The torma on the right is for the [fifteen] guardians and the torma on the left is for the landlord. You should know that these three tormas are there, and when you do the practice, you must think of them, purify in emptiness, generate them into nectar and then offer them. You shouldn’t just recite words, because then you are not doing the practice. You must do the meditation and must offer the food or whatever other offering is there. You should do the meditation of dispelling, purifying in emptiness and generating into nectar.

Everything has to be very neat. You make the tormas and put them there on the altar, but once you begin the retreat every day you have to add something fresh to them. Sometimes you make balls of tsampa mixed with butter. Every day in the morning before you begin the first session, you add something fresh to the tormas. There has to be something fresh every day. It can be nuts or something else. That’s one point.

It is most important that the whole altar be clean and neat and that nothing is used that involves pollution. You also shouldn’t use offerings received through the five wrong livelihoods, such as through cheating, harming other sentient beings and so forth. Anyway, the whole thing should be according to tradition and be very clean, very neat and beautiful. The altar should be something that makes your mind feel happy. It shouldn’t be a depressing altar; all the offerings on the altar shouldn’t be depressing.

Next is the mala you use for the retreat. The mala should accord with whatever activity you are trying to achieve. If it’s pacifying activity for sicknesses, spirit harms, negative karma and defilements, if it’s for purification, you use a glass or crystal mala. If it’s controlling activity, you use a red sandal or coral mala. I don’t remember what you use for increasing activity. If it’s for wrathful activity, you use a raksha mala. You use a specific mala according to the action you are trying to achieve. The mala that fits all the activities is the bodhicitta mala.

For Highest Yoga Tantra, of course, you need inner offering, the vajra, bell and damaru and the other samaya substances. If we have all these samaya substances, it draws the dakas and dakinis and the protectors. I think it’s like having in a city a good restaurant with delicious food or a shop that sells very special things that are needed by various people: it will draw people there and they will buy. Here, if you are equipped with all the samaya substances, it draws the dakas and dakinis and the Dharma protectors, who then help you to actualize the path.

There should be a vase to sprinkle water.  

You also put kusha grass and crab grass under the seat. In a fire puja you offer crab grass for the long life of your gurus; you, the practitioner; and benefactors if you’re doing the fire puja for their long life. So, you put the crab grass under the seat to pacify obstacles to long life. That substance has power. The tip goes towards your back. Crab grass is called [tsa tuba] in Tibetan, so it’s long-life grass. It’s for long life and also to remind you of Buddha’s life story. A grass-seller called Tashi offered grass to Buddha for his seat. Buddha sat on that and then became enlightened. You think, “Buddha became enlightened by sitting on a grass seat. I myself will do the same thing. I will follow Buddha’s biography and by meditating without allowing my mind to be distracted, I will achieve enlightenment by sitting on this grass.” You have remember this.

The kusha grass, as I mentioned last night, has the power to purify pollution and to make your mind clear. The kusha grass should have an unbroken tip. I don’t remember completely, but I think it’s to have a clear mind and single-pointed concentration.

You can use the kusha grass you were given last night. You won’t get the long-life grass now, but you can use that kusha grass.

I have already mentioned that you put border marks outside the door of the drubkang, the house of attainment. It is common to do this, but maybe only if you are in retreat for a long time. In Solu Khumbu and Tibet, people usually have a little bit of a platform on which they put one stone with the syllable of the protector (normally HUNG) written on it. However, you could put the HUNG there on a piece of wood or paper or something like that. You then perform the sets of offerings and torma offering for the deity of the written mark.

You also have to arrange the gektor, the torma given to the interferers. You need to burn [kugul], the black incense that is used to the interferers, the spirits. When you burn that incense, the interferers don’t like the smell. Somehow it has the power to make them go away.

I remember that in Washington in the United States I was once doing gektor for a young girl who had some spirit harm. There was a woman who was a little psychic, and when the person who was helping me burned this black incense in preparation for the gektor to be taken out, the psychic woman felt that the spirit who was harming the young girl went away when this incense was burned. Anyway, that was what she felt.

The [pö ngak], or black incense is to dispel, or chase away, interferers. There is also [pö kar], powdered white incense, which you burn when you want to invoke protectors and so forth when you do a puja.

You can use the [pö ngak] and also blessed mustard seed to chase away interferers.

You have to arrange a charcoal fire along with the gektor, and you also need rice to sprinkle.

All these preparations should be made around the time that the sun is setting and before darkness has reached half of the mountain. (It didn’t get done here at that time, however.) Anyway, this will give you an idea of what to do later when you do retreat. Also, doing all the necessary things in this way makes the retreat come out more perfectly and with fewer obstacles. Even though we didn’t get to do it at the right time, the text explains that you do these preliminaries to the retreat when the sun is setting and before darkness has covered half of the mountain.

You then sit on your meditation seat, generate the motivation and then go for refuge and generate bodhicitta. You then generate yourself as the deity and bless the dispelling water, or [sang chu], the water to dispel the interferers abiding in the offerings and so forth. In Highest Yoga Tantra, after you bless the dispelling water, you then dispel the interferers abiding in the inner offering and bless the inner offering. With the inner offering, you then bless the offerings, tormas and so forth. In the lower tantras, however, there is no inner offering, so you bless the dispelling water. In Highest Yoga Tantra you bless the dispelling water and also the inner offering.

After that, you do the gektor, giving torma to the interferers. Last night I think I tried to include the gektor for the retreat as well. Serkong Dorje Chang explained that you should do strong, stable visualization that, by doing the gektor, you have dispelled the black side beings, the interferers who do not like you to do the practice of nearing attainment to achieve the deity. The white side beings are the devas and nagas who like Dharma and like to help Dharma practitioners. Here the black side beings don’t like Dharma and dislike Dharma practitioners. Because of this, they try to harm you when you are practicing Dharma, the nearing attainment retreat. So, you should meditate strongly that they are dispelled, that they have gone away. As it’s mentioned in the teachings, they are fully satisfied by the oceans of uncontaminated nectar and receive everything they want. They all then go beyond this ocean, beyond this world. They are so happy, so satisfied, that they decide never to harm or cause obstacles to you and other sentient beings. It is impossible for them to come back.

When you do the gektor, at that time you then throw out the garbage you collected when you cleaned at the beginning and have kept somewhere. You throw out the gektor and the garbage together.

I don’t remember which text I saw it in, but you think that the garbage is all your delusions, especially your attachment and selfishness, all your superstitions. Also, in relation to tantra, you can think the garbage is ordinary appearances and ordinary concepts. You then think that you throw the garbage into the open mouth of the Lord of Death, who is nine stories down below the earth, and it then becomes nectar. The Lord of Death closes his mouth, which is then sealed with a golden double vajra. This becomes a method to prolong your life, just as with Vajrasattva meditation-recitation and migtsema practice. When you do purification with Vajrasattva or migtsemas, you visualized that all the defilements and negative karmas come out and go nine stories down below into the open mouth of the Lord of Death, where they are transformed into nectar. The jaws of the Lord of Death close, and his mouth is sealed with a golden double vajra. The earth then closes over him. This practice is said to be very powerful in prolonging life.

Outside, you then give a torma to the deity of the retreat mark and request their help in ensuring the success of your practice in not allowing attainments to go out and not allowing obstacles to come in. You then come inside and do the torma offering to the landlord. So, there are three tormas, and the one on the left is for the landlord. You give the torma to the landlord and ask them not to cause any obstacles to the nearing attainment. Now here, since you are asking the white side beings, you give them a white torma. In some Highest Yoga Tantra tormas, there can be onion, garlic and meat, but not in lower tantra ones. Landlord tormas shouldn’t have these things; they should be white tormas made with the three sweets and butter, milk and yogurt. You then ask the landlord for help in your activities.

In regard to the retreat border outside the retreat house, in a strict retreat you yourself don’t go beyond that, and you don’t allow others to come in. Since the mark is generated into the deity, you don’t put it on the ground; you have a platform, like the height of this table, and you then put the retreat mark on top of that. If it’s a stone or something else, you can paint it white and then draw the syllable on it.

After you have made the torma offering to them, you think that the protector or guardian whom you have generated into that retreat mark fully accepts your request not to allow obstacles to come in and attainments to go out. You then bless the abiding house by dispelling with the dispelling water. After that, you bless the seat, and there’s then also protecting the directions. You then protect yourself, blessing your three doors. So, that’s it as far as the preparation.

Now, there is the motivation. When the great, incomparably kind Guru Shakyamuni Buddha was in this world, he brought incredible benefit to sentient beings, teaching the 84,000 teachings of Dharma. Buddha then passed away into the sorrowless state, and all you now see are holy places with only ruins and the stories of how Buddha did this here and that there. So, of course, I myself could die at any time. Since Buddha, who was here in this world, passed into the sorrowless state, I myself could die at any time. There is no doubt that my death could happen at any moment.

There were the Six Ornaments, including Nagarjuna and Asanga, and all the other great pandits, who wrote incredible commentaries to Buddha’s teachings. There were so many of them, but all that is left now is their texts. They have all passed away. It is similar with all the yogis in India and Neal, such as Tilopa and Naropa. All you now see are their caves; nothing else is left. They have all passed away. So, of course, there is no doubt that I myself could die at any time, at any moment.

There were all the Tibetans from the different traditions who achieved enlightenment, such as the great Lama Tsongkhapa and Milarepa. All you now see are their caves, their writings and their life stories. Therefore, there is no doubt that I myself will die, and I could die at any moment.

It is also the same with my gurus; so many of my gurus have passed away and already reincarnated. Many of them are now young. So many of them have already passed away, including Lama Yeshe, who guided me for more than thirty years. So many of the gurus from whom I received many initiations and teachings have passed away. In relation to us, we received many initiations from Kyabje Kirti Tsenshab Rinpoche, who also is now not living. Chogye Trichen Rinpoche also gave initiations some years ago in Taiwan, which many of you may have attended; Rinpoche has also passed away. Therefore, there is no doubt that I myself could die at any time, at any moment.

It is like this with our gurus and also with our families. Many of our family members and friends have already died. This has happened to so many people that I know. Therefore, I myself could any day, any moment. And many people who are the same age as me, who were born on the same day, have already died. So, of course, death could happen to me at any time.

It has happened so many times that I’ve almost died in a car accident, by falling down a cliff or in some other way—even sometimes by being killed by others. So many times in my life I’ve been just about to die, but somehow I haven’t died up to now. It’s a miracle that I’m still alive, that I still have this precious human body. Therefore, what I should do now is abandon negative karma, or digpa, in Tibetan. Since I haven’t died so far, what should I do now? I should abandon negative karma and practice virtue, practice holy Dharma.

Even last night so many people in this world died. They went to bed, but then this morning they’re no longer human beings. Therefore, I could have died last night. I could have gone to bed, and the same thing could have happened to me. If it had happened, by now I would be in the lower realms, in a most terrifying hell. The thought of being in such a place for even one second is most frightening. By now I could be in ice mountains or in a hot hell. What could I do then? Nothing! You’re your karma has ripened and you’re there in those unbearable, terrifying realms, there’s nothing you can do until it finishes.

I don’t remember the exact quotation, but Nagarjuna said that life is transitory, like a flame in the midst of wind that can be stopped at any time. It is like a bubble that can be popped at any time by the wind. So, life is even more transitory than those examples. It is wonderful that we are able to have the opportunity to wake up from sleep, which is nothing else but breathing just in and out. In sleep, the gross mind is absorbed, and there is just breathing in and out. So, having the opportunity to wake up from that sleep this morning is wonderful.

Also, if I had already died last night, I would be in the lower realms because I didn’t do real Dharma practice, intensive, continual Dharma practice. I didn’t do any real, powerful purification. Therefore, if I had died last night, I could be in the lower realms by now.

So, as Nagarjuna says, it’s unbelievable, like a dream.

Every second that I have not only a precious human body but a perfect human body qualified by eight freedoms and ten richnesses is far more precious than the sky filled with zillions of dollars or gold or even wish-granting jewels, which is the one of highest value. The value of all that is nothing compared to the one second that I have this perfect human body, with which I can achieve three great meanings: the happiness of future lives, liberation and enlightenment. Even in one second I can create the causes of these three. Even if I had enough wealth to fill the whole sky, all that couldn’t stop my rebirth in the lower realms nor give me a good rebirth.

It is said in the teachings that if you practice charity but don’t practice morality, you can be born as a wealthy naga. So, you can understand from that. That much wealth alone can’t bring you a higher rebirth, liberation from samsara or enlightenment. Therefore, all that is nothing, even a wish-granting jewel is nothing, compared to the perfect human rebirth that I have for even one second.

Therefore, this means that what I should do is practice Dharma. So, I’ll practice the Hinayana, or Lesser Vehicle, the Paramitayana, or Mahayana sutra, and Mahayana tantra. What does this mean? From the Hinayana path, there are the pratimoksha vows and the lay vow pratimoksha vows; from Mahayana sutra, there are the bodhisattva vows; and from the Secret Mantra, or Vajrayana, there are the tantric vows. That is one thing.

The other thing is that from the Hinayana, there is renunciation; from the Mahayana sutra, there is bodhicitta; and from Mahayana tantra, there is practicing pure appearance in the generation and completion stages of Highest Yoga Tantra and in the path having sign and the path not having sign of the lower tantras. So, I must practice Dharma in this way.

Generally, in the mornings you should generate this as your motivation for the day. After this, you decide, I’m going to die today. So, what should you do? I must practice bodhicitta. I must let go of the selfish mind and engage in the practice of bodhicitta, cherishing others. I’m not going to talk about this here; I’ll give you just a rough idea. You then meditate on the shortcomings of self-cherishing thought and the benefits of cherishing others. There are different techniques, so one day you can use one technique and the next day use another technique. You don’t have to think of all the shortcomings in one day or in one morning. You can think about different shortcomings each day. And you can think about the benefits of cherishing others in the same way. You can then do tong-len practice while reciting OM MANI PADME HUM, whether or not you have a commitment to recite it. If you have a commitment, if you recite OM MANI PADME HUM while doing that practice, your commitment also gets done.

At the end of the tong-len practice, you think, Here I’ve been doing just the visualization. Actually, sentient beings are still suffering, so I must liberate them from all their suffering and its causes and bring them to enlightenment by myself alone. Therefore, I must achieve enlightenment, and therefore, I’m going to do all my activities.

With the motivation of any action, there is the causal motivation and the motivation during the action. Your generating a motivation for your life, for your activities, is the causal motivation. The causal motivation is the one that transforms your actions into virtue, into Dharma, the cause of enlightenment, of liberation from samsara or of the happiness of future lives, in dependence upon the level of Dharma motivation that you generate. The causal motivation is the one that determines whether an action is Dharma or not Dharma.

Here you think, From now on I’m going to do all my activities, including all the virtuous activities of doing preliminary practices, prostrations, mandala offerings, chanting mantras and so forth, to achieve enlightenment for sentient beings. With all your general activities, such as eating, walking, sitting, sleeping and working, you’re also dedicating, I’m going to do all these to achieve enlightenment for sentient beings. You then think, Like Lama Tsongkhapa, may I, in all my lifetimes, be able to offer limitless skies of benefit to sentient beings and to the teaching of Buddha. This is your conclusion.

We’re now going to do Calling the Guru from Afar as the motivation, then we’ll do just the different preliminary parts. We’ll then do Lama Chöpa in one second.

Buddha passing away into the sorrowless state is to teach us about impermanence and death. It is telling us how our life is, giving us a teaching on impermanence and death. Reminding us that we have to remember death. After death, there’s either the body of a happy transmigratory being or the body of a suffering transmigratory being. We will definitely take one of them. Anyway, you think, because of all the suffering of samsara, I must practice Dharma. It is not just to remind you of death but to remind you that because of that, you must practice Dharma.

It is the same with the passing away of Kyabje Kirti Tsenshab Rinpoche, Geshe Lama Konchog and Kyabje Chogye Trichen Rinpoche. It is all a teaching for us. They themselves don’t have death because they’re enlightened beings. Since even an arya bodhisattva, who has achieved the path of seeing, has already abandoned death, how’s it possible that buddha has death? That’s an impossible thing. They don’t have death, but they do this to show us impermanence and death. They are saying, Don’t be lazy and don’t get caught up in meaningless activities, the works of samsara. You must practice Dharma. So, it’s all a teaching for us, just as with Buddha.

So, I just wanted to add that. If you think like that, it’s very effective for your mind. It helps you to make the determination to cut the attachment that clings to this life, to cut the things that are opposite to the three principles of the path: the attachment seeking samsaric pleasure in the future; self-cherishing thought; and ignorance. And it helps you to practice the three principles of the path, and on top of that, tantra.

You can read Calling Guru from Afar by Pabongka Rinpoche in Chinese while I read the Tibetan. Just read it without chanting.

Here when you do this prayer, you have to visualize all your gurus or just your root guru or a specific guru toward whom you have difficulty to generate devotion. While you are then reading Calling Guru from Afar, which describes the kindness of the guru and other guru devotion meditations, you relate each verse to that particular guru toward whom you have generated heresy or have difficulty generating devotion. Doing this practice by relating in this way is very helpful in transforming your mind into guru yoga, in being able to realize that the guru is buddha.

Just reading the words is not enough. While you are reading the words, you have to meditate, you have to relate the words to the guru, to either all the gurus or as I just mentioned. You have to relate the words to the guru and then do the meditations on looking at the guru as buddha, the kindness of the guru and so forth. It then helps.

So, you can receive the oral transmission of this prayer, which is the last teaching I received from my root guru, His Holiness Trijang Rinpoche. To receive the oral transmission, listen while I recite it. You can then read the Chinese after each stanza so that you understand what has been said. First I will read.

[Rinpoche begins the oral transmission of Calling the Lama from Afar, alternating verses in Tibetan with those read by the group in Chinese.]

Here it’s the same as I mentioned before: I could die at any moment, I could be down there in those lower realms at any moment.

The conclusion is not just to be afraid. That alone doesn’t help. If you have the cause to be reborn in the lower realms, there is fear; if you don’t have any negative karma to go to the lower realms, you don’t have fear. That’s basically how it is. The solution is that you have to always practice mindfulness and then practice Dharma. As I mentioned before, you have to practice lam-rim, the three principal aspects of the path. Your mind has to practice the antidotes to the delusions. You have to live in Dharma by practicing the antidotes to those delusions.

[Rinpoche continues the oral transmission of Calling the Lama from Afar, alternating with verses read by the group in Chinese.]

At the end you recite the prayer, “May I not arise heresy even for a second....”

To achieve enlightenment in the brief lifetime of a degenerate time, to achieve enlightenment quicker and quicker, for the sake of all sentient beings, we need to attain all these paths mentioned by Pabongka in Calling the Guru from Afar. For that, I need to purify my defilements; for that, I need to rely upon a special deity, a deity that is powerful in purifying the unimaginable negative karmas collected during beginningless rebirths. Therefore, I am going to do Mitukpa retreat for the happiness (here happiness means the happiness of not only this life but all future lives, as well as liberation and enlightenment) of every single hell being, every single hungry ghost, every single animal, every single human being (including your enemy, the person you don’t like), every single asura, every single sura and every single intermediate state being. I’m doing to do Mitukpa retreat for the benefit of each and every single sentient being. So, that’s the conclusion. The retreat is not for you; it’s for the numberless hell beings, hungry ghosts, animals, human beings, asuras, suras and intermediate state beings.

The retreat is also for the long life of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, the one object of refuge of us sentient beings and the originator of all our peace and happiness, as well as for the long lives of Kyabje Chöden Rinpoche, Kyabje Denma Lochö Rinpoche and all our other gurus. By our purifying our negative karma, may they have long lives and may they succeed in all their wishes.

[Rinpoche explains the Mitukpa practice for the initiates.]

We will now do a quick Lama Chöpa, with tsog.

The reason I have explained how to begin the retreat is that it’s part of your education. Sangha, especially, must know how to guide a retreat. Both lay and Sangha then know how to begin a retreat like. Here I’ve basically explained how to begin a deity retreat for Action Tantra; there are some extra things for a Highest Yoga Tantra retreat. Both lay and ordained people should know how to do a personal retreat, and Sangha, especially, should be able to guide other people in how to do retreat. You need to learn these things so that you can help others to do retreat, as well as for your own practice. That’s why it’s important. 

We’ll begin Lama Chöpa from refuge.

[Rinpoche quickly chants Lama Chöpa, with tsog offering.]

Lama Yeshe would say that it’s okay to drink fruit juice when you take the Eight Mahayana Precepts, but His Holiness Tsenshap Serkong Rinpoche used to say that you can’t have even fruit juice. When I asked Rinpoche whether it’s okay to drink apple juice, Rinpoche said even not apple juice. I was asking because apple juice is very watery, with no solid stuff in it. However, I think the very essence is that it’s okay to drink liquids that are very watery and have no solid stuff inside. The conclusion is that it shouldn’t make kaka after it has come inside the body. The essence is that if there is nothing solid, it’s okay to drink it. Even though Lama said it’s okay to drink fruit juice, Tsenshap Serkong Rinpoche said that you can’t have even apple juice.

In the fasting time you can have brown sugar, honey and anything else that melts. I think that anything that melts doesn’t make kaka; it doesn’t have stuff inside that produces kaka. I think that is the basic point. If there’s something solid inside it, you can’t drink it in the fasting time in the afternoon when you take Eight Mahayana Precepts.

The very strict way to keep the Eight Mahayana Precepts is to eat one meal and not have breakfast; otherwise, you eat breakfast. From when we started taking the Eight Mahayana Precepts during the last two weeks of the course in the very early times at Kopan, we ate just one meal. It started like that and has continued like that, unless someone is sick. Sick people are permitted to have dinner or breakfast. An exception is made for people whose health would be harmed if they went without food.

I thought to mention some details so that it will help you to keep the Eight Mahayana Precepts purely in the future.

The strict way is not to have even milk tea but to drink black tea, like the Theravadins. Many years ago I went to Sri Lanka with Thubten Yeshe, who was a nun at that time; she is not a nun now, and she helps with the Basic Program at Chenrezig Institute. She was traveling with me at that time. She had been before to see Buddha’s tooth in Candy in Sri Lanka and she wanted to take me there on the way to Australia from Nepal. It was a very good time, actually. We first stopped in the city of Colombo and from there went to Candy, where we stayed in a very old British hotel near the temple. I went to the temple in the morning. In front of the stupa with Buddha’s tooth were lined up containers of rice and other food brought by different families. They brought the food there to get the blessing of Buddha’s tooth. Many people, even young boys, would come and take blessing from the tooth. It was quite  inspiring to see the young people come to show their respect.

I think it might have been the first time one young girl had brought her baby there. She put the baby there on the floor in the room where Buddha’s tooth is. She kneeled down and stayed there for about half an hour. She then took the baby out.

The monks were offering bath to the Buddha’s stupa. Unless you’re a special visitor from another country, you don’t see the tooth but just the stupa. However, the tooth has so much power that you feel the power there. So, there is one stupa with another stupa on top, and then another stupa. The monks offer bath to it every morning. During that time, downstairs there are four people beating drums, offering the sound of the drums to Buddha’s tooth. They beat the drums for one hour.

So, I was doing full-length prostrations there. I think it was unusual for them, so the monks and other people were watching me. Groups of tourists would come about every five minutes. I think they stopped coming around four or five o’clock. A monk came and watched me, then left. One old Sri Lankan man then asked me to come upstairs. I was alone, and I wasn’t sure where he was going to take me. I then remembered that in India some people are caught and hung up with a fire down below to draw the oil from the body. So, I suddenly remembered that. I wasn’t sure where he was going to take me. When I went upstairs, the monk, who was the caretaker, was there. He was very happy to see me because I came from Tibet and all that.

He then asked me, “Do you want tea or milk? I said tea because I thought it would be like Indian chai. I visualized and asked for chai, but the monk then ordered Sri Lankan black tea. It worked out perfectly, because the monks don’t drink milk in the afternoon. It fitted with their culture, with their practice.

Anyway, the strict way to do it is to have tea without milk, like the Theravadins. However, while I don’t think you can have tea made purely with milk, because there is solid stuff inside, but I think you can have tea with milk, just with much less milk than you normally use. It might be okay if the tea is mostly water with a little bit of milk. Just reduce the amount of milk.

Otherwise, I think there’s a danger that the Eight Mahayana Precepts you take for one day won’t be kept very purely. There’s a danger of that happening. When you do it for one day, you should do it well. You should make sure everything is perfect. You then have some pure practice to show. So, I’m just mentioning this for your long-term practice. Otherwise, we know one side but not the other. When we then take Eight Mahayana Precepts, we make mistakes all the time because we don’t see one side. Our practice then doesn’t become pure.

[Rinpoche chants the lam-rim prayer from Lama Chöpa in Tibetan, while Ven. Sophia speaks in Chinese; offering of leftover tsog; then rest of the lam-rim prayer.]

Due to all the past, present and future merits collected by me and the merits of the three times collected by others, may all of us here, our family members, all the students and supporters of this organization, many of whom sacrifice themselves to the organization to serve others, and those who rely upon me, for whom I have promised to pray and whose names have been given to me, and all the rest of the sentient beings never be separated in all future lives from the four Mahayana Dharma wheels, and may we train our minds in the common path, the three principal aspects of the path to enlightenment, and then complete the uncommon path, the two stages, and achieve the unified state of Vajradhara as quickly as possible.

[Rinpoche continues Lama Chöpa with Auspicious Verses, followed by a long cymbals’ solo.]

Gang ri ra wäi….

[Rinpoche then chants the prayer for fulfilling His Holiness’s wishes in Tibetan.]

Jang chub sem chhog rin po chhe…. [3x]

Due to all the merits of the three times collected by me and the merits of the three times collected by others, which are merely imputed by mind, may the I, who is also merely imputed by mind, achieve Lama Losang Thubwang Dorje Chang’s enlightenment, which is also merely labeled by mind, and lead all the sentient beings, who are also merely labeled by mind, to that Lama Losang Thubwang Dorje Chang’s enlightenment, which is merely labeled by mind, by myself alone, who is also merely labeled by mind.

Jam päl pa wö ji tar khyen pa dang….
Dü sum sheg päi gyäl wa tham chä kyi….
Chhö kyi gyäl po tsong kha päi….
Dag dang zhän gyi dü sum dang….

[Ven. Sophia leads short mandala offering in Chinese, then Rinpoche’s long-life prayer.]

If you recite this long-life prayer three times, it’s then the same as reciting the long version. It think it is purposely made short. The idea is for it to be something short. The geshe from Florida requested Kyabje Chöden Rinpoche to write something short. I think the idea is to do something short, rather than the long version. So, I think if you repeat it over and over again, it’s the same as doing the long version of the long-life prayer.

[Rinpoche and the group recite the multiplying mantras.]

That is for the merits to be increased 100,000 times. Now the next one is for whatever prayer we did or are doing to be actualized.

[Rinpoche recites the final multiplying mantra.]

Whenever it’s a convenient time to continue, you can start the next session. When you do start, you can start with the practice of blessing the speech, then do the Mitukpa sadhana afterwards.

That’s it. So, good morning, good night.