The Benefits of the Longest Chenrezig Mantra

[Rinpoche and students offer mandala]

Any question? Just one question?

Student: If I don’t want to take the initiation of Vajrasattva now, can I stay only to receive the blessings? I will receive Vajrasattva from other teachers.

Rinpoche: You received Vajrasattva initiation before?

Student: Yes.

Rinpoche: Whatever you like, it’s your choice.

Student: Do you recommend staying, if I will not receive the initiation. Is it good for me or anybody?

Rinpoche: If you are going to practice Vajrasattva you can take it. It’s up to you. It’s up to what your holy mind decides. What were you going to say?

Student: Rinpoche, could you talk to us about the relation between karma and merit?

Rinpoche: Karma and merit. Karma, there is virtuous karma and nonvirtuous karma. [Rinpoche asks the abbot something in Tibetan] I was asking Khen Rinpoche about indifferent karma, karma which is neither virtue nor nonvirtue. Khen Rinpoche, the abbot, was saying there is karma that is a mixture of black and white, virtue and nonvirtue. There is a kind of karma like that. I think if the power of the seed planted on the continuation of your consciousness is positive, I think that is good karma, merit. Merit and good karma don’t have to be separate.

Student: Rinpoche, would you please explain to us about the twelve links and dependent arising and how this helps to develop renunciation.

Rinpoche: I already mentioned this morning how to meditate on twelve links of dependent arising, how we circle in samsara. Out of ignorance, we start so many [sets of] links every day, every hour, every minute.

Then I said even if we are free from one prison, there is another prison outside. Even if we become free after a long time, there is another prison outside; there are more and more circles. It’s kind of endless. Therefore, we must see how important it is to realize emptiness unified with dependent arising, and at least practice mindfulness on emptiness, to meditate every day on emptiness. To study the teachings is so important, so important.

By developing that into a direct perception of emptiness, that ceases the seed of karma and delusions, the cause of suffering. Then, we become free from all the results, all the sufferings. Practicing mindfulness on emptiness is so important. It helps free us from the prison of samsara. It is so important to do this every day and to study the teachings on emptiness as much as possible in this life.

This is coming! More teachings are coming!

Before that I must do the lung. I always forget to do the lung. I must do the lung first, otherwise I always plan to do it at the end but I always forget. This is the longest Chenrezig mantra. The shortest one is OM MANI PADME HUM. It is not OM MANI PADME HUM HRIH, which many people recite.

HRIH is the seed syllable of Chenrezig’s holy mind, so OM MANI PADME HUM is six syllables, not seven syllables, six. OM MANI PADME HUM HRIH is not that. His Holiness has said that many times. So, that is the shortest one.

In the nyung nä text, there is Eleven-faced [Chenrezig] mantra:

NAMO RATNA TRAYAYA / NAMA ARYA JNANA SAGARA VAIROCHANA VYUHA RAJAYA / TATHAGATAYA / ARHATE / SAMYAKSAM BUDDHAYA / NAMAḤ SARVA TATHAGATEBHYAH/ ARHATBHYAḤ SAMYAKSAM BUDDHEBHYAḤ / NAMA ARYA AVALOKITESHVARAYA / BODHISATVAYA / MAHASATVAYA / MAHAKARUNIKAYA / TADYATHA / OM DHARA DHARA / DHIRI DHIRI / DHURU DHURU / ITTE VATTE / CHALE CHALE / PRACHALE PRACHALE / KUSUME / KUSUMA / VARE / ILI MILI / CHITI JVALAMAPANAYA SVAHA

This one is not in the nyung nä text, it is in the Mani Kabum. The very first time I went to Malaysia, I met Tony Wong. His job was to print books. His wife is strongly Christian. He has very close connection to female Chenrezig, the buddha who in China is called Kuan Yin, but his wife said she would allow him to become Buddhist if he won the lottery. He won—I don’t know how much money. She was quite far away, so he did like this. [Rinpoche raises his arms in the air] He won the lottery and was allowed to become a Buddhist.

He has a very close connection to Kuan Yin. At nine o’clock every morning, he would go to his office and ask Kuan Yin, the female Chenrezig buddha, and receive answers from her. In the afternoon, on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, he did his main healing of very sick patients. Then after, when his office was full of sick people and there was not enough room, with people sometimes sitting on the steps, he recited mantras for hours, on and on, on and on.

I gave him a mantra, I don’t remember the name of the deity, but he also recited that for hours. Although there was no statue of Chenrezig, there was a picture, and he put a bottle of water in front of it. There was no visualization; he just it put there with a strong belief that it was blessed. Then he gave the water to the sick people to drink. For example, once there was a man who had cancer, who had to be lifted up by his wife and a friend. But by drinking the water, he was sick but he got better, and the next day he walked alone without anybody’s help. Like that, so many people were healed of their sicknesses by going to his office.

There is a Malaysian city near Singapore, Johor Bahru, where there is a Kagyü monastery. When I was going there from Kuala Lumpur, driven by somebody who had met Lama Yeshe in the past, Tony Wong came with me. All the way from Kuala Lumpur to Johor Bahru, he was explaining how many people had recovered from sickness. Even when we arrived, he hadn’t finished his story.

I went there a few times, until we started the center [in Kuala Lumpur]. A lady called Huei wrote me a letter saying she wanted to start a center. Before meeting me, she wrote a short letter, and then it happened. Before [the center started], Tony Wong twice arranged the timetable. We went outside to see old folks’ homes and different things. Much of the time was in the office, meeting all the sick people, doing observations, checking what they should do, things like that.

It takes a lot of time. I don’t know how other lamas do it. Probably they have clairvoyance and so do things very quickly, but I don’t, so it takes a long time. Tony told me his wife was waiting at home. It was after five o’clock and maybe she was a little angry about having to wait so long, I’m not sure. Then, he didn’t go home. He recited this long mantra with all the people. It’s supposed to be in Sanskrit, but there was only one Sanskrit word in all the words he recited. He asked me about this mantra but at that time I didn’t know about it. He asked many other Kagyü lamas, but it seems he didn’t get a reply. Maybe those many high lamas showed that aspect. I said I would check.

Once when I went to London, there was a student, a nun, Sarah, who was at the London FPMT center. She gave me the Mani Kabum. The Mani Kabum is written by Chenrezig, the compassionate buddha, the Dharma king of Tibet, Songtsen Gampo. I read it but not all. I saw this long mantra, and there were many pages about the benefits, about how it heals so many different sicknesses.

I gave it to Geshe Tegchok, the abbot of Nalanda, the FPMT monastery in France. They have been doing it for many years when they do sojong, the confession ritual, reviving the vows that are degenerated. They also do it when they are abiding in summer retreat. All the monasteries are supposed to do these three things. During the summer retreat, you have to recite the whole sutra, what the Buddha said, which, besides the study of sutra and tantra, makes the place qualified to function as a monastery. Therefore, I gave it to Geshe Jampa Tegchok, the abbot of Nalanda monastery, who was well-known in Sera, Ganden and Drepung. I gave it to him to be translated, so he sent it to the Tibetan university in Sarnath in India to be translated into Tibetan. Most of it was translated but some wasn’t because they said it is very secret.

I’m going to do the lung of that. Sorry, it became a long, long story. They recite this for hours. I think maybe it is supposed to be Sanskrit, but only one word sounds Sanskrit. I don’t think it’s Chinese. I don’t know whether it’s some broken language or whether it is written that way for the patients. If we recite this mantra once, it’s the same as having recited a hundred million times OM MANI PADME HUM. It’s exactly the same. When we recite this once we get the benefit of having done so many years of retreat. It is unbelievably powerful. Whoever recites this mantra even once, when they go in the water, in a lake or an ocean, when the water touches their naked body, the water becomes holy water, blessed water. When that water goes away and touches people and animals, it purifies the unbelievably heavy negative karma created in the past, even like having killed our father or mother, or an arhat, or having harmed a buddha or caused disharmony in the Sangha. Those very heavy negative karmas collected in the past get purified when that water touches anybody, the people playing in the water or any sentient being in the water.

By reciting the mantra, we are free from the three types of birth. We don’t get born in the womb; we are free from that. And we are free from birth from an egg. From our consciousness being conceived in an egg. And we are free from birth due to heat, like lice; we are totally free from that. From here up to enlightenment we are always around buddhas and bodhisattvas, so our life always goes up to enlightenment; it never goes down to the lower realms. That is why anyone who touches the water we have blessed, anybody who goes into the water, people or animals who touch that water, receive incredible benefits. Many lifetimes of heavy negative karma they have collected get purified. Our life always goes up to enlightenment because we are around buddhas and bodhisattvas.

Not always, not to every sick person, but I generally give water blessed by this mantra. You can bless water with different mantras but this is the main one to bless water. I think the power of this mantra helps many people. I’m sure it does for those who have the karma.

Sorry. It doesn’t look good to say that, but it is the power of the mantra. Even though I don’t have the blessing, reciting this mantra gives the power to purify others’ negative karma. I think, by touching their body somewhere and things like that, it becomes great purification. So, when we recite [the mantra and bless] the water of the lake or the ocean, when the water then touches other beings—all the big or small animals in the ocean and the people—it is very precious water; it helps them so much.

I myself don’t have any power, but I try to bless the water especially with this mantra and then put it in the ocean. I did it in Singapore and maybe in Russia. In Russia we went to Kalmykia, a monastery where they built a Maitreya statue like we did. Theirs was a few stories, I think maybe three stories. They built it by using our Maitreya statue as an example. I went there to consecrate it with other monks. I got permission to go to that secret place. It is huge. It is the largest ocean. [Rinpoche is referring to a trip to the Caspian Sea in October 2019] I got permission and soldiers took me out in a boat with quite a number of bottles of water blessed with the mantra. After some time, I poured a little bit of water out and then everybody poured the water [into the Caspian Sea.]

All the animals, all the living beings in the water that the water contacted were purified. There were two or three boats. Different people went and as the boat went out, so many birds came. The soldiers said because the boat had a machine down below, the small fish came and so the birds came to eat them. The birds followed a little bit, but I didn’t see them eating the small fish. They didn’t follow us all the way through, maybe because the sun was setting. I tried to do this. My plan is to try to help sentient beings everywhere living in the water. Whatever they are, big or small, they always have great fear, either trying to eat somebody who is alive or, at the same time, running from their enemy who is right there, trying to eat them. It is like that.

Of course, from an airplane the water looks so blue, and there is a beach and mountains. It looks so nice, so blue, with the sun shining. But when we go a little bit below the surface of the water, there are so many fish, some big like mountains, some tiny, with the big ones eating the small ones, and the small ones, wherever they are, near stones or wherever, trying to hide. But, due to karma, their enemy is right there. Wherever they go, their enemy is always right there. It is like that! Can you imagine the suffering? When a shark comes, it’s huge. And then this other fish. What’s it called? I forgot the name. I wrote down the name of the fish. I wrote it down but it’s in a different book. Sorry.

There are millions [of small fish] in the ocean. I don’t know who leads them. Then, when the shark comes, they get scared and go like this. [Rinpoche indicates with his hands the fish bunching together] They get scared and go like this, becoming a ball. Then, it’s very easy for the shark to eat them, very easy to get them in its mouth. They are so scared; they don’t know, and then they are eaten. That is just one example. Not only sharks, there are other fish that eat them. There is not much we can do but help them, but we should do whatever we can, even just reciting this mantra and blessing water, and then taking it to the oceans or lakes. We should do whatever we can to help them. They are our most dear, our most dear, our most kind, our most precious; they are wish-fulfilling.

On the day [we went to the Maitreya statue], it was good weather. Usually, it seems it’s difficult to stay where the statue was built because so much wind brings dust with it and you get it in your eyes. It’s difficult just being there. That is what they said when they did the consecration the first time. On that day we were lucky. It was very good weather, totally blue, with no wind. Because I didn’t know the place, I bought many plastic bowls, big ones and small ones, maybe a thousand, to make offerings. Before I went, they made beautiful traditional offerings around the statue, with incense. Then, we did puja and did the consecration.

So, think, “The purpose of my life is not just to achieve happiness, even liberation from samsara for myself, not just that. It is to benefit others, to free the numberless sentient beings from the oceans of samsaric sufferings: the numberless hell beings, the numberless hungry ghosts, the numberless animals, the numberless human beings, the numberless suras, the numberless asuras—to free everyone from the oceans of samsara and bring them to enlightenment by myself alone. Therefore, I must achieve enlightenment. Therefore, I’m going to take the oral transmission of the mantra.”

I received this mantra from Kyabje Kirti Tsenshab Rinpoche, whose qualities are like the sky, an amazing, learned, good-hearted and pure teacher.

[Rinpoche begins the lung of longest Chenrezig mantra, The Holy Name Mantra of Chenrezig]

OK. That’s enough. That is the lung.

The Rice Seedling Sutra

In the Rice Seedling Sutra, I think ignorance is like the farmer, the cultivator. Then the field is used as an example of karma. In the field of karma is planted the seed of consciousness. Seed is used as an example of consciousness. The seed is planted in that field. Then, the farmer makes it wet with the water of craving and grasping. From that, the sprout—name and form—arises.

That is what it says. First is the ignorance holding the I as real. That motivates the karma. [Rinpoche yawns] Sorry, I have many bad behaviors. That motivates the karma. Ignorance is the cultivator.

Then, from the field come the crops, bad crops and good crops. Various crops grow from the field. As I said before, the field is used as an example of karma. From the karma, the bad and good results come. Various samsaric rebirths arise. Therefore, karma is like a field. The consciousness, that which goes from one life to another, holds the seed or capacity of bad and good karma until the result manifests, the fruit ripens. Consciousness holds the seed or potential of bad and good karma until it ripens.

So, consciousness is like the seed. With water and heat, when the seed is moistened…. There is the Tibetan word, bang ru, which means the grain used for making alcohol inside a pot. In Solu Khumbu we put a hollow bamboo tube inside and suck the wine through the tube. Bang ru refers to the wet grains inside [the pot] that are used to make chang. It is the material that becomes chang.

So, the heat and water make the seed wet and ripen it and from that, the plant grows. Wetness is used as an example of craving and grasping. From the wetness of craving and grasping, becoming happens. From becoming, the seed of karma is propagated, and from there comes birth, the next life. The links of craving and grasping are like the water and minerals, causing the consciousness to join in the mother’s womb, bringing about the birth.

That is the result. In the example, the plant grows. That is like birth. That is the consciousness joined in the womb and taking birth. In the Rice Seedling Sutra it says,

Well, the phrase dependent arising means that something arises because something else already exists; something is born because something else was already born. That is to say, ignorance causes formations. Formations cause consciousness. Consciousness causes name and form. Name and form cause the six sense sources. The six sense sources cause contact. Contact causes sensation [feeling]. Sensation causes craving. Craving causes appropriation [grasping]. Appropriation causes becoming. Becoming causes birth. And birth causes aging and death, sorrow, lamentation, suffering, despair, and anxiety. Thus does this entire great heap of suffering arise.²⁴ 

I remembered I wanted to tell you this. At Vajrapani, Santa Cruz, there was a Japanese boy. I don’t know if he had cancer, but he was dying anyway. He must have been quite intelligent, but when he was dying he thought the way phenomena appeared to him cheated him, deceived him. I think he got angry because the way phenomena had appeared to his mind had cheated him. Therefore, he got angry at the time of his death. He must have been quite intelligent. Actually, how things appeared to us as real, as truly existent, as existing from their own side, as existing by nature, all this is decoration, projection by our ignorance, through the negative imprints left on the continuity of the consciousness. He knew he was being deceived but he didn’t know that it came from his mind. Because he hadn’t met the Dharma, he didn’t know the Dharma, he didn’t know that. Thinking the way things appeared to him cheated him, he got angry as he was dying.

The most important thing is that this came from his mind; it was projected by his mind, by the negative imprints left by ignorance on the consciousness from beginningless rebirths. He didn’t know that, so that most important thing was missing. If he had known that, it would have helped him know what it was that had cheated him, his mind, the ignorance. Ignorance had cheated him, not only in this life but from beginningless rebirths up to now. He had been cheated by his own ignorance.

Therefore, studying Madhyamaka, shunyata, emptiness, as much as possible and meditating to actualize emptiness is the most important thing we can do if we don’t want to suffer, if we want to be free from samsara. If we want to be free from samsara, this is what we need. All suffering arises from ignorance. As the sutra says, if there is this, that arises, and at the end is the result. This is the evolution of the dependent arising of the all-arising, which means karma and delusion.

Now, with the evolution, we can reverse it. Old age and death come from birth; birth comes from becoming; becoming comes from craving and grasping and so on. It goes down to compounded action comes from ignorance. So, there are two ways, forward and backward, and this second way is going backward.

Similarly, by ceasing ignorance, we cease the karmic formations. By ceasing the craving and grasping, we cease becoming, then birth. From this we cease the seven results: [consciousness,] name and form, the six sense bases, contact, feeling, then birth and old age and death.

Then, in the same way, by ceasing birth we cease old age and death. Then, all the way down to ceasing karmic formations and ceasing ignorance. That is the traditional evolution of dependent arising. Then going backward is the dependent arising of cessation.

That’s why the yogi who seeks liberation needs to meditate like this to become an expert in the evolution of the four noble truths, taking it from ignorance and going back to ignorance.

The Wheel of Life

With the four noble truths, the Buddha provided the information for sentient beings to understand this very easily. The Buddha used the rice seedling, an outside crop, as an example to understand the twelve dependent-related limbs. Then, making a drawing [of the Wheel of Life] makes it easy for sentient beings to understand.

One of the stories is explained in Dulwa Namche, Clarifying the Vinaya. Among Guru Shakyamuni Buddha’s disciples, the hearer-listeners, the supreme, the one excellent in wisdom is Shariputra, and the one who is expert in psychic powers is Maudgalyayana. From time to time the two arhats, with their psychic powers, would travel through the six realms. When they came to Dzambuling, this human world, they explained to Guru Shakyamuni Buddha’s disciples the various ways that sentient beings are suffering, such as the sufferings of the hell beings and so forth. The Buddha’s younger brother, Chungawa, didn’t like at all the idea of becoming celibate, so Shariputra and Maudgalyayana took him to the lower realms with their psychic powers and showed him the sufferings of the lower realms. They showed him how desire leads to the lower realms. That is how the Buddha’s younger brother entered the Dharma.

And then, all the Buddha’s disciples came around and this story was explained to the Buddha by his attendant, Ananda. Then, in this sutra Clarifying the Vinaya the Buddha said,

Ananda, those two great disciples Shariputra and Maudgalyayana won’t happen like that at other times, with one excellent in wisdom and one excellent in psychic powers, therefore, draw the Wheel of Life outside the monastery.

Outside the monastery means like we have done here in Kopan, outside the gompa. The Wheel of Life depicts the five [types of] transmigratory being: the hell transmigratory beings are one, the animal transmigratory beings, the hungry ghost transmigratory beings, the human transmigratory beings and the sura and asuras (which are put into one category).

Then, the Buddha said,

Below draw the hell sentient beings and the animals and the hungry ghosts, the three lower realms draw [and above] show the deva and human beings. Then, draw the eastern world, Exalted Body, and the western world, Enjoying the Ox. These worlds come in the mandala. They have many qualities, so offering to them helps us have success. Then in the north, Uninteresting Sound. A week before they die, they hear a bad sound, which means a sign that they are going to die. Then, also draw the human world, Dzambuling. In the center of the wheel, draw attachment, anger and ignorance.

That is what is explained in Clarifying the Vinaya. So here, in the center of the Wheel of Life, there is attachment, anger and ignorance.

It will come again later with the clarification, but I’ll explain this anyway. [At the hub of the wheel] there is a pig, [a pigeon and a snake]. Both the pigeon’s tail and snake’s tail should come from the pig’s mouth. In many Wheels of Life, they draw the tail of the rooster in the mouth of the pig and the snake in the mouth of the rooster. That is incorrect. In Nepal maybe people draw the Wheel of Life as they have been taught by their teacher without looking to see what is explained by the Buddha in his teachings.

Drawing it that way is probably to show that anger arises due to attachment. But how it is explained in the sutra is that from the pig’s mouth come the tails of both the pigeon and the snake, signifying that ignorance, holding the I real, is the root of samsara. The pigeon signifies attachment. I saw a geshe explain once that pigeons have so much attachment. If you throw your spit on the ground, a pigeon will take it and feed its wife or husband. I don’t know, it will feed the other pigeon from its mouth. There is so much attachment in the relationship. That is why a pigeon is used in the Wheel of Life for attachment.

Then the snake signifies anger. Both tails are in the mouth of the pig. That means if we have the root of samsara, the ignorance that holds the I as true, then anger and attachment also come. These three are the three poisonous minds. There are many other delusions, such as the six root delusions and the twenty secondary delusions. Then there are the 84,000 delusions. But these three poisonous minds are the true cause of suffering; they are delusions.

On either side of the hub there is a black side and a white side. Depending on which of the six realms the being is going to be born in, there are different signs in the intermediate state. If they are going to the lower realms, such as hell, they are depicted on the dark path. When they are going to a higher realm, they are depicted on the light path. The intermediate state beings who are going down are depicted as naked people, chained and in the black part showing the negative karma, going to lower realms.

Then, there is white one, the virtuous path, then… [Rinpoche sneezes] Excuse me. I think it’s time to stop. It says time to stop. On the white path, the beings are going to the higher realms. They are well dressed, even the lay people, well dressed, going up. Due to virtue, they are going to be born in the upper realms.

OK. I’ll stop here. After a few minutes, we’ll start again. I’m joking! OK. Break.

Rinpoche to Ven. Robina: How many dedications did you do while we were doing one? While I was doing one slowly, I think you did it a few times, three or four times.

OK, thank you.

You can leave.

[Rinpoche leaves but later returns to do his preparation for the Vajrasattva jenang]

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Notes

²⁴ See the Rice Seedling Sutra, Ch.1, v.4, at read.84000.co/translation/toh210.html#UT22084-062-010-section-1. [Return to text]