Серия ежедневной практики, курс 01 — Мандала шагов к просветлению (1999, Реддинг), занятие 2

[Speaker 1]
Session 2 Namo Buddhaya Namo Buddhaya Namo Buddhaya Sangye chakram sangye chakram la Chanchu adhutamiktya suchi Radhi chunchang gipe sanam ki Nama pinche sangye krupasho Sangye chakram sangye chakram la Chanchu adhutamiktya suchi Radhi chunchang gipe sanam ki Nama pinche sangye krupasho Okay, if you go back to page 90, I think, yes? That verse talks about both the stages. We finished one of the stages.

We talked about Completion stage, which is the nearest door to the courtyard, okay? Then we have to cover the other stage, which is called Creation stage, okay? Creating something, which is called gyerim in Tibetan.

And that'll be the room before that, okay? And there's a hallway that connects the two. So we need to visualize a hallway, all right?

So that's going to be the next stage, all right? The hallway is going to be like this. It's at the end of the verse, it says, the practice of the four times highest that there is.

tun shing nyang drub chu le miyawar dak pe su shing drub par jeng gi lob in the Tibetan. Sometimes, some texts say tun shing nyang drub chu le miyawar some texts say nyang drub chu le miyawar but the point is the same. There's something between the two stages that you have to complete to get from Creation stage to Completion stage, okay?

And that's tun shing nyang drub, the practice of the four times. This refers to your tantric retreats, okay? Typically, many of you have taken the Vajrayogini initiation from Ken Rinpoche.

And when you take that initiation, you make a commitment to do four major tantric retreats in your life. And you have a certain commitment to finish a certain mantras and other practices during those retreats. And then I remember when they told me about this...

You know, Rinpoche gave the first initiation maybe 20 years ago, or longer. And he kept telling us we had to do these four retreats. And I thought it just seemed like so arbitrary to me.

You know, why is it exactly four? And why is it so many mantras per retreat? And anyway, I can't meditate when I'm doing a mantra because it disturbs me.

I did meditation with Goenkaji in India 25 years ago. I loved it. Vipassana meditation.

And I said, I don't see how you can recite something and meditate at the same time. It's contradictory. You can't do that.

So for like eight, ten years, I didn't do any of those retreats. I just didn't get it. Before I started my first one, I went to Rinpoche and said, you know, can I leave the mantras?

And he said, no. And then he went to India, and I had time to do my first retreat. And that's a very necessary process.

I mean, certain things happen to you during those retreats. You have to do those retreats. You have to do all of them.

You have to make them full retreats. There's all this American deal, negotiation with Ken Rinpoche about that, you know. Can I not do a full one?

Can I finish it in two weeks? Can I do it at home? Can I do half this week and half next month?

And Rinpoche is just trying to get you to do anything. So he's like, well, okay, you know. But it doesn't work, okay?

I mean, if you want to get to the last room, you have to do those retreats, okay? So now we have another, I call it a hallway, all right? So now, your mind is in the courtyard, then to the dzogrim, to the completion stage room, and then to get into the completion stage room, you've got to go through the hallway.

So you've got to have a little hallway in there. And somehow you've got to put a four in there. I don't know, four stands with statues on them or something, or four buckets, or whatever, four, anything you want.

But there should be four, you've got to remember four, okay? Four sessions, four session retreats. It doesn't refer to the four retreats, it refers to how you do the retreats.

And there's a certain protocol to those tantric retreats. They're called lerung retreats, which means to get you ready for something, which is the last room, right? And you have to go through those four retreats.

And don't shortchange yourself by trying to negotiate it with Ken Rinpoche. Don't shortchange yourself and say, I heard Steve Foster did his in 15 days. Maybe I could do it in 14 days and get back to work.

Or something like that. Don't think like that. It takes five weeks, okay?

Maybe six. If you do it nice, if you do a good one. And you can do your mantras slowly.

Instead of trying to figure out how fast you can do them, you should be figuring out how slow you can do them. You see what I mean? And how much you can get out of them.

And this whole thing of a mantra where you do so many retreats, it seems so arbitrary to me. I resisted it for a long time. It's like, who cares?

So you blah, blah, blah something a hundred thousand times. I don't see how that's going to change you. And I'd rather meditate.

But it's not like that at all. They have a deep, deep effect on your subconscious. Certain things happen to you.

You lerung. You see? Lerung means to get you ready for something.

Those retreats are called lerung retreats. And they get you ready for the last room, okay? They prepare you for the last room.

Your whole vision changes. Your whole ability to see things changes. It's like going from the kid to the guy who took the sugar cube.

You know what I mean? You don't see it as candy anymore. You see it as something holy.

It's the same thing, but the difference is you did your four retreats. You see? It's a big difference.

It's totally different. They do have an effect on you. And just about the end of the third or fourth one, something does change.

And it does take about four of those retreats. So, that's the next lam rim back, okay? Before you get to creation stage.

Between creation stage and completion stage, you have to do those. Those four retreats relate to both. That's why it's a hallway, okay?

To get the full effect, to get to the point where you can see the secret stuff, you have to finish the four retreats. Tantra keeps itself secret. If you don't do the four retreats, you won't get the rest.

You see what I mean? And you have to do it. Yeah?

[Speaker 2]
Would you say the practice of the four tantras refers to doing the four retreats or doing them in a particular way?

[Speaker 1]
No, it refers to the protocol of the retreat. Which means, during those retreats you do four sessions.

[Speaker 2]
Okay?

[Speaker 1]
It could be called a four session retreat. But you do four four session retreats. You do four retreats in which you do four sessions a day.

And they have a certain timing and things like that. And I can't tell you about that. When you're ready to do one, and you have all the proper training and initiations, then we can negotiate.

But you have to do four of those. And when it says in the text, the practice of the four times, four times means you do a certain number of sessions per day, and you do them at a certain time of day, and you do certain things during those sessions. And that's what four times means.

So Je Tsongkapa is here referring to your le rung. And le rung, get ready for what? You see, I mean, I have lots of friends, they say, I'm doing my le rung.

I say, do you know what le rung means? They say, yeah, le surungwa, got ready for something. I say, what?

They say, I don't know. You know, I mean, it's for the fourth door. I mean, for the last room.

Okay? You, if you do those retreats, then you're, you're very, very, your ability to see things changes. And you move to a different level.

And things that meant one thing at the last level mean a different thing at this level. And the difference is the four retreats. So you have to do them.

And you can't get it really into the last room until you do the four retreats.

[Speaker 2]
Okay?

[Speaker 1]
So it's not just some arbitrary thing that Lama's made up, or, I heard Lama Serpa accused of, he's so busy, that when someone comes to him for instruction, he says, you know, people say it's an easy way to get rid of his students. He says, come back when you've done 500,000 of this mantra. And they come back, and he's like busy, and he says, come back when you've done 300,000 satsangs, you know.

It's a good way of getting rid of them for three years or something. You know, not like that, okay? That's not the point.

It has a deep, deep subconscious effect of preparing you for the last room. Okay? So the hallway is going to be four tantric retreats.

Okay? And you've got to visualize that. So now we have like three elements.

We have the courtyard with the, that nice body and mind. Then you have the first room next to the courtyard, which is completion stage, with the plumbing all messed up. And then there's the hallway, with four anything, I don't care, four butter lamps, or whatever you want to think, but those are four, four retreats of four sessions each.

Okay? And, you know, to really get the place ready, to go buy the groceries, or arrange for a cook, to travel to where you're going to go, to set up the altar properly, which is a big thing in a tantric retreat, to do all the protection circles, to bless your seat, to do your dharmas, everything else, the preparation takes a week. And then the mantras themselves take three to four weeks.

So, you've got to think, in my, my idea is you've got to think five to six weeks. I don't think anything starts happening until about two weeks into it, or two and a half weeks into it. It takes about two and a half weeks for your mind to come into a tantric retreat.

And then you only have, like, two weeks left. You see what I mean? It's very necessary to, to do it that way, and to think of it that way.

Okay? So that'll be that door. Then we'll do one more room, okay?

We'll do the room on the other side of the hallway. Okay? Which is creation stage.

Okay? This is called kīrim. There's a couple of things to say about kīrim.

It's basically a practice where you train yourself to see your world in a certain way, in a sacred way. Okay? So it's a, it's called takpanyāṁsara.

Takpanyāṁsara means make-believe, the yoga of make-believe. And you, you force yourself to see your world in a certain way, in a certain holy way. And you force yourself to see the people and the physical objects in your world in a certain way.

And that's the next room. There's two parts to kīrim, okay? One is in the Vajrayogini kīrim, and there are many, many kīrims, but in Vajrayogini, for example, you're practicing eleven different make-believe yogas.

[Speaker 2]
Okay?

[Speaker 1]
There's eleven different yogas or practices that you do. And they mostly relate to visualizations or trying to see things in a certain way, or pretending that certain things have happened around you, and like that. And I would call that first stage kīrim, first stage creation stage, you know, first level creation stage.

There's another level of creation stage, which is where you start seeing things that way, period, and you're not making it up. You see what I mean? You see the distinction?

At one stage of creation stage, you are trying to see things in a certain way, trying to see things as sacred. And then there's another level of creation stage where it's just happening to you. Do you see the distinction between the two?

You can go and get an initiation from somebody and get permission to try to recite a long practice of creation stage and go through eleven different visualizations and try to see them a certain way and try to think of them a certain way. And that's what we're doing when we do tse chu, for example. But there's another level of kīrim where, despite yourself, you are seeing things sacredly.

And that's a big distinction. One is like a kīrim that's sort of happening to you. One is a kīrim that you're trying to do.

You see what I mean? And there's a big difference between the two things. Now I'm going to stick on you one more hallway and then we'll visualize it, okay?

What's the difference between a person who has it happen to them, which is a lot more fun, and a person who is trying to see it that way, which is like 75 pages of sadhana, you know? When and where we get to the cake, you know? Big difference.

Big, big difference. I'm not putting down sadhana. You have to do sadhana because it prepares you for the other thing.

It's like a le rung for the last room. But how do you get it to happen to you? You see what I mean?

What's the difference between those poor souls who recite or try to recite some kind of tantric sadhana for 20 years and nothing happens to them? And they get bored and they finally quit. What's the difference between them and people who say, man, all these things happened to me last week, you wouldn't believe it.

Wait, let me tell you what happened to me. And every week it's happening to them. What's the difference between those two people?

It's the next hallway out. So now we've got what? Two rooms and two hallways going out.

Now the second hallway is in the next verse going backwards. Page 85. So we'll recite that verse.

Ready? Ready? I'll do a one two three.

In the monastery they don't go one two three, they do what? The Unze, the Channing Master goes, ...

[Speaker 2]
That means we are allowed to do this.

[Speaker 1]
Really! Okay. One, two, three.

One two three. Bless me to know the genuine certainty that when I enter Death, the cause that gives me both the attainments is keeping my pledges and vows most pure. Grant me then to always keep them, even if they cost my life."

So the second hallway out is the vows, is keeping your tantric vows and your tantric pledges. And since one of the secret vows is to keep your other vows, it's all your vows. So we're talking, well, let's leave it here at the tantric vows because those are going to come later.

Keeping your tantric vows. What I'm trying to say is there's two kinds of Americans practicing tantra. And I've met them because I travel all over the United States.

I teach at almost every center imaginable. There's these poor guys that got initiations from Lama Yeshe in 1974 and were persistent. And they've been reciting this thing.

It's all dog-eared, you know, it's all worn out, the papers are falling apart. And they've been reciting this thing for 25 years, you know, every day. And then you say, well, what's different?

You know, how do you feel different? They say, not much, you know. Honestly, they say not much.

And then you say, well, don't you feel strange about that? And they feel, well, yeah, sometimes they get a little discouraged, you know. And you say, well, you know, what are you going to do about it?

They say, I don't know, you know, I don't know what to do about it. And you say, well, are you keeping your vows well, your tantric vows? And they say, I don't know what they are, you know.

And you say, well, what did you think was going to happen? You know, this is what makes tantra work, is the vows. So there's nothing else about tantra that makes it work.

You see, if Buddha could make you a tantric deity by putting some kind of water on your head, Abhigekha dasamaya sriya hung, then we wouldn't be here. He would have done it before, because he's not a sadistic, right? He wants us to get enlightened.

So if it's just a process of some kind of sprinkling water on you, or putting some kind of funny thing, or ringing a bell at you or something, if that's all it takes, then we wouldn't be here, okay? So, tantra doesn't work and cannot work unless you keep your vows. You cannot keep your vows if you don't know what they are.

Okay? I always say that, you know, it seems to be that lamas fly into town for a weekend and they give like three, four, five initiations and they fly out. And then people are left, like, stranded on this desert island, you know?

And they say, what am I supposed to do now? Oh, recite this thing. What's it mean?

I don't have time to tell you. And don't forget to keep your vows, you know? And they say, what are my vows?

And they say, see you later. You know, and I think we should boycott those. I think Americans should demand the vows, you know, you should say.

I heard, you know, this guy, Je Tsongkapa, he says, you can't get anywhere unless you keep your vows. You have to teach me what they are. You know what I mean?

So, let's hold out, you know? I say, boycott those initiations until they give you the vows, okay? I mean, you take the vows when you take the initiation, but if they don't tell you what they are, then how can you keep them?

You see what I mean? And this is the only thing that makes Tantra work. See what I mean?

You don't get into the second room now, the creation stage. Doesn't work if you don't know your vows and you don't keep them. It just doesn't work.

Nothing works. It doesn't do anything. It just doesn't.

And if you do keep them, then you don't have to sit there and read a 75 pages of sadhana and try to memorize all the colors of this guy's right arm, third finger, you know? You'll meet him. You know what I mean?

See the difference? And you can say, you know, Jetsun Kappa, they called him, they said they're painting the, is it 35 Buddhas? There's a cave and it was worn off the wall and they started to paint them and they said, help us out, Jetsun Kappa, you know, what color is number four?

And he goes, ah, blue. You know, because he can see them, you know what I mean? And it's a true story, okay?

And that's the difference. You see, if you keep your vows, if you know them and you keep them, then kirim becomes a process of something that happens to you and not something you're trying to make up, okay? You meet these people and you start to meet them and you see them and you, and that can only happen if you keep your vows, okay?

Because the difference between you now and the difference between you then is only good karma, you see? You have to collect enough powerful good karma to see them and that is only done by keeping your tantric vows, okay? So the, now we got two rooms and two hallways, okay?

There's a guy in the courtyard or the girl or whoever it is, enlightened being. They got there because they fixed their plumbing in the room next to the courtyard. They got there because, what?

They did their tantric retreats. They got there because they kirim, either the one where they tried to make up all this stuff or the better one, which is where it just started happening to them. And they got there because they were in the last hallway, which is the hallway before that, just keeping your vows.

And I, if I was you, I would visualize that hallway as, in the beginning as a book where I'm learning my vows and then later on as a book where I'm keeping my vows. Thun Druk, okay? Thun Druk, six-session yoga, you know?

I was, when they told me, you have to do six-session yoga, I'm like, I don't even like to exercise. You know, you got to do it six times a day. And, okay, it doesn't mean anything like that, okay?

Six-session yoga, the guts of it, you know, like the, you know, like when you have a medicine and there's an active ingredient. The active ingredient is checking your vows six times a day, period. You know?

There's a lot of other practices there, but the active ingredient is that that forces you to check your vows six times a day, okay? How many vows do you have if you've taken an Anuttara Yoga Initiation? There's a trick here.

Some of the vows have five parts, six parts, 10 parts, okay? If you break it out, for a full monk it's 484 different commitments. Minus 253 is, I don't know what, 200 and, 258?

Yeah, anyone in this room who's not a fully ordained person who took an Anuttara Yoga Initiation has 258 separate commitments already, whether they told you or not. Now, is that a big pain in the ass or what? No, it's an incredible opportunity.

You see what I mean? Like, it just keeps out many things and you get to get enlightened. You see what I mean?

You have to think of it that way. It's not like some, I don't know, it's not like a restriction or something like that. It's more like, hey, do this and you get to have that body, you know?

I mean, it's a good deal. It's actually a deal, you know? They're offering you that body and that mind and that ability to send out that many enlightened beings if you just keep these, you know?

So, you have to learn them and you have to keep them. One time I was in a later retreat, I said, I'm gonna do a real Tunduk. I'm gonna check 484 vows today.

I started at like 4.30 in the morning, right? And it was 11 o'clock at night and I took a lunch break, okay? And I didn't finish 484 vows, you know?

So I'm like, how can I do this six times a day? And then, the lamas have taught this thing where you check them on a rotating basis, okay? Like, rather than check 484 vows like this, dak chok shenpo chenpo mito shi, shakya minne, dey chok pongwa dang, ko chokwa dang, min chokwa, min rung dang, tsam me ngang dang, la dang dang, tan chokwa dang, ma chokwa dang, nin dang dang, do dang dang, sok tu bang dang, nye mong dang, tan chokwa dang, chok sang dang, nye nye mong dang, chok sang dang, min rung dang, min rung dang, dak chok shenpo chenpo mito shi, tsangwa chodu ma rang, la dang dang, san dang, nye chen dang, nye jay, kye sung.

That's how they do it. That doesn't work, okay? That's not gonna work.

Okay, did you just check your 18 root bodhisattva vows? It's impossible. You can't do that.

You know, it's important to recite the thing you committed to recite. You should recite it. That's not checking your vows, okay?

Unless you're some kind of super Einstein who can, I don't know, in that amount of time, you can check 18 vows, I don't know. But you have to get to a point where you have to choose certain vows during the day. So there's this book that we keep, you know.

And if you don't know how to do it, talk to somebody next to you who seems to be scribbling something before class, okay? And that's checking your vows, okay? So you must know your vows.

If you check them that way, you check one every two and a half hours or something? If you check them that way for a few years, amazing thing. If you even do it for a few weeks or months, amazing things will start to happen to you.

If you do it sincerely. If you do it half-assed, you'll get a half-assed result, okay? If you do it sincerely, really examine your heart six times a day, check your vows, then kīraya will start to happen to you.

And you don't have to try to force it. You see what I mean? The distinction?

You don't have to sit and visualize what color is this guy's third finger, okay? You start to meet him, okay? Then it's a lot easier for those of us who can't memorize very well.

You just meet him and say, oh, you're blue. Okay? Okay?

And the difference is just that, keeping your vows, all right? And that's why it's in... There's a whole verse dedicated to that.

He says, after you've entered dhās, which we didn't talk about yet, you have to keep your pledges and your vows. And that's what gives you your attainments, okay? So you have to think of that.

Now you've got a lamrim meditation with five parts already. You got the inside of the courtyard, you got the room closest to the courtyard, you got a hallway into that room, leading to another room, and then you got a hallway before that. Now, what they do in the monastery is to say, lungjung, lungdok, lead it to me front ways, lead it to me back ways, you know?

Skip every other one, lead it back to me every other one. And then, you know, we do this in the monastery during debate class. So, going front ways, first hallway.

I mean, vows. Next?

[Speaker 2]
Gyerin.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, gyerin meaning you see them. You see what I mean? Or you can do your sadhana.

Okay? If you don't do the vows so well. Then next?

[Speaker 2]
Retreats.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, four retreats. And then? Dzogrim.

Dzogrim meaning coming, okay? And then you get that body, and that mind. Okay, how about the other way?

You want to put a body and mind, got to do the dzogrim. Before that, got to do the four retreats. Before that, got to do the vows.

Okay? Okay, meditate on it. We'll do a meditation.

All right? And get those... And that's the way it is.

You can't skip one, okay? It doesn't work that way. That's the thing about the Lam Rim.

And if you teach it to somebody this way, it's very good, because they get into that emotion that you can't get to one room from another unless you go through the hallway. You see what I mean? Because I think some people, when they learn Lam Rim, they just kind of learn, oh, I learned a death meditation, and there was a refuge in there somewhere, and there's something about a llama.

And, you know what I mean? But there's no feeling that you must go through here to get to there. You see what I mean?

And you got to think that Lam Rim is like that. Okay? Okay?

Okay, so, get ready. We'll meditate for about 25 minutes, half an hour. Make up your own mnemonics, okay?

Embellish each room. You just heard a talk about it. Put some stuff in there.

You're going to come back there a week from now and say, now, what's those four flashlights there, you know? I forget what that was. You know, put something in the room to remember, okay?

And then you've got a whole Lam Rim meditation in your toolbox. You can pull it out any time you want, okay? We're not going to do the preliminaries because we did such a good preliminaries last time, okay?

Okay, so just do, I suggest you do three rounds of ten breaths, and then start walking through the rooms forwards and backwards. I suggest you walk through them, and don't treat it as if you're looking down at them or something like that. Like, actually walk through them.

You look over here, there's four things there. You say, oh yeah, four retreats. And then maybe have four petals on each flower.

Oh, I got to do four sessions during each retreat, you know? There's a calendar up there, and it's marked May 1st to June 15th. Oh yeah, I can't do those 14-day tantric retreats, okay?

Going to take five or six weeks, okay? Something like that. When I go like that, that's the end of the session.

Or maybe I'll just go like that, okay? That's easier. All right, they do that in the monastery.

It'll be about half an hour. If you get bored with the rooms, and the rooms are all filled up nicely, then think about the meaning, you know? Like, how many of your tantric vows do you know?

And start thinking about them, yeah.

[Speaker 2]
Can we go backwards?

[Speaker 1]
You go both ways, I think. Go in and out, you know, okay? Personally, I like to start with where I'm going.

I think, spend five, ten minutes on how it feels to be Vajrayogini sitting there, or Tara sitting there, okay? Okay, that's good. I'd like you to take a break now.

Five, ten minutes. Get something to drink, stretch, then come back. Okay, let's start again.

Pull out your book, page 83. We're going to read verse 10, okay? This is how you get into the vow room.

This is the next room before that. Vow hallway, I should say, okay? 83, ready?

One, two, three. Grant that once I've practiced well, the paths shared and become so that it's worthy. I enter with perfect ease the way of the Dhamma, highest of all ways, holiest door to come inside for the fortunate and the good.

The main thing here is paths shared. And paths shared means the non-secret lamrim, okay? The lamrim path, all right?

So, shared by what? Shared by the open teachings and the secret teachings. So, like you hear people say, there's this myth that I think is dying out now, that tantra is higher than other stuff.

And once you get to tantra, you can ignore all your other vows and things like that, or something like that, that people who are practicing tantra are exempted from normal morality or something like that. And that's, the point here is that it's not the case at all. That shared means the six perfections, which we're going to get to a couple of rooms back, are necessary for the success of both, you know, the slow way and the fast way.

And it's a foundation. The idea is not that you reject what you've learned before once you get to tantra. The idea is that you build on what you've learned before so that you get high enough to practice tantra.

So, you have to practice what we call the shared paths, the shared steps of the path, okay? And it says here, once I've practiced well the paths shared, means you have to be a master of the open teachings before you get to the tantric teachings, okay? You know, in a practical way, I'd say, finish the 15 ACI courses.

Seriously, well. And know their contents extremely well. And then you'd be pretty well prepared.

And in the monastery in the old days, you had to be a Harampa Geshe to go to tantric college. They only graduate two a year from Sarah, me, out of, you know, 1,500 monks. It's two a year, graduating.

So, that's how good you had to be at the open teachings before you were allowed to study seriously the secret teachings. So, it's a little easier nowadays, but I'd say, know the contents of those 15 courses well. And that implies the three review courses, just 18 courses.

And I'm not kidding. You know, really, you should know the contents well. And then you'd be, you know, assuming your head was in the right place, you'd be prepared.

You know, it's possible, by the way, as you noted, to do the 18 courses intellectually and not have your head in the right place. So, it's not necessarily true that if you finished all the courses, you'd be qualified. But I'd say, if you did, and your heart was in the right place, then you could enter the tantric teachings.

And that's what the last paragraph here on 83 says. It says, you know, you have to know the information and practice the open teachings of Lam Rim well. But then, very importantly, you have to have compassion.

And your mind has to be in the right place. And then you can enter the tantric teachings, which they call here the Diamond Way, okay? So, now we gotta put a room on the other side of that hallway we just finished, okay?

The hallway was keeping your vows properly. Now, the room before that, it's gonna get complicated, okay? I suggest you make that room round, and like a little bit of crystal palace or something.

This is the mandala of the Tantric Daily, you know? This is your initiation, okay? This is entering the mandala.

So, I would put a room. Somebody asked me how dark are the rooms so far. To me, they're pretty dark.

Mine are adobe, okay? But this room is gonna be lots of skylights and stuff like that, crystal, you know? Lots of crystal.

This is the initiation room. And this is where you get your vows, okay? So, it has to be before that hallway.

And this is where you are granted premier stages of tantra, okay? So, you're gonna have a room. It's gonna be big.

It's gonna be well-lit. It's gonna be crystal, lots of crystal. And it's a mandala, and you're being granted initiation by a qualified lama, okay?

So, you have the big difference between the ten qualifications of a normal lama and the qualifications of a tantric lama, okay? And they have to be someone who's very, very skilled at tantric teachings. People ask me, how do you find a teacher like that, you know?

I mean, there's basically three or four ways, right? One is to go around the East Village to the coffee shops and see who's giving initiations that weekend, you know, on the posters and on the wall. I mean, that's one way.

That's not a real initiation, okay? I mean, is it an unreal initiation? Probably it imparts some kind of seed to you.

I mean, if it's a good lama, qualified lama, probably, even if you never met them, and you just saw a poster and you went there and you got this initiation, I mean, probably there could be some seed planted, okay? But a proper initiation is much different, all right? And the one that really works to give you the blessing that you need should come from a lama that you are very, very intimately connected to and that you know very, very well.

You know, I'd say typically five, 10, 15, 20 years you've known them and you're very, very close to them and they trust you and you trust them and you would put your life in their hands. You know, if they said, do this, do that, and it was risky to your life, you wouldn't hesitate, you know? That should be the relationship.

So the idea that you can just walk into some initiation somewhere, and I've met many Americans who said this initiation, you know, and I said, what do you mean you think? You know, and they said, I don't know, I didn't know what I was doing, my friend took me to this place, it was like $12, I went and I went in there and the guy did something and then I don't know, I don't know if I got the whole initiation or what and I don't know what I was supposed to do after that. I think it was ablokeshvara, but it might have been chenrezig, you know?

You know what I mean? Something like that. And just this kind of, you know, it shouldn't be like that.

I mean, it should be someone that you are intimately related with and you've checked them out carefully and you would risk your life for them, you know what I mean? And vice versa. There's many tantric texts that say if a lama gives an initiation to a student without that relationship, it's like, it's just something like a horse tied to an elephant and the elephant falls off a cliff and then the horse goes with them, you know?

So, like, the student won't know what to do, they won't know the vows, they'll practice it wrong, they'll fall off a cliff into the lower realms and then drag the teacher also. You see what I mean? Because you're not, from the teacher's side it's improper and from the student's side it's improper.

So, it should be someone closely, intimately related with it, who knows you well, okay? And who's gonna be able to guide you and lead you. They have to take care of you after that.

It's more than getting married. It's much more serious than that. You see what I mean?

So, it should be something you've thought about very carefully and someone who gives you those initiations. I think there's three kinds of initiations going on nowadays. One is these huge initiations, 5,000 people come and His Holiness is doing that to, he's gonna do it in Indiana.

He does it to give some kind of small seed to people. It's not the full initiation. It doesn't have all the parts of the initiation.

And he's doing it knowingly to try to plant a small seed in people's hearts that later they can get a more serious initiation. I'd say there's a second level initiation where the students of a Lama, maybe 30, 40, 50, 100 people are getting initiated at once and they have more information about what they're doing, but not as much. By the way, once you take an initiation with another person, you become their Vajra brother or sister and you have all these commitments to them.

Like you're in initiation with some person and you have the same Lama and they're giving you initiation and you don't even know this person. You have this commitment to them also. Once you take an initiation with another person from the same Lama, you have to treat each other like close family.

Like if you have the slightest bit of jealousy, the slightest bit of friction between you, it's very heavy karma. And you know, you got to know what you're getting into. So then there's a third level initiation which is called Shelshe, which is one Lama granted to one person or two people or three people or something like that.

And that's the heaviest initiations. I mean, that's a real secret initiation. It's passed on one person, two people.

The original Vajrayogini initiation was passed on to Phamtingma Kuchen Gyi, two people, you know, Naropa taught it to two people. And that's a real initiation. And that has four elements to it, four different initiations, four different empowerments occur during the initiation.

So in your crystal house here, you got to have, like there's going to be four different elements in the initiation. There's going to be four very important seeds planted through four very specific and very heavy initiations, okay? And that's going to be happening in that crystal place.

And through that process, you are granted vows, okay? That you're going to keep in the hallway, all right? So you got to visualize it that way.

So what do we have in this crystal palace? You're entering the mandala of this being, which is your Lama, Tantric Lama. They're giving you initiation with four different parts.

They're planting special seeds in your mind. And they also empower you to practice Tantra, okay? They give you permission, that is the permission, to study and practice Tantra.

So you have to do that before you can keep the vows, you have to be granted the vows. How do you find this guy, you know? You force them to come to you, okay?

I always think of flypaper, sticky flypaper, okay? Like, you force them to come to you, okay? And that's the process.

How does it work? You practice the Lam Rim, you see? You practice the Six Perfections very, very well.

You keep your Bodhisattva vows well. That's going to be the next room, by the way, okay? But that's how you trick a Tantric Lama into entering your life, okay?

Like, you can't go buy them, you see? They don't respond to how much you pay, or, you know, you can't find them that way. You can't go to Dharamsala and ask around and say, who's the best one, and go ask them for a Tantric initiation.

It doesn't work that way. You keep your Bodhisattva vows so pure that they are forced to come into your life and give you initiation, okay? And that's the real heavy way to find a Tantric Lama.

And that's how it happens, okay? It doesn't mean, by the way, that you shouldn't go to Dharamsala. You should, but, or wherever.

You hear that there's a good Tantric Lama, but the process is one of becoming so virtuous, collecting so much good karma, that you create them, and they come into your life, okay? And knowing them is a difficult matter, you know? Recognizing them is a whole skill in itself, and that skill is a result of keeping your Bodhisattva vows, okay?

And that's a whole nother room, okay? We're not gonna go there yet. So, we'll do a visualization.

It's gonna be, you know, you do your own mandala room, okay? Whatever you think. But, there's gonna be a Lama there.

They're gonna grant you four initiations. The real initiations are very heavy. They're not like you sit there and some guy bangs your head with something.

They're very, very heavy. And, so you think that you're in this room and you're getting this initiation from this Lama. And they are granting you permission to study tantra, and they are granting you the most precious thing they can, which is your tantric vows, okay?

That you have the honor of keeping after that, if you learn them, okay? So, somebody asked me, are you learning them in the hallway or in the crystal room? I'd say in the crystal room, okay?

Like, they're giving you initiation. They're giving you four empowerments. They're planting four seeds in your mind stream, and they're granting you your vows, okay?

And the only way you can get into that room is through the Lam Rim, through the Six Perfections. And we'll talk about that this evening, okay? You can't get into that room unless you do.

So you're getting the feeling like, so you can't go from room to room unless you do what came before. And you should think of the Lam Rim like that. You won't get to the inner courtyard if you never practice the plumbing thing.

You'll never be able to do that unless you do your retreats. You'll never be able to do that. Start to see the beings around you in a different way.

And that won't happen to you until you keep your tantric vows. And you can't keep your tantric vows if you don't know them. And you can't know them or learn them or have permission to study them until you take an initiation from a qualified lama.

So this room is very important. You have a qualified tantric master there in the middle of the mandala, and they're going to grant you these four empowerments. And it doesn't work any other way.

You can't skip a room. There's no shortcuts. Okay, you got to do each one of these things.

And that's the idea of the Lam Rim. Yeah.

[Speaker 2]
Can you characterize the empowerments or not?

[Speaker 1]
Basically, planting seeds for the three bodies of a Buddha. Okay. And not much more than that.

But as I say, the real ones are quite heavy, very heavy, you know. Okay. So go, you know, walk back and forth.

Start in the crystal room, go out to the courtyard, go back, see how fast you can remember everything. Don't forget to get all the elements there. You're getting your vows, you're meeting a qualified tantric master, they're giving you four empowerments.

Okay. Did you have a question? Oh.

We're going to do, we're going to go behind schedule a bit. We'll do about 10, 15 minutes. Okay.

Time to run into the courtyard and back once or twice. Okay. Don't be cheap, okay?

Don't be a cheapskate. Make this mandala room really nice. Okay.

Okay. Lots of crystal. Make it out of diamond or something if you like.

All right. Okay, we'll stop there. Okay.

In the middle of time, we are all wishing in daily body, Sanghe shindhu, Maitreya, Agi, Dukkhu, Nanda, Shri Nanda, Shri Mata.

[Speaker 2]
This is the end of session two.