Двадцать одна хвала Таре, Леди Освобождения (1999, Тусон), занятие 1

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mentally, driving you to get deeper. You know, whatever way is good for you. Sometimes they should be very gentle and soft on you and then sometimes they should be very hard on you.

But in any case, there's this maturing process that takes place. Between the time you reach the monastery and the time you get out, 18, 20 years later, there's this process of development. And it should be like that.

You see, I mean, if the monastery works right, the people who are halfway through or three quarters of the way through should be acting differently than the people who have just got in. You see what I mean? And if you're meditating well and if you're keeping your vows, then things happen to you after periods of time that can't happen to you if you don't.

You see what I mean? You begin to see things that people can't see if they don't meditate. You begin to see things that people can't see if they don't have vows and they're not keeping those vows.

And if you keep that up over 5, 10, 15 years, your whole world is totally different than it was when you got in the monastery. And that's what monasteries are for. You see, I mean, it should be like that.

And in my monastery, Sara, you don't study Tantra until you finish your Geshe degree, which is after 20 years. Only two Geshes out of 8,000 monks would go to the Tantra college each year in Hassa. So it's very stringent.

And you were a much different person at the end than when you were at the beginning. And then the whole concept of Tantra, the teachings of Tantra, the methods of Tantra, the vision of Tantra becomes very... you become very prepared for it.

And it's very appropriate for you to be the next thing that you should do. A lot of people in normal life in America have a lot of leftover Tantric stuff from their last lives. You know, there are many people that you meet who have already...

they could be ready for Tantra much faster than normal. And then you meet them and you check them and there are certain attitudes and certain ways of looking at things that make a person closer to Tantra. So I don't teach Tantra openly, especially to people I don't know.

It wouldn't be appropriate. But there is this beautiful thing, called the 21 Praises of Tara. It's 21 verses in praise of 21 Taras.

And it's 21 prostrations. And we normally in the monastery recite it 21 times in a row. And it's very beautiful.

So I'd like to teach you that in honor of Bhagavad-Gita Tantra. And we can call it a supplication. In other words, you learn it, try to recite it as often as you can.

In the monastery you just do like 100 or 200, you know, like that. It goes like that. It has a special beat like nothing else.

And it goes like boom, you know. And it's very, very powerful. It's very ancient.

This 21 verses came from ancient India. It's in the Tantras in the Kangyur. Kangyur was the teachings that were given by Lord Buddha 500 B.C. So the original is there. So it has an ancient history. And throughout history people have written explanations of the verses. The explanation I'm going to give you...

By the way, I normally stand up and write on the board and make people recite and jump around and stuff like that. This is going to be a different kind of teaching. This I'd like to do a straight tea.

Tea is where this lama gets up and seriously takes you through the explanation. Which I rarely do. Maybe I've done it, they know, twice in the last five years or something.

But I think that's the way we should do this one. I want you to understand every single word of these 21 verses. They're very beautiful.

And this is the ultimate... It became later what we call a drupthap. Drupthap means a method of reaching Tara.

And the drupthap part is a pun in Tibetan. Because drupthap means to reach her in the sense of getting to meet her face to face. And it also means to become Tara.

So in Sanskrit we call it sadhana. So this is actually... This text, this praise has become the core of a secret practice for reaching Tara.

I can teach you the praise without giving you the initiation and without giving you the jaina. These are special rituals that you normally have to have to practice a Tara practice. That you have to get from a qualified teacher with whom you have a deep relationship.

And what I'd like to suggest is that we learn the 21 verses. You learn to recite them. We'll do it sometimes in Tibetan.

I'll teach you how to do this special thing in Tibetan. It's a very special chant. And then I'll teach you the English.

And I'll go through each word of the English. Because it's a little bit secret. And it doesn't always mean what it seems to mean.

So I think it'd be beautiful. Many people around the world... Like I just got back.

We just flew from Vajrapani in Land of Medicine Buddha in California. They recite this every morning. I don't think they know what it means exactly.

So I think it would be fun for you if you knew what it meant. And then it would be very beautiful for you to recite it all the time. Like every morning you could recite it.

Who is Tara? Tara is a female Buddha. She is the Buddha in a woman's form.

And you can meet her. The point of doing it, the point of learning it is she does really exist. She's not a symbolic person or something like that.

She does exist. She can take many different forms. There are 21 traditional forms.

She could look like Arab. She could look like an American. She can look like a Tibetan, Chinese, Japanese.

It doesn't matter. She's an enlightened being. And she has the ability to appear to you in whatever form she chooses actually.

Whatever form would be good for you. So you're going to see that in the verses, her qualities. And the verses are a song of praise to Tara.

So I'm just going to do a straight monastic cheat. A straight teaching. Take you through the commentary.

And I think then you'll appreciate the 21 verses much more. If you do them frequently. If you pray while you're doing them to meet her.

To get the initiation into her world. They call it mandala. Mandala just means a secret world.

And frankly it comes from your good karma of the faith in her and asking to meet her. And then the mandala would occur where you live. It's not like you have to take a plane somewhere.

Something like that. This is not the mandala now. If you're seeing it as something normal.

I'm not saying that. I'm saying if you practice the good karmas that are expressed in this poem. You will come to see a true mandala.

And you will come to meet her. And a lot of that involves keeping a special code of life. Buddhist code of life.

Not harming other beings in any way. Being very careful not to harm other people. Trying to exchange yourself and other people.

Try to put your mind in their bodies and see what they would like. Always thinking what other people would like. Like this code of conduct over a period of time would take you into her mandala.

And you would be in her mandala. And you can be in her mandala and the person next to you might not be. And then you would be experiencing her mandala as we speak.

And then they wouldn't. And that's no strange thing in Buddhism. We say everything is empty.

The room here is empty. Your body is empty. The people around you are empty.

Meaning they don't have any nature of being good or bad from their own side. Your mind is organizing the colors and shapes around you. And your mind is interpreting it in a certain way.

Due to your past karma. So you see me in a certain way. The person next to you sees me in a different way.

I'm not either one. I'm just a blank screen. According to Buddhism, I'm not the interesting person that one of you thinks I am.

And I'm not the boring person that the other person thinks I am. I'm blank or neutral. And the amount of goodness in your own heart, your good karma, is forcing you to see me in a certain way.

If you had better karma, you'd be seeing Tara sitting here. If you had worse karma, you'd be seeing something even more boring. And you have, from your appearance, and I don't know, some kind of mixed up karma.

Like, you'll get bored halfway through. You'll get tired. Then you'll think something's pretty interesting.

And then, you know, I'm floating somewhere in between for you. And the point is to learn the Buddhist path. Learn the Buddhist code of life.

And then, you plant certain karmas in your mind this year. And then, in the coming years, you begin to see things differently. If you do that in a perfect way, you will reach her mandala.

In this life. And you will meet Tara. And it's nothing like you can expect right now.

It's nothing like you can imagine right now. You just have to try. So we'll be talking about the code of life, without which you cannot get into the mandala.

It doesn't matter if the Dalai Lama comes here and puts some water on your head and says, OK, you have initiation. If you don't know the Buddhist path, you can't reach to her mandala. It takes a certain amount of compassion towards other people.

It takes a certain amount of self-control. It takes a certain amount of keeping a holy way of life. And then, one day, you're in her mandala.

And that's really what we would like to do. So I'll keep bringing that up as we go through. I'm in the mood to actually go through the commentary properly, no matter how long it takes.

So if you get tired, we'll take a break. We were just under the influence of Lama Tsong Khapa. He just goes till 6 in the morning if he's not done.

I don't ever do that, that late. But I'm just thinking, you should get the whole thing the right way. And if you've got to go home, or you're tired, don't feel stressed, just get up.

We're not going till 2 in the morning. I would say 2 hours, tonight. And if you have to go somewhere, just get up and go, that's OK.

I want to give it to you the right way. And that should be done word by word. It might take less than that, I don't know.

Let's see how fast we get through. I'm just in the mood to do it that way. It's very, very holy.

To get this transmission is extremely rare. I got the tar initiation from Tsong Rinpoche. He was the tantric master of Ganden Monastery.

He passed away about 10 years, 12 years ago. OK, so we'll start. The explanation I'm going to do is from a Lama named Muthu Dharmabhadra.

His dates are 1772 to 1851. This will be on your third installment, which is not even printed yet. Which you'll get tomorrow evening.

And we know from the colophon that he wrote this commentary in 1818. And he says, I stole most of this from the first Dalai Lama. OK, whose dates are...

He was 1391 to 1474. He also used... He copped a lot from a commentary on this, 21 verses, by a Sakyan Lama named Drapa Gyaltsen.

Drapa Gyaltsen is very important in the Vajrayogini tantric lineage. He's interesting. He was a layman.

He never became a monk. He is, I think, the greatest lineage holder in the Vajrayogini teachings. And he wrote extraordinary texts on the highest levels of tantra, called Dzogchen.

Which is where you do inner work on your inner body. So he wrote really the most amazing texts on that. So we're also using parts from his commentary.

And from the second Dalai Lama, Gendun Gyatso. And from a Lama named Taranatta, who wrote the most famous history of Buddhism. And then finally from Atisha, who brought Buddhism to Tibet.

And an Indian master named Ravi Gupta, who is considered the beginning of this secret lineage. All the information we have about him is that he lived after Arya Nagarjuna. That would put him after the 3rd century.

This is where all this is coming from. You're going to get it very easily distilled. But it's been a lot of work over the centuries.

So it originally was spoken by the tantric form of the Buddha himself. That's where the 21 verses come from. So we're going to start out with Aum.

See Aum there? The very first line. The whole thing starts out with Aum.

Aum Jatin Padma Dorma Lata Tano means I bow down to Aum. I bow down to the holy realized woman. Dorma means lady of liberation.

Ma means lady. Dorma means free. In Sanskrit that's Tara.

In Tibetan, Dorma. It's important to start out with Aum because Aum represents her mind, how she thinks, how she talks and how she acts. The word Aum, the sound Aum has in it A, U and M.

Say A, U, M. Aum is made of these 3 sounds. They represent the way that an enlightened being acts, the way they talk and the way they think.

Whenever you say Aum, you're already requesting to be able to talk like the Dalai Lama, to think like the Dalai Lama, to act like the Dalai Lama. It starts out with Aum. All secret teachings, all secret mantras start out with the word Aum.

And that's the meaning of that. That's the combination of those 3 qualities. Then he calls her Jatin.

Jatin Ma. Jatin Ma. That has become a high title nowadays for women reincarnations.

And Jatin Ma means Holy One. Holy Woman. Why is she a Holy Woman?

It says here she is the ultimate Aum of the Buddhas. Aum can mean a lot of things. Aum can mean Mother of the Buddhas.

Like wisdom is called the Aum of the Buddhas. Like Yab-Aum. Aum can mean consort.

Aum can mean like a mother. A woman in a general sense or a queen. So it says here she's called the Holy One because she's the Aum of the Buddhas.

And also because she keeps her 3 sets of vows. She's holy because she takes vows and she keeps them. If you want to meet Tara in real life you have to collect good karma.

You can either just do the shotgun approach which is try to do the best things you can that you know about or you can take vows. And there are 3 levels of vows. The first are what we call freedom vows.

And those range from one day vow to layman's vow to a monk's vow or nun's vow. So you can go everywhere from keeping 5 things for 24 hours or up to keeping 364 things for your whole life. But these are what we call freedom vows.

Second kind of vows are bodhisattva vows. That's 64 different rules and then a bunch of extra ones for acting like a bodhisattva. Someone who has devoted their life to help other beings and help them reach Buddhahood.

And then there are tantric vows, secret vows. And in there there's 100 and something, 150 maybe. Anyway, she's called Holy One because she keeps her 3 sets of vows.

She has these vows and she keeps them. What's the point of a vow? Vow is not some thing that frustrated guys and ladies in Europe in little stone houses keep unhappily and they look all nervous all the time.

It's not like that. Vows are the most powerful karma that have been identified. If you keep these you'll meet Tara in this life.

And it's quite true. So just the first word of the first phrase is giving you that information. They call her Jetsunma to refer to the fact that if you learn this code of conduct and if you keep it carefully you will get the karma to meet her.

How will you meet her? Why will you meet her? Because everything is empty.

Everything has emptiness. That's why you will meet her. Got a pen?

I got a lot of pens. I like a white one. Do you mind?

This is how I teach emptiness. This is how the Sakyas used to do it in the ancient times. This is called the pen thing.

Those of you who have heard it or are bored of it, that's okay. My lama said 3,000 hours of hearing emptiness then you got a chance. What's this thing?

What is this thing? It's a pen. People say it's a pen.

If a dog came in here, where is he? If it was a puppy and if he was really lively and if he came up here and I tried to shove this in his mouth and said, what is this thing? What would he do?

Likely he'd just chew on it and get ink all over Peggy's stuff. I've seen that happen. And so the dog is perceiving this as something to chew on, automatically.

The human is perceiving this as a pen, automatically. Which one is right? They're both right.

This is the era of animal rights. You can't say the human's opinion is more valuable than the animal's. It's not fair.

They're both valid. It works. It functions.

It is truly something to chew on until the ink spurts out on Peggy's carpets. It's validly that thing to a dog. And to a human it's quite validly a pen.

You can use it to write with and everything like that. So both are real. In a sense you have two realities adhering to one cylinder.

So it's one cylinder which has two realities. To a dog it's something to chew on. To a human it's something to write with.

Both perceptions are correct. For the person having them. For the being having them.

So it is simultaneously something to chew on for a dog and something to write with for a human. But what is it in and of itself? Forget the human thing.

Forget the dog thing. What is it? It's a cylinder.

It's just a cylinder. A human sees it as a pen. A dog sees it as something to chew on.

Take the human out of the picture. Take the dog out of the picture. What's left?

It's just a cylinder. We call that the emptiness of a pen. What's that mean?

It doesn't have any nature of its own. It doesn't have a nature of being a pen by itself. In and of itself this cylinder is not a pen.

If you happen to walk in here with a human frame of mind and you know what those are and you think of it that way it looks like a pen to you. If you walk here and here and you got four legs and a tail and you look at the same cylinder you'll perceive it as you'll start to salivate. No, you'll just be automatically you'll say looks good.

From its own side it's neither one. In and of itself it's neither one. It's just an innocent cylinder.

Really. It's just a white and blue cylinder. It doesn't have pen-ness about it and it doesn't have dog-chewy thing about it.

And that's its emptiness. That's the meaning of emptiness. That's what no-self means.

That's a bad translation of no-self nature. No inherent nature. It doesn't have its own nature of being a pen.

It doesn't have its own nature of being anything. If your mind makes you see it as a pen it's a pen for you. If your mind makes you see it as something to chew on it's something to chew on for you.

Who's right? They're both right. From their own point of view.

What is it in and of itself? Nothing. It's neither one.

That's the emptiness of pen. Emptiness is nothing more complicated than that. Nothing worse than that.

Nothing weirder than that. It's very simple. It's very clear.

This is a cylinder. And something in the human's mind makes them see it as a pen and something in the dog's mind makes them see it as a thing to chew on. What is that?

By the way, it's coming from the mind, right? It's not coming from the cylinder. If it was coming from the cylinder, the dog would see it as a pen.

If it was coming from the cylinder, we would get... we would start getting salivates about it. If it was coming from the cylinder.

But it's not. So who's laying this trip on the cylinder? You are.

You're mine. How come you don't automatically see there's something to chew on? You can say conditioning, but you can take a dog and talk to them all day and they won't see it as a pen.

You see what I mean? You can train them for years and they won't see it as a pen. You see what I mean?

There's something deeper. It's not just what your mom told you and stuff like that. There's something deeper going on.

You see what I mean? Even when you were a child, well, maybe you saw there's something to chew on. We say there's something deeper running your procession.

Something much deeper. And we say karma. We say seeds in your mind, seeds in your consciousness.

They reside in your subconscious. You have a big bag full of them. They come up, they rise up to your conscious mind in priority like airplanes taking off at an airport.

And then they make you see things the way you see things. So right now the karmas are ripening in your mind and they make you see this thing as a pen. And get this, this is hard.

That makes you a human. The fact that you see it a human way is why you're a human. It's not that you're a human and then you see it that way.

Whosoever sees this as a pen is therefore a human. And whosoever sees it the way a dog sees it, sorry, you're a dog. That's what being a human is.

To see it as a human is to be a human. To have the karma in your mind to see this as a pen is to be a human. And not vice versa.

You've got to get used to that. Why am I bringing this up? What's it got to do with Jethima?

We're never going to end if we go at this speed. I won't keep you all night, I promise. We'll just go fast at the end, which is the way His Holiness did it at the College Chapel, right?

It's very profound. If you keep those three sets of vows, tantric vows, bodhisattva vows, morality vows, if you keep them, if you learn them and keep them, an enlightened being called Shakyamuni has identified these few things as being the most powerful karmas you can put in your mind. And if you put those in your mind very purposely, very consciously, then because this thing is blank or neutral, you have a chance to see this as Tara's magic wand.

You see what I mean? Because it could be that. Just as much as it could be a dog thing.

Just as much as it could be a pen. This is just a plain old cylinder. You put different karmas in your mind today, it's like gardening.

They take a while to grow. But if you consciously put these beautiful, holy, sacred thoughts and deeds and actions and words in your mind, if you're doing that all day long, you put seeds in your mind that will force you to see this as part of Tara's mandala next time we meet. Next time I'm here in Tucson.

You see what I mean? That's the way it works. That's the emptiness of everything.

This room is empty. This building is empty. This cylinder is empty.

If you see it as a pen, that's because you have those karmas. If you see it as a dog, a chew toy, that's because you have those karmas. Now get this.

If you see this as a pen, that makes you a human. It's not like you're a human so you see it as a pen. That's not true.

If you see this as a pen, you just qualify as a human. And yet that's what it is to be a human. If you see this as a dog toy, then I'm sorry, you're already a dog.

If you see it as Tara's wisdom staff, then you are in her mandala. Right here. You see what I mean?

And you just have to know how to collect the most powerful karmas to make you see that. Because you can't see it now. You can imagine it.

You can pretend, oh, he's a girl. He's white. He's holding out this thing.

But there's a big difference between seeing it and imagining it. I'm not talking imagining it. I'm talking you walk in here and Tara's sitting there.

The same person who was here last month is here again. But now you see him as her. As Tara.

And that isn't because of anything I did. I'm just a cylinder. It's something you did.

You kept your vows. You kept this holy way of life. Helping other people.

Never hurting anyone. Watching what you say. Watching what you think.

Watching what you do. Dedicating all your efforts to helping other people. And you walk in here and you see something different.

You see what I mean? And that's what this whole thing is about. That's what Tantra's about.

The initiations are sort of a holy trigger deep down in your subconscious. And then when you get an initiation they always give you over a hundred commitments. Over a hundred codes of life to keep.

And if you learn them and keep them, then the initiation works. And if you don't, it doesn't work. It doesn't do much at all.

See what I mean? If you learn that code of life and then you follow it, the next time you come in here, you've got to see this guy as Tara. Because I'm empty.

Because I'm just like this cylinder. Don't call it a parent. It's not fair to animals.

And not fair to Tantric followers who've walked into Tara's mandala. And see it as her holy star. You see what I mean?

Don't be so human. You don't have to be. Humans die.

Humans get old. That's not a good place to be. It's not a good place to stay.

While you have some life left in you, get into the Tantric teachings. Learn the acts, the deeds of a Tantric follower. And then next time you come in here, you don't have to sit there like a human.

Seriously, you will. This room, this pen, and this cylinder are the same. Exactly the same.

If you collected a different karma, if you led some holy way of life and put different karmas in your mind, the next time you came in here, or the next time you woke up and looked at your arm, it might look different. So I'm not saying it turns into white light in one night. Don't have any big expectations tomorrow morning.

It doesn't work that fast. It's just like gardening. And these plants take like 6 to 12 months to even do anything.

And I don't want to mislead you or get you all excited and then tomorrow morning you don't come because your arm was the same. If you learned this code of life, take these vows, follow these vows, which is really just a list of holy karmas, a list of powerful karmas. Then the next time you walk in here, or the next time you look at your arm, that cylinder won't look the way it looked yesterday.

It'll look better, younger, stronger, healthier. The whole Tantric thing is that you can turn this body into her body in this lifetime, before you die. And because of the pen thing, it's possible.

Because of the empty thing, this thing is possible. See, get it? This stuff is cool.

This stuff works. Because of the pen thing. You know, I always tell people, if you accept the pen thing when I start out this spiel, you're stuck.

You see? When I get to this cylinder, you have to agree. The principle is exactly the same.

There's no difference in the principle at all. This is perceived totally two different ways by two different minds and that makes them a dog and a human. This can be perceived as Tara's arm and then you will be Tara.

So, drupa her, reach her. First step in Tantra is to pray to her and say, help me out here. This guy went to this long explanation, I went to Kalachakra, I didn't know I had a hundred and something commitments.

Help me out here. Help me out. This 21 verses is like an SOS.

It's a Tara SOS. I'm not kidding. You're like saying, Tara, I believe in you.

I'll see you someday if I do my gardening in my mind right. Help me out here. Give me some help.

That's what these verses are. They are like the holiest practice in the monastery. We have to say them every single day before debating.

Before you go kick some guy's butt and debate. You do this prayer and you get this power from Tara. Very holy, very ancient.

Two and a half thousand years. The guy in the photo store really liked it. We left him one.

Maybe go on to the next word. I won't give you all night, I promise. Next one is pakma.

In English it says woman of realization. Realization here means someone who has seen emptiness directly. Someone who has seen emptiness directly.

You just understood emptiness intellectually. I held up this thing. You used to think emptiness is some black hole or some shining light or watching your mind float or something like that.

And I got up and told you the pen thing, which you can never forget now. That's understanding emptiness intellectually. One day in deep meditation you will see emptiness directly.

And that's a whole other ball game. It's about a 20 minute experience. When you come out of it, you can see your future for hundreds of years.

You can meet Buddhas directly. You can read other people's minds. All of these amazing things happen to you on that day.

And when you reach that threshold, that line, that border, we call you a higher being. In Sanskrit that's arya. And in Tibetan it's pak.

So she's called pak. Pakma means she has reached that stage. In fact she's in that state all the time.

Which only an enlightened woman can be. Seeing the ultimate reality of this thing and the pen at the same time, only an enlightened being can do it. And she is one of those.

That's why we call her pakma. It's getting heavy, right? It wasn't so easy.

Droma means tara. Free. To free somebody.

By the way, the root ter in Sanskrit came into English as all those words like retro. To turn. The word turn comes from that.

Turn people free. The tr root in our ancient roots of our own language is where the word tara comes from. To turn.

To turn people away. Meaning to turn them out of their jail. To free them.

Chaktsalo means I bow down to you. Tara. Again, these are called the 21 verses.

And there are 21 most famous forms of tara. Now that she has reached the United States, there will probably be a couple hundred more, I think. Because she will look like an American to you.

And don't doubt it. I have seen paintings of her and other holy beings that were made before Buddhism reached Tibet and China. If you go to the Hermitage in Russia, the wall paintings, they look pretty western.

They look more British than Chinese or Tibetan. And this is before Buddhism reached Tibet. And don't doubt that Tara has the ability.

That's her shtik. That's what she does. She comes to you in the form which is most beautiful to you.

And you know, I like this form. And it's beautiful. It's a beautiful Tibetan woman.

I predict that in a hundred years, down in the Dragoon Mountains, they'll be painting them Caucasian. Because they met her that way. And don't doubt it.

Don't think it's strange or something. That's the way it should be. That's what she does.

That's what she's supposed to do. She's supposed to come to you as the most beautiful thing that you and your culture can imagine. That's why she takes different forms.

That's why there's 21 forms. Because whatever's attracted to you now, she will be 10,000 times better for you. It's the pen thing.

Now we get to the first verse. And we'll take a break in 15-20 minutes and we'll drink something. And I like to just relax for 10-15 minutes and then do it again.

I like to walk around a little bit and drink some coffee. I'm going to read it for you in Tibetan. This is also a lung.

Lung means you get the transmission orally. I got it from Song Rinpoche and from my dear, sweet, holy, rude lama, Khen Rinpoche Geshe Losantachen, who is the former abbot of Serame Monastery. Okay?

Okay, that's sort of how they do it, except they do it twice as fast. I'll give it to you, the meaning now. That's how she opens the first line.

And this is beautiful. This is very strange. You see, it's unusual in Tibetan.

This word should come at the end and it comes at the beginning. It's like, boom! Chaktsam means, I bow down to you.

I love you, Tara. I bow down to you. Chaktsam.

Dhamma means Tara. And why is she called Tara? The commentary says, Semten Tamche Dungyale Kyope Na Dhammate She's called Tara because she protects all living beings from all kinds of pain.

All forms of pain. Okay? And that's the meaning of her name.

Nyurma means the woman who does this quickly. Nyurma means you act quickly. And the commentary says, she's called quickly because she's faster than other Buddhas.

Okay? Alright? She's faster than other Buddhas.

By the way, if you learn the mantra, it's Om Tare Tutare Ture Soha. She has two mantras that we're going to run into here. One is called the peaceful mantra.

The nice guy, nice girl mantra. And one is called the kick butt mantra. Okay?

And she has both forms. And you're going to see that in these 21 verses. She will alternate between the two forms.

This is the nice guy, Dhurma. Okay? Tara.

And there's a violent form. There's a ferocious form. Okay?

And we're going to talk about that. In general, the meaning of ferocious tantric deities is that that's how they look to your negative emotions. What does love look like to anger?

Especially when anger is about to get incinerated by love. Okay? No, really.

And that's why these deities have ferocious aspects. It's not that they are evil or dirty or demonic or something like that. That's how compassion looks to selfishness.

When selfishness is about to get eliminated by this being. You see what I mean? So they look quite frightening.

They're about to kill you. And that's how they look to you. So Dhurma has two aspects.

One is very nice, peaceful. And she uses that to entice you and get you to come here tomorrow. And then she can take a raffle form.

Like when you feel jealousy start to come up in your mind and you think of Tara and you think of what she would do if she started to feel this. She would obliterate it, like a mad dog. She would rage and smash the jealousy in a few seconds.

And the jealousy would look up at the last moment and see this woman coming at him. So she has both aspects. And she's capable of looking quite wrathful.

And you're going to see that. Different verses here are praising different qualities of her. You're going to see a lot of wrathful aspects.

It was hard to translate all the words for destruction here. We were looking at the source for 20 words for destruction. Because that's what she does.

Next she's called Pelmo. We have a beautiful nun here called Pelma. Same root.

Pel means glorious. Here it says Lady of Glory in the translation. Why is she called Pelmo?

She's glorious because she destroys demons. Who are the demons? The demons are your jealousy.

The demons are your lack of compassion. The demons are your attitude of taking care of yourself and ignoring other people. These are the demons.

Why is she called glorious? What's that got to do with destroying? Some of the ancient versions of the text say Falmo and not Felmo.

Falmo means warrior woman. Warrior woman. I think that might be a better translation.

I've had somebody in New Jersey who's going to fax me the oldest version tonight. You've got to let me know if it comes. I found one in New Jersey this afternoon.

Someone's going and sending it. It's in the Conger. We'll see if it says Pelmo or Falmo.

Warrior woman seems to make more sense. She's called Eyes of an Instant, Fast as Lightning. Eyes of an Instant.

She has this third eye thing. My Lama used to make fun. He read Losarampa books when he was trying to learn English.

I heard Losarampa say you could drill this into your head. Which is a lot easier than years of study. That's the third eye.

Third eye here represents wisdom. What is wisdom? The most profound form is to understand the pen thing.

That's all. That's it. If you keep chewing on that for a few months, you will, metaphorically speaking, have a deep insight into why you could meet Tara.

And you could become Tara. Because it's the same thing as the pen and the dog and the human. You see what I mean?

It's exactly the same thing. You could enter her mandala. That's not such a big thing.

It's not such a difficult thing. If you understand the pen thing, you can reach her. In both senses of the word.

So here it's called Eyes of an Instant, Fast as Lightning. Instant here means in a single instant, Tara has the ability to understand the ultimate nature of an object and to see all objects in the universe at the same moment. In one second.

Every second of her life, she's perceiving everything that's going on everywhere. And the emptiness, the ultimate nature of all those things, all at the same time. She's having some bad karma.

So anyway, that's why she's called Eyes of an Instant. In one instant, she perceives all objects. The next part is a tradition, the traditional story of how Drona came to be.

And it says, Angel born from the depths of a lotus, grown from a tear that dropped from the eye of the protector of all three realms. The commentary says, Chenrezig, which is Avalokiteshvara, which is like the god, the Buddha of compassion, a drop, a teardrop, he was looking at all sorts of beings, thinking how sad things are, and a drop came out of his eye, and that drop dropped on the ground, and from it grew a lotus, and then out of the lotus came Drona. So that's what this verse means.

Angel born from the depths of a lotus, grown from a tear that dropped from the eye. The protector of all three realms is Avalokiteshvara. Which is His Holiness the Dalai Lama, nowadays.

He is believed to be the incarnation of Avalokiteshvara. I say believed, not because I don't believe it, but in Buddhism, if you're going to be the Geshe type of guy, they have to prove everything to you. Can you prove to me that His Holiness is the Chenrezig?

No, I can't. And if I can't prove it, then I'm not supposed to say it. Seems to be.

It's a little suspicious that you can choose somebody at three years old, and they get a Nobel Peace Prize. But otherwise, I haven't seen any white light. Personally, I don't have the...

I haven't got there yet. So anyway, by tradition, His Holiness is Chenrezig. And there's a different way to translate this last line, which is easier in the Tibetan.

So those of you who think the Tibetan is a little stretched here, they explain it. Another translation. Of the third line, sorry.

And it's a lot easier to translate if you have another translation. The Tibetan is the same as America. Fifteen guys were getting this poem from Sanskrit.

Fifteen guys were trying to translate it. And then one of them made it into the canon. And fourteen didn't make it.

And in a few cases, we have the other versions. And some of them are better in some lines. You see what I mean?

So it'll be that way in America too. Later, in about a hundred years. All three realms, I want to just tell you what that means.

There's this teaching of three realms, desire realm, form realm, formless realm. It doesn't mean that. This means the three realms in the sense of everything below the earth, everything walking on the earth, and everything in the sky over the earth.

That's what the three realms mean here. And it covers every living creature. You can think of it as worms, humans, and birds.

In ancient scripture, it means nagas and other spirit beings that live in realms under the earth. Humans, animals, and those kind of beings that walk on the earth. And then devas, like holy beings, like temporary angelic beings that fly in the sky and live in heavens above the earth.

Here, Avalokiteshvara is called the protector of the three realms, meaning every kind of creature that's around. I like to translate his name into English, which is loving eyes. Chenrezig, Avalokiteshvara, means loving eyes.

Chenrez means to look at somebody like that. Oh, I love you. That's what chenrezig means.

The word chenrezig means to look with loving eyes like that. And this is kind of when you have a crush on somebody, especially when you're very compassionate and you're looking at somebody and you're like... That's what his name means.

I like to call him loving eyes. I'd like to take a break there. Walk around, get some coffee, relax, and we'll start again in about 10-15 minutes.

And we won't do the whole seven, we'll just do a couple. All right, we're going to go on. I'm not going to do much more because it's late, and I don't want to keep you late.

We'll start again tomorrow. The second verse, I'll read it to you and then give you a short commentary, okay? It's page two.

Okay. chak tsel tun ge dawa kundu kama gyal ne tsepa she ma kama tongpa tsopa nam kye rab tu tsewa udra bar ma chak tsel means I bow down to you again. And this is a beginning of praise of what we call longku.

Say longku. Longku. Longku means...

the day your karma gets good enough, because of the pen thing, you will look down at your arm and see white light, you know, immortal, okay? An enlightened being of white light. You'll look down at your arm and you'll see that.

Before you get there, between now and the time you get there, if you try this kind of code of life, it starts to get... you see what I mean? Every day it gets a little closer to that.

So, after a certain number of months it gets a little lighter and a little stronger, and actually the aging process begins to reverse. The ultimate end of that is that the body turns into a body of light, okay? This is a very lousy representation of what it would feel like, okay?

I mean, that's the closest you can get on paper. I mean, for canvas it's the most beautiful I can imagine, and it really is. But the real thing is a million times better, okay?

I mean, they can't capture it on paper, okay? But imagine to have a body made of light, and you get there gradually, you see what I mean? As you keep the tantric way of life, as you follow those vows, then slowly the body begins to change, gradually and noticeably, and it's a very exciting process, okay?

It gets lighter, stronger. You're getting older, body's changing, okay? Why?

Your physical body in tantric system is connected to your mental frame, your mental state, okay? Every time... You've heard the word chakras.

Chakras, you know, they teach there's these beautiful little circle things or flowers or something like that in your body running down a central stem or channel. They're actually these life-threatening, horrible tumbleweeds that are choking off your health and your physical health. And we say that every time you have a negative emotion, every time you feel jealous, anger, any kind of negativity, that main stem in your body gets choked slightly, and that makes you older, okay?

So the more you can avoid those, the more energy is flowing in your body, and the ultimate evolution of that, if you can learn to overcome negativity completely, is that your body would start to shift back to some kind of light, body of light. There is a very beautiful, realistic, practical way of getting there, okay? That's what I'm trying to say, okay?

Lomku means the day you get there, your body looks like that, okay? It looks like her. So the next, like, six verses are going to be about her body.

Lomku means paradise body. This is how she looks to herself in the mirror, in her mandala, okay? Where is it?

I mean, for all I know, one of you could be there already and be seeing yourself that way. I don't have the karma to see you that way, okay? You mean I could look one way to myself and look completely different to someone else?

Okay. Yeah, that's your emptiness. That's your emptiness.

The pen thing proves it, okay? Yeah, yeah. Do you think this Holiness of Daya Lama looks in the mirror and sees this older gentleman with balding or something?

He doesn't see that, okay? In other words, emptiness means there is no base reality. There is no standard condition.

There is no Daya Lama who is an aging gentleman or Avalokiteshvara in white light, okay? There is no standard Daya Lama. There's the Daya Lama you see and there's the Daya Lama he sees, and there's nothing in between.

Get it? And that's fine. That's the pen thing, okay?

That's the same principle, okay? So, what I mean to say is when you get your longku, it could be in this room, and you'll see yourself like that. Now, how other people see you depends on them, okay?

They might think you're the most dumb, ugly person they ever met, and that happens, you know? People get nailed up on crosses, stuff like that, all right? I mean, it depends on the vision of the person looking, okay?

So, this is going to describe her paradise body. By the way, she has another physical body that's going to come later, okay? That's called tuku.

Say tuku. You've heard tuku meaning, toku meaning, the technical meaning of tuku is when a person gets enlightened sitting in Peggy's pool house, okay? And sees themselves as Tara, really, okay?

And you might look like Dottie to us other people, like the Dottie that we think we see, okay? Which we do see, okay? At that moment, you gain this, actually one millisecond later, technically.

You gain the ability to appear in thousands of other places to help people. As a, like a movie, okay? We call it emanation body.

Tuku means that. That's what the word tuku means. Tuku technically means that there's somebody up in some paradise, which is the pool house, right?

And then they're appearing in Kansas and Siberia and the North Pole, and you know what I mean? And wherever someone is ready, they're appearing there. And that's called a tuku, okay?

So the minute you get your light body, a millisecond later, all these other bodies are appearing all over the world, helping people, you know? So you gotta be careful who you sit next to. All right, we're gonna do a description of her physical body, that as she sees herself, okay?

Let me see. Okay, so it says, it's pretty much just what the verse says. Tunggut Dawa means autumn moon.

And in Buddhism, the autumn moon is considered the most beautiful, the most pure, the most clear. And here it says, imagine one totally free of pollution and clouds and fog, and it's this total, limpid autumn moon. And her face, the shining, the color of her face is light, okay?

The point here is that when you get to that stage, you don't have blood and flesh and skin, because you don't have the karma to see that anymore. You are pure light. We call it rainbow body.

Say jalu. Jalu means rainbow body. It's not that you look like, what do you call that, candy?

It's not like you look like M&M's body. You know, it's not like you're all different colors or something like that. The point is, from a distance, a rainbow looks solid.

And then when you drive up to it, you can't see it anymore. You see what I mean? You put your hand through it.

And jalu means, when you get to that point physically, you will look to other people like you have a regular body. But if you could go to her paradise, to her mandala, and touch her, your arm would go through. You see what I mean?

Because she doesn't have normal physical matter. We call bembo-yu sukme. Sorry, suk-yu bembo-me.

Suk means form, physical matter. She has appearance, but she doesn't have matter. How's that?

It's not made of physical matter, but you can see her and touch her. You see what I mean? There's a distinction.

She doesn't have a mortal body, but you can see her. She has colors and shapes and sounds and warmth and things like that. But they are not made of what they are made with you and me.

They're not physical matter. The distinction. So this is describing her face as like a thousand perfect moons.

And then that she gives off this light as if you took a thousand stars or a million stars together and put them in one person. So the first part is describing, how do you say, the passive lightness of her face. And then the second half is describing how it gives off light.

Like you took a thousand stars and put them in somebody's face and they're just shining out like that. So that's her physical appearance. The point is that when you get to this point, you don't have a body like this anymore.

It's over. This body is a preventable error. I'm not kidding.

This is a mistake that you can fix. And I'm not kidding. I'm not joking.

According to Buddhism, this is a broken realm. We have wandered into a realm that doesn't work. And if you don't change it, it'll just get old and die.

If you don't undertake a really pure practice, it'll just get old and die. And you can reverse it. We're going to go on to verse 3 and then we'll stop on verse 3.

I'll recite it just for the oral transmission. Okay? Okay?

Chak chel means eyebrow down. Ser means gold. Lo means blue.

Let's see how they did it. Yeah. She has a blue lotus in her left hand.

Okay? And the stem of the lotus is gold. I can't...

Yeah, anyway it should be a little gold, and there'll be a gold stem and an indigo lotus, so that looks good. And it says, they call it, it's like a jewel in their hands, okay, of a golden indigo lotus. Child of the lake, toke, toke gepepe madewayi, okay, is a code word in Buddhism for a lotus born of a lake, okay, and in the highest teachings of Tantra it has a much deeper meaning, okay, so it's very auspicious that she's holding in her left hand a lotus, it has other meanings in the highest teachings of Tantra, okay.

Number gamma, then the next two lines, the last two lines and then we'll stop, are describing the kind of life you have to lead to become her, to reach her, okay, and these are the six perfections. The six perfections of a bodhisattva are hidden in these last two lines, partly hidden, partly obvious, okay. Jimba means giving, the perfection of giving away the things that you have, the nice things that you have.

Sundru, by the way, that's number one, perfection number one, Sundru, the second one, which is called joy and suffering, that's number four, they're kind of mixing it up here, okay. Sundru, number four means enjoying doing good stuff, okay, once you get good at the Buddhist path, it becomes a pleasure, okay, like, it's not like you feel grumpy that you have to do this or that, it's like you can't go to bed because you can't stop, you see what I mean, like people get so into it that they can't sleep anymore, you see what I mean, because it's just so beautiful and so fun, okay.

Kathuk here means, it's called hardship, and it means living a moral life, living an ethical life, okay, it's sutra, it's the second of the six perfections, okay, here it's called Kathuk, okay, Kathuk means living an ethical life, okay. Shiwa, Shiwa I think is wisdom, let me check, yeah, Shiwa, although it generally means meditation, here means wisdom, which is the sixth of the six perfections, okay, what's wisdom? The pen thing, okay, mainly, okay, mainly that, you understand that, your worries are over, you can become Tara, okay, that's the, that's wisdom, okay, the perfection of wisdom.

Patience means the art of not getting angry when the time comes, you have about, I estimate five to ten seconds to engage in this perfection, a few times a day, okay, and that's it, okay, like this is, like wisdom, you can sit there for four hours and read a book, effort, you can try to be happy all day, giving, you can, you know, go and work at the hospital, but but patience, meaning the art of not getting angry when the poop hits the fan, you have five to ten seconds to do it and then it's all over with, you either got angry or you didn't, okay, and it's all over with, you get angry, we say you destroy a lot of good karma, okay, what's that do? That means you're going to have to see the stupid pen instead of Tara's wisdom staff, okay, and I'm not kidding, I'm not kidding, those little irritations throughout the day destroy the karma that would make you meet Tara, they're very effective at destroying good karma, okay, little anger, okay, they also choke the chakras, you know, one more wrinkle or a piece of a wrinkle, you know, one more hair turns slightly gray, and over a lifetime that kills you, the choking of your central core channel by your negative emotions makes you old and kills you, if you could stop it, you would get younger, and eventually you would reach her, you would become her, you see what I mean, that's all the story, the story is that the winds that choke your channels and your emotions ride together, they ride in tandem, okay, they go together, every time you have a negative thought, something happens in your body, something chokes in your body, and we're talking those 65 pieces of thoughts per finger snap, 65 mental impressions, called kecik dume, okay, it means, when I say a negative thought, I'm talking about a flash of a little bit of a negative feeling, 65 times in that much time, okay, it's hard to track this stuff, it's hard to be aware of where your own mind is going, okay, yes, yes, yeah, every time you get the slightest idea of the pen thing, huge things opening up in your channel, okay, and it's weird to think about it, just think about the pen thing for 5 minutes, and you overcome the negativity you've done for days, okay, it's amazing, you know, that's what, that's your channel, it's amazing, that's why when you get into the highest teaching of Tantra there's so much going on between physical body and emptiness, you see what I mean, cause your channels are wide open, they can have them open all the time if you understand this thing deeply, they just open, all the time, and you're in that state all the time, okay, that's pretty cool, alright, last one is meditation, okay, by the way, so the whole goal is to get to that state, okay, how do you open them up, every time you have a negative thought, you're choking them, every time you have a holy thought, you're opening them, and the goal is to get them wide throttle open, all the time, okay, which would require plain old consideration and kindness to other people, okay, which is the hardest thing, okay, okay, last one, meditation, okay, meditation means the ability to sit in meditation, a lot of this stuff can only happen if you're sitting in formal meditation, okay, a lot of the stuff I'm describing is done by people who practice meditation frequently, like say half an hour to an hour a day, a lot of this stuff cannot happen to you unless you're doing that, okay, so you have to learn how to meditate, and then you have to give it the time to meditate, by the way, she lives forever in a world of these six things means she has perfected them and she's always doing them, okay, in Tibetan it says, she's always acting in these spheres, only, she's a woman who is always in this state of mind, all the day, every hour, every minute, she's constantly in these six activities, okay, and that's her quality, that's what Tara does for a living, okay, alright, we'd like to do a little prayer at the end, this little prayer, the first part with this little thing here, represents the world, and you're like offering me, when we're offering Tara, a gift of the world to thank her for the nice poem, okay, it was written by her in her male aspect called Shakyamuni Buddha, okay, same person, okay, and then, and then after we finish that, we do a dedication, dedication means, having this class is like throwing a pebble into a, into a lake, and then the prayer, the prayer means, may there shockwaves come out of here, spiritually and emotionally that the next person you meet tonight or whoever you run into this week, they get some little feeling about something well is going with you, and then they pass it on, you see, and it, that's called dedication, it's a prayer that the ripple effect happens, so that's what we're going to do now, okay, ready? We'll try to copy it for you for tomorrow. Okay, cool, thank you for, thank you for having us, and thank you for the painting, thank you for tricking us into doing Tara.