Двадцать одна хвала Таре, Леди Освобождения (1999, Тусон), занятие 2

[Говорящий 1]
Again, these are 21 verses, which correspond, they represent 21 different prostrations, or bows down to Tara, who is an enlightened woman, and normally in the monastery we repeat it 21 times, at about this speed. You know, they go like that for 21 times. Everyone thinks about what's for dinner.

They never explain it to me, so I thought it would be nice to get an explanation. And then, of course, there are 21 famous forms of Tara. In this prayer, or this is called a stotra or a trapa, there will be 21 prostrations and 21 verses.

So it will be something like that. Each verse is a separate description of one of Druma's great qualities. And there's a structure to it.

By the way, I got the original this morning by fax. We found it. It's two and a half thousand years old.

And some of the readings, as I suspected last night, are different. The one end of the first line, where it says, Pamo, in the first verse, it is Pamo. Pamo means Lady of Glory, if you look in the translation.

Pamo means Lady of War. War on your negative qualities. You'll see after two and a half thousand years, some words get changed.

But we found the original. I think there's one more I'm going to check tonight. Or between classes.

But that would mean Lady of War against the mental afflictions or against your negative qualities. I wanted to give you a little comment on the structure of the whole thing. The very first line there, which is the prostration, where it says, I bow down to Tara Holy, the very first line on the top, that's called Dorten.

Dorten means, that's a wrap up of the whole thing. If you had to put the 21 verses into one line, it would be that. These are 21 verses of bowing down to Tara.

Then the rest of the 21 verses are about her holy qualities, her sacred qualities. Again, this is not an initiation. I think initiation should be passed down quietly from teacher to student after they've known each other intimately.

This is not an initiation. I'm giving you a vehicle, which is the core of a practice by which people over the centuries have reached Tara. And as yesterday we said, reach means meet her face-to-face and then secondly, become her.

In Tibetan, or in Buddhism, that's what reach means. So, I would suggest, if you're into Tara, if Tara is attractive to you, and different people have different yidam. Yidam means the one angel that you're attracted to.

It could be Yamantaka. It could be Vajrayogini. It could be Tara.

It depends on your own heart. So, if you're attracted to Tara, practice, then the custom is to recite at least 21 times a day. And then think about her.

And treat it as a request. You see? When you praise her, you're calling on her, and you're saying, please help me bump into a qualified lama who can give me the initiation, who can give me the mantras, who can teach me the practices, which are extensive.

When you really get into a tantric practice, it takes years to master it. And may I meet such a master. May I run into such a master.

And you can use it for that. It's like calling her to come help you. And that's a great way to start.

And that's what these are. These are very famous in the monasteries. Every time we do any ritual on a major holiday, twice a month, we always do this one.

So, it's very deep. The first verse there is what we call Geshe. Geshe means, here starts the explanation of her holy qualities in more detail.

The Geshe will have several parts. The first part is that we are going to praise her through describing how she came to be. And that's the first verse.

The first verse is a reference to an old story about the god of compassion, Avalokitesvara, who is nowadays His Holiness. A tear dropping from his eye, dropping on the ground, a sacred lotus growing there, and then Tara coming out of the middle of the lotus. The very first verse is a story about that.

Reflects the story. Second verse represents the beginning of the praise of Tara through describing her body, her bodily qualities. And I think we talked yesterday, she's got two different bodies, as do all enlightened beings.

One is the body that she has in her own paradise. The other is the body she sends out to help people. The main body, the physical body, is the one in her paradise.

And then she sends out other bodies to help other people. We talked about it yesterday. And I'll continue to refer to the pen thing.

If you weren't here last night, the pen thing is this. It's an explanation. It's a way to understand emptiness.

Very simply, when I hold this thing up and ask you what it is, you think and you say pen. There's two things going on in your mind. The word pen, you hear the word pen, and then you have a picture in your mind that we call pen.

When I say pen, you always have the same picture in your mind. It's a perfect pen in your mind. It's some kind of...

It's too perfect actually. You can never see that in real life. When I say pen, and when you look at a pen, what you're really looking at is a picture in your own mind in a sense.

And you have to get used to that. That's a perfect pen. It's the idealization of pen.

You mean like archetype or something of pen. And you see pen. And you see a whole pen.

In reality, it's impossible to see a whole pen. Why? A pen that you see in your mind can't exist in reality.

Why? You can't see the pen without looking at the bottom of the pen. By that time, you've lost the top of the pen.

That's why the human eye goes like this all the time. Perceptually, you can't see a whole pen. You have to be looking at the top in order to confirm it's there.

And then you glance down at the bottom to confirm it's there. And you already lost the top. And you can't look at the whole pen without looking at the top or the bottom.

What you're doing is impossible. But still you see a whole pen, don't you? You're looking at a mental image of a pen.

All the time. Every time you think you're seeing a pen, you're seeing your own idealization of a pen. I'm not trying to freak you out about it.

It doesn't matter. The point is that all there is really here is a cylinder. To the dog, if I stuck this to the dog, they would start to chew on it.

To them, they automatically think of the cylinder as something to chew on. A human automatically thinks of the cylinder as something to write with, if you know what it's for. And you have automatically that perception.

If I say, close your eyes and think of this thing as something to chew on, I mean, you can imagine it as the way a dog maybe thinks about it, but you don't have that instinctive attraction to chew on it. You see what I mean? Like a dog would.

That's the difference between a human and a dog. In fact, in Buddhism, that's what makes you a human. And that's what makes you a dog.

If you walk in this room and have an uncontrollable urge to chew on this, and slobber, you is a dog. You see what I mean? No kidding.

Not kidding. And if you walk into this room and have an urge to write with it, you're already a human. You see what I mean?

We say there's no human or dog separate from those perceptions. You gotta get used to that. It's not that you're seeing it as a pen because you're a human.

You're a human because you see it as a pen. And that's what a human is. And if there ever came a day when your mind changed and you started to see something to chew on, you would also look down and see a paw.

And I'm not kidding. That's what dogs are. That's why humans can become dogs.

After the death process. But you gotta get used to it. That's a long story.

I'm not talking about that today. What I want to say is that we say that those perceptions that you impose on this cylinder are dictated by your past deeds. If you've been kind to other people, if you've been considerate to other people, if you've given other people writing instruments you will perceive this as a pen.

If you've been unkind to other people, unthoughtful, you will perceive this as something to chew on. If you go one whole level higher, and if in this lifetime, you are able to practice compassion and wisdom perfectly, before you die, you will see this as the holy staff of Tara, and you will see me as Tara. You see what I mean?

And yourself as Tara. Because it's empty. It's just a cylinder.

It's just shapes and colors. How you see it depends on your mindset. And that mindset is solely determined by how you've been to other people.

Other living things. That's Buddhism in a nutshell. Karma over here.

Emptiness over here. They are always combining on any single object. We say, how do you know if someone is describing emptiness properly or correctly?

They should be talking about karma in the next breath. Emptiness is the fact that this is just a cylinder. Karma is what makes it a pen.

The karma in your mind, the path is in your mind, forced you to interpret this colors and shapes as a pen. That's all. That's Buddhism in a nutshell.

Karma is the projector. Emptiness is the screen. And there is no other object.

There is no pen. We are dependent on those two things. This is just a plain old innocent bystander cylinder.

And your mind is forcing you to see a pen. Does that mean you can just decide that it's going to be a bar of gold this evening? It's not voluntary.

It's instinctual. The karma is forcing you to see it as a pen. You don't have a choice to see it as a pen.

Unless you go gardening. Gardening means incredible good deeds, incredible virtues, incredible generosity to other people. And then six months, eight months, you start to see this thing as something different, something higher.

Karma doesn't work in the present tense. Karma works only when you plant it regularly. It's just like flowers.

You plant it regularly and then six months from now, eight months from now, you get some result. That's the whole thing. That's the whole point of what we are talking about.

You've got to understand emptiness to understand how you can do karma. This cylinder and this cylinder work the same. They're just cylinders.

What you see is your human arm or a dog's arm or a tarot's arm of white light only depends on how good your gardening is. If you undertake serious, well-trained, talented practices which are based on morality and virtue towards other beings and compassion towards other beings, then you will be forced to see this as something higher. OK, so what's the war?

Now we'll go over this. There's nothing more to that. I mean, if you're really intelligent enough for this, it would teach me that the vows, whether it's a tantric vow, how do I keep them?

Maybe just keep them. Honestly, things change, OK? Everything changes.

Emotional things, relationships, financial situation, place you live, the environment around you, everything. Your body, your health. Everything starts to change, OK?

Because everything is driven by your perceptions. And if you keep a sacred code of life, those perceptions are changed. OK, that's how the world changes.

That's how we get to heaven actually. That's how you get to tantric paradise. That's how you produce one.

The practice of Buddhism is the science of producing your tantric paradise. OK, alright. We should read the second verse.

That's where they start to describe where do we get her body and her paradise, OK? Now, in general, the reason twenty-one verses go through her nariscar aspect and her big butt aspect, OK? Like, there's a peaceful tarot, and there's a violent tarot, OK?

We're going to go through the peaceful one. As I said last verse, don't get worried about the violent one. She was violent, why?

That's how compassion looks to selfishness, OK? It's just the way your mind is going to look to your jealousy five minutes before your wisdom erases your jealousy, OK? Jealousy is about to be erased from a human mind after having been there for millions of lifetimes.

Comparison with them doesn't look very bad. That's like the picture in the dark. That's why they're left in flames, and they've got these big fangs, and they're going to rip the heart out of whom?

Your jealousy, your anger, your desire. That's how compassion looks to a negative state of mind. And when they see compassion walking towards them, they're like scared.

They don't want to be there anymore, OK? And they put up a good fight. You'll find that if you spiritually try to practice Buddhism, all your mental problems get worse.

For a while, OK? They're putting up their death fight, and they rebuild for five minutes after a holy teaching, while agreeing with the Dharma. OK?

Typical, OK? They feel they're incoming. They don't care.

And they are still with themselves, OK? It's a typical level of problem. OK.

So verse number two is the first of six, where it describes her parental responsibility. OK, verse number two describes what? It describes the, uh, where is she?