To prepare ourselves for this session of Dharma study, we should recall the instructions, those instructions which enable us to turn our minds away from worldly distractions, ordinary conceptualizations that often detract from one's application to Dharma practice and the attainment of best results therefrom. That is, we should approach this session of Dharma practice with proper attitude.

[01:16]

Here a proper attitude would be the would be a resolve to apply oneself wholeheartedly to the study of Dharma today in order to become able, as a result of one's studies, to accomplish the highest good of all other beings. When any virtuous action such as this is motivated by this highest resolve to work for the enlightenment of other beings as well as oneself, then that action becomes magnified in its results and in its efficacy.

[02:25]

Therefore, one should begin with this resolve to work towards enlightenment through these present efforts. Secondly, one should be attentive to the to the dharma that one is receiving, putting aside all the distractions, one should listen single-pointedly to the teachings that are being given, make a single-pointed effort to understand them and to keep them in mind for one's own future practice. Thirdly, one should relinquish all ordinary conceptualizations of this present effort in studying the Dharma.

[03:34]

This can be done in several ways. First of all, you can relinquish the conceptualization of this moment as being an ordinary one. This is a dharmic event occurring on a deeper level wherein a transmission of Dharma knowledge is being enacted. You should see the teacher as being none other than Shakyamuni Buddha himself, who is expounding the Dharma to you. Visualizing the teacher as Shakyamuni Buddha, you should think that rays of light shine forth from his radiant body to dispel all the darkness and obscurations from your own mind, that your own mind thus purified

[04:38]

becomes receptive of the Dharma teachings, able to understand them, retain them, and that also great insight into their profound meaning arises within your own consciousness. You should think of yourself also as not being an ordinary person, but visualize yourself in the form of the bodhisattva of wisdom, Manjushri Bodhisattva himself. You are that bodhisattva of wisdom who tirelessly seeks out all the profound teachings of enlightenment on behalf of ignorant beings. Nor is the present situation an ordinary one. Think of your environment as being as being one in which all appearances are non-dual appearance and voidness, that all

[05:57]

all sounds or the sounds of Dharma, the sounds of the deity's mantra. And that this present, these premises are a celestial mansion wherein the transmission of Dharma is taking place. So if If through these tantric visualizations and recollections one applies oneself single-pointedly to listen to these teachings today, not only will your efforts in study be heightened, enhanced through thus approximating the transmission of Dharma on a higher level, but will one's merit in making these efforts will also be likewise magnified and enhanced.

[07:13]

You listen to me. In the past, when I was a monk, I used to pray to the Buddha. I don't know. [...] When I was a child, I used to go to school. [...]

[08:16]

I used to go to school. I used to go to school. I used to go to school. If you don't know how to do it, you will not be able to do it. If you don't know how to do it, you will not be able to do it. If you don't know how to do it, you will not be able to do it. When I was a child, I used to go to school. [...]

[09:18]

When I was a child, I used to go to school. [...] This is the first time that I have seen this. This is the first time I have seen this. This is the first time that I have seen this. This is the first time that I have seen this. This is the first time that I have seen this. If you don't know how to do it, you can't do it.

[10:32]

If you don't know how to do it, you can't do it. [...] Thank you. I don't know what to say. In our studies of the Landre system of meditation, we have already become familiar with the four recollections which serve to prepare us for

[12:19]

advanced Buddhist practices. You will recall that we studied progressively the reflections upon the unsatisfactoriness of worldly existence as a whole, the reflections upon impermanence and death, reflections upon the unfailing operation of the law of karma. Yes, thank you.

[13:30]

And the difficulty of obtaining the opportunity to practice Dharma. Through these four reflections our minds were our minds became progressively disengaged from involvement in worldly activities and strengthened in the resolve to apply ourselves in practice to these teachings of enlightenment while the opportunity was available to us.

[14:32]

These were preparations for the exoteric Mahayana meditations, such as training in concentrative and insight stages of meditation, realization of the two kinds of non-self, etc. Now we are in this second series of studies engaged in preparation for another kind of advanced meditation, that is, advanced tantric techniques. But here too, those Four reflections are necessary as the first stage in practice.

[15:48]

Unless all our later practices derived from a sense of renunciation and diligence that is aroused in the mind through these four reflections, those meditations will be ineffective. But if upon those four reflections we then prepare our minds for advanced practice by undergoing first the training in the four foundation meditations, our meditations, all our later meditations will assuredly be fruitful. So, at this point we are now discussing these four foundation meditations which prepare us for advanced tantric practice.

[17:08]

Their overall purpose is to enable us to acquire purification and merit. The four foundation meditations which prepare us for advanced tantric practices are, as you know, refuge, Vajrasattva meditation, the mandala offering, and the guru yoga. There is a fifth foundation practice that are prostrations, which is usually in our system combined with the practice of the refuge meditation.

[18:27]

Now, the first of these four foundation meditations is that of refuge. Its purpose is to is to enable us to enter into the path of practice by reciting the refuge formula 100,000 times or more, accompanied and accompanying this recitation with the visualization and the ritual of taking refuge our minds, so to speak, embark upon the path.

[19:35]

We have a point of entrance into the experiences of the path. And by training our mind in these practices, we develop a sense of reliance upon the... Buddhist trinity and develop a sense of rapport with them, which makes us receptive to their blessings and guidance. And also, our practice of refuge impels us to make, to progress further in subsequent stages of practice. So in a word then, the purpose of the refuge foundation is to facilitate our entrance into the path of practice.

[20:39]

The Once having entered into practice, however, we become aware of the difficulties involved in practice. We encounter mental traits or physical problems or negative emotional states which hinder us in making effective progress in our training. In order to purify these

[21:50]

karmic hindrances then, these emotive and cognitive obscurations and obstacles which we may have accumulated through our past non-dharmic actions, it is necessary to purify body and mind and speech in order to remove these obstacles to effective practice. And so we undertake next the meditation of Vajrasattva. Vajrasattva is the... Here is the bodhisattva who functions as a purifying object of meditation. Through reciting his hundred syllable mantra one hundred thousand or more times, our karmic obstacles and obscurations will be purified.

[23:11]

But purity alone, mental and physical purity alone, does not constitute sufficient foundation for advanced tantric practices. Our mind must be enriched, strengthened, matured through the acquisition of merit that is the result of virtuous actions. While virtue is acquired through acting unselfishly through body, voice, and mind, performing services for others and for the Dharma, working for the Dharma, etc.,

[24:31]

One of the most effective ways of gathering merit, according to the Vajrayana tradition, is through the practice of the mandala offering. Now the mandala, symbolically representing, are the whole of our being. the whole of all the components of our personal being and, in fact, the whole of our universe, of our subjective universe, if offered in a spirit of sincere devotion and relinquishment and unselfishness to the Buddhas, for the highest good of all living beings becomes an act of worship on the highest level and

[26:05]

and accordingly brings about an acquisition of... a great amount of virtue or merit. So the third foundation practice consists of offering the mandala, that is, the symbolic universe, to the enlightened ones on behalf of all beings at least 100,000 times or more. and if performed effectively, correctly, results in the acquisition of a great store of merit. Having acquired, having entered the path, purified one's way of internal and external obstacles and having acquired a store of merit, one needs finally a sense of

[27:36]

guidance and confidence in undertaking, in pursuing these advanced stages of tantric meditation. And so the fourth foundation consists of the guru yoga practice through which one meditates upon one's own teacher and consciously strives to invoke a sense of rapport, intimate rapport with his mind directly, and invoke also a transmission of his insight, blessings, and a sense of his own dharmic experience, which will serve as

[28:53]

a source of guidance for us in our own uncharted practice. Here one recites the formula of invoking the guru accompanied by appropriate visualizations and thereby develops through this practice, through the practice of this meditation, guru yoga meditation, for one hundred thousand or more times, one does indeed develop this strong sense of intimate rapport with the guru. So through all of these foundation practices, that is, to recapitulate, the prostrations combined with, no, sorry, refuge meditation combined with prostrations accompanied by the noble resolve of the bodhicitta and the meditation of Sri Vajrasattva and the

[30:14]

Guru Yoga, meditation, the mandala offering and the Guru Yoga meditation. Once the mind becomes... one's mind and body become purified, strengthened, enriched and matured to such a degree that one is with assurance able to undertake these profound and difficult practices of the Vajrayana path. And through having this foundation on which to practice and which to base those practices, one can expect to succeed. Failing to have achieved the whole of these foundations, one really should not expect success in advanced practices no matter what they might be.

[31:40]

With these foundations to build upon, one can safely and successfully undertake to meditate upon any of the tantric deities, whether it be Sri Hivajra or Vajrayogini or whomever. And one has every reason to expect the highest success from one's practice. if one has been diligent and thoroughgoing in one's prior practice of these foundation meditations. So in the past few weeks we have discussed and given you the instructions for the first two of the four foundations.

[32:45]

That is, we discussed the refuge in a Sri Vajrasattva meditation. Tonight we will discuss the third foundation, that is, the mandala offering. Sankratakila mandala asetite, peki dasa jungkho rusi. Jungkho. Jungkho. Jungkho jiye na. Thank you very much.

[33:51]

Thank you very much. When I was a young boy, I was very young. [...] I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.

[35:20]

I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Thank you.

[36:21]

I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. If you don't believe me, I'm going to tell you this. If you don't believe me, I'm going to tell you this. If you don't believe me, I'm going to tell you this. When I was young, I used to go to school.

[37:53]

I used to go to school. I used to go to school. When I was young, I used to go to school. When I was young, I used to go to school. When I was a child, I used to go to school with my parents. [...] It's not a big deal. It's a big deal. It's not a big deal. It's a big deal.

[38:53]

If you don't believe me, I will tell you the truth. If you don't believe me, I will tell you the truth. If you don't believe me, I will tell you the truth. If you believe me, I will tell you the truth. The Sanskrit word mandala is translated into Tibetan by the word kinkor. In English, both words mandala and kinkor would be translated as simply a circle.

[40:21]

Circle. Now, the circle A circle signifies or represents totality or completeness. And this is what is signified when one performs the mandala offering. That is, that you are offering to the enlightened ones the whole of your being. Historically, this ritual of mandala offerings is traced to an offering made to the Buddha by a universal emperor,

[41:28]

Chakravartin Raja, Chakravartin Raja, that is an emperor of the universe who once offered the Buddha the whole of his empire, the whole of his kingdom, that is the whole of the universe. Now, at present we are not able to make a similar offering but we can offer all that we have that is all that we might rightfully claim as belonging to ourselves that is that there is no other of which there is no other Our own body, voice, and mind, our faculties, our experience, our property, property that belongs to us, and even one's own family.

[42:35]

All that is one's own. that is, the whole of one's belongings, can and should be offered up to the enlightened ones in this effort to accumulate merit, because Merit is acquired through the making of gifts. And the more unselfish the merit, the more thoroughgoing... the more unselfish the gift, the more thoroughgoing the gift, the more merit is acquired. So the purpose of this foundation practice is to train ourselves in total unselfishness through this This giving is offering up the totality of our own being and all our belongings. But even this gift must be performed rightly.

[43:55]

First of all, it must be sincere, and it must not be performed wrongly. What would be a wrong offering to the Buddhas? What if, let us say that most of the belongings that we have most of our own property has not been purely acquired. We have acquired them ourselves, maybe sinfully, through sinful means, certainly through greed, through the mental poison of greed or selfishness or miserliness or through other negative

[44:58]

means we have acquired what we are now offering up. So there is the fault, the state, the taint rather, of sinful acquisition of the very things that we're now planning to offer the enlightened ones. Then even though we offer them up, at the time we are offering them. We may be holding back. We don't really mean it. We're merely doing it through rote. We're merely doing it. We're pretending to give them up. We're really thinking. We try to hold back something for ourselves. We don't give up the attachment to them. So there is still the taint of clinging, even at the time of giving them up.

[46:03]

And finally, there is taint of pride. even if we do manage to get through making the gift, then we become very conceited about it and think, well, I did it. I did what is hard for others to do. I'm really quite a giver. I've given up all that I've got, and so forth. And you become very conceited and proud. And so, at every stage then, our gift, our offering, has been tainted with the... It's not familiar. No, no. I think it's here. It's James. It's James.

[47:05]

You want to leap in here? Yes. So, at all three stages of our magnanimous gift, it has been tainted, our actions were tainted with sin, with miserliness and with conceit. This kind of the offering, however, that is to be made here through this practice of the mandala offering must not be an offering such as this. It is a total offering of the totality of one's being and all that pertains to oneself. without clinging to it, without conceit about doing it, but only with the thought that through this offering to the enlightened ones, all that I am and have, that may all beings acquire merit and enlightenment, and through this offering may I also become enabled to help them in this.

[48:30]

So that is a real offering. Now, the mandala, let's go into the specifics of the practice of the mandala offering. This offering of the totality of one's universe is symbolized by what is called the mandala itself, which is an arrangement, a symbolic arrangement of using certain instruments. that is, a mandala board, if you will. And there are specifications about the type of mandala or circle that one may use in the ceremony, in the ritual. Now, when we use, let's talk about the material, the mandala.

[49:31]

Now, when I say the mandala, now I'm talking about the specific instrument or the particular... the particular utensil that you're using to symbolize this offering of your universe to the enlightened ones. This may be of three kinds of material, three classes of material. The best one would be of gold or silver. The second best would be of of lesser metals such as bronze or copper, something like that. Or, and the least preferable, would be stone or wood. Now what about the size of this instrument?

[50:34]

If it is of gold and silver, say the Tibetan scholars, it should be of one toe in diameter. That is, the span between the tip of one's thumb and the tip of one's middle finger. Yeah, whatever you call it. Yeah. If it is a wood or stone, however, if it is not a metal substance, it should be, it should equal, the diameter should equal the distance from the tip of one's elbow to the tip of one's hand. Okay? It should be larger. Now, And it's quite all right to use these lesser materials. For example, Rinpoche's own great teacher, Gautama Lama Lepore Rinpoche, was very poor.

[51:40]

He couldn't afford one of the costlier models, so he used first a wooden mandala, and he did five... It's not like that. It's not like that. It's like that. First, he could only afford a wooden mandala, and so he used that. He made 500,000 offerings of the mandala, using that wooden mandala. And then he... acquired a stone mandala, and he used that to perform another 500,000 offerings of the mandala.

[53:05]

Now, of course, there are shorter and longer versions of this mandala ritual. He, of course, practiced the longer version, which is much longer than the shorter one. Whereas other lamas have said it is all right to use these smaller utensils, smaller instruments as the one's mandala, Gautama Avalokiteshvaraya Rinpoche stressed that they should be large. He prefers the larger models because if not, since the whole point of making mandala offerings is this willingness to give and to make efforts in giving,

[54:09]

that the larger they are, the bigger the effort, the more the offering. So it's right within the keeping of the mandala. The spirit of the mandala offering is to use the larger models and so forth. In any case, it's not right to scamper or to use subsized mandala services. Yes, sir. Can you remember how to use it? What? What? If you don't know how to do it, you can't do it.

[55:50]

If you don't know how to do it, you can't do it. If you don't know how to do it, you cannot do it. When I was young, I used to go to Samaya and Satoa. I used to go to all of them. [...] I don't know what to say. I don't know what to say. I don't know what to say. And then they said, I'm going to take them out, and [...] I'm going to take them out.

[57:17]

In the past, there was no such thing as a temple. [...] We have to do something about it. We have to do something about it. We have to [...] do something about it. Very good. Yes, sir. Yes. Physically the offering of the mandala consists of arranging arranging one's offering upon the surface of this mandala.

[59:06]

You must have seen in Rinpoche's hand he was holding the utensil which we are calling here a mandala. So holding one should first of all hold the mandala in your left hand not in your right. Hold it in your left and then place your offering on the surface of the mandala with your right hand, not with your left. If you offer with your left hand, it means that you will starve in the future. So, But before you place the offering, there are first a few things that you should know about the offering itself and the preparation for the placement. First of all, let's talk about the material you use in your symbolic offering.

[60:14]

Ideally, that is, Ideally, you should offer the five kinds of precious metals, such as gold, silver, and so forth, precious stones. If you don't have those, then the second best kind of offering would consist of medicines, the five the five prescribed kinds of medicine. These are herbal in nature. And I couldn't begin to tell you what they are. Mirabilum or something like that. And in any case, they grow in India in the Himalayas. Is it orphans? Yes. So, what makes the second best would be an offering of medicinal herbs.

[61:21]

If you don't have even those, if you are a poor meditator, it's all right to use white stones, white pebbles. All right. So having prepared your offering, now you must prepare the mandala, the surface of the mandala for the ceremony. This means that you must first purify the surface of the mandala. This you do By reciting the 100-syllable mantra of purification, you must know it from your Vajrasattva meditations.

[62:23]

You recite that hundred syllable mantra while at the same time repeatedly cleansing or cleansing the surface of the mandala by rubbing it with this portion of your right hand, the heel of your right hand. You can't use a rag or a sponge or any other thing to cleanse it. It's not that it... The point is that you must use the surface of your own skin to cleanse this, the surface of this mandala while reciting the mantra. Having done this, then you next wash the surface of the mandala with, ideally, herbal water, some kind of concoction of water in which

[63:36]

purifying the herbs that have been placed. Then you pour a little bit over the surface of the of the mandala and cleanse the surface. If you don't have that best kind of herbal medicine, herbal liquid, then you can use a substitute, for example, a less expensive mixture of herbs. Or if you don't have that, then just use clean water, plain, pure, fresh water. All right. Now you are ready to begin the offering ceremony. May I just ask a question? These five precious metals of local medicine, where do they go? This is going to be elaborated as we go along.

[64:44]

I'm just telling you what you offer at this point. Now I'll tell you where the offerings go. He'll explain all of that as we progress. Yes, these details are important and they will definitely be explained. I mean, I don't know myself yet, that's why I'm asking you to wait. So, now you take up the offering itself, that is, we're using, as you notice here, not gold or silver or even stones, we're using rice. So the rice symbolizes our offering. You take up a small pinch of rice in the fingers of your right hand and then starting with It's complicated.

[65:46]

Starting at the front of the mandala, which is assuming that my hand is the mandala, starting here, you draw a line up to the center of the very center of the mandala's surface. And there you place one pinch of rice. You move across and then drop. You move to the center. Yeah, you move to the center. Now, I don't know. He did a lot of things, and unless you all come and stand over his shoulder, I don't know how we're going to get through this, because it's all a matter of... Do you all have a picture of the mandolin in your mind? I mean, already round circles, right? That's good. Hearts of the... What? Okay, so visualize this round circle, and you understand that it's in this position, and you're putting the rice at different points.

[66:51]

All right, so now the first one is, as you can see from his mandala, is getting... What I saw him do was, he came up from the... Oh, my God, I can't visualize myself. All right. That's right. That's right. When I was a child, I used to go to school with my parents. I used to go to school with my parents. I used to go to school with my parents. When I was a child, I used to go to school with my parents. As you recite the first line.

[67:52]

He's going to do the whole thing. My name is Aung San Suu Kyi. [...] Then it's on the demolition duty.

[69:37]

Short version.

[69:39]

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