Insight Editions · No. 399
Repeating the Words of the Buddha
Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche's ten talks on the whole path, from Gampopa's Four Dharmas to the bardo
Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche
A study guide to Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche's Repeating the Words of the Buddha: Gampopa's Four Dharmas, re-enlightenment, impermanence, refuge, devotion, Vajrasattva, the three excellences, obstacles, worldly aims and the bardo, with tables, diagrams and practice notes.
A study guide to Repeating the Words of the Buddha by Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche, compiled and edited by Marcia Binder Schmidt, translated by Erik Pema Kunsang (Rangjung Yeshe Publications, 2nd ed. 2006). Shared free for personal reading; not for sale and not endorsed by the publishers. Please read the original book, and practise with proper transmission.
CORE CLAIM
Every teaching of the Buddha gathers into one point: recognize the buddha nature you already have, train in it in short moments, many times, and stabilize it before death takes away the freedom to choose.
SCOPE
Ten talks and a short message, from Gampopa's Four Dharmas to the bardo, compiled by Marcia Binder Schmidt, translated by Erik Pema Kunsang, second edition Rangjung Yeshe, 2006, foreword by Chökyi Nyima Rinpoche.
KEY FIGURES
Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche; Gampopa; Longchenpa; the third Karmapa, Rangjung Dorje; Düsum Khyenpa; Garab Wangchuk, king of demons; Milarepa and Rechungpa; Karmey Khenpo Rinchen Dargye.
BEST FOR
Newcomers who want the whole Vajrayana path in plain speech, and practitioners who need a reminder, which is how Rinpoche himself describes these talks.
The Book on One Page
The title is Rinpoche's own disclaimer: "Since I do not possess any qualities of learning or accomplishment, I will simply repeat the flawless words of the Buddha." What follows is the path from first motivation to the moment of death, told with jewels in mud, light switches and wild horses.
The Argument in Brief
- The essence is already here. Buddha nature is in everyone, "from Buddha Samantabhadra down to the tiniest insect," with no big or small versions.
- We have strayed onto the path. The jewel fell in the mud; we cannot be primordially enlightened, but we can be re-enlightened.
- Means and knowledge together. Refuge, Vajrasattva, devotion and the three excellences clean the jewel; recognition is the cleaning itself.
- Time is short. Impermanence and karma make practice urgent, and worldly aims compete with it.
- Death tests everything. Only stability in rigpa gives control when there is no free will.
"I'm not asking you to understand this, because of course you already do; I'm simply reminding you."
Map of the Talks
| No. | Talk | Payload |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Foreword and Message | Scholar and meditator; four validations |
| 2 | The Four Dharmas of Gampopa | Whole path in four lines; sun and reflection |
| 3 | Re-enlightenment | Jewel in mud; same essence, separate beings |
| 4 | Impermanence | Two feet of meditation; Saha; crossroads |
| 5 | The Innermost Refuge | Three kayas; means and knowledge |
| 6 | Devotion and Compassion | Head, heart and feet |
| 7 | Vajrasattva | Snake in the tube; four powers |
| 8 | The Three Excellences | Motivation, main part, dedication |
| 9 | Obstacles | Outer, inner, secret; Garab Wangchuk |
| 10 | Dharma Practice and Worldly Aims | Doing both; short moments |
| 11 | Bardo | Four experiences; drawing of a tiger |
Foreword and A Message to the World
Chökyi Nyima Rinpoche explains his father's style before Tulku Urgyen speaks: "instruction through personal experience." The short message that follows states the book's thesis in a page: enlightenment is not a fairy tale.
Two Approaches
| Approach | Suits | Method |
|---|---|---|
| Scholar | The skeptical, those with "many thoughts and doubts" | Study, reasoning, scripture |
| Meditator | Those who want direct realization | Pith instructions of Mahamudra and Dzogchen |
Suspicion that Mahamudra and Dzogchen are not the Buddha's words, the foreword says, "results from shallow learning." The master's duty is to point out; training after that "lies in the hands of the disciple." "Just half an hour of Rinpoche's teachings is more beneficial than reading through volumes of books."
"The master's duty is to point out the naked state of wakefulness; to train in meditation after having recognized this naked state lies in the hands of the disciple." Chökyi Nyima Rinpoche
The Message
Rinpoche says he has known "many, many people who attained such an enlightened state, both male and female." He asks for four kinds of validation: the Buddha's words, the lineage masters, one's own teacher, and one's own intelligence. "Do not leave anything to blind faith."
"Delusion never disappears by itself." The method to turn the body into rainbow light at death is only recognizing buddha nature. "If you really want to take care of yourself, recognize your enlightened essence."
The Style of the Talks
The foreword explains why these talks read the way they do. Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche alternated questions with advice, questioning students repeatedly until their uncertainty was gradually cleared away, so that the awakened state could be "seen nakedly and directly." Chökyi Nyima Rinpoche admits that his father's phrasing was "not particularly eloquent" at times, yet "always his words have a strongly beneficial impact." The reason, he says, is that Rinpoche spent many years in retreat and speaks of what he himself has undergone.
The foreword also gives the book's method in one sentence. All aspects of the Buddha's teachings gather into a single point: for someone who has not recognized, every practice should facilitate recognition; for someone who has, it should help sustain its continuity. Longevity practices, health practices and the rest are "many layers, many peels" around that core. Purifying veils and gathering merit also help sustain the continuity, because our karma and habits are powerful.
The Three Jewels and Three Roots
The message names the supports needed to realize buddha nature. The Buddha is the primal teacher who showed the essence; the Dharma is the training; the Sangha are those who uphold it. Then come the three roots: the guru, root of blessings; the yidam, root of accomplishment; the dakini, root of activities. Together they possess all-knowing wakefulness, all-embracing compassion, activity for beings and the capacity to protect.
The cause of every being's pain, Rinpoche says, is "nothing other than lacking the experience of our enlightened essence." We neglect what is continually present and chase illusory aims on "samsara's vicious wheel" of the twelve links. Everyone in the past died; everyone alive will die; the instruction is still available, and the lineage "is still intact."
The Four Dharmas of Gampopa
Gampopa condensed the teachings of the thousand buddhas into four lines, later expounded by Longchenpa. Rinpoche uses them as the frame for the entire path, from turning the mind to confusion dawning as wisdom.
The Four Lines
| Line | Practice |
|---|---|
| Mind follows the Dharma | The four mind-changings |
| Dharma becomes the path | The preliminaries |
| The path clarifies confusion | Development, recitation, completion |
| Confusion dawns as wisdom | Recognizing buddha nature |
Turning the Mind
Humans are as many as stars at night; those with a precious human body are like stars in the morning, and the sincerely diligent are fewer still. Life is "a flash of lightning or a bubble in water." Rinpoche adds dryly: if life ended in nothingness, "that would be perfect," but "I'm sorry to say" consciousness does not die.
Why Death Is Not the End
Rinpoche spells out the second and third mind-changings together. However much wealth, friends and family we gather, "we lack the power to bring any of it" into the afterlife; we journey alone to an unknown place, as we have in every past life. All happiness is "as insubstantial as the dream we dreamt last night." After death we must experience the effect of former actions, circling between the three lower and three higher states. We stay in samsara as long as we are covered by the emotional and cognitive obscurations, which are exactly what block omniscient buddhahood.
The Preliminaries
Refuge and prostrations purify body, Vajrasattva purifies speech, the mandala purifies mind, and guru yoga purifies all three. "Realization occurs spontaneously when the obscurations are removed." Guru yoga, though placed among the preliminaries, is "more profound than the main part."
Gold in the Mud
The ground is buddha nature, present like oil in a mustard seed. We fail to recognize it and become "pure gold that has fallen into the mud." In this frame, the path means the state of confusion. Our nature has three vajras: an unchanging body, an unceasing speech and an unmistaken mind, hidden by our ordinary body, talk and thinking.
- Suchness is dharmakaya, like space.
- Illumination is sambhogakaya, like sunlight spreading from it.
- Seed syllable is nirmanakaya, like a rainbow: "visible but not tangible."
"Without space the sun cannot shine; without sunshine a rainbow cannot appear."
Practising the Stages
Visualize with vastness: "Don't visualize the deity in your own little house." Dissolve all into emptiness, build the elements, Mount Sumeru and the palace, and appear as the yidam. Deities "are not subject to pleasure when being worshipped"; the offerings are for our purification. Dissolving the visualization cuts eternalism; re-emerging cuts nihilism.
On datura, people suddenly appear with "ten heads, twenty arms, fifty legs." When it wears off, we see them as they are. Ignorance is the drug that has not worn off, and the three stages are how it clears.
Sun and Reflection
"There is no buddha apart from your own mind." There is one mind, deluded or undeluded. Its essence is the sun in the sky; its expression, our thinking, is the sun's reflection on water. Can a reflection light the whole lake or make things grow? No. The obscuration is subject-object fixation, renewed each moment.
Buddha Nature Has No Sizes
Buddha nature "doesn't increase or decrease." It is not sometimes covered and sometimes uncovered; it does not change in size; "it is not that someone has a big buddha nature and somebody else a small one." Space has no centre or edge; wherever space pervades there are beings, and wherever there are beings buddha nature is present. That is why it is said to encompass all of samsara and nirvana. The three buddhas Samantabhadra, Vajradhara and Vajrasattva are "not three different enlightened beings" but its three aspects, inseparable like space, sunlight and rainbow.
The Jewel and the Fake
Humans, "the most clever and capable" of beings, hold a wish-fulfilling jewel and prefer a fake piece of jewelry. "There is nothing sadder or of greater waste." The opportunity is like "a good meal once in a hundred years," only more precious.
Pointing Out Dualistic Mind
A fine brocade brings "How nice!": attachment. A used handkerchief: aversion. A clean plain one: indifference. Across the six collections of consciousness, we like, dislike and ignore. You cannot "throw a nuclear bomb" at the three poisons; they are an "evil machine." Those who say "I don't kill, I don't steal" still create subtle negative actions moment by moment.
"Ten thousand years of darkness are dispelled in one moment" when the switch is pressed. Self-existing wisdom is the only path of the buddhas of the three times: "not even an atom of any other path."
The Name of Buddha Nature
Rinpoche finally names it: "empty and cognizant self-existing wakefulness." The empty aspect is like space pervading everywhere; inseparable from it is a natural capacity to cognize. It is self-existing because it is "uncreated by causes in the beginning and undestroyed by circumstances in the end." The vajra master gives the pointing-out instruction "for that single purpose," and what he points out is not something we lack. Only by recognizing, then continuously sustaining it, and finally reaching the point where "not even an iota of conceptual thinking remains" is stability attained.
Recognize, Train, Stabilize
A flower seed is not spectacular, so "do not expect the recognition of mind essence to be something spectacular." The full bloom holds the four fearlessnesses, ten powers and eighteen unique qualities, all already in the seed. "We must equalize life and practice."
Three Vajras Obscured
Rinpoche ties each stage to one of the three vajras. Development stage removes the veil over vajra body, which is obscured by our perishable physical form. Recitation of the three kinds of mantra, vidya, dharani and guhya, removes the veil over vajra speech, the "king of all melodious expressions," obscured by our stop-start talk. Resting in samadhi reveals vajra mind, obscured by momentary thinking. Mantra is called "the king of verbal expression" because it is unceasing, unlike ordinary speech.
He also gives the practical sequence for a beginner who has not recognized buddha nature. One can approximate the samadhi of suchness by imagining all worlds and beings dissolving into emptiness, chanting OM MAHA SHUNYATA JNANA VAJRA SVABHAVA ATMA KOH HANG. Out of the great emptiness, cognizance unfolds like the sun rising, and from that a deity appears like a rainbow, "apparent but without self-nature." The deity is not made of flesh and blood.
Not Wood into Gold
The development stage "does not mean to imagine something which is not already present." Rinpoche repeats that it is not "pretending that a piece of wood is pure gold" but "simply acknowledging what already is." For now the visualization is an artificial construct, yet it is "an imitation that resembles what is already present." The ultimate development stage is simply resting in the mind of all buddhas, from which the two form kayas manifest spontaneously.
In the same way, the true completion stage of Gampopa's fourth line differs from the completion stage with attributes, which is only dissolving and re-emerging from a visualization. The true one is recognizing buddha nature. Then "gold is just pure gold." The mind given the name "sentient being" when deluded is called "buddha" when undeluded. "Sentient beings do not have two minds."
The sun shines everywhere, "but sunshine never reaches inside a cave facing north." That cave is misunderstanding, wrong view or partial understanding. Check which way your own understanding faces before assuming the light is absent.
View, Meditation, Conduct, Fruition
Rinpoche defines the four in one paragraph. View is recognizing buddha nature; meditation is sustaining its continuity correctly; conduct is mingling it with daily activities; fruition is realizing it as totally unobscured, "like the sun shining with unchanging brilliance." The preliminaries and development stage "are like helpers, assistants." We are at a dividing point in the road that leads up or down. Mind creates virtue and evil; "our voice and body act as the mind's servants or employees."
Re-enlightenment
If buddha nature is already enlightened, why practise? Rinpoche's answer is blunt: "it is too late to make that claim." Our jewel has already fallen into the stinking mud, so the goal is re-enlightenment.
Not One
"All sentient beings are not one; they don't become enlightened when one person does." Not even Avalokiteshvara could free everyone. A realized being helps many; 3,000 beings are said to be liberated when one attains the rainbow body, and 100,000 in Uddiyana awoke together, but such cases are rare. "It is completely up to ourselves." Samsara has no end in general but an end for each person who awakens.
Three Things That Must Meet
| Factor | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Buddha nature | Present in all, like oil in sesame |
| Precious human body | Animals have the essence but cannot receive teachings |
| Spiritual teacher | Introduces what we already have |
Wasting this is "returning empty-handed from an island full of jewels." We are like a fool lost in a crowd asking "Where am I?" until someone says, "Here you are!"
Shared: the empty cognizant essence, like gold, water or the space inside houses. Separate: the form of manifestation. "If you attain enlightenment it doesn't mean that I will be enlightened. Sorry about that!" "Some jewels were lucky. Some fell in the mud."
Claiming primordial enlightenment now would be "a philosophical trick." Primordial enlightenment means ground and fruition are identical with no path between; we already have a path to clear.
The Jewel Story
Rinpoche tells the full parable of the wish-fulfilling jewel. Buddhas' jewel never fell, so it needs no cleaning. Ours fell in the mud. Visualization, recitation and meditation are the cleaning, purifying body, speech and mind and gathering merit and wisdom. Once cleaned, the jewel is placed on top of a victory banner; offerings are made to it, and it fulfils all wishes. That is the fruition.
The term buddha in this context refers to primordial enlightenment: someone who realized the ground from the start. Sentient beings have no chance for primordial enlightenment, since they already soiled their jewel, but they can become re-enlightened.
"We presently possess all three of these factors." Rinpoche's point is practical: there is no further condition to wait for. The qualities of a buddha are not his personal property but "the qualities of the buddha nature fully manifest," and we have the same potential lying dormant.
Impermanence
The verse by Karmey Khenpo sets the tone: death follows birth, its time is uncertain, only Dharma helps. Rinpoche calls taking impermanence to heart "the first step through the door."
Nothing Lingers
Sun and moon, once risen, "don't linger in between for even an instant." Life is a candle burning down, a waterfall that never stops. "Yesterday will never come back." Nobody alive now will be alive in 150 years, yet "nobody believes he will eventually die." We are "like a tree that appears to be growing but is decaying inside."
Before death we can improve our situation by ingenuity. After death we are "absolutely powerless and choiceless." The causes for a good rebirth are "currently in our own hands."
Two Feet of Meditation
Revulsion is losing appetite for samsara, like a jaundice patient served fried food. Renunciation is knowing time is running out. "Our present body is as perishable as a rainbow, our breath is like mist on the mountains, and all our thoughts... like bubbles."
Food, Clothes, Reputation
If you always dressed well, you leave "a well-dressed corpse." Reputation is the worst of the three: at least food can be eaten and clothes worn. It is "like thunder in the sky or an echo." A dead king gets no welcoming party in the bardo; the Lord of Death "does not respect anyone."
Saha: the Indiscernible World
The Buddha named this world Saha, "indiscernible." Karma ripens slowly, so "we walk around like stupid cows." If results were immediate, no one would jump into evil any more than into an abyss. That is why we need a teacher repeating what the Buddha said.
| What Rinpoche trusts | Why |
|---|---|
| The Buddha's words | He saw the three times "as clearly as something placed in his own hand" |
| The masters' statements | Many showed signs: flying, passing through rock, rainbow body |
| The root guru's instructions | Tested in his own practice |
"It is not only because I am Buddhist that I believe the Buddha." Tibetans built no airplanes; they built "spiritual machinery."
Indian panditas visiting Tibet met the first Karmapa, Düsum Khyenpa, and said: "We know this old guy with the monkey face very well. He came to India many times" to their guru's feasts. The Karmapa never left Tibet.
Why We Need a Teacher at All
If karmic effects were visible, "we would not need a teacher to act as a substitute for the Buddha." Right and wrong would be self-evident. Because they are not, we listen to someone repeating words that are not lies: good actions give good results, negative actions negative ones. Hearing is not enough; "unless we trust what has been said, we won't act in accordance with it." Some suspect the teacher "doesn't know what he's talking about." Rinpoche answers that we cannot see clearly: "We don't know what we did in the past or if we will die tomorrow."
There was not just one buddha. A thousand will appear in this eon, and countless in future eons. Their words, "totally free of any deception," are the Precious Dharma.
Refuge and Blessing
Refuge is feeling from deep within that nothing is more precious than the Three Jewels. Enlightenment perceives all like a crystal ball. Blessings are near: hold a mirror to the sun and the reflection is immediate. Blessing is a hook; faith is the ring. The three unmistaken qualities free us from doubt; "it's not like we are told, 'Don't doubt! Just believe!'" Rinpoche admits: "I do not rely solely on my own judgment."
The Crossroads
The Lamenting Apology of Rudra: past tears would fill an ocean, past bones would outheight the tallest mountain. A good practitioner is joyful even at death. Yaks look handsome from afar, sickly close up, lice and scabies under the fleece. "When I was young... controlled by others... Now, I'm old... Alas, alas!"
Samsara as Spinning
Samsara means "spinning or circling like a cog in a machine." What decides rebirth is karmic debt. Many positive deeds lead to the three higher states of humans, demigods and gods; many negative ones to animals, hungry ghosts and the hot and cold hells. Higher than these is liberation, rebirth in a buddhafield, and higher still complete enlightenment.
The Living Lineage
Dharma without upholders would be "nothing more than writing on paper." The Sangha are like the holders of a family line, the teachers who explain what the teachings mean and how to apply them. Over centuries they produced many hundreds of volumes of commentary. "We need living beings who can communicate the profundity of the Dharma." Blessing is not far away: the moment we feel faith, it is present.
Where Rinpoche Gets His Confidence
Rinpoche's honesty here is unusual. He has never visited the higher states or the hells, nor can he see past or future lives. "If I were only to rely on myself, I would be unable to reach this certainty." He relies instead on the three unmistaken qualities, combined with his own experience, and on the many who reached a state free from doubt and showed signs of accomplishment.
Being human is like arriving on an island where jewels abound. "It's extremely important not to stand around with our hands in our pockets or folded across our chest." An animal in a forest could not receive teachings; we can.
The Choice Is Ours
"If we are happy and content to continue... of course we don't need to practice the Dharma." As an ox or cow, one would just eat grass, sleep and "abide in stupidity until we are slaughtered." Samsara does not need our effort to continue. At a fork in the road, "it is our own hands that will steer"; no one else can steer for us. A buddha is a sugata, one "gone to bliss," where not even the word "suffering" is heard.
If we fail to practise, Rinpoche notes, we are not adding more beings to samsara, only adding ourselves to those already there. "Wouldn't it be better to attain enlightenment" and help countless others?
The Innermost Refuge
Padmasambhava's verse takes refuge in empty essence, cognizant nature and manifold capacity. Rinpoche begins with a comparison: the nearest thing in Buddhism to an omniscient god is the three kayas, though "that is not really necessary."
Means and Knowledge
Means is visualizing buddhas outside and practising; knowledge is realizing they are within our own nature. An external buddha alone "will by itself never bring complete enlightenment," yet the real depends on the superficial.
- Airplane: the engineer plus the materials.
- Corn: method alone is "the husk without the corn cob."
- Tibetan doctor: diagnosis plus medicines.
The Kayas as Buddhas
Samantabhadra is dharmakaya; Vajradhara, sambhogakaya; Vajrasattva, nirmanakaya. Deities are not a family. Of a thousand buddhas this eon, Shakyamuni is the fourth, with a billion emanations.
| Kind of nirmanakaya | Example |
|---|---|
| Created | Sacred images, like the Bodhgaya statues now in Lhasa |
| Supreme | Shakyamuni; for Vajrayana, Padmasambhava |
| Incarnated | Tulkus |
| Variegated | Any form, "including bridges or ships" |
Buddhas appear in every class of being: Shakra among gods, Steadfast Lion among animals, Flaming Mouth among hungry ghosts, Dharmaraja among hell beings.
One sun appears in billions of bodies of water. Their indivisibility is the essence-kaya, the nature of our mind; outer kayas "are merely symbols."
Kayas Are Not Karma-Bound
Nirmana means "magically created." Ordinary beings cannot choose when to leave or enter a body; our rebirth is decided by karma. Nirmanakayas are "not bound by the law of karma"; like reflections of the sun, they appear wherever there is water. Buddhas manifest to tame beings in each of the six classes, and most beings see them simply as kings or rulers of their own world. Among demigods the Buddha is Taksang; among humans, Shakyamuni.
A buddha has accomplished everything for himself, so "a buddha appears only for others." Because beings differ in capacity, there are three or nine levels of teaching, the nine vehicles. Since we cannot perceive sambhogakaya or dharmakaya, the thousand buddhas of this eon are human: "Unless buddhas appear as human beings, how can we see them?"
Space, sunlight and rainbow are only the outer images. "The meaning of these symbols lies within our own mind." Refuge in the innermost sense is refuge in our own empty essence, cognizant nature and manifold capacity.
Devotion and Compassion
The third Karmapa's line governs this talk: "In the moment of love the empty essence nakedly dawns." Love here means both devotion upward and compassion downward.
The Moment of Love
Devotion so sincere that "the hairs of one's body stand on end" strips the mind bare, and in that moment rigpa is recognized. Compassion does the same: beings have the same wisdom and do not know it.
| Part of the body | Quality | Role |
|---|---|---|
| Head | Devotion | Opens to blessing |
| Feet | Revulsion, compassion | Carry practice forward |
| Heart | Nondistraction, the view | The essence |
"Devotion is the head of meditation, revulsion is the foot of meditation and nondistraction is the heart of meditation." How can someone travel with only a heart?
Effort First, Effortless Later
Dzogchen says devotion arises naturally, "but frankly speaking, for a beginner it doesn't happen like that." Refuge is the main devotion practice and bodhichitta the main compassion practice: "the basic capital" for the business of higher practice. Without the two bodhichittas, "I will swear to that," no practice brings one step closer.
Why Cultivate Them
Devotion and compassion are not mentioned simply because we ought to feel them; there is a direct reason. Without the buddhas, their teachings and followers, we would not know any Dharma or how to reach liberation. Remembering this "naturally and unavoidably generates devotion." Remembering that all beings have been our parents, and what they go through, makes compassion unavoidable.
The Kagyü and Nyingma traditions call devotion "the universal panacea." Focus on devotion and one does not need years of debate, philosophy, grammar and art. Thousands reached accomplishment this way. Ignoring devotion, compassion and renunciation is "like a bird trying to fly without wings."
The Kagyü masters say it is delusion to count on any method other than purifying, gathering and the master's blessing. So "whatever conceptual practice we do should ideally be combined with the recognition of mind essence." Means without knowledge takes three eons; together they are swift.
Devotion and compassion share one essence: love. "The mind is laid bare of thoughts at the moment the empty essence dawns nakedly." The Kagyü lineage is called the lineage of devotion, but compassion works the same way.
Vajrasattva
Vajrayana is high risk and high reward. Its saving grace is that broken commitments can be repaired, and Vajrasattva with the four powers is how.
The Snake in the Bamboo
A snake in a bamboo tube can go only up or down. Kept samayas lead to Unified Vajra Holder in this lifetime; broken ones to Vajra Hell. The lower vehicles carry less risk and less gain.
There are four stages: infraction, breach, violation, complete break. Repair must come within three years.
- 4 stages of damage, from infraction to complete break.
- 3 years: the limit for confession.
- 253 monastic precepts lost with one major breach.
- 100 recitations of the mantra, in one session with all four powers.
Four Powers
| Power | Content |
|---|---|
| Support | Vajrasattva above the crown, embodying the hundred deities |
| Antidote | Nectar through the crown; misdeeds flow out to the Lord of Death, who then generates bodhichitta |
| Remorse | "A training in pretense is not effective" |
| Resolve | Not repeating it, even at the cost of one's life |
Even the five actions with immediate results can be purified, by naked confession before a hundred practitioners. With all four, the practice is like a match on a mountain of dry grass.
Rinpoche says doubting Vajrayana's effectiveness is "wrong view," with "no worse misdeed." That makes the claims hard to test from outside, though he grounds them in the three unmistaken qualities, not blind belief.
Conventional and Ultimate Purification
Subtle misdeeds are "like water moving under a covering of straw." Conventional purification uses visualization and resolve; ultimate purification is resting in rigpa, where the rope tying samsara is cut. An inheritance teaches us to continue samsara; the Buddha left "instructions on how to empty samsara."
The Antidote in Detail
The visualization is precise. At Vajrasattva's heart is a white syllable HUNG circled by the hundred syllables. Light radiates out, making offerings to the buddhas and purifying all beings, then gathers back. Nectar drips from his heart, out through his big toe and into the crown of one's head. Misdeeds, sickness and evil influences leave through the lower openings as soot, pus and poisonous insects. The earth cracks open nine stories deep, where the Lord of Death and his henchmen wait with open mouths; satisfied, they too generate bodhichitta, and one's karmic debts are cleared. It is "like taking soap and water and washing our hands."
Remorse for What We Cannot Remember
Remorse must include what we cannot remember. Grind the whole world into pellets the size of a juniper berry, the Buddha said, and you could count the pellets but not your lifetimes. All the actions of those lives sit as imprints in the all-ground consciousness. Vajrasattva can purify them, "but only if we have true remorse."
Few Hardships, Many Methods
The Sutra path takes three incalculable eons, an "incalculable" being ten followed by fifty-two zeros. Vajrayana is described as "many methods and few hardships," meant for sharp faculties. Rinpoche keeps returning to wonder: "the more I reflect on the practices of Vajrayana... the more amazed I am." One deity and one mantra of a hundred syllables: "it's amazing." He also warns that profound practices attract powerful maras, so trust matters.
The root of samsara, he concludes, is "the continuous instant of delusion," called formation among the five aggregates. "The only thing that can really cut samsara is the moment of rigpa."
The Three Excellences
"Never forget the excellent preparation of bodhichitta, the excellent main part free from concepts and the excellent conclusion of dedicating the merit." All Tibetan schools share this frame.
One Frame for All Schools
From India's Sutra and Tantra to Tibet's Eight Chariots (Nyingma, Kadam, Sakya, Karma Kagyü, Shangpa, Shijey and Chö, Jordruk, Nyendrub), now four schools, all practise the three excellences. Even offering one flower or one stick of incense this way multiplies its effect "one million times."
| Excellence | Content |
|---|---|
| Preparation | Vast compassion and profound pure perception |
| Main part | Development with concepts, completion free of them |
| Conclusion | Dedication and aspiration |
Compassion on Demand
People say, "I don't know how to feel compassion." Rinpoche's answer is the mother before a sadistic murderer, then extending that feeling, because all beings have been our mother. "It's only a difference in time." An infant abandoned at birth dies within a day or two; we owe our parents our life.
Development and Completion Defined
"Develop" means to create mentally, to visualize or imagine; the completion stage is the ultimate nature itself. "Holding concepts is the development stage; freedom from concepts is the completion stage." Regarding body, voice and mind as vajra body, vajra speech and vajra mind is development; recognizing the buddha nature is the ultimate development and completion. Development is skilful means; completion is discriminating knowledge. They should not be separated. Rinpoche maps them back onto Gampopa: development falls under "the path clarifies confusion," completion under "confusion dawns as wisdom."
Pure Perception Is Accuracy
Seeing elements as the five female buddhas and aggregates as the five male buddhas is "acknowledging that gold is gold." Even non-Buddhist traditions saw the elements as gods. Mahamudra, Dzogchen and Madhyamika meet in buddha nature.
Conditioned virtue is a cloud that anger can blow away; unconditioned virtue is the sky. Dedicate with threefold purity, free of giver, recipient and act, and it is never destroyed. Shunya means free of even an atom of substance; ta means cognizance is present.
The Vast Attitude
The Mahayana attitude is aimed at beings "as infinite as space." Of the six classes there is "not a single one who has not been our own mother." We think, "I alone will rescue all these sentient beings" and establish them in complete enlightenment. Love between parent and child is not only human; animal mothers love their young too. If all our past bones were heaped together, the pile would be taller than Mount Sumeru, and in each life we had parents.
Viewing everyone the same, without friends on one side and enemies on the other, is immeasurable impartiality, one of the four immeasurables. But the bodhisattva attitude is more than compassion: it is the will to establish every being in supreme enlightenment.
The Profound Attitude
The Vajrayana attitude is pure perception: the world a buddhafield, the dwelling a palace, men and women dakas and dakinis, sounds mantra, and the thoughts and emotions of beings the continuity of innate wakefulness. The basis of speech is wind, and the basis of wind is the wisdom wind forming all mantras. First comes the idea; then the experience, which is recognizing that the essence of thought is nonconceptual wakefulness and leaving the mind natural and fresh.
Dedication in Practice
Dedication needs a virtuous deed to dedicate, even one OM MANI PADME HUNG HRIH. Then comes the aspiration: "May all deeds and intentions of the buddhas and bodhisattvas... be fulfilled!" Without dedication, getting angry will destroy the virtue, since conditioned anger can destroy conditioned virtue. "The reason why we should never forget... is because we are ordinary people and we do get angry."
- Before: "I will do this to purify obscurations and gather accumulations for all beings."
- During: rest free of concepts, or as close as you can.
- After: dedicate and aspire, ideally free of giver, gift and recipient.
Obstacles
The Barchey Lamsel prayer frames the talk: clear outer obstacles outwardly, inner inwardly, secret into space. Only the secret obstacles can stop buddhahood.
Three Kinds of Obstacle
| Kind | Example | Remedy |
|---|---|---|
| Outer | Earthquake, flood, fire, hurricane | Sadhanas of guru, yidam, dakini |
| Inner | Blocked channels, winds, essences | Tummo, the six doctrines |
| Secret | Grasping and fixation | The correct view |
Traders sailing to an island of jewels profit if nothing wrecks the ship. Obstacles block common and supreme accomplishment.
Where the Demons Live
The four maras have homes: emotions in the red and white elements, aggregates in flesh and bone, Lord of Death in the life channel, son of the gods in the mind. "The demons... are not outside ourselves." Each leads 20,000 demons: 80,000 obstructers carrying 404 sicknesses.
The demon king Garab Wangchuk, "Lord of Pleasure," watches from above with five queens: Attachment, Pride, Anger, Jealousy, Stupidity. When someone resolves to practise, they shoot the arrow of whichever poison he is prone to. A gambler stays up all night; chanting OM MANI PADME HUNG, he falls asleep in five minutes.
The Inner Elements
The four elements are inside the body too: flesh and bones are earth, blood is water, bodily heat is fire, breath is wind. Inner obstacles arise when channels, winds and essences fall out of balance and circulation is blocked, giving rise to sickness. The New Schools call the remedy the six doctrines of Naropa; the Nyingma have the same six, and the main one, "the life pillar," is tummo, an Anu Yoga practice. Secret obstacles dissolve "into the innate space of dharmadhatu" in the moment of recognizing nondual awareness, and then attainment occurs by itself.
Rinpoche himself says "figuratively speaking" of the demon army. The numbers and queens read best as a map of how distraction works; he ends by locating every demon inside the body and mind.
Why Crooks Prosper
Seeing liars rich and Mao Tse Tung controlling China, some say "Maybe it's better to be a crook." Rinpoche: they are spending past merit fast, and struggling practitioners are exhausting past bad karma.
Lodrö Thaye's Complaint
Lodrö Thaye said: "When I engage in Dharma practice I fall under the power of dullness and drowsiness. When I engage in nondharmic activities I am clear and bright with sharp faculties." Rinpoche attributes this to "the help we get from Garab Wangchuk." The demons' favourite weapon is the son of the gods: not only postponing practice but dullness, distraction, agitation, doubt and superfluous plans during sessions. "The more profound the Dharma practice, the more crafty the demons."
Procrastination has a voice: "You can always practice tomorrow, or the day after!" Or, "This year I couldn't really concentrate, but next year I will definitely do an intensive retreat."
Bodies That Leave No Corpse
The demon of the aggregates is what makes us leave a corpse. Great practitioners either depart in a transformed body to the celestial pure lands or attain the rainbow body, where the physical body simply vanishes. The Lord of Death cuts the life force "one day, we never know when." The four primary sicknesses come from wind, gall, phlegm and their combination, each with a hundred sub-forms.
Two Ways to Read Bad Luck
Rinpoche gives a second argument besides karma. Money and health are left behind at death, while the cave practitioner with bare necessities is "spending his life on something that will help in all his future lives." "It is certainly true that practitioners have more obstacles than normal people, but one shouldn't think... that negative actions are more profitable."
Dharma Practice and Worldly Aims
The Kadampa Four Commitments pledge life to Dharma, Dharma to poverty, poverty to solitude and solitude until death. Rinpoche teaches this ideal, then admits "for disciples to follow this literally is very, very difficult."
Two Enemies Under One Roof
Dharma and worldly aims are "like having a friend and a foe under the same roof." In Tibet, lay people supported meditators; the West lacks that, so "Try to do both at the same time." Work first and practise later is "a sign of a good disciple"; the reverse is "the bad son of a good father."
- Sleep moderately and practise in the early morning.
- At work, recognize mind essence again and again, "then continue working."
- Retreat briefly: even a few days helps.
- Treat fame as an obstacle: dreaming of being famous is mara.
He jokes: "These days the only lama who teaches both worldly life and Dharma practice is me... I'm just joking."
Using the Hours You Have
Rinpoche is concrete about time. "One doesn't work all twenty-four hours." You may work in the daytime, "but at night don't be too generous with the pleasures of sleep." "Since Western people work only seven or eight hours a day, of course there is time to practice." If you have a family, combine earning a living with practice; later, when responsibilities ease, "wave a final goodbye to the futile aims of worldly life" in a quiet mountain place, assuming the years are there, "because we honestly don't know." Even a fraction of correct practice, "like an imitation of real practice," is worthwhile.
The Real Profit
Black karma happens automatically; white karma must be accomplished. The profit of Dharma is not visible: it is developing free will for the moment it is gone. In the body, the mind is a chained crow; in the bardo, a feather in a hurricane. The body is a guesthouse, the mind a traveller.
Short Moments, Many Times
"All the Kagyü and Nyingma lamas say that one should practice short moments repeated many times. They never said long sessions with few repetitions." Short, because there is no stability yet; many, because otherwise one never gets used to it. After some stability, go to the marketplace and test it.
Rinpoche offers a check: concentrate on one place from morning to evening. Can you? "Even if everybody in the Kathmandu Valley tried to help your mind stay," it would not. The argument rests on observation, not doctrine.
The Wild Horse
Saddle an unbroken horse and let it go: it gallops until it drops. Now we are tethered by the body; at death, the wild horse. Only buddha nature has purity, permanence, bliss and identity.
Fame and the Corpse
Worldly aims are good food, money, expensive clothes, a pleasant situation and fame. A practitioner diminishes these, wears "cast-off, second-hand garments," and regards fame as an evil. "Fame is just like the name tagged to a corpse." The Four Commitments run exactly opposite to the worldly wish for a mansion full of people: "forget about dying all alone in a remote place."
The Marketplace Test
The traditional order is solitude first: the three solitudes of body, speech and mind lead to the three vajras. Once somewhat stable, the practitioner goes to the marketplace and checks whether external experiences affect recognition. "The best is if there is no effect." When awareness is fully mingled with life, staying in remote places no longer matters, and "one's experience manifests as helpers and turns into symbols and books." For one accustomed to the view, "there isn't a hair-tip of harm from social interaction."
Can You Drop the Emotions Now?
Rinpoche asks a direct question. "If we really had any control, we could right now decide to simply drop and be finished forever with all disturbing emotions. But does that happen?" We could say, "Let these qualities be present!" and have them. "It doesn't, does it?" We cannot order ignorance away and command rigpa to stay. That is why practice is gradual: as recognition becomes familiar, discursive thinking diminishes, and the old habits of fixation, emotion and negative karma are slowly eliminated.
"It is not that one is doing something conceptual like meditating upon an object or keeping a thing in mind." We need only "allow for a moment of the awakened state of mind." Enlightenment is never attained while duality remains, including the duality of getting rid of ignorance and attaining rigpa.
The sequence the Buddha taught applies: first get the idea, then think about it, experience it, and finally realize it. A clairvoyant's warning, "you are going to die tomorrow," would not help someone without trust: "How does he know anything!" The aim is to reach the point of feeling keenly, "I should practice Dharma, I should practice Dharma!"
Bardo
Longchenpa's verse asks to "remain in the natural state of dharmakaya" when body and mind part. Rinpoche gives the full map, then reduces it: "just lean back and rest in rigpa."
Six Bardos, Three Kayas
The bardo of this life holds meditation and dream; then dying, dharmata and becoming.
| Bardo | Liberation possible | Who |
|---|---|---|
| Dying | Dharmakaya | The foremost practitioner |
| Dharmata | Sambhogakaya | The "in-between" practitioner |
| Becoming | Nirmanakaya field, via six recollections | The lowest |
The Moment of Death
Gross dissolution comes first: earth ("Please lift me up!"), water (cold), fire (thirst), wind (an abyss). Then whiteness like moonlight, redness like a setting sun, blackness. For ordinary people that is a blackout of three and a half days.
For the trained, the fourth moment is the same nondual awareness recognized now. Recognition, stability and liberation happen "as quickly as flapping the sleeve of a Tibetan robe three times." "One moment makes all the difference; in one moment, complete enlightenment." The same meeting of red and white made us faint at conception.
Dharmata
The peaceful and wrathful deities are "our own innate divinities," neither gods from outside nor imagination. The unprepared are frightened "like the wild donkey... by mountain grass moving in the wind." For a practitioner it is "like meeting an old friend." The eight gates of spontaneous presence are the last chance; wisdom lights look too sharp, and samsara's lights look comforting.
A physical tiger can kill a physical body. Bardo apparitions are immaterial; fearing them is like believing "a drawing of a tiger could eat us." "How can space harm space?"
Why the Bardo Body Cannot Be Hurt
The body we have in the bardo is "an illusion of what we habitually believe it to be." It is like a rainbow and cannot be killed or harmed; "it's only our belief that we can be hurt that makes the problem." The trouble starts when we take immaterial appearances as solid, exactly as when haunted by a nightmare. If something real and material were coming, fear or attraction would be reasonable. For the practitioner who knows appearances as the play of his own mind, "there is nothing to worry about."
Stories of the Illusory Body
A yogi in Kham let a boulder roll over him unhurt. Others put a hand in a tiger's mouth. Milarepa walked through rock; Rechungpa left through his cave roof. Means joined with Mahamudra, the path of liberation.
Means and Liberation
Rinpoche draws the lesson from Milarepa and Rechungpa: the Six Doctrines are the path of means; Mahamudra is the path of liberation. "Practicing the path of means without uniting it with the path of liberation does not result in those attainments." The mind, he says, is "like a jewel mine: anything can appear from it." "My own root guru told me these stories."
The Two Sleepers
What takes rebirth "is nothing other than what right now feels happy or sad." A glimpse of rigpa is "like having a light sleep in the morning." Samantabhadra "never fell asleep to begin with, so how could he have any dreams?"
The Very Subtle Dissolution
If there is no stability at the ground luminosity, four very subtle stages follow in the bardo of dharmata.
| Stage | What happens |
|---|---|
| Space into luminosity | The oblivious state wakes up; luminosity means cognizant |
| Luminosity into wisdom | Four wisdoms appear as spheres of four colours; the fifth is missing |
| Wisdom into union | The peaceful and wrathful deities manifest |
| Union into spontaneous presence | The eight gates: all buddhafields and all six classes at once |
Being stable in primordial purity here is "dissolved yet unobscured": confusion has vanished and wisdom is not covered at all.
The Life Vein
At conception the first thing formed is the life vein, where mind operates as the life-sustaining wind with four subsidiary winds. Picture a bamboo shaft: the wind keeps the red and white elements apart. At death the wind weakens, the elements meet, and the inner breath ceases. "This moment is the dividing point between liberation and further confusion."
Forty-Nine Days
The ordinary person wakes on the fourth day wondering, "Where am I? What happened?" The mind leaves through one of the nine openings. The deities appear for three weeks; the bardo of becoming lasts four more, forty-nine days in all. But these are "meditation days," measured by how long one can remain undistracted in awareness, and for normal people they "could be extremely brief."
Overwhelming, Yet One's Own
Bardo sounds are like "one million thunderclaps," the light like "one hundred thousand suns," and the wrathful forms as huge as Mount Sumeru. Yet "the sounds are our own sounds, the colors are our own colors." The sequence is unpredictable, since dharmata "does not align to any conceptual thinking." Meet whatever comes free from hope and fear. Prepare now with the thought: "Whatever I experience right now... is unreal, illusory."
"We don't have to pigeonhole every single little experience." Dualistic mind makes endless categories. Rinpoche's instruction is simpler: "Whether the world turns upside down or inside out, it doesn't matter: just lean back and rest in rigpa."
Master Takeaways
The ten talks repeat a single structure: what we have, why we miss it, how to clean it, how little time there is. These are the points that last.
Twenty Takeaways
- Validate, do not just believe: four kinds of validation.
- Delusion never leaves by itself.
- Four lines hold the whole path.
- The path is the state of confusion.
- Visualize vastly, not in your little house.
- Thinking is the sun's reflection, not the sun.
- One light switch ends ten thousand years of dark.
- Recognition is a seed, not a spectacle.
- We are re-enlightened, not primordially enlightened.
- Same essence, separate beings.
- Free will expires at death.
- Reputation is an echo.
- Blessing is a hook; faith is the ring.
- Means without knowledge is husk without corn.
- Devotion, revulsion, nondistraction: head, feet, heart.
- Samaya is a dented gold jar.
- Seal virtue with threefold purity.
- Bad luck can be karma used up.
- Short moments, many times.
- Lean back and rest in rigpa.
Frameworks in the Text
| Framework | Content | Talk |
|---|---|---|
| Two approaches | Scholar and meditator | 1 |
| Four validations | Buddha, masters, teacher, intelligence | 1 |
| Four Dharmas | Mind, path, clarity, wisdom | 2 |
| Three samadhis | Space, sun, rainbow | 2 |
| Essence and expression | Sun and reflection | 2 |
| Recognize, train, stabilize | Moon days 3 to 15 | 2 |
| Three factors | Nature, human body, teacher | 3 |
| Two feet | Revulsion and renunciation | 4 |
| Three unmistaken qualities | Words, statements, instructions | 4 |
| Four nirmanakayas | Created, supreme, incarnated, variegated | 5 |
| Four powers | Support, antidote, remorse, resolve | 7 |
| Three excellences | Preparation, main part, conclusion | 8 |
| Three obstacles | Outer, inner, secret | 9 |
| Four maras | Death, aggregates, emotions, son of gods | 9 |
| Three bardos, three kayas | Dying, dharmata, becoming | 11 |
These are public talks for beginners, and they show it: heavy repetition, claims of flying yogis and rainbow bodies presented as settled, and karma used to explain why crooks prosper, an argument no evidence could refute. The book's strength is its candour: Rinpoche admits a beginner's devotion is fabricated, concedes Western lives cannot copy Tibetan renunciation, and offers tests you can run on your own mind.
Who's Who
| Name | Role |
|---|---|
| Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche | The teacher |
| Chökyi Nyima Rinpoche | His son; wrote the foreword |
| Marcia Binder Schmidt | Compiler and editor |
| Erik Pema Kunsang | Translator |
| Gampopa | Author of the Four Dharmas |
| Longchenpa | Expounded them; bardo verse |
| Rangjung Dorje | Third Karmapa; Aspiration of Mahamudra |
| Düsum Khyenpa | First Karmapa; "monkey face" |
| Karmey Khenpo Rinchen Dargye | Verses on impermanence, Vajrasattva |
| Garab Wangchuk | King of demons |
| Lodrö Thaye | Quoted on dullness in practice |
| Milarepa, Rechungpa | Yogis of the illusory body |
Connect It
The Commentary on the Preliminaries expands Talks 2 and 7 line by line. Vajra Speech holds many of these images in short form: gold in mud, the dented jar, the yaks, the old father who never slept.