Broken compassion

[Students were not recorded]

Ken: Okay. Any questions to start with? We’ve been doing this practice for a little while now, being awakened compassion. Any questions?

[Unrecorded] You said it, not me. Codependence, and inappropriate boundaries, and being taken advantage of, and being someone’s doormat, are all expressions of broken compassion. So yeah, you are talking about compassion. What is the essential gesture in compassion? Don’t try to answer this intellectually, go into being awakened compassion. What is the essential gesture? [Unrecorded]

Anybody else? [Unrecorded] Unqualified love, presence. That’s not actually a gesture. It’s a quality, yes. What’s that? [Unrecorded] You’re not exactly open, that’s more ecstasy. What did you say, Kate? Acceptance. What does acceptance look like as a gesture? Make a physical gesture. [Unrecorded] There’s a difference between opening and accepting. Is that what acceptance is? [Unrecorded]

But in order to do that, what had to happen? These are all parts of it. Acceptance. What’s the physical gesture of acceptance? No, just, what does it look like? Do it physically. Yeah. What are you doing there? Not this, that’s not acceptance, that’s taking in. And opening is this. Acceptance is … All of this is true, but what are you doing? Allowing. And to allow, what do you have to do? [Unrecorded] Yes, this is true, well, more specific. [Unrecorded] That’s in there as well, but to allow, what do you have to do? Yes, Susan. [Unrecorded]

None of these are wrong. Before you get to that? [Unrecorded] It is getting closer. Don’t think it; feel it. It’s all in there. [Unrecorded] Yeah, it’s wonderful. Thank you. That’s acceptance. You have to let go of your own agenda. That’s exactly what you were describing, Susan. And what is required? And you have to accept what is. And of course it includes presence, and non-judgment, and all of these things. But the essential gesture of compassion is letting go. Everything else follows from that. When you let go, then you can serve what is true. Then you can do what needs to be done.

When I was on this three-week retreat, there was a friend of mine there, and she is a very, very intelligent woman. And I was having some physical difficulty at one point, and so she said, “Here, will you take this?”

And I said, “No, I’ll be fine.”

She says, “I want you to take this so I can feel better.”

I said, “I know. It’s why I’m not taking it! It’s about you, it’s not about me.” This is the opposite of compassion, or that’s the broken manifestation of compassion, you perceive the suffering, you see what to do about it, but you want that to happen so you can feel more comfortable.

And, in what you’re describing, Catherine, that’s a lot of what’s going on. You want to feel better so you keep pleasing these people. And you’re avoiding feeling a certain discomfort in yourself. [Unrecorded] Yes. You like it. Ah, this is a whole nother issue. [Laughs] Do we need to go any further here? [Laughs]

Letting go

Ken: That’s a whole other matter, and that actually also is related to compassion, is being able to receive, and just receive. It involves in the same way, letting go. [Unrecorded] I wouldn’t stretch it that far. If you do that, I think you’re going to find yourself wrapping yourself up in all kinds of knots. But somebody gives you something, and if it’s a free gift, what business is it of yours how they feel about it? By qualifying how they have to feel, you are moving into a controlling dynamic. And sometimes that’s appropriate, but at the same time, being able just to receive is an important quality as well, just as important as being able to give. You follow? Okay. We can go into it later.

So, the essential element—a gesture of compassion—is letting go. Letting go particularly of our own ideas about how things should be, how I should be, how the world should be, etc. Because as long as we are holding those ideas, we cannot see how things actually are.

This is one of the reasons that Avalokiteshvara or Chenrezi is diffusion or the union of compassion and emptiness. And the emptiness is [gap in recording], and in being nothing, one is able to respond appropriately. So the emptiness and the compassion go hand in hand. So thank you for your question. Any other question? Yes.

[Unrecorded] Presence is really composed of or has four dimensions and letting go is one of them. The other three are: showing up, like really being there, opening to what is, and seeing what has happened. And then the fourth is acceptance. So these are power, ecstasy, insight, and compassion; and presence has those four dimensions. Do you want to follow up any further? [Unrecorded]

Compassion, yeah. I was looking for something more specific, that in the moment of compassion, what you do is let go, or accept what is, so that you can do all of the others. Presence is the result of letting go, if you wish. And I was looking for, how do you get there?

Joseph Goldstein also points out another very interesting thing—at least I found it interesting—about this term, letting go. There you are in meditation, you’ve got thoughts coming up, or you’ve got a big emotion coming up, or you’ve got some crisis, or shift change in your life, and it just keeps coming up in your meditation. When you say, “I’m going to let go of this,” what do you actually do? [Unrecorded] Yeah, you let it be. And letting it be is how you actually let go. You stop trying to do anything. Pushing it away is trying to do something. You just let it be.

[Unrecorded] That’s right. Yeah, and that’s a very important aspect of parenting. Being present with the child, but letting the child find its own way in the presence of another, or the parent. Yeah, very good point.

Mantra as mind protection

Ken: This morning we’re going to introduce a new element. You may recall on Wednesday evening, I mentioned that one of the epithets for Vajrayana is Mantrayana. In fact, that’s the term that is most frequently used when talking about the sutra approach, and then it’s the mantra approach. In Tibetan they say mdo’i theg pa (pron. do-ee ték pa) and sngags kyi theg pa (pron. ngak kyi ték pa), sutra and mantra. And, I said also that mantra is a magic spell.

Now, in sorcery cults from ancient times up to the present day, certain combinations of syllables evoke certain energy, or movement of energy. And could be used to direct energy so that you could charge objects, and use them to transform experience. That’s what the essence of sorcery is. And one of the genius aspects of the Vajrayana is that it took this technology and co-opted it for spiritual purposes.

If you read any number of prayers in the Tibetan tradition, or in the discussions of these kinds of meditations, you’ll see over and over again, references to the ordinary and supreme powers. Well, the ordinary powers are things like being able to disappear in a crowd, being able to heal, etc., typical sorcery stuff. The supreme power is direct understanding of one’s own nature. So, in the text you have these two playing off each other, but it’s always acknowledged that the supreme powers are more important than the ordinary powers, yet the Tibetans were fascinated by the ordinary powers, and just love that stuff.

So, I’m going to talk about this in the term of how mantra, how the recitation of mantra, brings about, or helps bring about supreme powers—direct understanding of one’s own nature. One of the common explanations of the etymology of mantra is, as I think I mentioned before, manas, which is a Sanskrit word for mind, and tra, which is the word to protect. So, it’s to protect the mind.

Now, meditation that I’ve given you so far, you are to imagine that you are awakened compassion. And you can do this for a while, and there’s kind of opening, and a transformation of experience. But then you run out of juice, right? Anybody experience that?

Okay, that’s one place that mantra comes in. When you run out of juice, you say the mantra. And what you’re doing, because it’s precisely when you run out of juice that your distractions arise and you get sidetracked and you go off and do all kinds of spins, right? So you protect the mind by saying the mantra. It’s very simple. Now, I was always puzzled in the three-year retreat because we were told to say mantras all the time. We’d have such admonitions as: mantras of the winds that fan the fire of samadhi, little things like that.

Those were the instructions we were given, but when you read the texts, they would say, do this visualization, and explain it in all in this extraordinary detail. And then you’d come across the line, “When you get tired say the mantra. I went, “Huh?” But we’re saying the mantra all the time, so what do you mean when you get tired say the mantra?

In 1986, relatively soon after I came to Los Angeles, Thrangu Rinpoche visited, and I had opportunity to host him. I actually had a center back then. And we set up a day long program with Thrangu Rinpoche in which people meditated, and then he conducted interviews. [Unclear] He’s still doing that, isn’t he? Yeah, that was not a thing done in the Tibetan tradition.

During one of the breaks, Thrangu Rinpoche and I were chatting. He said, “I’m curious, Ken, as far as I can tell, you just have people resting with the breath. Is that right?”

I said, “Yeah, just shamatha.”

“Hmm, they don’t just fall asleep?”

I said, “No, no. No, they find it very restful.”

“Hmm, interesting. In Tibet we always had them say mantras because they just fell asleep otherwise.”

Pronouncing the mantra

Ken: So, one of the things I want you to work with here is to try this. When you find yourself running out of juice—imagining and feeling that you are awakened compassion—then you start saying the mantra. Now, what is the mantra? I think all of you know it’s om mani peme hung. In Sanskrit, it was probably pronounced om mani padme hūm. But the Tibetan pronounciation, the “d” is always silent and alters the vowel in Tibetan, so over the centuries, the Sanskrit pronunciation was corrupted to be something like the Tibetan.

Now, if you think this is a crucial matter, there’s a story which arises in the Sufi and the Tibetan traditions, and I think it has a common origin, of a couple of monks who are really, brilliant, brilliant scholars and very sincere in their practice. And they heard about this old hermit who lived on an island in the middle of a large lake, and they heard that he was really quite a phenomenal master. And they thought, “We’ll go and see.”

So, they rented a boat, and they rode across this lake, and as they approached the island, they see beams of light and rainbows pouring out of the island. “Wow. Impressive!” They got to the island and didn’t take them long to find this hermit. They asked him for instruction, he gave them, they were very, very impressed how deep, relevant it was. And they said, “Would it be too much to ask, what is your practice?”

He said, “Oh no, I recite the mantra, om mani padme ox.”

And they went, “om mani padme hūm?”

“Oh yes, this is the mantra for awakened compassion. I’ve been doing this for years. It’s wonderful.”

“Well, the actual mantra is om mani padme hūm, not om mani padme ox.”

The hermit went, “Oh dear. I’ve been doing it wrong for all these years! Oh, oh dear. Well thank you so much for letting me know. I’ll say it right.” And so they took leave and they got into their boat, they started to row back as they rowed back they noticed there weren’t anymore rainbows coming out the island. And then they saw this figure walking on the water, and it was the old hermit.

And he said, “I’m just a little confused, could you say that mantra again, I couldn’t remember it.”

They said, “No, no, just go back to om mani padme ox.” [Laughs] So pronunciation is extremely important, but exceptions may be made. [Laughter]

Meaning of the mantra

Ken: Now that’s one level, that is when you get tired, you say the mantra. And what does om mani padme hūm mean? Om is a symbolic syllable in Sanskrit, which is similar to just “O”, like as in O Lord, or something like that in English, but it has far more meaning in it.

During the 1968 Democratic Convention, Allen Ginsberg, who’s just a wonderful soul, was sitting in a park with the police all around throwing tear gas, and beating people. And he just going, “Ooomm.” And in the middle of this, an Indian person came up and said, “You have to hold the ‘m’ sound for at least as long as the ‘o’ sound.”

He went, “Oh, good.” So it was “Ooommmm.” And there’s a certain whole vibration. This is what Allen Ginsberg did in the Chicago riots. But it’s a very, very powerful syllable, and it’s used all through Hinduism and Buddhism. And you’ll see it transliterated in Hinduism as aum or sometimes aung, because it’s actually just a nasalized sound, but in Tibetan tradition it’s mainly pronounced as om. So, it can be O or hail or ave as in the Latin Ave Maria, or something like. It has that quality.

And mani is the word for jewel. Padma is the word for lotus. Now, I’m not a Sanskrit scholar. I know half a dozen words in Sanskrit, only little more than half a dozen, not much. And I’m told that padma is in the genitive case when it should be in the vocative case, which has caused at least one university professor I know a great deal of heartburn. Leon Hurvitz who used to be at UBC in Vancouver, “But it should be in vocative case! Why is it in the genitive case?”

And then hūm is another symbolic syllable, similar power, and in Buddhism actually, probably more important than the syllable om because it’s regarded as the syllable which embodies the five pristine awarenesses, among other things. So, if you want to translate it into English, you have, O, jewel in the lotus, amen, would be a rough translation, or so be it or something like that. Now, jewel in the lotus, this is an epithet for Chenrezei, awakened compassion, Avalokiteshvara, one of the many epithets.

So, what you’re actually doing when you’re saying the mantra is saying, “I am awakened compassion, I am awakened compassion, I am awakened compassion.” That’s what you’re actually doing. You’re calling on awakened compassion. And in another sense, you are casting this spell on you. So, in addition to just giving you a place to focus your attention, to protect the mind, it also is continuing in a more relaxed way, the essence of the meditation, which is identifying with awakened compassion.

Now, one of my teachers, Dezhung Rinpoche, when he was alive, was certainly the leading Sakya scholar, and really one of the leading scholars in the Tibetan tradition, in addition to having a profound understanding. It was just extraordinary. You asked him any question, he usually spoke for two hours, just such a wealth of understanding, and material, and able to draw on resources. And he’d say, “Well, in this text it says this about this, but over here they say this about this.” He’d just go on and on and on. Wonderful.

If you were translating for him, it was another matter, half an hour later, I’m not going to remember all of this. But he was brought over to the States as part of actually a CIA project back in the early 60s and installed in Seattle, so as a resource for [unclear] university. And one of his principal concerns is how did he continue his practice? And at a certain point he thought, “I will just recite 100 million om mani padme hūm’s.” So whenever we went to visit him, he would be just reciting om mani padme hūm. We’d ask him a question, he’d stop reciting, answer the question, then go back to reciting.

And he was just doing this all the time. Whenever we’d go down and pick him up to bring him back to the center in Vancouver, all the way he’d be going om mani padme hūm. “What do you think of the sunset?”

“Very beautiful, om mani padme hūm,” just like that all the time. Now, this is another way that the mantra can be used to protect the mind; this is at a deeper level. All of you know in your meditation that there are various levels of thoughts.

The purpose of the mantra

Ken: And some of you have heard me talk about meditation is like having a picnic with elephants, and then having a picnic with dogs—things getting a little more manageable—and then having a picnic with ants. So there you are, you’re sitting, it’s quite nice. You’re sitting at meditation, but there’s this stream of stuff. Remember the old telephone lines where you could pick it up and you could just hear a conversation in the background, but you couldn’t quite make out the words. But you have that kind of thing running through you. The technical term in Tibetan is ‘og rgyu (pron. o(g) gyu), which means underlying movement. Trungpa, with his usual penchant for a turn of phrase, translated this as subconscious gossip.

The purpose of reciting the mantra constantly is to replace the subconscious gossip, or this underlying movement, with the mantra. And this is done just by repeating it. So you’re saying, om mani padme hūm, om mani padme hūm. And what happens is that you’re cultivating a habit here so that when you’re not thinking about anything, your mind’s going om mani padme hūm, om mani padme hūm and you don’t have any more subconscious gossip.

Now you all know what that underlying movement does. There’s all kinds of incipient emotions, and little hooks in it, which pull us out of our meditation, or pull us out into distraction in our daily lives. And the purpose here is just to replace that. And if you actually accomplish this, then your mind is at rest, even though this is all going on. Your mind’s at rest, because there’s no longer any disturbance in it. This is a very deep form of protection.

Now, this is a technique that is not exclusive to Buddhism at all. Some of you may have heard of the Jesus Prayer: “Oh Lord Jesus have mercy upon on me, a sinner.” I don’t know the Greek for it, but in the Orthodox church, the Jesus Prayer serves exactly the same function. The purpose is just to recite it until it is going automatically in you day and night. And that’s regarded as the first step in your relationship with the Jesus Prayer, takes a little while.

[Unrecorded] The subconscious gossip is something that’s actually going on, it’s this low-level thought. And that low level thought is what pulls you into distraction because you aren’t usually aware of it. Meditation, when you’re sitting, and you’re just aware of it, the instruction I usually give for people to work with it, is as soon as you become aware of it, relax completely into the breath. And that cuts through it momentarily. Then you’re just resting. And then it starts up again, and then you cut through it again, so you actually come to rest without any thought. That’s the standard instructions for shamatha practice.

This is Vajrayana practice, so shamatha is regarded as a result not a method. The method here is reciting the mantra so that that’s actually replaced.

So, whenever there’s any movement in the mind, it comes up as om mani padme hūm. And that’s not the same as subconscious material and material you aren’t aware of. There would be a relationship between the two, in that the material that hasn’t yet emerged into consciousness would be responsible for driving a lot of the underlying movement. And that’s where all the hooks are, but they aren’t exactly the same thing.

The story that Rinpoche used to tell, which illustrates the same point, is that a certain person had a very, very bad-tempered mother who, was not interested in spiritual stuff at all, and made no apologies for her very, very bad temper, and her cruelty and nastiness to all and sundry. And she had a store, and as in many stores, when you open the door, a bell rang, when the door closed, a bell rang. So her son said, “Could you do me one favor? Whenever the bell rings, somebody comes in and goes out of your store, could you say om mani padme hūm?”

“Oh, okay.” So she agreed to do that. And when she died, of course she ended up in the hell realms. And there she was in this big vat of molten copper and was suffering tremendous pain. A guard turning the copper, but his stirring implement hit the side of the caldron, and went bing. And she went om mani padme hūm and was immediately liberated from the hell realms. [Laughs]

[Unrecorded] Absolutely, but moves into a positive state of mind. So, this is another reason that mantra repetition is used, is that it establishes a way which brings you out of highly reactive states, just like that. So those are very practical aspects of the mantra. And you can use the sound of the mantra, and I’d ask you to say it in a whisper. It’s usually recited in a low voice, but in these circumstances I’d ask you to recite it silently, a very soft whisper. And you can also just rest your attention on the sound, and then it becomes a basis for shamatha.

And when you’re doing elaborate visualizations, that’s kind of refreshing. Even in what we’re doing here, when you run out of juice, just start saying the mantra, which is a form of saying, “I’m awakened compassion.” In addition to just feeling that in that quiet way, you just rest your attention on the sound. It’s not a lot to think about. And those of you are used to traditional Tibetan environments when they’re doing mantra meditation, you have the whole room buzzing with a sound of the mantra.

Mantras can carry lists

Ken: Now, there’s another important aspect. You’ve heard me mention the other day that it’s good to memorize lists and to learn them. Well there are six syllables in the mantra, and those six syllables have been used as a vehicle to carry all kinds of symbolism. And in this way, the mantra itself has become highly symbolic and is a wonderful vehicle for carrying lists. So you have the six realms, om represents the god realm, ma the titan, ni the human, pad the animal, me the hungry ghost, and hūm the hell realm, and you have various colors corresponding to those realms. Now all of this, you don’t need to take notes and I’m not going to go through it in great detail, you’ll find on pages 39 and following in Bokar Rinpoche’s book, and he gives one, two, three, four, five, six.

There’s another book—which I don’t think has been translated into English—called the Mani Kabum, which is written in the eighth century by one of the Tibetan kings. Mani is an epithet for this mantra, om mani padme hūm, it’s just called the mani mantra, and this is called a hundred thousand Instructions on om mani padme hūm. And there are sections of it which I had exposure to many, many years ago, which is like 12 or 13 pages of lists that are being [break in recording].

Some of you may recall that in the, I think it’s in the 10th chapter, is this complicated chart of transformations. That’s all from there, and as I heard it many years ago, wow, this describes the whole progression of awareness. And so I hauled out my notes on that, put that in the book. You have the six perfections, the six manifestations of Buddha Shakyamuni in each of the six realms.

And you get typical Tibetan stuff here, I love it. You have the five dhyani buddhas, right? Damn, there’s five, there’s not six. So they throw in another one, just to make up. I can’t remember what the sixth one is. And then we have the three kayas. So, we get fourth kaya, the svabhavikakaya, and then we have the bliss kaya, which is fifth one, so we’ll throw in the sixth one so we can hang that out in the six syllables too.

You have the six primary emotions: anger, which is connected to the hell realm, and greed, hungry ghost realm, and instinct to the animal realm, and desire with the human realm, and jealousy with the titan realm, and pride with the god realm. So, you get to remember those and each of the syllables purifies one of those emotions.

And it just goes on, and on, and on, and on, and on, so it’s wonderful. So if you really learn om mani padme hūm and all its symbolism, anybody asks you a question about Buddhism, you’re going to have a response. Not only that, you’re going to have a response that’s appropriate to that situation. You think, “Well, oh six perfections, okay,” and so forth. So, I’m making light of it but it really is very wonderful that way.

Mantra in other traditions

Ken: Yes. [Unrecorded] Oh, well that’s a question that has been discussed a few times, probably for several thousand years. When the church, Catholic church, moved from the Latin liturgy to the local liturgies in the local language, there is huge debate on precisely this issue. Isn’t it more important to understand what you’re talking about? And there are pros and cons both ways; it’s not at all a simple matter.

The Tibetans left the mantras in Sanskrit. They didn’t make any effort to translate the mantras, even if they knew what [unclear]. Not all mantras can be translated, some of them are highly symbolic, but they didn’t make any effort to translate the mantras. The Chinese did. Vajrayana didn’t survive in China or only in a very small way. And that’s an important thing. They left them all in Sanskrit. And part of the reasoning here—and I do not know enough about the science; a lot of the science getting lost in probably well over a thousand years ago—is that when you say certain syllables, they actually do reverberate in the body in different ways. And so, some syllables have one effect and another syllable has another effect.

One of my favorite stories on this, is a woman who was ill and she asked her priest to come pray with her at her sick bed. And the rest of her family wasn’t too excited about this. And the priest was greeted at the door by the woman’s brother. He said, “None of us feel that your words will have the slightest influence, but this is my sister’s wishes, so here she is.”

And so, the priest prayed beside the woman’s bed for some time, then left, and the brother escorted him to the door. And as he was putting on his coat, he turned to the brother and said, “You really are an old fart.”

And the brother said, “How dare you!”

“Oh, very interesting. You said my words had no power at all, but they seemed to have upset you quite a bit.” [Laughter]

So there’s power in sound. There’s power in words, and that’s one of the reasons that’s frequently given for not translating these because these go back to very ancient science of the relationship between sound and energy. And Hinduism puts much more stock in this than Buddhism in general. Hinduism is a religion based on sound, and Buddhism is a religion based on light actually, as one person put it.

Another very simple reason is that when you invest something like om mani padme hūm with meaning, it’s completely free of other associations. And so it’s like open, and so that’s another reason for it. The Jesus Prayer is in English, and I don’t think anybody has yet put out a Buddhist mantra in English. And I imagine it’s only a matter of time.

The six-syllable mantra has many applications

Ken: [Unclear] Well, you’ve run out of juice, right? So just rest, saying the mantra, which of the sense I’m awakened compassion, om mani padme hūm. And whether it’s five minutes, ten minutes, half an hour, you’ll know when you feel refreshed. Then you go back to—not doing the visualization, we haven’t got to the visualization yet—feeling you are awake. You can do that with some energy again. And learning how to work with this is part of learning how to work with practice.

[Unclear] Oh, that! I’m going to leave that up to you. In the Tibetan tradition, as you know from … This book is all about om mani padme hūm.

There’s a 19th century teacher called Dza Patrul, lived in far Eastern Tibet. He was quite a character apparently. But one of the things that he found very, very painful was the sectarian divisions that plagued Tibetan Buddhism at that time. So he was really the first, with a number of other teachers, started presenting Buddhist teachings in a way to break down, “Well, you’re that school so we can’t do that practice.” Encouraging people to find what practices work for them, whatever school.

He wrote a poem called, roughly translated as, Virtuous News That Is For the Beginning, Middle and End. And the first part of it is generally sound advice about how to conduct yourself in ordinary affairs:

Though you serve your superiors, they will never be pleased.
Though you look after your inferiors, they will never be satisfied.
Though you care about others, they won’t care about you.
Think about this and make a firm decision.

(i.e., to leave the world)

Though you explain, people miss the point or don’t believe you;
Though your motivation is truly altruistic, people think it’s not.
These days when the crooked see the straight as crooked,
You cannot help anyone—give up any hope of that.

(The usual cheery, hermit stuff. It’s great for doing away with expectations.)

Disgust, because there’s no one to be trusted,
Sadness, because there’s no meaning in anything,
Determination, because there’ll never be time to get everything you want.
If you keep these three things in mind, some good will come of it.

Virtuous News That Is for the Beginning, Middle, and End, Patrul Rinpoche, verses 10, 12,18


And the first part of it is generally sound advice about how to conduct yourself in ordinary affairs.

[Laughter] Then the second part, he goes through all aspects of the dharma, but every verse ends with, recite the six syllables. Just to give you a flavor:

Whatever appears is delusion and has no true existence;
Samsara and nirvana are just thoughts and nothing more.
If you can release thoughts as they arise, that includes all stages of the path;
Applying this essential instruction for releasing thoughts, recite the six-syllable mantra.

Your own mind, aware and void inseparably, is Dharmakaya.
Leave everything as it is in fundamental simplicity, and clarity will arise by itself.
Only by doing nothing will you do all there is to be done;
Leave everything in naked void-awareness, recite the six-syllable mantra.

Virtuous News That Is for the Beginning, Middle, and End, Patrul Rinpoche, verses 39-40


And so, he just goes through everything like this. And then Dilgo Khyentse, this figure on the front, this translation of extensive commentary that he gave on these verses. And so in the Tibetan tradition, you just recite the six-syllable mantra, which is om mani padme hūm, and you just went about whatever you did in your practice or in your life, whatever. So that is a method of practice.

Then another method of practice is you work at your practice, in this case being awakened compassion. When you run out of juice, you recite the mantra to rest the mind. So, this is for you to work out what works for you and different things will work for different people.

[Unrecorded] Yes, but don’t get ahead of the game. [Unrecorded] You’ll either see it as written as hum or hung, but it’s halfway between those. So that’s why it’s hūm. [Unrecorded] In the Tibetan pronunciation. In the Sanskrit pronunciation, it would be padme.

[Unrecorded] This is awakened compassion, yes, one form. Ah, I didn’t explain about the jewel and the lotus, thank you. Yeah, he’s sitting on a lotus. But the jewel in the lotus—lotus is usually a symbol of compassion—but here in the phrase, jewel and the lotus, it’s a symbol for emptiness. The jewel is compassion because it’s the wishful fulfilling jewel, it grants all wishes. That’s compassion. And it is in the lotus, which is emptiness. So it’s a epithet which expresses the union of compassion and emptiness. Thanks for reminding me about that.

[Unrecorded] Oh, mala, rosary. In all traditions where there’s any kind of recitation—whether it’s Catholic, Muslim, Tibetan, Hindu, there are probably other ones I don’t know about; Jewish, is there a method of counting?—you would have a rosary, the basic function of which, it just helps to keep you on track. You’re sitting there saying, om mani padme hūm, and your mind goes wandering. And you go, “Oh yes, I’m meant to be reciting.”

Rinpoche used say, “Oh, this rosary has got many uses.” And he says, “Could be a whip for the mind.” [Laughs]

And I said, “Well, why do you count?”

“Oh, well, counting is very good because one day you do a hundred. The next day I only did a hundred. I can do more than that.” So, it’s a constant source of encouragement, things like that.

And there are many, many practices. Well, in many of these practices, you had three ways of determining a practice amount. One would be to practice until you actually got certain signs, either in dreams, or visions, or something like that, or realizations would arise. Another was to practice for a certain period of time, so you do a practice for one month, or three months, or a year, or something like that. And another was to do a practice for a certain amount, and that’s what the rosaries used to count that amount. So you might do a hundred thousand, or a million, or 10 million, whatever. So that’s where rosaries came from, it actually helps to keep your presence in the things. And you always use your left hand. The rosary’s always used in the left hand, traditionally. They kind of go nuts if you put it in your right hand for some reason.

Any questions before we break for meditation? Is everybody clear? I want you to continue with the practice of feeling that you are awakened compassion. As I said last night, what I want you to do here is get really clear about what it means to be awakened compassion in very pragmatic situations.

For instance, if you work in an office, and one of your coworkers is actively trying to undermine your position. Never happens, right? What do you do? What’s the expression of awakened compassion there? What do you do if your boss asks you to do something that’s morally questionable? It’s not actually wrong, it’s just in a gray area. What do you do? What does compassion look like there? One can make up much harder scenarios. I’ve given some difficult ones to a few of you.

But rather than just feeling like you’re shedding the light of compassion throughout the whole world, I really want you to go through and think about very concrete situations. What does compassion look like here? What does compassion look like here? And, because it’s when you do this, that you’re going to come into contact with what you would ordinarily do, which is, “I don’t want to deal with that.” When you think, “What awakened compassion do? Uh, that’s not what awakened compassion would do.”

And that’s where you’re going to meet. And this is where you get to know intimately the nature of awakened compassion. And that’s my reason for giving you this focus in your meditation, is to have that intimate knowledge. It’s not theoretical at all. So please continue with that. Add the piece of the mantra in as it works for you, in the way that it works for you. Okay? Thanks very much. Oh dear, still went 10 minutes over.