
9. Becoming Awakened Compassion
Ken closes the retreat with a step-by-step teaching on the Chenrezi sadhana, emphasizing how each element—from refuge prayer to mantra recitation—serves the experience of awakened compassion. “The key—and the really only critical point here—is to keep coming back to the feeling ‘I am awakened compassion.’” Drawing on stories from the Sufi tradition and detailed ritual guidance, he helps participants adapt the practice to their own lives. Topics covered include the union of the awareness and commitment being, visualizations for transforming reactive energy, and living the practice in post-meditation experience.
Attaining deep knowledge
[Students were not recorded]
Ken: Shall I read it again? Idries Shah. Yes. I think Arcana republished these, but I know some of the Nasrudin stuff was not available for a while. Where are we? Here we are.
A man, who was very easily angered, realized after many years that all his life he had been in difficulties because of this tendency.
One day, he heard of a dervish deep of knowledge, whom he went to see, asking for advice.
The dervish said, “Go to such and such a crossroads. There you’ll find a withered tree. Stand under it and offer water to every traveler who passes that place.”
The man did as he was told. Many days passed, and he became well known as one who was following a certain discipline of charity and self-control under the instructions of a man of real knowledge.
One day, a man in a hurry turned his head away when he was offered the water and went on walking along the road. The man who is easily angered called out to him several times, “Come, return my salutation! Have some of this water which I provide for all travelers!”
But there was no reply.
Overcome by this behavior, the first man forgot his discipline completely. He reached for his gun, which was hooked into the withered tree, took aim at the heedless traveler, and fired. The man fell dead.
At the very moment that the bullet entered his body, the withered tree, as if by a miracle, burst joyfully into blossom.The man who had been killed was a murderer on his way to commit the worst crime of a long career.
There are, you see, two kinds of advisors. The first kind is the one who tells what should be done according to certain fixed principles, repeated mechanically. The other kind is the Man of Knowledge. Those who meet the Man of Knowledge will ask him for moralistic advice, and will treat him as a moralist. But what he serves is Truth, not pious hopes.
The Man Who Was Easily Angered, Tales of the Dervishes, Idries Shah, p. 71
It’s quite clear, isn’t it? I was going to work with another story today actually. [Unrecorded] Maybe you could explain it for everybody else.
This story’s a little bit longer.
Once upon a time there were three dervishes. They were called Yak, Do and Se. (Which incidentally means 1, 2, 3.) They came from the North, the West, and the South, respectively. They had one thing in common: they were looking for the Deep Truth and they sought a Way.
The first, Yak-Baba, sat down and contemplated until his head was sore. The second, Do-Agha, stood on his head until his feet ached. The third, Se-Kalandar, read books until his nose bled.
Finally they decided upon a common effort. They went into retirement and carried out their exercises in unison, hoping by that means to summon enough effort to produce the appearance of Truth, which they called Deep Truth.
For forty days and forty nights they persevered. At last in a whirl of white smoke the head of a very old man appeared, as if from the ground, in front of them. “Are you the mysterious Khidr, guide of men?” asked the first. “No, he is Qutub, the Pillar of the Universe!” said the second. “I am convinced that this is none other than one of the Abdals, the Changed Ones,” said the third.
“I am none of these,” roared the apparition, “but I am that which you may think me to be. Now you all want the same thing, which you call the Deep Truth?”
“Yes, O master,” they chorused.
“Have you never heard the saying that there are ‘as many ways as there are hearts of men’?” asked the head. “In any case, here are your ways:
“The First Dervish will travel through the Country of Fools; the Second Dervish will have to find the Magic Mirror; the Third Dervish will have to call in the aid of the Jinn of the Whirlpool.” So saying he disappeared.
There was some discussion about this, not only because the dervishes wanted more information before setting out, but also because although they had all practiced different ways, each yet believed that there was only one way—his own, of course. Now none was certain that his own way was useful enough, even though it had been partly responsible for summoning the apparition which they had just seen, and his very name was unknown to them.
Yak-Baba left the cell first, and instead of asking everyone, as had been his custom, where a learned man might live in the neighborhood, he asked whoever he met if they knew the Country of Fools. At last, after many months, someone did know. And he set off there. As soon as he entered the country, he saw a woman carrying a door on her back. “Woman,” he asked, “why are you doing that?”
“Because this morning before my husband left for his work he said, ‘Wife, there are valuables in the house. Let nobody pass the door.’ When I went out, I took the door with me, so that nobody could pass it. Now, please let me pass you.”
“Do you want me to tell you something which will make it unnecessary to carry that door about with you?” asked Dervish Yak-Baba.
“Certainly not,” she said. “The only thing that would help would be if you could tell me how to lighten the actual weight of the door.”
“That I cannot do,” said the Dervish. And so they parted.
A little way further on, he met a group of people. They were cowering in terror before a large watermelon which had grown in a field. “We have never seen one of these monsters before!” they told him, “and it will certainly grow even larger and will kill us all. But we are afraid to touch it.”
“Would you like me to tell you something about it?” he asked them.
“Don’t be a fool!” they replied. “Kill it and you will be rewarded, but we don’t want to know anything about it.” So the dervish took out a knife, advanced upon the melon, and cut a slice which he started to eat.
Amid terrible cries of alarm, the people gave him a handful of money. As he left, they said, “Please do not come back, Honored Murderer of Monsters. Do not come and kill us likewise!”
Thus, gradually, he learned that in the Country of the Fools, in order to survive, one must be able to think and talk like a fool as well. After several years he managed to convert some fools to reason, and as a reward one day he attained Deep Knowledge. But although he became a saint in the Country of the Fools, they remembered him only as the Man who Cut Open the Green Monster and Drank its Blood. They tried to do the same, to gain Deep Knowledge—and they never gained it.
Meanwhile, Do-Agha, the Second Dervish, set off on his search for the Deep Knowledge. Instead of asking everywhere he went for the local sages or new exercises and postures, he just asked if anyone had heard of the Magic Mirror. Many misleading answers were given to him, but at last, he realized where it might be. It was suspended in a well by a piece of string as fine as a hair, and it was itself only a fragment, because it was made up of the thoughts of men, and there were not enough thoughts to make a whole mirror.
When he had outwitted the demon who guarded it, Do-Agha gazed into the mirror and asked for the Deep Knowledge. Instantly it was his. He settled down and taught in happiness for many years. But because his disciples did not maintain the same degree of concentration needed to renew the mirror regularly, it vanished away. Yet to this day there are people who gaze into mirrors thinking that this is the Magic Mirror of Do-Agha, the Dervish.
As for the Third Dervish, Se-Kalandar, he looked everywhere for the Jinn of the Whirlpool. This Jinn was known by many other names, but the Kalandar did not know this. For years, he crisscrossed the Jinn’s tracks, always missing him because he was not known as a Jinn, or was perhaps not referred to as being connected with a whirlpool.
Finally, after many years, he came to a village and asked, “O people! Has anyone here heard of the Jinn of the Whirlpool?”
“I’ve never heard of the Jinn,” said someone, “but this village is called the Whirlpool.”
The Kalandar threw himself upon the ground and cried, “I will not leave this spot until the Jinn of the Whirlpool appears to me!”
The Jinn, who was lurking nearby, swirled up to him and said, “We do not like strangers in our village, dervish. So I’ve come to you, what is it you seek?”
“I seek Deep Knowledge, and I’ve been told under such-and-such-circumstances that you can tell me how to find it.”
“I can indeed,” said the Jinn. “You have been through much. All that remains for you is to say such-and-such a phrase, sing such-and-such a song, do such-and-such an action; and avoid such-and-such another action. Then you will gain Deep Knowledge.”
The Dervish thanked the Jinn and began his program. Months passed, then years, until he was performing his devotions and exercises correctly. People came and watched him and then began to copy him, because of his zeal, and because he was known to be a devout and worthy man.
Eventually, the Dervish attained the Deep Knowledge; leaving behind a devoted assembly of people who continued his ways. They never did attain the Deep Knowledge, of course, because they were beginning at the end of the Dervish’s course of study.
Afterwards, whenever any of the adherents of these three dervishes meet, one says, “I have my mirror here. Gaze enough and you will eventually attain Deep Knowledge.”
Another replies, “Sacrifice the melon, it will help you as it did Dervish Yak-Baba.”
A third interrupts, “Nonsense! The only way is to persevere in the study and organizing of certain postures, of prayer and good works.”
When they had in fact attained Deep Knowledge, the Three Dervishes found that they were powerless to help those whom they had left behind: as when a man carried away on a running tide may see a landlubber pursued by a leopard, and be unable to go to his help.
The Three Dervishes, Tales of the Dervishes, Idries Shah, p. 97
So, what do you make of this story? [Unrecorded] That’s certainly one element in it. Yeah, can’t start at the end, very explicitly said. Why did I read it now? [Unrecorded] Well, I would possibly amend that to saying, they may not understand where you’re coming from. Hopefully, it’ll be beneficial to them.
Well, there’s another reason I had. [Unrecorded] This is along the lines I was thinking. There is a great tendency, because of the richness of Vajrayana, to latch onto one thing or another, and to make one aspect or another of it a thing. One of the elements of this story is about the futility of making aspects of practice, any aspect of practice, a thing. Then you miss the practice. So, it’s very important.
Chenrezi meditation
Ken: This evening, I want to go through, rather too quickly, how you actually do the practice, which we’ll do as a meditation this evening together.
[Unrecorded] Devotion can become a thing. Reciting and mantra can become a thing. Getting the perfect visualization can become a thing. All of these are important elements, but none of those are the actual practice. The actual practice is knowing awakened compassion, not intellectually, but knowing it directly, and doing what brings that about. Follow?
I’m going to talk through this. All of this is described quite clearly in Bokar Rinpoche’s book, so that’s a good resource. As we go through, there are some comments which may also be helpful in understanding how to relate to various sections.
But first, you’ll remember I talked about the three seals. Seal of preparation—refuge in bodhicitta, the seal of the main practice—no conceptualization and no reference, and the seal of conclusion—dedication. This practice follows exactly the same format. Preparation is the first verse:
Until I awaken, I take refuge
In the buddha, the dharma, and the supreme assembly.
This verse originated with Atisha about 800-900 years ago and is used in all traditions. You’ll see varying translations of it, but it contains taking refuge in the buddha, the dharma, the sangha; the supreme assembly is an epithet for the sangha.The second two lines are bodhicitta, awakening mind:
Through the goodness of generosity and the other virtues,
Chenrezig Sadhana, p. 15
May I awaken fully in order to help all beings.
And thinking of the various sources of refuge, or imagining them in front of you, you say this with a sincere feeling for the meaning. Then, all of that dissolves, and you start into the section called: Creation of the deity. And here there’s a process. There are three ways you can do this. You can do the visualization first and then repeat the verses. You can repeat the verses and then do the visualization, or you can do them both together. History says it doesn’t make any difference.
You imagine that on the crown of your head, and on the crown of the head of every sentient being, there’s a white lotus, and above that the flat disc of the moon, and then the letter hri. This is the Tibetan form of hri. It makes no difference whether you imagine it in the Tibetan form, or in the Sanskrit form, or in the English form, h-r-i. It’s really the sound that’s important.
The hri is blazing with light. As you imagine, it becomes so intense that the hri disappears and becomes Chenrezi, just as you’ve been imagining, above your head.
All of us when we first started doing this, would be going like this [pause] because this term visualization would have us trying to see it. And people would say, “Well, it’s easier if he’s turned backwards on my head.” So Chenrezi is facing that way, and I’m facing this way. So you can sort of look up that way, right? [Unrecorded]
Just to get the idea here, imagine there’s an apple on your head. You get that sense? That’s how you do it. That’s it, trying to see the apple. There’s an apple on your head. We could have great fun with this. I can get you to stand up and walk around as if there were four or five apples balanced on your head, one on top of another. You can get the feel of it very easily. So you do the same thing here. Just that instead of an apple, it’s Chenrezi.
There’s a relatively detailed description. His form is radiating light, brilliant light, but it’s a bit like a rainbow or tinged like a rainbow. So it has white and red and green and yellow and blue, all of these colors. His form is clear white, kindness in his eyes and smiling face, four hands joined in prayer, the left holds a lotus and the right a crystal rosary. You’re all familiar with this. Silk, and gems, and ornaments, and deer pelt, vajra posture. There’s a second moon in his back that I described the other day, and the Buddha of Boundless Light, Amitabha, sits just above his head. You think of great compassion or Chenrezi, you think of him as the union of all sources of refuge: buddha, dharma, sangha, lama, yidam, protector, so forth.
Feel this as deeply as you can, because this is where the power of respectful appreciation and devotion as I was describing in reference to the short Vajradhara prayer at the beginning of the retreat. Traditionally, you’re instructed to regard Chenrezi, imagined above your head, in essence being your teacher and in form manifesting as Chenrezi. And the reason for that, at least in Tibetan culture, is that people always had great faith in their teacher, and this is a way of allowing them to feel that intensity of faith. The faith has an energy in it.
All of you, I know from our interviews, whether you like it or not, all of you have formed a connection with awakened compassion in the retreat. You’re stuck with it now. It’s a source of inspiration; it’s a source of clarity; it’s a source of understanding. It manifests in each of you a little differently, but there’s an emotional relationship that you have developed with awakened compassion. It’s not an intellectual idea anymore. It is considerably more than that. And that’s what’s important.
You are praying to awakened compassion. It just happens to be in this form, to give you a form to which to direct your feelings of appreciation, or respect, or whatever. But always come back to the idea that it’s awakened compassion, great compassion, and that is what this is all about. Don’t get carried away, or lost in trying to get the form perfect, or in trying to figure out the personality of the deity, and so forth. You already know that quite intimately.
[Unrecorded] This is exactly what I meant about making various aspects into a thing. That’s where you’re getting carried away. If you come back, “What am I really doing here? What am I really doing here? I am opening, and meeting, and forming a relationship with awakened compassion.” That’s what’s really going on. We use a dramatic form, which basically is a vehicle for that energy.
So, this short prayer is one.
O Lord of whitest form.
And rather than use this word unblemished, somebody suggested you change it to unstained by fault. And that’s fine by me if you want to change unblemished to unstained. Yeah, it still scans, so it’s:
Whose head a perfect Buddha crowns in light.
(That’s a reference to Amitabha.)
Whose compassionate eyes regard each living being.
Chenrezig Sadhana, p. 18
The All-Seeing One is a literal rendering of Chenrezi or Avalokiteshvara. It says, repeat this three times, but in fact, you can repeat it any number of times, a hundred thousand, because it’s a prayer. And the purpose of prayer here is to develop emotional energy. That emotional energy that you develop powers your practice.
This is where Rinpoche added in the Seven-Branch Prayer [Chenrezig Sadhana pp. 19-22] on the following page, and the Prayer to the All-Seeing One [Chenrezig Sadhana pp. 23-33] on the following two pages. And you put them in right at this point if you’re going to use them. That’s optional. The sense of faith and appreciation, whatever you want to call it, that’s not optional.
When you develop a strong enough emotional energy, then how you experience things changes. There’s a transformation. And I don’t mean that everything becomes pure light. When you are feeling full of that kind of respectful appreciation, what happens? One opens, and your whole perception of things change.
What is very important here is that—and this is not going to happen every time you do the practice, but if you do this sincerely and deeply—there will be times when the presence of awakened compassion above you becomes real, and it feels like Chenrezi is really there. And he responds to your emotional energy, to your faith.
The response is a flood of energy, which is symbolized by light pouring from his form, so that you do not feel any different from awakened compassion. The world becomes an expression of awakened compassion. You imagine that transformation as your form becomes the form of awakened compassion.
Most people do this meditation with their eyes closed, but you just imagine you are in this extraordinarily beautiful world. There are long descriptions of it, where when the wind blows through the trees, you hear all the sounds of these wonderful teachings. And all the leaves are made of sapphires, and all the fruits are made of rubies. Maybe a little difficult for you if you have difficulty with abundance, but the beautiful grass, things like that, it’s really a paradise.
You imagine that this is a symbolic representation of the transformation. You think that not only you have experienced this transformation, but every being in the whole world is transformed in the same way. And you all become Chenrezi—each one of you. Not only in form, but your speech becomes Chenrezi’s speech, which is the mantra om mani padme hūm. And your mind becomes Chenrezi’s mind, which is compassionate emptiness. It’s exactly the things that we’ve been working with over the last three days. And that’s what the line:
To Chenrezi’s three faculties are changed.
(And then a very important line: All knowledge, change that knowledge to awareness, I translated this decades ago.)
All awareness, sound, and all appearing forms become inseparable from emptiness.
Chenrezig Sadhana, p. 31
What does this mean? It means that everything, this whole realm that you’re imagining, including your own form as Chenrezi, arises like a dream, like a rainbow. Or to use a modern example, like a hologram. You have this thing which appears, and it’s absolutely clear, for there’s no substance to it, it’s just pure appearance. We’ve all seen holograms, right? Go to a haunted house in Disneyland.
So it’s just pure appearance—that’s form. And sound has all the substantiality of an echo. Everything’s like an echo. And awareness is not separate from emptiness either. In this beautiful pure land, with you and all sentient beings in the form of Chenrezi, you recite the mantra or you just sit there doing the visualization. When you get tired, you recite the mantra, you do whatever you want.
Viewing others as Chenrezi
Ken: Earlier in this retreat, I asked you, when you imagine that you are awakened compassion, what happens to the world? Your perception of it changes, and it becomes less threatening. You feel you can respond to it more. How do you view other people when you are completely feeling that you are awakened compassion? How do you view other people? [Unrecorded]
Who are they? What are they? [Unrecorded] Pure in what sense? [Unrecorded] You feel a connection with them. You aren’t dismissive or pushing them away. And as you say, you feel there’s the potential for responsiveness. That’s your working position. That’s what imagining everybody as Chenrezi is a dramatization.
It’s not that you actually see people with four arms and white radiating light, things like that. Just as you’ve become an expression of awakened compassion, you relate to them as an expression of awakened compassion. But in order to open that possibility up in the meditation, you actually imagine they become Chenrezi.
Dezhung Rinpoche told the story of this one lama in his area who practiced this all the time, and took it to heart very, very deeply. He was the scraggly, unkempt hermit, and only a few of the senior lamas in the local monastery knew the depth of his practice.
So one day, there was this really big ceremony, with all the pomp and regalia of the monastery, banners, and incense, and huge offerings all decked out. And the abbot of the monastery was on the huge throne, strewn with brocade, and everything like that. And all the monks were busy chanting and playing the musical instruments, all very formal, and everybody was right into it.
In comes the scraggly old hermit, and he just looks at all of this, and his practice is so deep, he just sees it all as manifestation of awakened compassion. And the abbott was a teacher of considerable spiritualization, and that’s how he saw him. So, he said, “Ah, you’re awakened compassion.”
All the monks turned to him and thought, “What’s he doing here?” And the monk police got up and started moving towards him. They were not nice people. They kept discipline in the monastery, and most of them were quite brutal thugs.
Just as they’re about to lay hands on him, the abbott said, “No, no, no, no, no! He’s the expression of awakened compassion!”
And the scraggly, old hermit said, “No, no, no. You are the expression of awakened compassion.” And then he started pointing, “And so are you! And so are you!” This is how the world was for him, just totally open.
Visualization options
Ken: In the practice, there are numerous visualizations, and in the beginning this is a source of much confusion for many people. In the beginning when you’re doing this, you have two Chenrezis: you’re Chenrezi, and you have Chenrezi above your head, and there you are happily matching your Chenrezi. But at a certain point, and this is really up to you, you do it whenever you wish.
Sometimes when you’re saying the mantra, you can just think with deep respect and devotion for the Chenrezi above your head. And then respond again by melting into light and coming into your form. So it’s like these two Chenrezis come together. So, you are imbued totally with all of the qualities of awakened compassion.
Now, technically, in the Vajrayana jargon, this is called the joining of the commitment being with the awareness being. The commitment being is the one that you have imagined you are. The awareness being is the one that is the embodiment of the principle of awakened mind. And these are joined together, so you now have no excuse but to feel that you are awakened compassion.
This actually represents a shift that takes place in people’s practice as it matures. In Varjayana, we imagine, we dramatize everything. So this is a dramatization of this. The Chenrezi above dissolves into light and you become Chenrezi. And you practice that way with total confidence.
[Unrecorded] Yeah, that’s exactly right. Jñanasattva is the awareness being, and Samayasattva is the commitment being.
There are many visualization practices that you can do. Bokar Rinpoche outlines 10 practices to start with. There are numerous variations, but one which is very good to do—hopefully not confusing you completely—is to imagine the lotus and hri mantra in your heart. I’m not going into all of the details of the mantra visualization. I’ll go over that later. Just imagine light radiating from your heart, and growing out to each of the six realms of existence. You can do each one separately.
As that light radiates out, you really feel all of the suffering, say of the hell realm, all of the suffering of anger. Don’t forget you’re awakened compassion, so this is not particularly a problem. You can be totally present with all the suffering of aggression, anger, hate, in all of the ways it manifests. Your light completely permeates that realm. You experience all of that reactive emotion, and all of the problems that arise out of it. And you’re aware of all of the beings that are suffering. And they all become Chenrezi, and they radiate light, and that light returns into you, so you’re imbued with even more energy.
What is being dramatized here is the process of transforming reactive emotional energy. What we do with reactive emotional energy is that we open to it, experience it completely, it transforms, and then all of that energy that was locked up in the reactive emotion becomes available to us for attention. This is a dramatic form of that. By doing it, in imagining this process going on, you actually create that possibility, or enhance that possibility, within you. And that’s the purpose of these practices.
[Unrecorded] Everything I’ve been describing—the second Chenrezi coming into you, feeling that—all of these are different practices you can do. And traditionally in a way that’s done in Tibet, you’d be reciting the six-syllables the whole time you’re doing this. Whether you actually do that or not, that’s entirely up to you. For some people, reciting the mantra is a way of generating energy and helps them in their practice to stabilize it. For other people, they do better just imagining the light going out and coming back, and so forth. When their mind gets tired, refreshing it by saying the mantra. That this is what you work out yourself.
When your meditation period is about to come to an end, or towards the end of it, or you just get tired, you let everything that you’ve been imagining dissolve into light. There are a number of ways of doing this. The simplest way is to let it all dissolve into light. So you and the world you’re imagining all become light.
In Bokar Rinpoche’s book, you’ll find instructions that Kalu Rinpoche gave for this, which is a different form of dissolution, in which you gradually dissolve everything into light from the outside. The world dissolves into you, and you dissolve into the mantra, and hri in the heart, and the mantra dissolves into the hri, then the hri dissolves, and all of that’s diagrammed out there.
And this is a way of bringing the awareness down, right into emptiness. So you’re just there. And removing here from what’s called the creation phase to the completion phase, where you’re completing the experience of being the deity with the experience of emptiness, which is being nothing at all. So, there are different ways you can approach that.
Then, before you end the meditation period, you say:
I and others are the holy form.
Chenrezig Sadhana, p. 32
The mantra sings and hums in every sound
As deep and vast awareness thoughts arise.
And this is what you carry into your day. You carry with it the sense of experiencing everything as the expression of awakened compassion. And again, this doesn’t mean imagining everybody’s got a white form, four arms, and jeweled crowns, etc. You just carry that sense that you and everything you experience is the expression of awakened compassion. That changes how you interact with things. This is the way you continue to practice in your daily life.
Practice what works for you
Ken: The actual liturgy doesn’t take very long. It depends entirely how long you spend on doing these various practices. I did a retreat back in the early 1970s, a one month’s retreat, doing Chenrezi meditation for two and a half hours at a time. Going over one aspect, or doing these practices over and over again. You can do the whole thing in 10 minutes.
What I suggest you do is that you sit down, let your mind rest through the breath for 10 or 15 minutes, so it’s settled. Take refuge, let it settle, and then go through the stages of the creation of the deity. For those of you who are devotionally inclined, there’s great value in praying to Chenrezi, or your teacher as Chenrezi, or Chenrezi as the union of all refuges. There’s tremendous value in that because it generates this emotional energy. And if you want to make that the main part of your practice, that’s fine. And then go through the rest rather quickly.
For those of you who find really being Chenrezi, or awakened compassion, that is where you want to put the emphasis, then go through those prayers, imagine light going out from Chenrezi, transforming everything, Chenrezi coming into you, and spend most of your time on that part of the practice. For those of you who like to hang out in attention and awareness, you can go through all of that, dissolve the visualization, just rest, and then you spend most of the time there. So there are all of these options. And that’s one of the things about Vajrayana, there’s so many facets, and the practices are so rich, that each person can find the area of the practice that works best for them.
[Unrecorded] As you gain facility, and get to understand the progression as liturgy, then you can start to expand on that into some of the visualizations and practices that Bokar Rinpoche describes in the book. You don’t have to do that all at once.
See, everything—and this is very important—everything, all of these different aspects of practice, they’re all different ways of coming to know the union of compassion and emptiness. If we had a few more days in the retreat, in the course of the interviews, I would be directing one person, “Put most of your time and energy here,” another person, “Put most of your time and energy here,” because those are the parts and practices that work best for them.
[Unrecorded] Go over to page 13, and that’s the dedication. When you are the embodiment of awakened compassion, you can, if you wish, do taking and sending as the embodiment of awakened compassion, which is different from just doing taking and sending as yourself. Why? Because when you’re taking and sending as yourself, you can think of taking in that suffering and going, “I don’t want that.” Or you can think of sending away your intelligence or your health and you think, “No, I still want that.”
But when you’re the embodiment of awakened compassion, you have infinite resource to take in the suffering of others. And you have infinite resources. So you can really get into taking and sending in a whole different way. However, and I included this particularly for those who’ve done the taking and sending retreat, the total flowering of activity, which is on page 14, is a whole nother practice.
[Unrecorded] And then guru yoga, middle of page 15. Then you meditate on compassion, and there’s a few lines at the bottom of page 15. Towards the bottom you see: “My guru melts into me, instantly I become in form the Great Compassionate One.” And then you imagine you’re the Great Compassionate One and you do taking and sending. He says, “Recite the mantra om mani padme hūm as you do this.”
Again, that’s optional. You can do taking and sending while reciting the mantra, or not reciting the mantra, as you wish. But the main thing is, as Chenrezi you’re taking in the suffering of others, giving away all of your happiness, wealth, spiritual realization, etc. And then you go through the verses to conclude.
In case you’re not totally overwhelmed, I always believe in a bit of overkill. The way that you approach this practice is that when you begin your practice session, you die to your ordinary life, and you are reborn as the embodiment of awakened compassion. You go through your life as awakened compassion. You go through birth, and then you go through all your activity, helping sentient beings, with lights going out and back, and all of this stuff. And at the end of that, you die as awakened compassion. And that’s when everything dissolves into light. That represents death.
And you’re born again in the form you negotiate life, but now you feel you are awakened compassion, and you go about everything as if you’re in the bardo. You’re born in the bardo body. So you go around your life as if everything is a dream, or since bardo is closer to a nightmarish hallucination, you relate to everything as being a dream, in particular, as being the dream of awakened compassion.
When you eat, you imagine awakened compassion at your throat. And as you eat, all the food is turning into the elixir of pristine awareness, which is offered to awakened compassion, or Chenrezi, at your throat, and you’re feeding him. Feeding awakened compassion in you.
When you walk, you imagine that you are showing respect to awakened compassion. And when you go to sleep at night, you can do a couple of things. You can either imagine that you’re putting your head in the lap of awakened compassion and going to sleep with your head in his lap. Or you can imagine awakened compassion in your heart radiating light, and you go to sleep like that.
But, just every aspect of your life—because it’s all this nightmarish hallucination in the bardo—is an expression of awakened compassion. You keep transforming your sense to it by imagining all of these little things. That gets very elaborate, it gets very complicated. People can’t remember it all. The key—and the really only critical point here—is to keep coming back to the feeling, I am awakened compassion. And you just do that, everything else will take care of itself.
[Unrecorded] Use Bokar Rinpoche’s book as a crib sheet, that’s fine. You’ll learn it one way or another, takes time.
Energy transformation
Ken: I mentioned that there are energy transformation techniques. This is one that is often taught. All energy transformation techniques are dangerous. So, do not push them; work with them only as they’re comfortable. This one uses the breath, so particularly, only as it’s comfortable. If you start to strain in this, it’s detrimental to you in many, many different ways. So don’t push.
This is a practice called vajra recitation. You can do this towards the end of the period where you’re visualizing, just before you do the dissolution, if you wish. You can do it as a practice in its own right. It’s best if you imagine yourself in the form of Avalokiteshvara. As you breathe in, you imagine oms coming in through your nostrils and down into your heart, carrying with them all the energy and power of all the buddhas coming into your heart.
You hold your breath for a very short time, not forcefully, just naturally, thinking of mani padme. Or if you want the short version of just ah, either is fine, and you let your mind rest there. Then as you breathe out, you imagine hūm coming out of your heart. And all of your negativity, reactive patterns, confusion, bewilderment, etc. going out and just being dispersed, so it’s gone. This is traditionally done with om ah hūm. The om is white. The ah is red, hūm is very dark blue, blue-black. So, om ah hūm.
Don’t hold the breath for a long time. Hold it while you think of the letter ah, resting in your heart. And hūm, breathing out. The breath is natural with just this little pause. You can do this a number of times. I would start doing it for five times until your body gets used to this, and then you can gradually extend it. But if you start feeling spaced out, or dizzy, or there’s any strain in the rhythm of breathing, then stop. Come back to it another time. It should be quite natural, and it’s quite a gentle technique, but it will bring about out a state of heightened resting and clarity, which is what energy transformations are about.
[Unrecorded] You just rest with the feeling of ah, this is the heart of the speech of all buddhas. So you just rest with that in your heart. [Unrecorded] Om you bring in all of the power, energy of all buddhas into your heart. Here, no you don’t take it down to here. Some forms do it in the the throat, but it’s better to do it in the heart. [Unrecorded] Millions and millions of little oms coming in, red ah in the heart, then millions of hūms going out. [Unrecorded] Yup, it can be done as an aspect of this practice. This is generic, going across all deities.