The Very Venerable Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche

The Seven Points Of Mind Training

Birmingham Karma Ling, December 2002

III. How To Carry the Practice Onto The Path

B. The Special Application Of The Teaching: 5

5. The four practises are the best method.

The four practices are:

1. The accumulation of virtue

2. Confessing negative actions

3. Offering torma to the demons

4. Offering tormas to the protectors and the dakinis.

The first activity is accumulating virtue. This means making offerings to beings that are higher than oneself, the Buddhas the deities, and to the beings that are below one, practising generosity towards them. Also making prostrations, offering mandalas and so on.

After that is making supplication We pray to the Buddha and the three jewels, if it is better for me to be ill may I be ill, if it is better for to die may I die. Whatever is best may that happen. We pray for the blessing so that whatever is beneficial to remove our ego clinging and all of the mind poisons whatever is best to accomplish that may that happen.

The second practice is the confession of negative actions. We use four powers to accomplish this. The first power is that of regret, thinking this negative action I have committed is not beneficial, the second power is having an object for one's confession such as Dorje Sempa and meditating that the deities are pure and one is making a confession to this deity. The third power is relying on the practice accumulating virtue. The fourth power making a commitment that one will never commit this action in the future.

The third of these four activities is giving torma offerings or making offerings to the demons and obstacle makers. You think up until now you demons have created many obstacles and suffering for me and this is a great kindness, thank you very much. Please give me some more suffering and problems please. The reason for this is to purify me of ego clinging. If you can do that then it is really good. If you have that mind state nothing can harm you, but if you think maybe that is not very good, maybe they can harm me then the suffering will increase and increase. You think maybe they can hurt me, I'm not sure of they can hurt me or not. If you have hope and fear then they will definitely be able to hurt you. The main cause of the demons being able to cause harm to us is having this hope and fear. If you do not have hope and fear they can't cause harm to you. You say to the demons here is this torma this offering to you and as much harm and suffering and problems you can give to me to rid me of the ego clinging then please let that happen.

If you are not able to have this strong idea of bringing as many problems to oneself, if you aren't able to do that then while knowing that the demons can't harm you, you think I give you this torma, this offering, and please do not make any obstacle for the Dharma activity I wish to accomplish. Then you practise with loving kindness and compassion.

And the fourth activity is offering tormas to the Dharma protectors. You pray to the Dharma protectors, here is this offering for you, please remove all the obstacles and bad circumstances that prevent the accomplishment of my Dharma practise. If it is better for me to be ill let me be ill, if its better for me to recover let me recover whatever is the most beneficial to rid me of the ego clinging may that happen.

Q. When we do this about not being afraid of the hurt when I have been hurt in the past now I have fear and what you said last night, nice idea, but I don’t know how to do it.

A. The main point is to generate compassion. You think, whoever is causing me harm whether it is a demon or a person like me then they are the same as me, they want happiness and they don’t want suffering, exactly like I am.

So you think if it’s a person who is causing you problems or suffering then you think that person is under the influence of the mind poisons anger and so on. Without freedom they are totally under the influence of the mind poisons so they are not happy. Then through the activity of acting out the mind poisons they actually cause harm to others so they actually create the cause to experience the lower realms in the future. Then you think because of that these beings are going to experience great suffering in the future and you have compassion for them.

If it's a demon then they will never be happy they don’t have the causes to be happy they have no freedom. They have to cause harm to other beings so demon's nature is that they often have suffering and happiness and they die and are revived again and they have very great suffering. But the demons are the same as us they want happiness and to be free from suffering.

To put it briefly then all creatures or people that cause harm to us, they don’t know how to create the cause to experience happiness and they continually create the cause to experience more suffering and they can't accomplish their own wishes. What they don’t want they experience that. If we can generate this compassion thinking at some point in the past they were like our mother and if you can generate compassion for these beings then it can help and you don’t have to have fear. If you have compassion no demon can cause you any harm. Also you can mediate on emptiness, the demon is emptiness the harm is emptiness and I am emptiness. Then in the emptiness who is causing who harm, you can't burn the space can you? It’s the same. If you meditate on compassion and emptiness there is nothing better than that.

My father, the late Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche, had one friend who was a practitioner of Chod and this practitioner was in quite a high place, in upper Tibet, he was doing pilgrimage. One day he came to a small village. The villagers came to this lama and said will you stay with us for a little bit, there is a very nice valley with some very nice land and you can stay and do a short retreat there. The lama said oh that would be very nice. They accompanied the lama up the hill a little way then they left him there and gave him lots of tsampa or barley meal then they left him there. The lama was practising the Chod and playing his instruments and meditating when he heard a noise at nighttime. It seemed to be quite far off but then gradually the sound came closer and got louder. Then the earth began to shake. He was thinking what is going on here with all this noise then all of a sudden a large boulder landed right in front of him. When he looked at the rock it transformed into a great black creature which looked like a man. The black creature said to the Lama you are practising the Chod aren't you. The Lama continued his mediation playing the bell and the drum. He was concentrating so hard on his meditation he began to feel dizzy. Slowly the creature grabbed him by the throat.

The Lama tried to pray to the deity and to the Buddha but nothing seemed to help. Then the hands got tighter and he was unable to breathe and was almost dead. Even though he was half dead he thought this is demon probably going to kill me and he has probably killed lots of other beings and he will reap the result of his actions and have a very negative rebirth. He generated compassion for this being as he did the hands became less tight and relaxed around his throat. Then at the end he let go of the throat. The demon like creature said there have been lots of practitioners of the Chod in this place and I have ate them all but I am not able to kill and eat you, what is going on. The lama replied that this is because I had the strength of the compassion. The demon said to him that is true and whatever you have got to say to me I will listen to that.

The Lama made a stone wall around the demon, quite a big wall, and he said to the demon you are not allowed to step outside the perimeter of this wall and cause harm to sentient beings. Then later on this demon creature dissolved into the rock. This is a real experience, something which really happened. Because of that if you practise compassion nothing can harm you.

Q. When practising the tonglen I had the experience of something undermining me in my practise saying you haven't got enough goodness and virtue to give out to compensate for all the bad that you are trying to take in. The only way I could overcome this was by thinking even just by breathing out and breathing in the bad that is enough virtue to carry me through in the practise. Firstly would Rinpoche say whether that is ok and secondly his advice on how to overcome those sort of doubts which arise in the mind.

A. You don’t have to have this doubt or lack of confidence in the practise because you have Buddha nature don’t you? So then you have enough positiveness, you have a well of positiveness to send out to all sentient beings and you feel you send out all of your positiveness on the basis that you have Buddha nature. Of course this is enough and you have the wish that all sentient beings get this benefit from you, don’t have a doubt about it. At the moment when one is practising you can't really benefit the sentient beings but it is a preparation of really being of benefit in the future.

Q. Why, if we all have the Buddha nature do so many beings in the world cause harm to others and make wars?

A.The reason is that the majority of sentient beings do not recognise that they have Buddha nature. Because they do not recognise that, they create harm for sentient beings. This is due to ignorance.

What we are studying are the seven points of mind training. In general when one listens to Dharma teachings as I said yesterday one should have a relaxed mind, without hope and fear. In this relaxed way one should listen to the teachings. Hope and fear is thinking that one is listening to the Dharma and worrying whether it will benefit one or not. It has to benefit me. Maybe next month I may be enlightened and if I'm not that is not good.

This hope and fear doesn't just apply to listening to Dharma, it can come up when one is doing any kind of worldly activity as well. For example if one is a business person one wants to have a very good business and if it's not going well that will never do. Wanting to definitely have good business and having this kind of expectation is not good. Generally we can only do business to the best of our abilities and no more. Sometimes it goes well and at other times not so well. It is not certain. If one has a lot of grasping to good business, if things don't go so well one will have a lot of suffering. Another example is if one is studying. I have to study very hard and do well in the exam. If you have a very tight mind then one will forget what one has learnt and not do well. Also driving a car, if one has a tight mind the car will go the opposite way that you want to go and you may bump into someone else.

Out of the seven points we have covered the first three, the preliminaries, main Bodhicitta training, and part of transforming negative circumstances into the path.