GANDEN LHA GYEMA the hundreds of deities of the Land of Joy Kyabje Gelek Rinpoche teachings 1985-1990 restricted to: those who have a full vajrayana initiation those who are doing a retreat in the context of 100,000 Migtsema’s Jewel Heart Transcript ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The main body of this transcript is a transcription of the Ganden Lha Gyema eight tapes, a two-days guru yoga teaching given by Gelek Rinpoche in USA. The project was started in 1989 by Hélène van Hoorn, who did the research work on names and terms. She began a rather extensive glossary and made many notes and references as to make the teachings of full use for our students. Unfortunately she could not finish it. She died January 1991. This transcript contains Vajrayana-oriented teachings. In the first place it is meant for Vajrayaners. It can also be studied by Ganden-Lha-Gyema practitioners that are preparing for or starting the 100,000 Migtsemas. Note that the practice of the parts marked ‘Vajrayana’ is restricted to Vajrayaners only. A non-Vajrayana commentary, based on teachings given by Rinpoche summer 2002 in Cleveland, will be published in the course of this year. The manuscript is lightly edited, which means small grammatical adjustments were made and some additional headings were put in where thought necessary. Since the first edition revisions have taken place on the following points: Teachings on the Ganden Lha Gyema from the Lamrim weekend-retreats in Ann Arbor April, May and November 1990 were inserted. Additional information was drawn from Ganden Lha Gyema teachings September 1985 in the Netherlands teachings as well as from teachings Rinpoche gave in Tushita, New Delhi, around 1981. Some visualization techniques from the Three Principles teachings as well as from the Lamrim Teachings are inserted for the sake of those doing the Migtsema retreat. Retreat instructions given March 1990 in the Netherlands are put in. An index has been provided. As much as possible necessary drawings of syllables and deities have been inserted. The drawings of Buddha Vajradhara, Buddha Sakyamuni and Manjushri are from Marian van der Horst. Any faults the reader may find are due to the limited understanding of the transcriber, who enjoyed very much transcribing these beautiful teachings. Marianne Soeters Nijmegen, third, revised edition, August 2002 © Gelek Rinpoche/Jewel Heart 1991 CONTENTS 1 INTRODUCTION 7 1. Why you need a Guru devotional practice 7 2. Lineage of this teaching 13 3. Special benefits of the Ganden Lha Gyema guru yoga practice 13 2 PRELIMINARIES 23 1. Cleaning the place 23 2. Creation of the altar and laying out the offerings 24 3. Positioning the body 26 4. Motivation: correction of thoughts 26 5. Refuge taking and generating the bodhimind 29 6. Blessing the offerings 36 3 CREATION AND INVOCATION OF THE SUPREME FIELD OF MERIT 41 1. Creation of the Supreme Field of Merit 41 2. Invocation of the wisdom-beings 46 4 OFFERING OF THE SEVEN-LIMB PRAYER 53 1. Making the request to stay 53 2. Praise 54 3. Offering 61 4. Purification 65 5. Rejoice 69 6. Request to give teachings 76 7. Dedication 77 Mandala-offering and making the three requests 79 5 PRAYING AND REQUESTING 85 1. Explanation of the Migtsema 85 2. Praying and requesting 91 6 DISSOLVING THE MERIT FIELD 111 4 Ganden Lha Gyema 7 RETREAT INSTRUCTIONS 117 8 THE ROOTTEXT 125 9 GLOSSARY 133 10 LITERATURE 143 11 INDEX 145 Je Tsongkhapa I INTRODUCTION Do kindly generate a pure thought: I would like to obtain ultimate enlightenment for the benefit of all mother sentient beings. For that purpose I would like to listen to this great teaching. Not only listen. After listening I would like to think, meditate and practice. Through this path I would like to obtain buddhahood within this lifetime and at the shortest possible duration. Therefore I am listening and learning and I will meditate and practice and get a result by doing it. Not only for my sake. For the sake of all mother sentient beings. That way you develop the best attitude and motivation you can according to the Lamrim teachings. The teacher should also have a good motivation. Later, if you are teaching others, remember that. If the teacher doesn’t have a good motivation, the material that he teaches may well be very good, but it will become third-class material and whatever time and energy one puts in will be just wasted. In order to avoid that, I try to have the best motivation that I could and you should also do that. With that, please listen to these teachings. The teaching you are going to listen to today, this Ganden Lha Gyema, is a guru yoga dealing with Je Tsongkhapa. It is the extra-ordinary, uncommon teaching or method which has been passed on from ear to ear in the great tradition of the Se gyu system. It is very easy to practice. It does not have any heavy commitments. It can be stretched out to become a complete path. It can also be made very short. It has a mantra to say. It has a lama to meditate. It contains the seven-limbed prayer to build up your merit. Whatever necessary requirements one needs for one’s practice are all contained in here. 1. Why you need Guru devotional practice – Guru yoga When Jamgon1 Tsongkhapa after his practice had gained all the stages of development, he made state- ments. This is the first statement he made: The root of all causes producing Happiness here and hereafter, is the practice Of relying in thought and action Upon the sacred friend who reveals the path. Seeing this, follow him at any cost And please him with the offering of practice. I, a yogi, did that myself; You, O liberation seeker, should do likewise. Song of the Stages [Tib. lam rim du don] 1 Jam mgon means literally ‘gentle lord. It is an epithet indicating that Tsongkhapa and the deity Manjughosa [a form of Man- jushri] or Manjunatha [Manjushri incarnated in the human form] are of one essence. Ref. Pabongka Rinpoche, Liberation in Our Hands, vol. I, pg. 188. 8 Ganden Lha Gyema Whatever spiritual development we get, whether it is causal knowledge development, inner spiritual development, or result spiritual development, it is all rooted in the guru yoga. Inner spiritual development is gaining some mental development here and now. Result spiritual development is the ultimate development, becoming a buddha. Causal knowledge development means that both, the inner and the result spiritual development depend on the causal knowledge; you need the ‘know-how’. All three developments depend upon guru devotional practice. The great Atisha and his disciple Dromtönpa were able to give tremendous benefit to the students in In- dia as well as Tibet. This was totally due to their backbone of guru-yoga practice. And look at Tsongkhapa. And Marpa. And Milarepa. All of them have achieved a very high spiritual development and the practice they carried on, was this. Hundreds of different examples are here. But we don’t have time to go in detail on this. Milarepa. When you look into Milarepa’s biography2 it looks like he was doing nothing, except that he was given a hard time by Marpa. Marpa was trying to make Milarepa construct a very, very funny type of building. Halfway through Marpa said, ‘Ah, you totally made a mistake. Who told you to do this?’ Milarepa had to take the building down completely and he had nothing left. That happened several times. And what is very interesting – I think it was Kyabje Ling Rinpoche who used to say this – Marpa did not need a house for his son Tharmadote. There were plenty of houses; he would not need a funny looking triangular shaped house. Still Marpa was making Milarepa to do it. We always think it was only purification, but actually it was one of Milarepa’s most important earlier practices of guru yoga. As its direct result Milarepa got well-known later on and so helpful to so many people. He was able to influence the lives of lots of people. All of this was a direct result of these efforts. Tadungu. In general, if you follow the sutra path alone, obtaining enlightenment takes about three countless eons. There is no quick way in the sutra path alone. However, there is the case of Tadungu, the bodhisattva ‘who was always crying’. He was able to obtain the developments from the first to the seventh bhumi in a very short period. What normally takes three countless eons, he was able to cover within a couple of years! That was the exception due to his strong practice of guru yoga. Marpa and Naropa3. Marpa Lotsawa obtained a lot of teachings from Naropa, in particular Hevajra. One time Marpa was looking for Naropa, but by that time Naropa was already dead4. However, Marpa kept looking around and finally found Naropa in one of the jungles of India. Early in the morning, Naropa woke his student up and said, ‘The sun is up, Marpa, don’t sleep! Get up and have a look. The whole complete mandala of your deity, Hevajra, is here!’ Marpa got up and saw the complete mandala of Hevajra in the sky. Then Naropa asked, ‘To whom would you like to prostrate first, to me or to the deity?’ Marpa thought for a while, ‘Naropa, although I respect him and all this, I can see every day. But it is very rare to see the mandala. So let me first prostrate to the mandala.’ So that is what he did.