GANDEN LHA GYEMA Gelek Rimpoche Ganden Lha Gyema The hundreds of deities of the Land of Joy An oral explanation by Kyabje Gelek Rimpoche A Jewel Heart Transcript 2010 Gelek Rimpoche, Ganden Lha Gyema © 2010 Ngawang Gelek Jewel Heart Transcripts are lightly to moderately edited transcrip- tions of the teachings of Kyabje Gelek Rinpoche and others teach- ers who have taught at Jewel Heart. Their purpose is to provide Rimpoche’s students, as well as all others who are interested, with these extremely valuable teachings in a way that gives one the feel- ing of being present at the teachings. JEWEL HEART 1129 Oak Valley Drive, Ann Arbor, MI 48108, USA Phone (1) 734.994.3387 www.jewelheart.org Acknowledgements The main body of this transcript is a transcription of the Gan- den 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. Unfortu- nately she could not finish it. She died January 1991. The manuscript is lightly edited, which means small gram- matical 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 Del- hi, around 1981. Any faults the reader may find are due to the limited under- standing of the transcriber, who enjoyed very much transcri- bing these beautiful teachings. Marianne Soeters Nijmegen, 3rd , revised edition, August 2002 © Gelek Rinpoche/Jewel Heart 2010 Re-edited by Hartmut Sagolla and Kathleen Ivanoff to make available a transcript of Gelek Rimpoche’s Ganden Lha Gyema teachings that is accessible to the general public. Ann Arbor, August 2002 Table of Contents I INTRODUCTION 5 1. Why you need a Guru-devotional practice 6 2. Linegae of this teaching 13 3. Special Benefits of the Ganden Lha Gyema practice 16 II PRELIMINARIES 33 1. Cleaning the place 33 2. Creation of the altar and laying out the offerings 35 3. Positioning the body 39 4. Motivation: correction of thoughts 39 5. Refuge taking and generating the bodhimind 43 6. Blessing the offerings III CREATION AND INVOCATION OF THE SUPREME FIELD OF MERIT 63 1. Creation of the Supreme Field of Merit 63 2. Invocation of the wisdom-beings 71 IV OFFERING OF THE SEVEN -LIMB PRAYER 81 1. Making the request to stay 82 2. Praise 83 3. Offering 97 4. Purification 101 5. Rejoice 106 6. Request to give teachings 119 7. Dedication 121 Mandala-offering and making the three requests 124 V PRAYING AND REQUESTING 131 1. Explanation of the Migtsema 131 2. Praying and requesting 138 VI DISSOLVING THE MERIT FIELD 165 VII OUTLINES OF THE PRACTICE 171 VIII ROOT TEXT GANDEN LHA GYEMA 177 IX NOTES 187 X GLOSSARY 197 XI LITERATURE 219 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 ex- tra-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 Gelek Rimpoche 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 Jamgon 1 Tsongkhapa after his practice had gained all the stages of development, he made statements. 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 ] Whatever spiritual development we get, whether it is causal knowledge development, inner spiritual development, or re- sult spiritual development, it is all rooted in the guru yoga . Inner spiritual development is gaining some mental deve- lopment here and now. Result spiritual development is the ultimate development, becoming a buddha. Causal knowledge development means that both, the inner and the result spiri- tual 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 India as well as Ti- bet. This was totally due to their backbone of guru-yoga prac- tice. 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. 6 GANDEN LHA GYEMA Milarepa. When you look into Milarepa’s biography 2 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 mak- ing 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, obtai- ning 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 sev- enth 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 Naropa 3. 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 dead 4. 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, al- 7 Gelek Rimpoche though 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. Then Naropa said, When there is no lama there is no mandala. There is not even the name of a Buddha. All the Buddhas of the hundred thousands of eons have come only on the basis of the guru. The deities are the manifestations of the guru.