Lama Tharchin Rinpoche
(editted for clarity)
Vajrayana's wisdom is within you. You don’t have to wait because Dzogchen point
of view is you don't need to be liberated. You are already liberated. You never
got bound, you are free.
I have a story. We had a life-release. Suzanne bought several boxes of
chickens. Each box had three or four chickens. A small box like this, it is
completely packed. We opened the box and set them free. But due to their habit,
the chickens feel they can't walk or run around. They always sit like this (in
a restricted manner). Because of habit.
If you don't trust your freedom, you are just like those chickens. [Laughter]
It's really true. I realized that, wow, this is how heavy habit is. Then I
realized we are just like these chickens. Even though we already enlightened,
we kept dualistic structure.
We taught these chickens to move and let them move, later they learned to move.
Similarly, this skillful training of (visualizing deities and generation stage)
is like that. [Laughs] Just like that. Let us feel, “Wow, I'm a deity.” Trick
our minds in a positive way so that we can be free. This trick is called the
Mahayoga practice.
For example, if you change your name every day or every week. You keep using different names, keep
changing. Someday you will be confused
and think, “Who am I? What is my name?” So the mental trick is like that.
The deity yoga is a good way to feel this freedom. When you're feeling this
freedom, it builds up a habit, then you are free. Because our delusion, this
entire dualistic phenomena or appearance is created by our mental habit. This
whole universe is a mental display.
Whether it is a good place or bad place; good life or bad life, it’s all
okay. Whether it is pleasurable or
painful time. It's okay. Everything is displayed by mind.
Samsara is also a generation stage of creating material phenomena, concrete
phenomena, heavy phenomena. We are always creating samsara appearances. This is
unenlightened generation stage practice. This is samsara practice.
We use the same trick but in a good way. To create a good habit, your mind can
visualize deity appearances. First you create, then you feel, then feeling
comes more because that habit is coming closer to the truth, approaching
purity. Then that mind attains the habit of deity phenomena.
It sounds a little complicated, but actually when you do it, it is simple.
Because we have only one mind. We don't have two or three minds, just one mind.
When you focus that one mind, whatever you focus on, repeating it again and
again. That is called karma. It is a mental habit that you keep repeating.
That's why we repeat mantra. We repeat visualization of wisdom deities. The one
mind is engaged with wisdom body, wisdom speech, wisdom mind. That's how you
accumulate mental habit and build wisdom phenomena.
The one that builds ordinary, solid, material phenomena and clings to it is
your mind. Your mind creates this karma.
When your mind shift focus to wisdom phenomena, then it gets a little
vacation from building samsara and emotional phenomena. [Laughter]
Samsara is built by your mind. That is why we are meditating. Because the focus
is now changed. We have been meditating
on samsaric phenomena for countless lifetimes. For eons and eons we repeated
this meditation. Therefore, samsara is solidly manifesting to us right now.
So we are undoing the process through the same way. It is exactly same — using
your mind. Clinging onto phenomena is our problem. We desire good things and
hate negative things. Both of these
emotions of attachment and aversion comes from not knowing its nature, that's
ignorance. Through repeating attachment, aversion and ignorance, we build this
samsara.
Now, our Dharma practice is to reverse this process. Go back to who we are
originally. For example, I am Tharchin and my body here is 75 years old. It is
a temporary thing. This is not going to be forever. It is not reliable. If I
understand this, I have less expectation of my body.
If you have faith that your true nature is the primordial Buddha Kuntuzangpo,
instead of Tharchin. Then you keep repeating this moment by moment. It changes
this material, solid, concrete phenomena into what you are meditating upon.
