Thirty-five Confession Buddha Practice

Opening prayer

I always begin with helping us set our motivation. And the way I do that is I ask you to bring your attention to your breath until you hear from me again. It takes a minute or two. 

Now bring to mind that being who for you is a manifestation of ultimate love, ultimate compassion, ultimate wisdom. See them here with you. They are gazing at you with their unconditional love for you, smiling at you with their holy great compassion. Their wisdom radiates from them, encompassing you in its light.

And then we hear them say, bring to mind someone you know who's hurting in some way. Feel how much you would like to be able to help them. Recognize that the worldly ways we try to help fall short.

How wonderful it will be when we can also help them in some deep and ultimate way, a way through which they will go on to stop their distress forever. Deep down we know this is possible. Learning about karma and emptiness, we glimpse how it's possible. And we recognize that we need help. And so we turn our minds back to that precious holy being. We know that they know what we need to know. They know what we need to learn yet, and they know what we need to do yet to become one who can help this other in this deep and ultimate way. And so we ask them, please, please teach me that. Please show me that.

They are so happy that we've asked, of course they agree. Our gratitude arises. We want to offer them something exquisite, and so we think of the perfect world they are teaching us how to create. We imagine we can hold it in our hands and we offer it to them, following it with our promise to practice what they teach us, using our refuge prayer to make our promise.

Here is the great earth filled with fragrant incense and covered with a blanket of flowers. The great mountain, the four lands, wearing a jewel of the sun and the moon.  In my mind I make them the paradise of a Buddha and offer it all to you. By this deed may every living being experience the pure world. Idam guru ratna mandalakam niryatayami.

I go for refuge until I am enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma, and the highest community. By the merit that I do in sharing this class and the rest, may I reach Buddhahood for the sake of every living being. I go for refuge until I am enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma, and the highest community. By the merit that I do in sharing this class and the rest, may all beings totally awaken for the benefit of every single other.

Lineage of this practice

[8:50]

Thank you for requesting this practice. I first learned it from Geshe Michael during one of our breaks in Great Retreat when he would come in and share with us something that he knew we needed to learn. It was a little unusual because he's not into these kinds of ritual practices. He would rather we go out and help people with the four steps. We were in a place where we weren't going out, we were in retreat, and so he gave us this practice that helps to clean out obstacles when we understand how to use it.

The history of this practice, called the 35 Confession Buddha Practice, is that it was originally taught by Shakyamuni Buddha. It comes to us in a sutra called the Ratnakuta Sutra, which means The Stack of Jewels Sutra. And within that sutra is another one which is called the Triskandhadharma Sutra, which means The Three Heaps Sutra. And there's a commentary by Arya Nagarjuna that explains the situation. During Shakyamuni Buddha's time, 34 of his Bodhisattva disciples got in trouble. They were implicated in the death of a beer seller's son. Out of deep regret, they confessed their downfalls to the elder Upali who was one who held his vows and practices very purely. They asked him to convey their confession and regret to Shakyamuni Buddha. They asked for Venerable Upali to ask Shakyamuni for a teaching about purification and how to correct their wrong deeds. Buddha Shakyamuni saw that those 34 were actually innocent of the accusation. But for the sake of future disciples, he taught this practice, this Triskandhadharma Sutra, in order to give us tools to purify downfalls. It became this confession practice that we're going to learn today.

Lama Tsongkapa apparently used this practice a lot, one of his main practices. It's said that he did a retreat using these 35 Confession Buddha in which he did a hundred thousand prostrations and repetitions to each of the 35 Buddhas. To each of the 35, which makes 3.5 million prostrations. Makes my knees ache thinking of it. He had been advised by a pure vision of Manjushri to do so in order to clear obstacles to seeing emptiness directly. The story goes that towards the end of that retreat he had a pure vision of the 35 Buddhas and then his direct perception of emptiness. They say an imprint of his body from his prostrations is left on the floor of his retreat cave. [shrug] Don’t know.

These 34 Bodhisattvas, they pledged to specialize in helping people purify their downfalls and obstacles. Apparently, when you're getting close to your Buddhahood, you will say, or maybe Buddha tells you, ‘When I'm a Buddha, I'm going to specialize in blah, blah, blah’. Of course, every Buddha is fully enlightened, they specialize in everything, but they'll say something like, ‘When I'm a Buddha, may anyone who just says my name get blah, blah, blah result’. So we'll see with each of these different Buddhas what they said, ‘When I'm a Buddha, people can use me to purify this’. All of them are focused on cleaning out obstacles and downfalls.

Now what's a little confusing is it's 35 confession Buddhas, and there were only 34 Bodhisattvas. The 35th is Shakyamuni. He wasn't one of the ones implicated in the problem, but of course, his pledge.. I don't know what Shakyamuni Buddha's pledge was, to be honest with you. I'm looking at the list. It says 10,000 eons of negative deeds, but we know he pledged to do a whole lot more than just that.

[19:42]

Why learn this Practice? 

So why learn the practice? I learned after many years that anytime Geshe Michael says something like that, the answer is ‘Because there's suffering in the world’. What kind of suffering? Obvious suffering, the suffering of change, and pervasive suffering. And why is there suffering? Because we misunderstand where pleasure and pain come from. We experience and believe our experiences have their identities and qualities in them, and so the other in any experience is the source of my happiness and my unhappiness. And that's a mistake. And because of that mistake, we try to get things and we try to avoid things, and we think the things we do in the moment is what gets them or avoids them. And that's actually a mistake as well. It’s like we're so mistaken we don't even know we're mistaken. We keep trying to do the things that we do to get the things that we get, and we just perpetuate these things. Until something happens and we go, ‘What's wrong with this picture? It's not working right’.

The pen and the four laws of karma

How do we confirm to ourselves that what I just said might be correct? Our friend the pen. You've all heard it before.

What is this thing? A pen.

What if the little dog comes in here, I hand the little dog this object, what are they going to do with it, tell me? Play with it, chew on it, maybe run and bury it.

So what does that tell us about the identity of the object, where is it coming from? Yes, the experiencer has to be bringing something to the party. 

I admit, even as I hear myself describe that about the dog and the object, my mind is still insisting the dog is chewing on a pen. Then I recognize, no, dog isn't chewing on the pen, I don't really know what dog is experiencing. But they certainly seem to be having fun, they seem to be enjoying that thing, actually, more than I am. For me, functional thing. For them, their little tail is doing this [wagging in joy]. So again, that shows me, okay, even if it's a pen, some interaction between dog and the object is different than me and the object because it doesn't make my tail wag the way it seems to make the dog's tail wag.

So again, if the pen's identity or its quality was in it, the tail-wag-happiness quality in it, wouldn't I have to be that happy with it when I experienced it? Again, the experiencer is bringing something to the party. How much? As what? Another story, another time. Ultimately, the experiencer is bringing everything to the party. But we get there in baby steps.

Why am I saying that? The next question would be, well then, why do I see it as pen, and the dog sees it as chew toy? Why do I get functional thing, useful reaction to it, and dog gets ‘wow’? If it's not in the pen, is it something in the outside world? It has to be something in the experiencer themselves that makes them see and respond to that object in that way.

And then the question is, what is that? Because wouldn't we like to interact with this object like the dog does? Wouldn't we like to interact with everything with that ‘wow’? I mean, just thinking about it, we would be so strange, right? I don't know, maybe they'd put us in the nut house. ‘That lady, she is just like wagging her tail around’. But it could be when we understand where things truly come from.

So what is it in the puppy and in the human that forces them to experience their objects in the way that they do? We know the punchline. The punchline is mental imprints from past deeds. What that means is, our experience of this object as ‘pen’ is a result of some cause. And we know about causes that they have to have happened before the result, and [1] they have to be somehow similar to the result. There's a third one - [2] the result is bigger than the cause. So [3] we can't experience a result if we don't have the cause.

[4] If we have a cause, it must eventually make its result unless we've somehow damaged that cause in some way so that it can't have the power to bring its result.

What I've just described is actually the four laws of karma. The four laws of karma are not laws somebody made up, they are the explanation of why I see pen and dog sees chew toy. More specific to the four laws of karma, we know the first one [1] is that karma is definite. That sounds like it means absolutely karma is true. Although that is true, that's not the first law of karma. Karma is definite means it is definite that we will experience a pleasant result from a kind deed, and it is definite that we will experience an unpleasant result from an unkind deed. But when we think about life, I know there have been times when I thought I was being kind and what happened next was unpleasant. And there have even been times when I've been unpleasant and I surprisingly got a pleasant result. So it seems like this law of karma isn't true. Part of our practice of these wisdoms is to show ourselves the truth of these four laws of karma so that we can show ourselves that it is in fact true that a kindness will bring a pleasant result. And when life does not confirm that, that that experience is actually proving to us the truth of karma and emptiness. The key is recognizing that the experience we get in the next moment is not in fact a result of what we just did. In the same way that in nature, when you plant a seed in the ground that seed requires moisture, warmth, time to go through the transformation that brings us up to finally get over the threshold into manifestation of the orange tree from the orange seed. Supportive factors have to happen to it and if opposite of the supportive factors happen, that seed will never make it into the orange tree. But once you plant an orange seed, there's nothing you can do to it to make it become a banana plant. If it gets all the other factors to bring it to manifestation, the orange seed must give an orange tree. The result is similar to the cause, so we can't do a kind thing and get a negative result. We can't do anything in this moment and get its result in the next moment. So when I do an action now and experience what comes next, the what comes next is the result of some seed I've planted long ago that was similar to how the result's coming out. That experience was planted by some similar deed to what I'm experiencing, regardless of what I did the moment before. It's disorienting, isn't it? You pour the water in the Keurig thing, you put in your little whatever [mug], you push the button, you get a cup of coffee. ‘Surely pushing the button makes the cup of coffee.’ I just told you it has nothing to do with it. ‘It can't have nothing to do with it because I can't just stand there and stare at the Keurig. I do have to push the button.’ But you know, there can be a time when I push the button and no coffee comes out. And then I go, ‘oh, that Keurig machine, it's broken’. We so automatically blame something instead of going, ‘Oh, I guess I didn't push somebody's Keurig button before’. Why am I going there? If we plant being rude to someone and later on somebody is rude to us, if we remember being rude to that person, so I can see I deserve this rudeness, I'm less likely to respond in the way I ordinarily would when somebody's rude to me. I would be more likely to say, ‘okay, burned that one off. I'll try harder not to be rude because that was unpleasant’.

Now suppose unpleasant things happen and you don't remember having been that way to somebody else, like even ever in this life. Orange seeds make orange trees. There's nowhere else that unpleasant circumstances can have come from. It isn't meant to show ourselves, oh, I'm so bad, I'm so terrible. 

It's meant to empower us, to be able to understand how to respond in creative ways to plant the kind of seeds in our mind, any kind of that result will be great. So karma is definite - a pleasant experience must be a result of some kind of kindness I've done. Any unpleasantness must be a result of some kind of unpleasantness I've done.

Further, those imprints grow, which helps us with our creativity. We can do a little teeny kindness many, many times, and each one of them grows. So it doesn't mean we have to become life-saving, I don't know, like huge, huge, powerful goodies. Little teeny kindnesses are enough.

The third law is a deed not done can't bring a result. This one we go, duh, right? But when we blame somebody else for something that's happened to us, we are believing that something happened to us that we didn't cause. So although we say, ‘I understand that one about you can't get a result if you don't have a cause’, we live as if it's true.

Then the fourth one is, once we have a cause, it's gonna give a result. It itself will not just disappear. We would need to do something to prevent a cause that could bring a negative result from bringing that result.

What that all means is, as we perceive ourselves interacting with other, whether it's an other living being or an other material being, our awareness, our mind, is there, experiencing. And it is influenced by how we see ourselves think, say, do towards that other. And that impression of ourselves acting is imprinted into that mind, we call it the seed, the mental seed, simply because we were there. And we're always there, this mind, this awareness. So we do a deed, the seed gets planted. We like this mudra. [pointer finger pressed into other palm indicating a seed planted] That seed, it carries along. It's being influenced. Similar deeds add a little bit to its power. Deeds opposite to it subtract a little bit from its power. And so like the orange seed with the warmth and the moisture, et cetera, contributing to its ripening, these imprints are influenced by all the other things we do to grow them and shrink them and grow them and shrink them. Until something happens, I haven't figured out what it is yet, that gets that seed over the threshold into manifesting into an experience. That's the process of ‘me and my world’. So the me that's part of this aware-er also has this aspect of creator. Our ignorant relationship with that me is ‘I am the experience-er‘. My ignorant experience is - it's all coming at me and I'm experiencing. When we understand deeper, we can have this identity of I am the creator. Our focus then becomes what I'm creating by what I'm doing. And rather than constantly being in react mode, we make this shift to plant mode, create mode, knowing perfectly well that what I create now is not bringing what comes next. By continuing to create, I am creating a future now which will be more and more exquisite for everybody involved. 

So we hear that, we understand that. Why can't we just walk out of here and do it? I hope you can. I still find myself in react mode and it's so frustrating. I know better. Teachings say we only can't change immediately because we have obstacles. What obstacles? Obstacles of all that misunderstanding that made me act misunderstandingly in order to get what I want in the moment and avoid what I don't want in the moment, thinking it'll work and being upset when it doesn’t, when it never does. Like, ‘just get it, Sarahni’.

[52:26] 

So this practice, long story, the misunderstanding that drives all this is this very simple misunderstanding that we showed ourselves about the pen and the puppy. The qualities and identities are not in the things. We put them on there, forced to do so by the ripening results of the causes planted by how we perceived ourselves behaving towards others. So just think back in the last couple of weeks. Can you find a way in which you acted towards another that when you imagine that coming back to you, it will be unpleasant. I’ve got a couple. Can you also think back in the last two weeks of things you are aware of yourself doing for an other that when those come back to you, well, now, that will be all right. How many [of each]? Give yourself credit. There's probably more good ones than bad ones, right? More kindnesses than uglinesses. I don't like good / bad, right? Kindness / unkindness. A little harsher is selfish and unselfish. That word hurts a little bit to call myself selfish. ‘No, I’m not!’ But yes, I am.

If we really can't determine the result of a given deed because there's this time gap between its doing and the result we're going to get, how do we ever know? How do we really ever know what's a kind deed and what's an unkind deed? The question should come to us. And then long story short, an omniscient being says, we can only really see exactly what deeds cause what results when we're omniscient. So rather than make us reinvent the wheel, he taught about those 10 non-virtues and 10 virtues. Out of which come all 84,000 mental afflictions that we're going to be working on clearing out, if I ever get finished here. So when we are deciding, okay, I'm going to change my behavior to avoid those 10 negatives and flip them around and cultivate the 10 virtues, that's really all we need to do, those 10. We know the ten, I'm not going to go there. They are what determines making a future that down spirals into more and more unpleasantness, and creating a world that spirals up into more and more pleasantness for everyone.

Let me do just a little bit more and then we'll take a break. So we just thought about the last two weeks. And maybe we can remember a lot of what we did in the last two weeks, but what about the last two years? And what about the last 20 years? And those of us who have more than 20 years.. Just this lifetime alone we've experienced a lot - pleasant things, unpleasant things. What we've experienced is done and gone. When a seed ripens, how we responded, how we reacted, created the what's coming. So, you know, do you remember being a teenager? Yeah, probably we made a lot of oops. Do you remember being a two-year-old? I don't. But you know the two-year-old phase, right? ‘No, no, that's mine’. Like wicked karma made when we're two. Probably really good karma made when we're infants. But then what about lifetimes before? Some incredible goodness that has created this [class], yay, for all of us. You know, and a lot of yuck as well. Meaning we have lots of seeds that we have no idea. And just thinking about our own personal experiences, what we believe is going on in our outer world based on however we get that information, all of that is this movie [projections ripening]. The movie Sarahni and Sarahni's Life. Same for each of you. We don't know what's in those karmic pockets. It can be really scary. And it can be really, like, exciting.

This practice is designed to help us clean out those negative seeds that we know we've planted. And even the ones that we must have planted that are creating everything that we don't like about our me and our world. We can theoretically damage those seeds that are in there already but haven't reached the threshold. We can damage them such that they can't reach the threshold, ever.

All right, let's take a break. I'm going to pause the recording.

The four powers

[1:03:12]

So once we know we've got negative seeds in our minds and we realize, ‘Oh my gosh, I can do something about that’, [we ask] ‘Holy teacher, teach me how’ and we learn those four powers of purification. That's what prompted Khong Lee asking for this because she connected the dots, because this is one of the six classical antidotes that we apply. It alone can't do anything for anybody. Used in the context of our four powers of purification and through our understanding of karma and emptiness (meaning the pen thing), all of that together, with our intention to ’become one who can help that other in that deep and ultimate way‘ is what gives the power to this practice to serve as an antidote to those negative seeds. So remember that. The three guys in the bar. ‘I did something that's going to hurt me.‘ [1] Refuge, [2] bodhichitta, [3] I'm going to apply an antidote, and [4] I'm going to make a power of restraint. Power of restraint means I'll avoid doing it again. I like my powers of restraint because if I do the opposite, I'm for sure not going to do what I did. So these four still need to be applied to our practice of the 35. And it's sort of built in but we need to hear all this to remind ourselves that as we do the practice, this is why.

So again, those six traditional antidote powers, the most powerful is to meditate on emptiness. And then of the others, study the scripture on emptiness. Recite holy names, that's this one. It's not the only one, it's the one I know. Recite secret words. Make offerings to the holy beings. Create holy bodies, make images.

I think that was six.

So we are learning a specific ‘recite holy names’ practice to apply as our antidote to any negativities that we're wanting to purify. Where does it fit in our Lam Rim? Everywhere. We continue to purify right up until we perceive ourselves as Buddha-me in Buddha paradise emanating. So this is just another tool in your toolbox.

The benefits of using the 35 confession Buddha practice with our careful intention, with our understanding of karma and emptiness, is that we can truly damage these negativities in our minds through which we are perpetuating our broken world. Je Tsongkapa's experience shows that it also helped him clear out his obstacles to the wisdom through which we finally stop perpetuating that misunderstanding. So there is nothing special about [35 Confession Buddha purification antidote. Other] purification practices can do the same thing. And the fact that it's the one that Je Tsongkapa used, and we are in Je Tsongkapa's lineage, we can benefit from that connection.

Another advantage of this particular practice is that it's using all three gates. Meaning our body, our speech, and our mind all in one practice. It adds depth to our purification. It clears out negativities and plants virtue simultaneously. Because remember in class we learned that the preliminaries, even to purification, is doing prostrations and making offerings and going for refuge. And that's built into this practice. So we're gathering goodness and purifying all at the same time. Don't we like efficiency?

So then once we're done, of course we do rejoicing and dedication so we park those good seeds in the bank. All right.

How to prostrate

[1:11:48]

So we learned in class how to do prostrations. For this practice you can decide yourself whether you will do a half prostration or a full prostration. The important thing when we make a determination like this is that we complete what we say we're going to do. So be careful what you decide. We may say I'm going to do 100,000 full prostrations, and after your 15th one you think, eh, no, I can't do that. Better to have downgraded at the beginning. ‘I'm going to do seven half-prostrations a day, and add one every week’. Be easy on yourself with these commitments. Once you make one, keep at it even if it's going to take many years to complete it. 

Half prostration, we learned you make your hands with your thumbs tucked in so that you're not offering something empty.

You touch your crown [top of head], symbolizing body of Buddha.

Forehead, the signs of a Buddha.

Throat for the speech of a Buddha.

Heart for the mind of a Buddha.

And as we do so we are thinking, ‘I offer my body’ [with palms on crown], ‘I use thoughts’ [with palms on forehead], ‘speech’ [with palms at throat], ‘and mind‘ [with palms at heart]. 

And then as you bow down, slowly go down, classically you put your knees down first and then your hands. But you'll hurt your knees if you do that. Put your hands down first, then your knees, and then you rock forward and touch your forehead to the floor. You go down slowly, thinking, offering emptiness. And then as you come up quickly, imagine you're seeing beings from the lower realms coming up and throwing them up to heaven. And then come up all the way straight. Our tendency is to stop halfway and go again. Don't do that. Get all the way up straight, [and then] repeat the next one. ‘I offer my body, thoughts, speech, and mind, [unclear]’. Down you go [to do the prostration]. Come up. It becomes like a dance, dance moves.

Then for a full prostration you do same [prayer hands to crown, forehead, throat, heart], but when you go down on your hands,

you slide them forward until you're prone. 

Your face is down, your hands come together, 

elbows bend up,

come back straight, 

palms down, 

slide back up and push yourself up.

When you do full prostrations repeatedly, people put mitts on their hands, gloves, so they slide. Often they'll have a mat that they come down on. You are welcome to make your prostrations comfortable. Use a pad under your knees for the half prostration. Make sure that your feet are shoulder width apart, toes pointing forward. If you need to, point your toes a little pigeon toe to help your knees. If we do our prostrations repeatedly and we're misaligned, we can strain something, hurt something.

Now technically, if you hurt yourself doing purification practice, it's a good thing. But it doesn't mean it has to happen so don't set yourself up to hurt yourself. So now, also technically, you can imagine yourself doing prostrations. You get it really clear, as if you're feeling every movement, and it will plant seeds as well.

The visualization

So, the visualization. There are 35 Buddhas to visualize before you. It can be helpful to get an image. I'm sorry I didn't think of that until this morning, to put an image of the 35. I used to have a big Tsa Tsa. A Tsa Tsa is a little plaster plaque. It's flat on the back and then the image is on the front. And this one was about this big, it was gray, and it had the 35. I gave it away. But we can visualize these if you can have an image.

Shakyamuni Buddha is the main one. We visualize him first. The different traditions describe it differently. Geshe Michael taught us he's on a lotus with the sun and a moon disk. Those represent certain things. He's shining in light. On the tips of those rays of light is each of these other 34 Buddhas. Each one has a certain color. They come in groups. There’s five groups of seven. Shakyamuni is one of the seven in one of the groups, which is how we get 35. So each of the groups, they are a certain color, they hold certain things, and they purify certain things in addition to the specific deeds that the specific Buddha has declared. Once we know all that, when we're setting up our visualization, we include that. So in learning this practice, you take time to build your visualization so that when you're actually ready to use the practice, you just turn it on - there they all are. So it doesn't take an hour to set up your visualization before you're ready to do your session.

I'm going to use the rest of this class to describe those different Buddhas and give you the oral transmission of a couple of mantras. Then we‘ll read through it, but I'm not sure if we'll have time to do the actual prostrations. With the group that we're in, we don't have space to do, all of us, to do the prostrations, but we'll explore when we get there.

The practice

[1:23:55]

Built into this practice is to do 108 prostrations, and the verbal prostration and request. And we are given a method of increasing the power of the verbal aspect of this practice by starting it with a recitation of a mantra of increase. Meaning for your session you would start by setting your motivation like we did at the beginning of class, and then doing your setting up your four powers, and establishing this session as the antidote, then set the visualization, and then start this mantra of increase. 

For an oral transmission of a mantra you repeat after me, like don't look at it, at your paper, don't read it. Hear it and say it, and then you can read it.

Okay,  ready?

OM SMARA SMARA VIMANA SKARA MAHAJAVA HUNG

OM SMARA SMARA VIMANA SKARA MAHAJAVA HUNG

OM SMARA SMARA VIMANA SKARA MAHAJAVA HUNG

We repeat that three or seven times, say the instruction, to increase the power of our verbal deeds. Now that you have that, you can use it anytime you want to increase the power of your verbal deeds. But make sure your verbal deeds are going to be ones you really want to increase, so be careful.

Then, if we do 35 prostrations three times, how many prostrations do we have? Anybody a math whiz? We don't have 108. We need three more. And so they add three more at the beginning by doing these prayers to Manjushri, Sushriye, and Utama Shriya. Three additional holy beings that we're calling upon their wisdom, power, and love to help us. So after our mantra of increase, we're starting our prostrations and we do a prostration saying, Om Namo Manjushriye.

So let me give you the transmission of those. So repeat after me.

OM NAMO MANJUSHRIYE

NAMA SUSHRIYE

NAMA UTAMA SHRIYE SVAHA

OM NAMO MANJUSHRIYE

NAMA SUSHRIYE

NAMA UTAMA SHRIYE SVAHA

OM NAMO MANJUSHRIYE

NAMA SUSHRIYE

NAMA UTAMA SHRIYE SVAHA

Those are three different ones. So we start with our 

OM [crown] NAMO [forehead] MANJU [throat] SHRIYE [heart] and down we go. Come up straight.

NAMA [crown and forehead] SUSHRIYE [throat and heart]. Prostrate [then come back up].

NAMA [crown] UTAMA [forehead] SHRIYE [throat] SVAHA [heart]

In Chrys's video, the woman singing, is that you Chrys? It's so beautiful. She sings it in a song. It's in English. So if you choose to use it and you prefer to sing, you can sing these.

Now let's look at the paper and actually learn these Buddhas. In the first seven… The recurring phrase for this practice is, “We bow down to Buddha (state their name), One Who Has Gone That Way.” When you're doing the practice by yourself, you can say “I bow down.“, but there's kind of a secret way to increase the power of this practice, which is you imagine that they're with you doing this practice is anybody you want to help. The classic explanation is mother, father, family, friends, but you can be more specific. Maybe even the person involved in the situation habit you're trying to purify. My point is, if you're imagining other beings there with you, then it is appropriate for the prayer to say, “We bow down“ because everybody you've brought with you is doing it too. It's not necessary, you can do it by yourself.

The five groups of seven Buddhas

1. Buddha Family of Buddha Akshobya

So of these first seven, I think I have them grouped on the paper.

NAGESHVARA RAJA, SHAKYAMUNI, VAJRA GARBHA PRAMARDI, RATNARCHIS, VIRASENA, VIRANANDIN, RATNAGNI

Their translation of the Sanskrit, they say we are welcome to say their Sanskrit name or their name in your own language, as you wish.

These first seven are associated with the Buddha family called Buddha Akshobhya.

That Buddha family is blue in color, like lapis blue, Peacock blue.

They hold a diamond and bell. The bell is always in the left hand, the diamond is in the right.

This category of being has to do with our heart chakra, has to do with purification of ignorant liking, growing compassion born of wisdom, growing our constant awareness of the marriage of karma and emptiness.

They help us grow what's called dharma sphere wisdom, the truth of the true nature of all existence, including myself.

2. Buddha Family of Buddha Vairochana

The second set of Buddhas:

RATNA CHANDRA PRABHA, AMOGHA DARSHIN, RATNA CHANDRA, VIMALA, SURA DATTA, BRAHMAN, BRAHMA DATTA

They are associated with Buddha Vairochana. 

They are all white in color.

They hold an eight-spoked wheel in their right hand, the bell in their left hand.

The wheel is white, if I didn't say that.

They influence our crown chakra, helping us transform our ignorance into wisdom by keeping our three moralities and keeping our refuge.

We grow what's called our mirror wisdom.

3. Buddha Family of Buddha Ratnakara

The third set of seven:

VARUNA, VARUNA DEVI, BHADRA SHRI, CHANDANA SHRI,  ANANTAUJAS, PRABHASA SHRI, ASHOKA SHRI

These seven are associated with Buddha Ratnakara who is yellow in color.

Holds a glowing yellow jewel in their right hand and the bell in the left.

They influence our navel chakra, helping us purify and transform our pride and stinginess into love and generosity through the practice of the four kinds of giving, and helps us grow our equal wisdom.

4. Buddha Family of Buddha Amitabha

The fourth set of seven:

NARAYANA, KUSUMA SHRI, BRAHMA JYOTIS, PADMA JYOTIS, DHANA SHRI,SMIRTI SHRI, SUPRAKIRTITA NAMA SHRI

These seven are associated with Buddha Amitabha who is red in color.

They hold a lotus in their right hand, a pink lotus, and a bell in their left.

They influence our throat chakra, helping us purify and transform our ignorant liking into what's called discriminating wisdom by learning how to use everything as our path.

5. Buddha Family of Buddha Amoghasiddhi

Then the fifth set of seven:

INDRA KETU DHVAJA, SUVIKRANTA, YUDDHA JAYA, VIKRANTA GAMI, SAMANTA AVABHASA, RATNA PADMA VIKRMIN, SHAILENDRA RAJA

They are associated with Buddha Amoghasiddhi, who is green in color, holds a sword in their right hand, and a bell in their left.

Influences our Svadhisthana or Muladhara chakras, the two lower ones.

Helping us purify our jealousy and ill will into admiration and honor through the practicing of the four offerings, helping us grow what's called accomplishing wisdom.

So simply by including these elements in your visualization, the imprints we're making in our mind as we do this practice, includes the meanings that are within each of those five Buddha families, planting seeds in your mind that will grow, that will bring you some day further teachings on how to become those five. So added benefit in doing our 35 confession Buddhas.

As you see on your paper, each of those beings declared that, Once I'm a Buddha, anytime someone uses my holy name with understanding, then may they purify… blank. Of these different beings, many of them give like a timeframe, 10,000 eons of negative deeds. BRAHMA JYOTIS, 1,000 eons. PADMA JYOTIS, 7 eons. And it's like, well, how many eons do I need to purify? You know, eons of eons. Since beginningless time, that many eons. So we can use these more specifically, like 10,000 eons of what kinds of deeds, what Buddha family they're in, what that Buddha family helps you purify, those kind of negative deeds from eons of time. You don't have to have it clearly in mind exactly. We're gaining all this subtle benefit even when we do [purify] “I criticized my sister”. So we can be specific in what we're purifying, and by doing this practice we also clean up all this other stuff.

So I described your setup. You do the first three, OM NAMO MANJUSHRIYE… And then you start at the first seven of the 35. And as you say, “I” or “we bow down to you, Buddha NAGESHVARA RAJA“, we do a prostration and come back to up. By the time we're standing up, “Om, I bow down to you, SHAKYAMUNI, One Who Has Gone That Way.“ Down I go, up I come. “Om, I bow to you, Buddha VAJRA GARBHA PRAMARDI, One Who Has Gone That Way.“

It becomes a nice flow repeating the refrain.

“I bow down to you, Buddha”, state the name, “One Who Has Gone That Way”.

Go down, come back up.

You go through all 35 once.

Start at the NAGESHVARA RAJA again. Go through it a second time.

Come back to NAGESHVARA RAJA again. Go through it again. And we've done 108 prostrations / chaktsals to all of those Buddhas.

Then you sit down.

Re-establish your power of restraint. 

Think of the goodness you've just done.

And then dedicate it as we usually do. 

We're almost there to our dedication [for this class].

And Tada!

How do we know our practice is working?

So how do we know… for instance, you might say, okay, I'm going to do a 35 Buddha practice every Sunday for six weeks to purify this particular habit. This is not something you need to do daily. You're welcome to. You're welcome to use it any way you want.

How do we know if it's doing anything?

• They say that your dreams will give you clues. If you have a dream where you're vomiting white stuff, it seems like it would be an unpleasant dream, but it's a good sign. The sign that your purification is working.

• If you have dreams of flying or being able to be multiple places at one time, or

• knowing people's minds, or

• dreams where you have these powers, also a sign that our purification is working.

• If you notice that in circumstances where you expect yourself to react in a certain way, you surprise yourself by not having that usual feeling come up. It's like, wow, my purification is working.

• Then of course, if you're just feeling happier, like that's the idea. It doesn't happen right away. It takes some time, but it's a way of knowing.

So now there's another factor in purification and that is that by taking on a purification practice, that's such an extraordinary goodness that it's as if we've taken a spoon to a pot of water that's got debris at the bottom of it, all settled. We've stirred the pot and the ick comes up into it. So sometimes a powerful purification practice will at first seem like it's making us worse. Things go wrong. We get sick. It's hard. The way we know that it's our goodness stirring up the yuck is that these things loom up and then they very easily resolve. So the kind of thing where you lose your purse and then in the next moment or soon, later that day, somebody goes, Is this yours? So there's a period of time that we're flipped out, but then it gets resolved. That's hard when we take on a purification practice and bad things happen to us. If that happens to you and you get worried or scared, talk to me about it. Mostly when we understand that that's possible and we say to our mind, “I'm willing”, nothing actually happens. So it does not have to happen that things will go wrong. Just know that if they do, you're not doing something wrong. You're in fact doing it right and keep at it.

Remember that these prostrations and verses, they don't have anything in them to purify anything, which is why we can use them to purify anything. When we use them clearly understanding how and why, with diligence and repetitive, they only work by planting seeds in our minds as well. We're planting seeds of goodness to negate the ones of the yuck as a specific tool to do so.

All right, so that's all I have to share. I'm happy to stay and help talk you through a session if you would like, those who are here, those are online also. You're also welcome to take all this material and explore it yourself. No doubt the transcript will be posted somewhere so that you can go back and read. Okay, so let's do our closing prayers and then I'll take questions and anybody who needs to leave can leave.

Dedication of class

Remember that person we wanted to be able to help. We have learned a major way that we can use to become one who can help that other in that deep and ultimate way. That's a great, great goodness. Please be happy with yourself. And think of this goodness like a beautiful glowing gemstone you can hold in your hands. Recall your precious holy guide. See how happy they are with you. Feel your gratitude to them, your reliance upon them. Ask them to please, please stay close, to continue to guide you and inspire you. And then offer them this gemstone of goodness. See them accept it and bless it, and they carry it with them right back into your heart. See them there, feel them there. It feels so good, we want to keep it forever and so we know to share it.

By the power of the goodness that we've just done, may all beings complete the collection of merit and wisdom and thus gain the two ultimate bodies that merit and wisdom make. Use those three long exhales to share this goodness with that one person, to share it with everyone you love, to share it with every existing being everywhere. See them all filled with wisdom, filled with loving kindness, and may it be so.

Thank you everybody.

Q&A

[1:58:46]

Khong Lee has a question, I think. Anybody needs to leave, you're welcome to leave because of the time.

[Khong Lee: Sorry. I must confess. Just now I have obstacle in listening to all the Buddhas names. I feel sleepy just now. There's eons behind the Buddha's name. Which means that you know they have existed in that particular time, is it? The 10,000 eons and you know.  What does it mean?]

It means the time frame of our existence and the negative deeds we made during that existence. Geshehla didn't teach does each one purify every negative deed I did in that 10,000 eons, or are they saying 10,000 eons of the negative deed that I'm specifically wanting to purify? I don't know the answer to that. But we learned from ACI, don't know what, [ACI] 8, how long an eon is. Long time.

[Khong Lee: I mean the time frame written after the Buddha's name. That one is the things that we have to clear. I mean the negative. Is it?]

Apparently that Buddha said anybody who says my name will purify their negative deeds from that much time. All the negative deeds done in that much time.

[Khong Lee: I'll listen back to the recording.]

It's not specific enough to say which 10,000 eons. That one or this one? So there's a big part of this is like just take it on faith that something significant is happening. And you can make it specific if we're working on my habit of criticizing, mentally criticizing others. Then I just put into there “10,000 eons of criticizing others” get purified by this practice.

[Khong Lee: That's very powerful. And then this 35 names... Because our world is really very big. The 3,000 , 3,000. So does it mean that all these 35 Buddhas, they are like Shakyamuni. They are you know covering one of the world, and then the rest are covering another world. Something like that?]

I don't know.

[Khong Lee: I'll check it out and see. Because I understand that one Buddha, they will cover one world. I mean from my reading but I'm not sure so that's why I'm interested to find it out.]

Yeah I don't know. Like we're supposed to get a thousand Buddhas in our world. Maitreya is going to be the fourth one, if I understand it correctly. So we have a lot to go. Climate change is not going to destroy Earth. It may destroy humans, but then just more will come. Doesn't mean we shouldn't fix it.

[Khong Lee: I’ll get the 35 names first and then later look it up from there. Thank you so much.]

Laura did you have a question too?

[Laura: Doing this practice, I did a recording and I'm not sure if that's a good thing to do. But I record my own voice and I say the mantras and names of the Buddhas and I leave a space for reciting live each time you know. So I hear it and I recite it and then do the prostration. And I kind of have to do it like two or three times just to fit it in the piece I was doing. But it was very helpful for me at the beginning. So I don't know if that's correct now because I never ask anyone to.]

Yeah great, that's fine to do. You know make it into a useful tool. So Laura said that she recorded herself where she would say it but then leave a pause. So that in the practice day she could repeat it, so she didn't have to read it and say it. She could hear it and then say it. Yeah that's great. It's a great idea, if that would be more useful. Yeah good.

Anything else? Claire did you have something?

[Claire/Svetlana: Yeah, thank you so much, Lama Sarahni. Can I ask for visualization of the Buddhas? Like Shakyamuni is in the center. And then all Buddha's families are like clockwise? Like blue ones are here and then we are going in order like to the left?]

Clockwise. So you have Buddha in the center and his light rays are going out. You would start up here [top center] with the NAGESHVARA RAJA and then actually it's another SHAKYAMUNI[ to the right of Nageshvara Raja], and then VAJRA GHARBA PRAMARDI going clockwise around the Shakyamuni [in the center]. Clockwise around Shakyamuni. Seven [at 3:00 position], seven [at 6:00 position], seven [at 9:00 position], seven [at 12:00 position].

[Claire/Svetlana: Yeah thank you. And can we like mentally do some prostrations or just remind names of some Buddhas when we need to get rid of our mental afflictions or to clear obstacles for some task? For example if some Buddha is about pride and we feel pride in ourselves, can we remind them for example?]

Yes. Yes. So if you're doing this practice, you get familiar with it. They say if you meet one of those guys that [while you’re doing the 35], “Oh, pride, that's the one I need”, then hang out with that guy. Do an extra 21 prostrations to that one. And then finish the rest. Yeah that's fine. Good.

Anything else? Yes Becky.

[Becky: Oh I wrote it in the chat. You could read it.]

At what point do we use the material in the general confession? Yeah, already I forgot, thank you. We have the general confession prayer. I meant to end with that.

One can, at the end of your 108, before you do your dedication, use the general confession prayer to put the stamp on the practice as a confession. You could technically also use the general confession at the beginning. Make the confession and then your 108 prostrations as your antidote. So thank you for reminding me. Thank you.

This general confession prayer is also what we use when we do our little fire pujas, and when we do our sutra big fire puja right together. Yeah some of those online have done those with me. It's not what we use when we do the big Diamond Way fire pujas, we use something different. So yes that confession prayer is yours to use as you wish. 

Anything else? All right. Thank you so much. Please have fun with this practice. If you don't ever use it that doesn't matter to me. I'm happy if you do. I hope you'll try it on for size. I did a month-long retreat with it once. It was useful. Okay that's all. See you. Bye-bye. 

[Students: Thank you for teaching. Please, please stay.]