taken by all bodhisattvas; in fact, we should do so.
Refuge and bodhichitta are both included in the excellent method known as the preliminary practices of the four times 100,000. To undertake these preliminary practices, the ngöndro, is something very precious. We begin by taking refuge together with making prostrations, bowing down 100,000 times. Sometimes we form the bodhisattva resolve along with refuge and prostrations. The purpose of taking refuge, as I mentioned earlier, is to turn away from samsaric existence and aim in the direction of complete enlightenment. We do so by seeking help from the Three Precious Ones.
Next in the ngöndro comes the meditation and recitation on Vajrasattva. Vajrasattva is the buddha who embodies all other enlightened families. He is described as their natural form and as the buddha of purification. This practice removes all our negative karma and obscurations, all our faults and failings in the sense of broken promises, which prevent us from making progress on the path to enlightenment.
Next is the mandala offering. The purpose of this is to relinquish all kinds of ego-clinging and any form of conceptual attitude that holds on to something as being one’s own. Giving away everything, by means of the outer, inner, and innermost mandala offerings, relinquishes all types of clinging. Automatically, at the same time, the accumulation of merit is perfected.
It’s said that the first mandala offering was made after the Buddha attained complete enlightenment, when the kings of the gods, Brahma and Indra, requested him to teach the Dharma. Presenting the Buddha with a thousand-spoked golden wheel and a miraculous rare white conch shell that coiled clockwise, they requested him to begin teaching, to turn the wheel of the Dharma.
Later, when the Tibetan king Trisong Deutsen invited Padmasambhava to Tibet to establish the Buddha’s teachings in his country, he composed four lines of verse to accompany his offering. As he made the mandala offering to Padmasambhava with the request to teach, he gave his entire kingdom, all three provinces of central Tibet, as an offering. While making the offering of his kingdom, he chanted these lines, which we still recite today:
The earth is perfumed with scented water and strewn with flowers,
Adorned with Mount Meru, the four continents, the sun, and the moon.
Imagining this as the Buddha realm, I offer it
So that all beings may enjoy that pure realm.1
I am told that it was due to the auspicious coincidence of the king making this mandala offering that the Vajrayana teachings were able to remain for such a long time in the country of Tibet, in a natural and very propitious way.
What is the substance of such an auspicious coincidence? It consists of a complete surrender of ego-clinging. That is essentially what our practice of the mandala offerings is about—laying down everything that could be clung to as being “me” and “mine.” We could say that the king totally opened himself up. He turned over to Padmasambhava whatever he might cling to as being his, and in this way he rendered himself a genuinely suitable recipient for the Vajrayana teachings.
By completely surrendering ego-clinging, King Trisong Deutsen established an authentic basis for the Vajrayana teachings in Tibet. Not only was giving away his entire kingdom an incredibly courageous deed; it was also a way to temporarily make a gap in ego-clinging. Of course, ego-clinging cannot be totally and permanently erased from one moment to the next. This is a process that happens through disciplined training. Still, the temporary suspension of ego-clinging is in itself something truly remarkable.
Some people might ask, “How can I offer Mount Meru, the four continents, the sun and the moon, and so on when they don’t actually belong to me? How can I give them away? They didn’t belong to King Trisong Deutsen either, so how could he give them away?” It’s not necessary to be this nitpicky. As a matter of fact, our world does belong to us. Whatever we perceive through our five senses and whatever occurs in our mental field constitutes our world, our life, and as the contents of our own experience it is ours to give. Our personal experience doesn’t belong to anybody else. Thus, we are able to give away whatever we perceive as our world.
One purpose of the mandala offering is to eliminate ego-clinging. Another is to perfect the accumulation of merit. Any act of giving is an offering, not just of the object being given but of the effort that went into creating that object. For example, when giving a single butter lamp you offer not only the act of lighting the wick, but also the work you put into obtaining the butter or the oil, creating the vessel, providing the metal that formed the vessel, and so forth. This principle applies to other types of offering as well. Basically, all that energy is what creates the merit.
Some people understand the concept of merit quite readily, while for others it’s difficult to comprehend. Merit most definitely does exist. Like everything else in the world, it’s formed through causes and conditions. All phenomena come about through causes and circumstance; there is no independent entity anywhere. Everything depends on causes and conditions. For instance, anything material is dependent on the four elements. Especially in the West, with its emphasis on materiality, matters are very dependent. Like everything else, merit is dependent on causes and conditions. Through the accumulation of merit, positive situations can be created. For example, meeting with the Dharma and receiving instructions on practice requires a certain amount of favorable circumstances to arise simultaneously. The occurrence of this requires merit.
Mandala offering is a very profound practice, which is why it is one of the preliminaries in the Tibetan tradition. I personally feel that all the preliminary practices are extremely important, but among them, the most profound are probably guru yoga and mandala offering. That doesn’t mean the others are not profound, but rather that these are perhaps the most profound. People often come to me and say, “I understand the reason for doing the prostrations, taking refuge. I also understand the purification aspect of Vajrasattva practice. But I just don’t get the point of making mandala offerings, and I don’t understand guru yoga.” This kind of statement shows how profound these practices actually are. Ego is not so willing to accept them. Ego is very clever and would like to create doubt for us about anything that undermines it, anything that might prove hazardous to its favorite practice, which is ego-clinging. This is really true—check it out for yourself. Whenever something is harmful to ego, ego will try to raise doubts about it. We need to recognize this trick from the beginning.
Prostrations are easy for people to understand. Some look at them as if they’re good physical exercise. They think that they’re good for the heart: “Oh, I understand. Prostrations strengthen my legs and back. If I sit for a long time in meditation and I get back pain, then I’ll just do prostrations to correct this. I might feel drowsy or lazy, but prostrations will chop up the laziness. I think refuge is very important: whatever we do, we need a certain type of guidance. So we have the Buddha as our guide, Dharma as the path or technique, and friends as the Sangha. I completely understand taking refuge. And Vajrasattva is the natural form or the manifestation of compassionate emptiness. I get it. By chanting the mantra and visualizing this thing moving down through me, well, I don’t exactly know what bad karma and obscurations are, but I feel less guilty. All this feeling bad about myself goes away, so that’s great. Karma, all these things, well, I don’t really know—but never mind, I certainly have some baggage, a few emotional patterns. I must clean these out; it makes sense.
But mandala offering I don’t understand. Offering the whole world—it doesn’t even belong to me. Mount Meru does not even exist, and what’s this about the four continents, when there are actually seven? And why offer the moon and sun? It’s ridiculous, crazy talk. Also that thing about blessings, I don’t get it. And why do we have to supplicate the guru, who after all is somebody made of flesh and blood, just like us? What’s the point of that?”
These doubts come up because we don’t really understand what the “guru” in guru yoga really means. The guru is not just the particular person you met. The guru principle refers to a lot of things. There is the guru as nirmanakaya, sambhogakaya, and dharmakaya, and the essence body, the svabhavikakaya. There is the guru as living lineage master, as well as the guru who manifests as our life situations and the guru who is the scriptures we read. Then there is the guru who is