Eva Natanya, 24 Apr 2020
Eva (Yangchen) starts the session by clarifying that, in the Vajrasattva mantra, there are two possible choices of the word śreyaṃ, so she explains why she made her particular choice and afterwards recites the complete translation of the mantra.
She then gives different suggestions for the visualization, depending on how familiar with the practice we already are. Adding new details when one has been reciting the mantra for a long time is a good idea, she comments, and so she provides us with such details.
Yangchen gives then some practical techniques for the visualization of the mantra around the moon disk at the heart of Vajrasattva, recommendations for counting the mantra, and options for the way of accompanying the different stages of the visualization with our mantra count.
Then she moves to explain the supplication, and confession stage, here we focus on purifying five essential categories: broken samayas, sins, obscurations, bad deeds, and downfalls. She gives an explanation of the different categories. We go then onto the inner purification. Yangchen instructs on the visualization and recitation of this stage, and afterwards on the visualization corresponding to the secret purification, including the dissolution of all appearances into emptiness. She is drawing from different sources to teach us this practice, one of them is a commentary on the practice by Thinley Norbu Rinpoche. In this commentary, Rinpoche defines the last stage of the practice as the ultimate power of turning back.
Yangchen shares the lines of Thinley Norbu’s commentary around the nature of Samantabhadra and Vajrasattva, why is a distinction made if they are of the same nature? She explains that this practice and personification of Vajrasattva is the bodhisattva’s offering to us to realize the essential nature of ultimate reality, Samantabhadra.
Meditation starts at: 44:00
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