(2.23) To these oceans of good qualities,
I offer a melodious ocean of praise.
May a chorus of sweet-sounding melodious verses
Always ascend to their presence.

(2.24) To all the Buddhas abiding in the three times,
The Dharma, and the Supreme Assembly,
I prostrate with as many emanated bodies
As there are atoms in all the worlds.

(2.25) I prostrate to the bases for generating bodhichitta,
To the images of Buddha’s body, speech, and mind,
To the Abbots and Preceptors,
And to the supreme practitioners on the path.

People usually have a lot of difficulty with prostrations because it seems quite bizarre.  When people first come to classes and they see people doing prostrations it seems weird and cult-like.  But when we understand what is going on, then it is in fact very beautiful.  Prostrations should come naturally as our respect grows.  For people we respect we naturally relate to them differently.

To prostrate means to sweep away all impurities and defilements and request all good qualities.  We request that all impurities and defilements that obstruct our attainment of the good qualities of our Spiritual Guide are removed, and we request that we attain these good qualities ourself.

The main point when doing prostrations is a genuine recognition that what we are prostrating too has superior qualities that we want to attain ourself.  It requires humility to admit that we have much left to do.  By paying respect to these good qualities we increase our admiring faith, which naturally transforms into wishing faith, which naturally transforms into effort, which then gives us these good qualities ourselves.

What are we really prostrating to?  The Spiritual Guide.  But  The Spiritual Guide is the synthesis of all three jewels.  All three jewels are an extension of the Spiritual Guide.  The Spiritual Guide is our own future enlightenment – our own pure potentiality fully developed.  We are not really prostrating to anything external, but rather to our true self fully realized.  When people understand this, they have no problem with prostration.

When we physically do prostrations, we usually place our hands together in the gesture of prayer and then touch our crown, forehead, throat and heart.  When we touch these four places, we need to recall what causes it creates, and feel our prostrating is creating these causes.  We should mentally want to acquire these abilities so that we can help others.  If we don’t do the mental work of generating wishing faith in this way and we simply touch these four places mindlessly, it is essentially meaningless.

When we touch our crown, we recall that a Buddha’s crown protrusion symbolizes his faith in his Spiritual Guide, and we wish to generate such faith ourself.  When we touch our forehead we recall that a Buddha’s hair curl at his forehead symbolizes his ability to see all of the past, present, and future directly and simultaneously, and we generate the wish to have such an ability ourself.  When we touch our throat, we recall that the speech of a Buddha has the power to liberate all beings from samsara.  And when we touch our heart, we recall that the mind of a Buddha is the actual refuge of all living beings, is omniscient, has universal compassion and has perfect skillful means to help others.  Physically we touch these four places, mentally we generate wishing faith to acquire these abilities ourselves so that we may better serve others.

There are three types of prostration:  Physical, verbal and mental.  Physical prostrations include doing full or half-length prostrations, or even just respectfully touching our palms together at our heart.  Verbal prostrations primarily include reciting praises.  Reciting praises is essentially a practice of rejoicing.  Whatever we rejoice in, we create the cause to obtain ourselves.  Mental prostration is our generating faith and respect.  There are three types of faith, believing faith, admiring faith and wishing faith.  We believe in the good qualities of the Spiritual Guide, then we admire these as fantastic, this leads to the wish to have these good qualities ourselves.

We should practice prostration all day long.  When we are with our fellow Sangha, we should see them as holy objects of refuge and make the three types of prostration.  Physically, we can just be respectful with our body.  Verbally, we can praise them and their example.  Mentally, we can generate the three types of faith with respect to them as an example, their good qualities and so forth.  We can do the same thing with everybody we meet, always relating to their good side.  This functions to draw out their good qualities and enables us to easily cherish them as precious.  A simple yet powerful way to practice prostration all day long is to regard everyone as an emanation of the Spiritual Guide sent to teach you something or help you overcome your delusions.

(2.22) Just as Manjushri, Samantabhadra, and others
Made offerings to the Conquerors,
So do I make offerings to the Sugatas, the Protectors,
And to the Bodhisattvas.

When Manjushri and Samantabhadra made offerings, they did so realizing directly that their offerings are a manifestation of the emptiness of their own mind of great bliss.  This verse encourages us to make offerings in the same way.

Conventionally speaking, the greatest offering we can make to our Spiritual Guide is our own practice of Dharma.  The highest type of offering is of our practice because this is what pleases the Spiritual Guide the most.  Why?  Because his only wish is for us to be happy, and he knows that our practice creates the causes for happiness.  Amongst our practices, the highest practice is what?  As was discussed in an earlier post, it is offering ourself as a servant to the Spiritual Guide.  Practically speaking, we can do this through any virtuous activity, but the highest of all is directly working to fulfil the wishes of the Spiritual Guide, namely working to fulfill his wish of causing the Dharma to flourish.  He has given us local Dharma centers which are in reality his greatest gift to us because through them we can engage in the actions of a Buddha in this world.

Many practitioners work very hard to try overcome their delusions, but they don’t enjoy much success.  Why?  The main reasons are because we lack merit and we haven’t purified.  It is very easy to get so absorbed in our problems that we forget to assemble the essential conditions for our practice to succeed.  It is very good that we view the Dharma as the method for solving our inner problems, in fact that is what we need to do.  But we do not just solve our problems from within the context of the problem – we can also attack the problem from the outside by doing practices that are not directly related to our problem.  The main point is we need to assemble the conditions necessary for our direct efforts to succeed.  These are primarily accumulation of merit, purifying negativity and receiving blessings.

For many years, I had a teacher who had an interesting way of helping people when they had problems.  When somebody would come to her with a personal problem, instead of giving them advice or discussing the problem with them, she would often give them a job to do for the center.  People would sometimes misunderstand and think that now they have just one more problem – namely work to do for the center.  But they were missing the point – the point is to overcome their problems with their practice, they primarily need sufficient merit and sufficient purification.  They get this through doing work for the center.  Then, when they apply the Dharma directly to their problem, it works.  It is often amazing how many daily problems simply vanish while scrubbing the toilets in a Dharma center.  If you don’t believe me, try it for yourself and see.

How does work for the center accumulate merit?  All the merit we accumulate is necessarily non-contaminated because the final goal of the center is the enlightenment of others.  The merit grows exponentially as the generations continue.  If each student helps 10 people in their life, then each of those 10 people helps 10 people, after 2 generations the karma is multiplied by 100, after 3 generations the karma is multiplied by 1000, and so forth – so it grows exponentially.  Geshe-la has said that the merit we accumulate by working for our Dharma centers continues to accumulate for as long as the center – or the effects of the center – exists, which theoretically is forever.  My very first center was in Santa Barbara.  While a variety of teachers came through, the center was actually mainly established through the efforts of a woman named Leah.  Conventionally speaking, she did the work that made it happen.  Later, the center in Los Angeles emerged as a branch of the center in Santa Barbara, and now the center in L.A. is enormous helping people through many different branches and centers in the L.A. area.  I don’t know whatever happened to Leah, but I do know this:  the merit she accumulated by helping establish the center in Santa Barbara continues to grow on a daily basis and will continue to do so for as long as the center and those practitioners who have been touched by it – directly or indirectly – exist.  In other words, forever.

We can do the same with our local centers.  Such merit is non-contaminated and it grows expontentially for eternity.  Where else can we accumulate such merit?  We need to really see this as an incredible opportunity.  Normally when there is a call or volunteers at a Dharma center, people try avoid having to do too much and sometimes they even ask to receive discounts on the teachings or be paid for their labor.  But if we had wisdom we would realize that we should even be willing to pay to be able to do such work!  People pay money to do internships and gain certain experiences all of the time, but such experience has limited value.  The work we do for a center, in contrast, is laying the foundation for our enlightenment and that of all we love.

How does work for the center purify negativity?  Any virtuous action performed motivated by regret functions to purify negativity.  If we wholeheartedly accept the difficulties we encounter while doing work for the center as purification, we purify mass amounts of negative karma.  Also, as we do work for the center, various delusions (especially self-cherishing) will come up.  When we recognize this as self-cherishing and we don’t listen to it but instead follow our wisdom, we purify the tendencies similar to the cause of our delusions.  Work we do for the center should be viewed within the context of the accomplishment of our internal goals – not external ones.  To succeed we need merit and we need to purify, and the highest powered way we have of doing that is working for the center.  What other means do we have?

We can transform our work for the center into sublime offerings.  When we engage in the work we should mentally imagine that our Spiritual Guide is with us, helping us overcome our delusions by bestowing blessings and helping us complete the task whenever we have difficulty.  After we finish the task, we should mentally imagine that all of the merit of all of our work takes the form of fantastically pure offerings which we offer to our Spiritual Guide and feel him to be delighted (for us) with our offering.  This will keep us inspired to continue working as we will enjoy doing it.

(2.20) In addition to these, may masses of offerings
Resounding with music and beautiful melodies
Remain like so many clouds that send down relief
To suffering living beings.

(2.21) And upon all the holy Dharma Jewels,
The stupas, and the images,
May there fall an uninterrupted rain
Of flowers, jewels, and so forth.

We do not seek to attain rebirth in the pure land for our own sake, rather we seek to be born there because once we have done so we will be able to send out countless emanations into the realms of samsara to gradually lead all of our kind mothers to join us in eternal bliss.  When we send an emanation, we do not feel as if we have somehow left the pure land and gone into the realms of samsara, rather it feels as if we remain centered in the pure land, but are aware of what our emanation is doing in the contaminated worlds.  While a crude analogy, it is not that different than playing a video game, where we sit comfortably on our couch while our virtual avatar participates in epic adventures in the game world.  Hard-core gamers often talk of how they “lose themselves” in their games so much so they temporarily forget their living room and are completely immersed in the game world all while actually never leaving the couch.

Once in the pure land, we are not limited to a single emanation, but can send out increasing numbers of emanations as we move closer to enlightenment.  When we do finally attain enlightenment, we are able to directly and simultaneously send out countless emanations to each and every being without exception, guiding them, helping them, nourishing them progressively towards their own enlightenment.  Our emanations can take a variety of forms, from beings who appear to be Spiritual Guides giving flawless teachings in this world to an electrical outlet in the International Terminal of an airport powering your laptop and everything in between.

In the Guru Yoga of Je Tsongkhapa we pray that he please “send down a rain of vast and profound Dharma appropriate to the disciples of this world.”  The teachings of a Buddha are not even remotely limited to the sounds and sights of formal Dharma teachings in a temple or a Dharma center, but can be transmitted through conversations overheard, the clanking of dishes or even the rustling of the leaves in the wind.  All that is required is a special mind of faith that believes everything they see or hear is actually emanated by their guru to teach them the truth of Dharma and to guide them along the path.  This special mind of faith opens our mind to receive the blessings of all of the Buddhas through everything around us.  Some people who smoke marijuana report gaining deep realizations from activities as simple as opening a bag of potato chips, but the faithful practitioner has no need for drug-induced insight (and all the negative side effects associated with addiction) when through their mind of faith they are able swim in an ocean of wisdom teachings even as they brush their teeth.

While it is perfectly possible to receive flawless teachings through anything and everything if our mind of faith is sufficiently qualified, conventionally speaking it is often easier to do so when we direct our mind towards the Dharma when we have special objects, such as stupas, statues, Dharma centers and the like.  If Buddhas can emanate themselves as anything, surely they must also do so as holy and sacred objects.  Some people misunderstand the meaning of statues, shrines and temples as some form of idolatry.   But the qualified practitioner is not worshipping some piece of metal, rather they use the statue as a reminder of what lies beyond.  While their eye awareness may perceive some well-crafted metal, their mental awareness perceives a living Buddha.  It is towards that living Buddha that the practitioner directs their prayers and requests.

By offering an “uninterrupted rain” of holy objects in the way Shantideva explains, we create the causes for the Buddhas to enter into everything around us.  Geshe-la explains wherever you imagine a Buddha, a Buddha actually goes; and wherever a Buddha actually goes they accomplish their function which is to bestow blessings.  If we look around us, what do we see?  We see countless people all face down in their iPhones.  What if we imagined that instead of seeing Facebook or pictures of their kids they were actually looking at Buddhas?  By imagining this, whenever people looked into their phones they would receive the blessings of all of the Buddhas through them.  They might not be aware of it, but we know what is really going on.  In this way, we fill our world with holy objects through which all those around us receive blessings and teachings.  We literally bring the pure world into this world through the power of such faithful imaginings and as a result gradually ripen and liberate all living beings in our karmic dream.

If we practice in this way, it is certain that we too will begin to receive teachings through everyone and everything, no matter where we go and no matter what we are doing.  Every moment can be a formal Dharma teaching, and making offerings in this way creates the causes for this to be our living reality.

(2.18) I offer to those with the nature of compassion
A celestial palace resounding with heavenly praise
And hung with beautiful pearls and jeweled ornaments
Whose infinite radiance illuminates space.

(2.19) Eternally I will offer to the Able Ones
Exquisite jewelled parasols held aloft,
With pleasing shapes, handles of gold,
And rims embellished with beautiful ornaments.

With these two verses, we offer to our Spiritual Guide and all the Buddhas the supreme abode, the celestial mansion of Heruka in Keajra.  Of all the palaces in the universe, none are more sublime nor meaningful than the celestial palace of Heruka.  People all over the world fantastize about living in their dream home, but the celestial mansion of Heruka is the greatest home of all.  If we have wisdom, there is no place we would want to call home more.  By offering this heavenly seat that is the envy of all the Chakravatin kings of the three times, we create the causes to one day take up residence in this most sacred and holy of places.

What makes Heruka’s palace so special?  It is located at the top of Mount Meru, the king of mountains, and the center of the Buddhist cosmos.  Buddhist cosmology is incredibly vast.  The universe as we know it is known as a single world.  There are the one thousand worlds, which correspond to 1,000 such universes.  The two thousand worlds are 1,000 one thousand worlds, in other words one million universes.  And the three thousand worlds are 1,000 of the two thousand worlds, in other words one billion universes.  In reality, there are countless different world systems, but they are referred to as the three thousand worlds.  This is not different than modern scientific cosmological theories that we live in an n-dimensional multi-verse.  While of course it is just mental imputation and not meant to be a geographical description, in order to visualize and conceive of the three thousand worlds, we say that they are located on four continents surrounding Mount Meru.  Around each continent are two sub-continents.  These continents can be thought of in modern scientific terms as universal clusters.  Just as there are superclusters of galaxies, so too there are superclusters of universes.  These superclusters are the four continents.  Mount Meru itself is actually a successive progression of pure lands corresponding with the different deities and spiritual traditions the world over, including the Land of the 33 Heavens, Tara’s pure land, and one can say the Christian heaven.  On the top of Mount Meru is Heruka’s celestial mansion.  This entire collection of the four continents and Mount Meru collectively is Keajra, or Heruka’s pure land.  According to Vajrayogini practice, Keajra has a different conventional appearance, but the meaning is exactly the same.

Heruka’s palace physically is square in shape, with four doors in each of the cardinal directions.  Inside, it is simultaneously as vast as the universe, yet still feels as cozy as Grandma’s home.  For those who have had the good fortune to visit a Kadampa temple, such as the one in the Ulverston, New York or Brazil, the physical aspect is quite similar.  We can find a complete description of his palace in Essence of Vajrayana and we can find images of it on-line.  Everything within the temple is made of wisdom light that radiates translucently from within.  It is sublime beyond description.

Just as certain functions are accomplished in the major buildings of the world, so too certain functions are accomplished in Heruka’s celestial mansion.  The two main functions are first, beings who enter it continuously receive flawless explanations of Dharma individually tailored to their specific needs and circumstance.  Second, the body mandala deities of Heruka bless and heal the subtle bodies of all beings, enabling all of their inner winds and drops to flow without obstruction into their central channel at their heart.  This enables them to effortlessly generate the mind of clear light bliss and emptiness.  With this concentration, they can quickly purify all of the contaminated karmic obstructions on their mind.  When the two obstructions have been completely purified, they attain enlightenment.

Venerable Tharchin explains that the location of mind is at the object of cognition.  The meaning is our mind literally goes to its object.  If we think of the moon, our mind literally goes there.  Because we naturally impute our “I” onto our mind, wherever our mind goes, our “I” goes with it.  If we can absorb 100% of our mind into our object, we will literally feel as if we are transported to its location (which is ultimately within our mind anyways).  If the object of our cognition is Heruka’s celestial mansion, our mind literally goes there.  If we can absorb 100% of our mind there, our “I” will naturally follow and it will quite literally feel as if we have gone to the pure land.  This is the experience of many Tantric meditators.

Understanding this, we should make a point of going to Heruka’s holy temple as often as possible.  When we go into meditation, we should feel as if we are leaving this world and actually transporting ourself into his home.  Once there, we can then ask questions directly of Heruka that he reveal to us what we should do to resolve particular problems in our lives or practice.  Religious people around the world go on great pilgrimages to visit the holy sites of this world to seek inspiration and advice, but the experienced Tantric meditator does so daily.  The celestial mansion becomes our refuge, our home, our Dharma center, our temple.  We can receive perfectly reliable teachings and heal ourselves there.  Kadam Bjorn explains that all physical illness comes from delusions, and all delusions come from imbalances or blockages within our subtle body.  By healing and restoring balance to our subtle body through the blessings of the body mandala deities, our delusions will gradually subside and with them our body will become healed.  There is actually no limit to how far this process can go.  While our ordinary human bodies may die, our personal experience will be of gradually appropriating the immortal body of an enlightened being.  All of this we can do inside Heruka’s abode.

When we die, we want to do so inside Heruka’s celestial mansion.  The friends and relatives we leave behind might see us in our hospital bed, but within our mind we are in Heruka’s palace, surrounded by the Heroes and Heroines singing vajra songs, showering us with pure offerings and providing eloquent explanations of Dharma.  Ideally, we would want to die within the definitive palace of Heruka, the clear light Dharmakaya.  But if our practice is not yet sufficiently developed for that, it suffices to believe with faith that we are in the living presence of our Guru Heruka, and he will lead us through the death process to rejoin him for eternity.  This is our good fortune.  In order to make this our reality at the time of our death, we are well advised to train in this way every time we go to sleep.

(2.15) To the Able Ones, the supreme objects of offering,
I offer all the beautiful, scented flowers –
Mandaras, upalas, lotuses, and so forth –
And exquisite garlands, finely arranged.

(2.16) I offer them vast and fragrant clouds
Of supreme incense that steal the mind;
And I offer delicacies of the gods,
Together with a variety of food and drink.

(2.17) I also offer jewelled lamps
Arranged on golden lotuses;
And on polished ground sprinkled with scent
And scattered with beautiful flower petals,

In our Tantric practices, we transform the five objects of desire (forms, smells, sounds, tastes and objects of touch) into five different types of offering goddess, which then make exquisite offerings to all the Buddhas and by extension to all living beings.  Whether an object is contaminated or an object is pure depends entirely upon the mind.  Nothing is intrinsically samsaric and nothing is intrinsically pure.  But by offering completely purified five objects of desire, we create powerful causes to be able to experience all things in this way.  Then, we can bestow the same experience upon others.

When an artist creates a piece of art, they pour everything they have into making something beautiful which inspires those who see it.  Who is not inspired and lifted emotionally by the ceilings in the Sistine Chapel?  We should be the same with our offerings.  Our goal is to create unsurpassed objects of beauty that inspire and lift emotionally all living beings.  In the early days of the tradition, when there would be an empowerment, the offering table would be filled with all sorts bags of chips, cans of Coke, and a whole lot of different types of English cookies.  Of course, it was nice to see all of these offerings being made.  But now, the offering tables for the empowerments are true works of art that naturally fill the heart with joy.  Go on YouTube and look for the videos of the Asian Festival in Hong Kong in 2014.  See the arrangement of offerings that were made for the Vajraygoini table.  One cannot help but be left in awe.

Some might object thinking it is a waste to spend so much money on making beautiful offerings, when that same money could be going to helping the poor, etc.  Helping the poor is of course good, and we should do that too, but making beautiful temples and offering is far more beneficial.  Why?  Geshe-la explains that beholding an image of a Buddha, even with an angry mind, plants non-contaminated karmic seeds on the mind of those who behold it which will ripen in the future in the form of them finding the path to enlightenment.  Every year at Kadampa temples around the world, thousands of school children and retired tourists come through, see the temple, look at all the Buddhas, and leave with pure karma on their mind.  Gen-la Losang once asked his students, “who is more important, those who come to the center and stay or those who come to the center and leave?”  He said the latter are more important for the simple reason that there are more of them.  He said we shouldn’t grasp at trying to get them to come back, but rather aim that if it is their last time to ever step foot in a Dharma center they leave thinking, “those Buddhists ain’t half bad!”  If seeing an image of a Buddha even with a mind of anger creates the causes for them to find the path in the future, imagine what will happen if they leave with a happy and peaceful mind, inspired by the beauty and loving-kindness they found?  Making our Dharma centers pleasant and filled with beautiful offerings should be seen in this larger context.  We may not get busloads of school children coming through, but we do get quite a number of new people who come only once.

Just as when we make offerings we should not be miserly and Spartan, so too we should not overdo it.  When making offerings at our center, our aim should be beautiful, but not ostentatious.  Inspiring, but not gaudy.  Abundant, but not gluttonous.  Different countries will have different cultural norms and expectations in this sense, so we should aim to be tactful and act within the norms and conventions of the culture we find ourselves.  We invest in well-crafted shrine cabinets as a sign of our respect for the Buddhas they house, but they should not seem indulgent and excessively ornate.

In the same way, we should make the floors, seats and images on the wall pleasant and comfortable.  I remember when we first started the center in Geneva we had these very uncomfortable folding chairs.  Some people saw no need to waste money buying more expensive chairs.  But that is sacrificing a larger virtue on the altar of a smaller one.  If people do not come back to the center because it is simply too uncomfortable for them to do so, then we may have saved some money and felt like we were not being indulgent by buying comfortable chairs, but have we really done the more beneficial thing if as a result many people do not return?  All of our investments in comfort and a pleasant environment in our centers should follow a similar logic.

Within our minds, though, we can go all out and fill the universe with the most sublime offerings imaginable.  We can imagine that from every pore of our body comes another body, and from every pore of those bodies come yet more bodies, and all of these bodies make endless offerings to all the holy beings without limit.  Within our own mind, we can never overdo it!

(2.12) I dry their bodies with matchless cloths
That are immaculately clean and scented.
Then I offer to the holy beings
Fragrant garments in magnificent colours.

(2.13) With various excellent raiments, fine and smooth,
And a multitude of supreme ornaments,
I adorn Arya Samantabhadra,
Manjushri, Avalokiteshvara, and all the others.

(2.14) Just like polishing pure, refined gold,
I anoint the radiant bodies of all the Able Ones
With supreme perfumes whose fragrance pervades
Every part of the three thousand worlds.

I remember when I first read these descriptions in Meaningful to Behold.  It actually made me quite upset and threw me into all sorts of confusion.  I thought to myself, “surely the point of becoming a Buddha is to serve others, not to transform others into their doting slaves like out of some movie of ancient Rome.  Surely a Buddha has no need for such things, so what is the point of doing this?” And we all know stories of religious cults where the followers shower the “guru” with luxurious gifts, the finest silks and cars, and erotic concubines.  Is that what Buddhism is all about?  If so, I don’t want to have anything to do with it.

Quite distraught, I then wrote Gen Lekma, my teacher at the time.  She replied, quite simply, the Buddhas form there side have no need of these things, but we do have a need to offer such things.  Buddhas receive our offerings with delight not because they are enjoying these objects, but because they know the good karma we are creating for ourselves.  The more spectacularly pure our offering, the more pure karma we create for ourselves, laying the foundation for us going to the pure land ourselves.  We do not want to attain the pure land so that we can enjoy these things for ourselves, rather we wish to get to the pure land because from there we can help everybody.  The more magnificent and pure our offering, the better the karma we create.

From a practical point of view, what do the Buddhas do with our offerings?  They put them to good use for the sake of all living beings.  Since the sole motivation of a Buddha is to help all living beings, if you give something to a Buddha, they will turn around and use it to help everyone.  In this way, an offering to a Buddha is like making an offering to all living beings.  Rich people hire asset managers.  They don’t have time to manage their money themselves, nor do they know how to put their assets to the highest and best use.  So they hand over their money to asset managers and ask them to manage the funds for them.  In the same way, when we offer things to the Buddhas, we do so because we know they will use them for the most beneficial purposes possible.  Warren Buffet gave away virtually all of his fortune to the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation.  He was asked, “why did you do that instead of setting up your own philanthropic organization?”  His answer was, “my goal is to bring the greatest benefit possible, so I want to give my money to those who are the best at using it well.”  Too bad he didn’t know about the International Temples Project!

But why anoint the bodies of the holy beings?  The reason is simple:  Our minds are naturally drawn to pure things, and we naturally treat pure things with respect.  By anointing the bodies of the holy beings, we create the causes for others to be drawn to them and to generate faith in them.  With this faith, they then receive instructions and put them into practice.  Further, anointing the bodies of the holy beings with all pure things creates the causes to obtain a pure body ourselves.  A Buddha’s form body pervades all worlds and is able to spontaneously emanate whatever living beings need.  We want all beings to enjoy only pure enjoyments which bestow upon them the realizations of bliss and emptiness.

(2.10) Within this sweetly scented bathing chamber
With a clear and glistening crystal floor,
Majestic pillars ablaze with jewels,
And canopies of radiant pearls spread aloft;

(2.11) With many jewelled vases filled to the brim
With scented waters that steal the mind,
And to the accompaniment of music and song,
I offer ablution to the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas.

Venerable Tharchin explains that the location of mind is at the object of cognition.  If the objects of our mind are those within the pure land, then quite literally our mind goes to the pure land.  He also said, wherever our mind goes, our “I” naturally goes with it because we naturally impute our “I” onto our mind.  When the objects of our cognition are in the pure land, part of us quite literally goes there.  Finally, he says whenever we engage in actions in a location, we create karma with that location, creating the causes to go back there again in the future.  Finally, Geshe-la explains that whatever we give we create the cause to receive.

If we put all of this together, we can realize the almost infinite power of offering ablution in the way described by Shantideva.  When we do so, we quite literally go to the pure land, and make special cleansing offerings to all of the Buddhas.  This creates the karma for us to actually go there in the future, and have our mind and body cleansed of all impurities.  To be cleansed here does not mean an ordinary cleaning with soap and water, but rather refers to a deep spiritual cleansing that purifies our mind of all contaminated karmic imprints and that purifies our bodies of being contaminated samsaric bodies.

We should spend all of our time in the pure land.  There is no reason for us to ever have to spend time in samsara.  Even if we are acting to help the beings within samsara, we ourselves need never go.  Within our mind, we can still see ourselves in the pure land, but we see we have sent an emanation body into the world of contaminated appearances.  This emanation body then serves and helps others while we abide in the pure land.  The more we imagine we are in the pure land and the more actions we engage in there (including sending emanations into this world from there), the more karma we create there.  We can think of things in terms of karmic gravity.  The law of gravity says that a larger mass will attract a smaller mass, and so the more mass is added in one place, the more everything around it will be drawn to it.  Right now, virtually all of our karma is created in this world.  As a result, the center of our karmic gravity is within samsara.  If instead, we can day after day, month after month, year after year, life after life, continue to create more and more karma in the pure land, then eventually our karmic center of gravity will shift to the pure land.  Then, we will naturally and effortlessly be drawn there.  As our mass is added there, those who are karmically close to us will be pulled into our new karmic orbit.  In short, we will draw them to join us in the pure land.

The pure land is indescribably beautiful.  Obviously I have not gone there myself, but I have had a couple of very special dreams where, as least as far as I am concerned, I went to the pure land.  There was this indescribably beautiful garden surrounded on all sides by a building that had an open but covered walking area all around it, not unlike what one sometimes finds in a garden cloister in an old European monastery.  All of the objects there, buildings, plants, even the sky, were all made out of a wisdom light, yet nothing felt ephemeral, rather everything had a unchanging vajra-like solidity and stability to it.  Not a material solidity, but solid nonetheless.  Everything glowed from within of by inner radiance that pulsated, giving rise to a profound feeling of deep inner peace and contentment, that was so peaceful it was blissful.  It was unlike anything I have ever experienced, and just a few moments of it so far surpassed any pleasant experience I have had in samsara that what is offered in samsara literally falls away into petty insignificance.  The allure is gone, I know nothing here can compare.  Once you have tasted something like this, there is no going back.  It is not that we suddenly become infinitely picky like a rich person who only accepts the finest of everything, rather it is the things of samsara simply no longer do it for us.  It is like going into a glittery mall, filled with all the finest luxury goods, yet you feel as if “there is nothing here for me, nothing of interest to me.”  The spell is gone, and with it the grasping at these things.

I have only had one or two experiences like this, but I can still remember them as if they were yesterday.  But it was enough to give me a “taste” of what the pure land is like.  Once tasted, you know there is no point working towards anything else.  It is not a clamoring after the greatest and most blissful samsaric object, rather it is seeking to return to the deep inner peace that lacks nothing.  Attachment actually prevents us from enjoying things.  Needing nothing enables us to deeply enjoy everything.

The descriptions Shantideva gives when he makes offerings are not mere fantasy, he is describing a world – a plane of existence – that actually exists.  We can marvel not only at the poetry of his words, but imagine the pure world it describes.  Doing so, and offering the things of that world, creates the causes for such things to become our living reality.

It is entirely normal when we first hear about the practice of offering ourself to the Spiritual Guide as his servant that a wide variety of objections will arise within our mind.  We first might wonder if this means we need to leave our family and our jobs and go live next to the Spiritual Guide and bring him food, clean his room, etc.  Sure, some might do exactly that, but only if it is their wish.  Generally speaking, though, the Spiritual Guide works for all living beings without exception, including for our friends, family, coworkers, neighbors and so forth.  How else can the Spiritual Guide help these people close to us other than through us?  We don’t need to go anywhere or abandon anyone, all we need to do is take up his work as our own in our homes, work environments, our local centers, neighborhoods, communities and so forth.  We merely need ask ourselves, “what would our Spiritual Guide want me to do here?” And then we do exactly that.

We might wonder, if I offer myself to him as his servant, what if he wants to do something with me that I don’t want?  It is entirely possible that he will want to do things with you that your delusions will not want.  He will want you to put others first, but our delusions will want to put ourselves first.  He will want you to let go of your attachments, but our delusions will want to grasp at them.  He will want you to be generous and give, whereas our miserliness will want to horde everything for ourself.  And this is precisely the crux of it all:  what our delusions want and what our Spiritual Guide wants are necessarily opposite.  But, what your delusions want is to eventually put you in the deepest hell where you can never escape.  They will not stop, ever.  All delusions are deceptive.  They promise us happiness if we listen to them, but they trick us and leave us only to suffer.  What they want is harmful for us, what our Spiritual Guide wants for us is everlasting freedom.  It is only because we are under the hypnotic spell of our delusions that we are completely confused about what is in fact good for us.

Our Spiritual Guide, ultimately, wants to forge us into a Buddha.  If we understood what Buddhahood was, we would want nothing else for ourself.    Offering ourself to the Spiritual Guide will mean we have to go against the grain and advice of our delusions, but that is a good thing.  We might think we are not ready to take on such a big commitment and we can’t guarantee that our delusions will not, from time to time, get the better of us.  We might worry, I don’t want to create the negative karma of stealing from the Spiritual Guide, and since I can’t guarantee that I will not ever use myself for myself again, it is better that I wait until I am ready before I offer myself.  But this is the wrong way of thinking.  Our Spiritual Guide knows our delusions will deceive us.  If they didn’t, we would already be a Buddha.  As long as we don’t abandon the wish to one day become an extension of him, an “instrument of his peace,” then we never actually break our commitment and there is no problem.  We might occasionally forget we have offered ourself, but that is quite different than mentally saying, “I don’t want to offer myself to my Spiritual Guide anymore, I would like to take myself back and use me for my own selfish purposes.” It doesn’t matter whether we succeed all of the time, in fact we will fail most of the time.  What matters is that we have chosen our final destination, and we never give up striving to go in this direction.

We might also quite naturally object that it sounds very sect-like like to offer ourself as a servant to the Spiritual Guide.  Normally we say the test as to whether something is a sect or not is a group is a sect if it tries to take control of you, whereas a pure lineage will try to give you control of yourself.  Now Shantideva is saying that we need to surrender control completely to the Spiritual Guide.  It sure sounds sect-like.  The answer to this objection is in order to surrender control to the Spiritual Guide, we first need to gain control of ourselves.  We are currently slaves to our delusions.  They control us completely.  We think we are free, but in reality we are in bondage.  Our delusions will never offer us to the Spiritual Guide.  The only way we can do that is to first gain our freedom from them.  Once we have gained our freedom, we then need to decide what we do with it and how we can use it in the best way.  So we examine all the different things we can do with ourselves, and we realize that offering ourself to the Spiritual Guide is the best.  So with whatever control over ourselves we have gained, we offer ourself.

Offering ourselves to the Spiritual Guide doesn’t then deprive us of our feeling of having freedom and control over ourself.  In fact, it is the exact opposite.  The more we offer ourself to the Spiritual Guide, the more we feel like we are gaining control over ourselves and becoming more free.  At present, the cycle of samsara is our delusions take control of us, cause us to engage in all sorts of negative and deluded actions, and this creates the karma that binds us further to Samsara.  But when we gain some freedom from our delusions, and then we use that freedom to offer ourself to our Spiritual Guide, we feel like we become even more free.  We can then use that freedom to offer ourself again, and so on in a virtuous circle.  Offering ourself to our Spiritual Guide enables us to easily overcome all of our delusions because that is his function.

And the deepest irony is this:  we are not who we think we are.  We think we are the self we normally see, the self of our self-grasping.  In reality, we are our Buddha nature, our pure potential.  This is who we really are, it is only our self-grasping that has created this false identity and convinced us that we are it.  Our Buddha nature is inseparable from the Spiritual Guide.  In fact, we can say that our Spiritual Guide is our own pure potential fully ripened.  We just don’t realize yet that is who we are.  So when we offer ourself to our Spiritual Guide what we are actually doing is offering ourself to our true selves.  We do not lose ourselves, but actually discover who we truly are.

(2.8) Eternally I will offer all my bodies
To the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas.
Out of respect, I will become your servant;
Please accept me, O Supreme Heroes.

(2.9) Being completely under your care,
I will benefit living beings with no fear of samsara.
I will purify my previous evils
And in future I will commit no more.

Offering ourself to the Spiritual Guide as his servant is our supreme practice.  What are the benefits of this practice?  When we offer ourself to the Spiritual Guide, all our actions function to create non-contaminated karma.  There are three types of karma, positive, negative and pure.  Pure karma and non-contaminated karma are synonymous.  Positive karma ripens in the form of pleasant experiences and an upper rebirth, negative karma ripens in the form of unpleasant experiences and lower rebirth.  Pure karma ripens in the form of blissful experiences and a pure rebirth outside of samsara, in the pure land, as a liberated being or even as a fully enlightened being.  Because the spiritual guide’s final goal is the enlightenment of all living beings, by working towards the fulfillment of his goals everything we do accumulates non-contaminated karma.  This is true even if we are cleaning the toilet or taking out the trash.

When we offer ourself in this way, we purify massive amounts of negativity, specifically with respect to the Spiritual Guide.  When we offer ourselves as a servant to the Spritual Guide, our delusions will fight back with a vengence.  As we work through these delusions we plow through all the obstructions that prevent us from uniting inseparably with him.  With the Spiritual Guide’s blessings, we can accomplish everything.  What prevents us from being able to receive the help of the Buddhas is the negative karma we have with the Spiritual Guide.  It is not unlike having interference which prevents us from picking up a wifi or mobile phone network signal.  But once this negative karma is cleared, the blessings flow endlessly.

When we offer ourselves as a servant to the Spiritual Guide, we feel ourselves to be an extension of his body.  It feels as if we are like a limb of his body – our body, speech and mind are his.  St. Francis said, “Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace.”  The Spiritual Guide enters into us and acts through us to help all those around us.  All our actions naturally become his actions working through us.  So it is as if he does all the work and we get all the merit.  It is as if we ourselves are directly engaging in the actions of an enlightened being. This is an essential basis for a qualified feeling of divine pride in our Tantric practice.  For an imputation to be valid, the name, aspect, nature and function must all be in alignment.  It is not hard to generate an image of ourself as the deity nor to remember that this appearance arises from bliss and emptiness, but we will only “feel” like we are the deity when we feel like we are accomplishing the function of the deity, namely feeling like we are ripening and liberating all living beings.  Offering ourself as a servant to the Spiritual Guide is the supreme method for generating this feeling.

We need to put ourselves in total alignment with him.  When we do, all of his power naturally flows through us.  We receive perfect inner guidance and always know what to do, and all our actions have infinite power behind them.  It is like we connect into a spiritual nuclear reactor and we can do anything.  We generate infinite self-confidence, because our Spiritual Guide can do anything and we are now an extension of him, so we too can do anything.

When we offer ourself in this way, we come under the protection of the Spiritual Guide now and in all our future lives, so we can guarantee the continuum of our Dharma practice between now and our eventual enlightenment.  Dharma practitioners don’t fear death, they fear losing the path.  If we die and lose the path, we will wander aimlessly in samsara for incalculably long periods of time.  If we can maintain the continuum of our Dharma practice, it is just a question of time (and effort) before we escape.  If a mother’s children were lost, she would never stop until they are refound and rejoined with her.  In the same way, when we offer ourself to the Spiritual Guide we become like their child, and they will always find us wherever we may be in our future lives and they bring us back to our Spiritual home.

Offering ourself to the Spiritual Guide completely destroys our self-cherishing and our self-grasping.  It destroys our self-cherishing because we no longer can use ourselves for ourselves, but need to use ourselves in the accomplishment of the goals of the Spiritual Guide.  If we give something to somebody, and then take it back and use it for our own purposes, it is a form of stealing.  In the same way, when we have offered ourself to the Spiritual Guide and then we subsequently restake a claim over ourselves and use ourselves for our own selfish purposes, it is as if we are stealing from all the Buddhas and ultimately from all living beings.  Our self-cherishing will naturally rebel against this, feeling like we are depriving ourselves of our freedom.  But our wisdom knows better and realizes that offering ourself to the Spiritual Guide is the very path to freedom.  A bloody battle between our self-cherishing and our wisdom will ensue.  We then do the work of again and again realizing how our self-cherishing is deceiving us, and that the best thing we can possibly do with our life is offer it up to the Spiritual Guide.  Eventually, the strength of our wisdom begins to surpass the strength of our self-cherishing, and we begin to know real freedom.

Offering ourself to the Spiritual Guide destroys our self-grasping because we see ourselves to be a reflection of the mind of the Spiritual Guide and have no independent self-existence.  We become and feel ourselves to be part of a larger whole.  Self-grasping is quite simply thinking we are our ordinary body and mind.  When we offer ourself to our Spiritual Guide, we are no longer our ordinary body and mind.  They are now extensions or emanations of the body and mind of the Spiritual Guide.  They are like waves on the ocean of his body and mind.

At a very practical level, when we offer ourself to the Spritual Guide, we naturally become just like him.  We become like him, his wishes become our wishes, his choices becomes our choices, his behavior becomes our behavior.  The more from our own side we try bring our own behavior into alignment with his, the more we feel him enter into us and work through us.  Christians sometimes wear wrist bands that say, “What would Jesus do?” and they use that as their guide for how they should behave themselves.  Mormons believe that it is by working to become like God that we are reunited with him.  It is exactly the same with the practice of offering ourself to the Spiritual Guide.