preliminary practices

There is a very good reason the preliminary practices come before the main part of practice. Every single aspect of the preliminary practices is meant to be like a pestle to grind and smash your laziness. Imagine that you are making hot sauce, achaar, with a stone mortar and pestle. When making this Tibetan salsa, you successively add garlic, ginger, chili peppers, and spices, grinding them all together into a smooth sauce. It’s the same with the preliminaries: you smash your laziness first with prostrations, then with Vajrasattva practice, then with mandala offerings and guru yoga, till all the laziness is gone. If you really go through these practices in an effective, thorough way, there is no reason for being lazy, for hanging on to personal comfort—none at all.

If we feel that it is difficult to simply let be, the preliminary practices are a method to make it easier for us.

Through the preliminary practices, it becomes easier to recognize and train in the nonconceptual meditation of Dzogchen. The general preliminaries are the four contemplations on precious human body, impermanence and death, cause and effect of karma, and the defects of samsara. The special preliminaries are taking refuge, arousing bodhichitta, the recitation and meditation of Vajrasattva, mandala offerings, and guru yoga.

Shambala Sun, May 2001, p. 60

It doesn’t make sense to grab at the highest teachings and reject the rest. It is the kindness of the buddhas to provide us with a complete path, and the preliminary practices are part of that path. All great teachers of the past have taught the identical message: 'Gather the accumulations, purify the obscurations, and receive the blessings of a qualified master.' In the tradition I represent, the preliminary practices are very, very important. I don’t think that the buddhas and all the past masters have created them just to lead us astray.

Shambala Sun, May 2001, p. 59

It is the kindness of the buddhas to provide us with a complete path, and the preliminary practices are part of that complete path. Often students refrain from doing them because they do not understand their purpose. Some students even think the preliminary practices are some sort of punishment. However, this is not a punishment meted out to torture people, not at all. Your laziness might say, 'Oh, no, the preliminary practices are so difficult. They must be meaningless. I don’t want to do them.' But you have to smash that lazy tendency. The main obstacle to practice is laziness. If you crush it from the beginning, your laziness will get scared and run away, 'Ooh, I cannot go near these people; it is too much for me.' Prostrations will chop up your physical laziness and mandala offerings will chop up your attachment.

Shambala Sun, May 2001, p. 60

                                                                                          Guru Rinpoche

In order to progess, we supplicate our lineage masters. We supplicate the Buddha, we supplicate the Dharma, we supplicate the Sangha: 'Grant your blessings that I may progress in this practice.' By this supplication, we keep reminding ourselves to recognize and allow this short moment, again and again. As with collecting raindrops from the eaves of a roof, the vessel is slowly filled. In the beginning, it seems quite difficult, but we should not lose heart just because it is not easy.

Fearless Simplicity, p. 135

Vajrayana practitioners should not belittle the emotions. Emotions are like smoke, and if there is smoke, there is also fire. In other words, when you look at somebody who has very strong emotions, that person may also have a lot of wisdom. Who knows? Such a person may perhaps, through skillful methods, be able to realize the original wakefulness within the emotions. Right now, however, as we have the opportunity, rather than suppressing negative emotions, to realize their natural purity. To apply this, and to truly understand Vajrayana, you must have a strong intelligence, otherwise you cannot pick up the methods. You need a very sharp innate intelligence in order to eliminate or break free of the conceptual frame of mind. Conceptual mind wants to make you stay within the boundaries of concepts.

Through the profound methods of Vajrayana, the two accumulations can be perfected on a tremendous scale. By utilizing certain skillful means to further enhance the recognition of mind essence, we can develop even more quickly, reaching progressively deeper levels. Let me mention some of these methods. The first entrance to the Buddhist path, which is taking refuge, involves regarding the Buddha as your teacher, the Dharma as your path, and the Sangha as your companions on the path and using all three of these as support. In other words, you could say, 'I place my trust in you, the outer Three Jewels, in order to recognize and actualize the inner Three Jewels.' No matter what Buddhist practice we apply, we should always remember that the two accumulations must be perfected. This holds true from the beginning level of shravaka training all the way up to and including Ati Yoga.

Fearless Simplicity, p. 34

Particularly when we come to Vajrayana practice, we must also have a certain amount of courage, a certain kind of mental strength, and together with that, an openness and softness of heart. This quality does not mean we are spaced-out or preoccupied with one thought after another. Rather, we should have a willingness to understand how to practice, along with the open-mindedness. This quality of inner boldness is very important in Vajrayana: being bold not in an aggressive way, as when you’re ready to fight whoever opposes you, but rather being ready to do whatever needs to be done. That is a very important quality.

Fearless Simplicity, p. 32

The best situation is to practice in a way in which mind essence is recognized in conjunction with the skillful Vajrayana methods. These methods include refuge, bodhichitta, the preliminary practices, the yidam deity, and so on. To practice these concurrently, excluding neither one nor the other, is the most profound way of perfecting the two accumulations. It is the way of bringing the ground into the path.

Fearless Simplicity, p. 34

For a practitioner who has already recognized self-knowing wakefulness, doing the preliminaries can totally obliterate all laziness so that none remains. At the same time, these practices also perfect the two accumulations and remove all hindrances. The essence of mind is further and further revealed by the steady process of removing that which obscures it. All this takes place through the practice of the preliminaries.

Fearless Simplicity, p. 42

Accumulating merit or using conceptual methods is like making a candle. The Dzogchen pointing-out instruction is like lighting the candle. You need to have both—the candle and a match together—to illuminate the darkness. With inadequate merit, maybe you can recognize mind essence, but instantly the recognition disappears. You cannot concentrate; you lack the candle. It is like a match in the darkness: it will quickly flicker and die. There is no way to even light the candle, if you do not have enough merit.

Fearless Simplicity, p. 68

                                                                             Manjushri

You know the phrases 'Try hard' and 'Don’t do anything?' We need to know when each of these is applicable. 'Try hard' when you are lazy--cut it--chop-chop. We have this tendency to be lazy, to whine and complain. It needs a chop, which is not such a big deal. We don’t have to be too considerate toward the lazy tendency. The best remedy against laziness is the preliminary practices.

Fearless Simplicity, p. 280

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.

The purpose of [the mandala offering] 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.

Fearless Simplicity, p. 38

Ego-clinging is very subtle. Everything we do seems to be another way to feed the ego. The ego bribes us into assuming a path that seems to be a genuine spiritual practice, but then our ego usurps it. Even chanting 'Om Mani Padme Hum' can be appropriated by the ego. You sit down on your meditation cushion and assume the posture, but it’s because of ego. You light incense and prostrate before your statues in your little retreat room, but it’s still all for your ego. We need something to break free from the ego’s grip and that is the accumulation of merit and the purification of obscurations, in conjunction with devotion and compassion.

Shambala Sun, May 2001, p. 61