The New Guide to Dakini Land. Geshe Kelsang Gyatso
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and the last line is a dedication prayer.
Sometimes we can offer our experience of these seven limbs by imagining that our inner experiences transform into a variety of offerings such as flowers, beautiful gardens, parks, mountains and lakes. We can offer to the Gurus any of our virtuous actions, such as moral discipline, giving, patience, mental stabilization, or wisdom. All these offerings of our spiritual practice are called ‘sublime offerings’.
KUSALI TSOG OFFERING
‘Kusali’ literally means ‘possessor of virtue’. It is the name given to very special Dharma practitioners, like Shantideva, who appear to engage in little spiritual practice but who in fact practise extensively and powerfully in secret. In the kusali tsog offering we use our imagination to offer our own body rather than offering external things. Because it is our most precious possession, it is far more powerful to offer our body to our Spiritual Guide by performing the kusali tsog offering than it is to offer other material things. The kusali tsog offering is said to resemble the secret practices of kusali Yogis because it is made only mentally and other people cannot see it. The literal meaning of the word ‘tsog’ is ‘collection’. In this context it refers to the vast collection of merit that we accumulate by making this offering.
There are two ways to offer our body to our Spiritual Guides and the Buddhas. One way is to offer our body as a servant, as did Naropa, Milarepa, and Geshe Jayulwa. The other way is to generate a strong and clear determination to offer our body, mentally to transform it into nectar, and then to offer it to the holy beings and give it to all sentient beings. This method is similar to the ‘white distribution’ of the ‘chod’, or ‘cutting’, practice – the principal difference being that in the kusali tsog offering we do not use ritual objects such as a large drum or a thigh-bone trumpet.
The kusali tsog offering is an especially powerful practice of giving that can sever our self-cherishing and self-grasping. A similar effect can also be attained through the practice of taking and giving. Both practices greatly increase our collection of merit.
To practise the kusali tsog offering we temporarily abandon our clear appearance of being the Deity and resume our ordinary form. We then generate a special motivation by contemplating the following:
From beginningless time until now I have taken countless rebirths, and each time I had a body. Of all these bodies, my present body is the only one that remains. All my previous bodies have disappeared. Some were reduced to ashes by fire, some were buried in the ground, some were thrown into water, and some were eaten. To have taken all those forms would have been worthwhile if I had extracted some meaning from my past lives, but most of my lives were wasted. In the same way, to have taken this present form will prove just as futile if I do not use it in a meaningful way.
My main aim is to attain enlightenment as soon as possible so that I can benefit all living beings. To accomplish this I must use my body to create a great wealth of merit. Whether I use it in a meaningful way or not, this body will be destroyed sooner or later, as were all my previous bodies. Therefore I must use my body now while I still have the opportunity. The best way to do this is by practising the kusali tsog offering. I shall transform my body into nectar, offer it to the Gurus and Three Jewels, and give it to all living beings. Through this practice I will cut my self-cherishing and self-grasping and attain Buddhahood to protect all living beings.
Having generated this motivation we visualize that our mind is in the aspect of a letter BAM at our heart. We then develop a strong wish to separate our mind from our body. Our mind, the letter BAM at our heart, transforms into a thumb-sized Vajrayogini, referred to in the sadhana as the ‘powerful Lady of Dakini Land’. In this form our mind shoots up from our heart like an arrow, leaves our body through the crown of our head, and flies towards our root Guru. Coming face to face with our root Guru, our mind-Vajrayogini then increases to the size of a woman of average height. We retain this form for the remainder of the kusali tsog offering.
Now we transform our old body into a form that is suitable to offer. We imagine that we turn to look back at it and see that it has fallen to the ground, where it has become fat and oily, and as huge as a mountain. Those who are ordained should visualize their old body in the aspect of a lay person and not as a monk or nun. As we move closer to this gigantic corpse three enormous human heads spontaneously appear. They are arranged in a triangle, like three stones arranged to support a cooking pot. We touch the forehead of the corpse with our curved knife and instantly the skin peels away and the skull cracks open. The skullcap falls away to form a giant cup, or kapala, which is placed on the grate of three human heads. We chop the rest of the corpse into pieces and heap these into the skullcup. The pile of dismembered flesh and bones in the skullcup is as large as a mountain, and it is surrounded by an ocean of blood, pus and other bodily liquids. Our mind-Vajrayogini stares with wide open eyes at the skullcup and the substances inside. As it is inappropriate to offer such impure substances to the holy beings we must now bless these substances and transform them into nectar.
The blessing of the kusali tsog offering includes all the profound meaning of the blessing of the inner offering and the visualization is very similar. The main difference is that on this occasion we need recite only OM AH HUM HA HO HRIH three times while performing the accompanying mudras. These six letters accompanied by the mudras contain the four stages of blessing that are found in the blessing of the inner offering. Clearance, usually the first stage, is the last stage in the blessing of the kusali tsog offering, and it is accomplished through a mudra. Purification and generation are accomplished in association with the letters OM AH HUM, and transformation is accomplished in association with the letters HA HO HRIH.
When we say OM, we should make our right hand into a fist at heart level. On top of this we place our left hand, which is open with the palm facing outwards, the fingers pointing upwards, and the thumb tucked in. This mudra symbolizes the wisdom of clear light realizing emptiness. Generally in Secret Mantra the left side or left hand signifies wisdom realizing emptiness and the right signifies method. Mother Tantras such as Vajrayogini Tantra emphasize the development of the clear light of emptiness, and to remind us of this we should try to begin each physical action with our left. For example, when we start to eat we should pick up the cutlery with our left hand and recall clear light emptiness. This helps us to maintain mindfulness throughout the day.
The letter OM symbolizes the ultimate nature of our body and all other phenomena. By reciting OM, performing the accompanying mudra, and briefly meditating on the lack of inherent existence of the skullcup and its contents we overcome our ordinary appearances and ordinary conceptions and thereby purify the skullcup and its contents.
When we say AH, we make a similar mudra but with our left hand in a fist and our right hand upright. This mudra symbolizes method, indicating the generation of the conventionally existent offering container. When we focus our mind on the huge skullcup on top of the three human heads, this is similar to generating the skullcup from the syllable AH in the blessing of the inner offering.
When we say HUM, we imagine that from a HUM inside the large skullcup the substances of our former body appear in the form of the five meats and five nectars. At the same time we perform the mudra symbolizing the ten substances. To do this we hold our hands at the level of our heart with the palms facing outwards, the tips of the thumbs touching, and the fingers outstretched.
Inside the kapala are the five meats and the five nectars. By reciting HA HO HRIH we transform them into nectar. The letters HA HO HRIH have the same nature and the same meaning as the letters OM AH HUM which are used to bless the inner offering. Both signify the three Vajra Buddhas: Akshobya, Amitabha and Vairochana. Akshobya is the Vajra Mind Buddha, the Buddha whose nature is the mind of all Buddhas; Amitabha is the Vajra Speech Buddha, whose nature is the speech of all Buddhas; and Vairochana is the Vajra Body Buddha, whose nature is the bodies of all Buddhas. HRIH and HUM are the seed-letters of Buddha Akshobya, HA and AH are the seed-letters of Buddha Amitabha, and HO and OM are the seed-letters of Buddha Vairochana.
In the space directly above the kapala we visualize a blue letter HRIH. This symbolizes the vajra mind, the nature of all Buddhas’ minds. To the right of the HRIH we visualize a red letter HA, the symbol of the vajra speech, the nature of all Buddhas’ speech; and to the left of the HRIH we visualize a white letter HO,