Mantra of Guru Rinpoche

 Approximate script for the podcast episode at podbean

The Guru Rinpoche Mantra

Hello and welcome to all faithful listeners and to dippers-in. I feel that the last episode was a bit dull, focusing as it did an awful lot on the frankly mistaken things that people say, do, and think about tantric sex. So I hope that this week’s episode will be full of joy! We’re going to look at Guru Rinpoche’s mantra and some tunes that can be used to sing it.

Firstly though, instead of leaving this appeal to the end, I’d like to start out by urging you to take a pause, have a look at the ways that you can like, share or subscribe to this podcast on whatever channel you are using to listen to it, to tell your friends and spread the word. Then come back to enjoy the episode. Would you do that? Thank you in advance!

There can be no doubt that the famous “Mani”, the six-syllable Om Mani Peme Hung mantra of Chenrezi, embodiment of compassion, is the most popular mantra in Tibet and in Tibetan-derived forms of Buddhism. Which is the second most popular? That’s more difficult to say. I don’t have the numbers, and it’s not a competition. For many people, the lovely Tara’s mantra, Om Tare Tuttare Ture Soha, would be the one they naturally reach to after the Mani. But the Nyingma people, and those with a strong connection to the Nyingma tradition, would be likely to make great use of Guru Rinpoche’s mantra, the one we are looking at today.

The majority of mantras in Tibetan Buddhist practice are held to be ineffective, or even to create obstacles, if we try to use them without the proper empowerment or authorisation. But there are a few exceptions, and the three that I have just mentioned are amongst those exceptions. You can get empowerments for all of them, and if you have the chance I strongly urge you to do that, but you don’t need to worry about creating some weird obstacle by using them simply on the basis of a sense of connection or even devotion.

The very first Buddhist centre I ever went to was known in those days as Kham Tibetan House. The daily routine included quite a lot of silent meditation, but also featured Thang Tong Gyalpo’s practice of Chenrezi known as “For the Benefit of Beings, vast as the Sky”, for which the central mantra is the Mani, and that went along with some Guru Rinpoche practice in the form of the Seven Line Prayer Guru Rinpoche and the Guru Rinpoche mantra. The Seven Nine Prayer is a well-known prayer of eight lines (don’t ask), which also has a couple of tunes - something to maybe return to in another episode. The mantra was sung to one of the tunes that we will listen to soon.

The Guru Rinpoche mantra – Om Ah Hung Vajra Guru Pema Siddhi Hung – was the first thing that Lama Chime, who ran that centre and who was my first teacher, gave me to recite. He is a Kagyu Lama, but, with Dilgo Khyentse as an uncle, had has very strong ties to the Nyingma.

After all these decades, I still have the piece of very thin paper on which a brief explanation was typed. Carbon copies! Another mark of the changing times. Most people probably will not know the difference any more between carbon copies, spirit dupes and roneos, so I’ll point out that carbon copying was the cheapest and easiest way of making at least a few copies back then. It relied on using several sheets, even up to 5, of very thin paper, with the carbon paper in between. In the absence of mistakes, the typist could thus make two, three or even five copies in one typing session. So it saved labour, yes, but not a lot, and the results weren’t always easy to read. Be that as it may, the paper gives us a chance to look at the syllables of the mantra, which you need to know if you’re going to recite or sing it, of course. It says this:

OM  is the body of the Buddha, which is his manifest appearance in this world-system, it is the Nirmanakaya

AH   is the speech of the Buddha, which is the preaching of his holy doctrine in all worlds, it is the Sambhogakaya

HUM        is the mind of the Buddha, which is the ultimate reality itself; it is the Dharmakaya

BENZA    (more often written VAJRA) is the diamond-like indestructible essence of enlightenment

GURU      is the true and supreme guru who bestows initiation, blessing and realisation

PEMA      is the Buddha-nature (tathatagarbha) latent in all beings but concealed like a jewel in a lotus

SIDDHI    is realisation and the power and blessing that flows from realisation

HUM        is the bija or seed-mantra of the guru out of which the divine vision of the guru arises in meditation.

I’m guessing that this is from some treasure text, and I have no idea who did the translation, but I’m holding back from making my own changes – it was what it was. I’ll put a photograph somewhere in the description, seeing how a podcast is really an audio-only medium, and because the flimsiness of the paper means that it’s almost a historical artefact itself!

So now for some tunes! The first, which I heard in Kathmandu in the nineties, is very slow indeed, and might be suitable for singing just once at the beginning of a session of accumulation.

TUNE

The second tune is not quite so slow – I learned it in Birmingham.

TUNE

Tune number three is a pretty regular tune, in which one mantra recitation amounts to one pass through the tune. This is the one that was used in Kham House back then.

TUNE

Finally, a tune that I heard used a lot in Germany, where two recitations of the mantra equate to the tune.

TUNE

If you want to learn any of these, you of course have the option of listening to clips from this podcast as many times as you like.

Quite often I put all these tunes together in my private practice, doing one each of the first three and two rounds of the fourth tune before going off into the quiet murmuring phase of mantra recitation.

This mantra plays a big part in the Longchen Nyingtig preliminaries, in which students are expected to recite it 10 million times. And before you ask – no, I have not done that. I’ve done one million of a few mantras, in a couple of cases two or three, but not 10!

[ audio of Karma Lhundup leading singing of the mantra]

So now that you know, or are at least in a position to easily learn, the mantra and tunes, what are you going to do with it? As I stress in the trailer to this podcast, I am not your teacher, and I’m not going to tell you what to do. But I will tell you what I and some other people have done. It goes like this:

1 Get a nice representation of Guru Rinpoche. This could be a printout, a little statue, a ginormous statue – it doesn’t matter, as long as it moves you

2 Put it in a respectful place

3 Light a candle, and perhaps incense or place flowers, pure water and so forth in front of it as an offering

4 Recite a refuge and bodhicitta prayer

5 Recite the seven-line prayer one or perhaps three times. (You can find it on the net, and I will probably look at it in another episode – had I already said that?)

6 Start by singing these tunes and then go on to recite like the humming of bees

7 Count 100, 1000 or even several thousand per day, then dedicate the merit

8 Keep going for a few months or a year or so.

9 Be happy, and be kind!

 

So that’s it for today. Just a quick reminder to like share or subscribe – and keep reciting!

#Buddhism #Vajrayana #Tibet #DoubleDorje #tantra #mahamudra #dzogchen #lama #mantra #meditation #nyingma #kagyu #GuruRinpoche #mantra #tune

 

Words or phrases you might want to look up:

●      Guru Rinpoche

●      Vajrayana

●      Nyingma

●      Nirmanakaya

●      Sambhogakaya

●      Dharmakaya

●      Longchen Nyingtig

●      Dilgo Khyentse