Importance of Dharma Protector
Nobody ever receive harm from Buddhas. Wrathful deities have wrathful countenance to absorb our wrath. The more we focus on a fierce Buddha, the more our anger gets more and more absorbed completely. This is because the anger is directed at ourselves, not at others anymore. Different color of the deities connote different emotions in our body. They transform different emotions in our body.
Let’s discuss about Lama Tsongkhapa. When we do Lama Tsongkhapa Guru Yoga together with visualisation and with confidence and faith, you open another doorway, and that doorway is two-fold:
- It connects you with the real enlightened being who abides, resides and comes from compassion, skilful means and omniscient wisdom.
- By invoking on such a being with that type of portfolio, you open up the same potential within you, coming out by their blessings.
Therefore, when we do any recitation or yoga, we are opening the channel to compassion, omniscient wisdom, all pervasive wisdom, and skilful means. Since we have the seed of Buddhahood, but we need to cultivate the seeds. Seeds means potential. Skilful means embodied by Vajrapani is very powerful and that’s within the triad of blessings we received from Lama Tsongkhapa. Those who practices Lama Tsongkhapa very well, you see they have very good speech, skilful speech, power of speech. Skilful speech derives from compassion is only through speech we can pour knowledge into another person. There’s no other way. Use our speech to penetrate so we can pour into another person’s being. Develop good and clear speech is dharma practice because your speech can benefit people instead of torturing people.
Why called Guru Yoga? Because when we submit to an outer guru, we find our inner guru. (Guru Yoga means a yoga that finds one’s guru.) Outside guru leads us to inner guru. (Guru comes from Sanskrit word of ‘Guna’ meaning good qualities, and ‘Ruchi’ means a collection; ‘Guna + Ruchi = A collection of good qualities’)
What do we do chanting? Because it helps us to focus. If we can focus, we don’t need to chant. But at our level, it’s better to chant, with concentration.
When we wake up, we do Lama Tsongkhapa Guru Yoga to opens the door to good motivation. It channels us to an enlightened being and to ourselves to become enlightened, and the beings around us who may or may not harm us, will be upright and jealous. The good beings will submit to Buddha. The bad ones try to disturb us, because they are attached to what we can give them or the potential of us having that and then they cannot. Because they are around us, they enjoy when we are eating but they can’t have it.
Similarly, we enjoy seeing things we can’t have it. These beings are the same too. They were just like us before. They will be like us when their karma finishes. Why these beings can disturb us?
(A) Merit or Demerit
(B) Connection and Affinity
(C) Us making connection or affinity
(D) It is being sent to us
(E) We have the karma for them to be around us, or we are in their area.
Not all supernatural beings are evil, but they’re just very attached, or otherwise they won’t even be a spirit. Devas, spirits, fairies, gnomes, gods, all these are classified under demigods and gods. They manifest differently (like the Greek Gods or Egyptian Gods), but they are all in deva realms. They definitely have power, but not supreme or lasting power. They will also die, as they are part of samsara. Only a fully enlightened being (Buddha) is out of samsara.
Sometimes when we go to some places and always fall down on the same spot. This is due to spirit disturbances. Even powerful meditation masters get disturbances from powerful entities because everyone still have some stains of karma from previous lifetimes as long as they are still not yet a Buddha. There is a class of spirits comes to disturb you when you do dharma practice. Why? Because they are against enlightenment, they want you to hang around samsara with them. That’s why during every practice, every sadhana:
~ if guru-samaya, you focus on 6-armed Mahakala.
~ if chakra-samara, you focus on 4-faced Mahakala.
~ if Yamantaka, you focus on Kalarupa.
~ if Vajrayogini, you focus on Skeleton couple.
~ if Kalachakra, you focus on protected Dorje Shuk (Vajra Vela).
~ if Medicine Buddha, you focus on the 3 medicinal mahakalas.
In conclusion to Vajrayogini practice, you have to do a torma offerings to the skeleton couple. Why? Because they protect you while you’re on the path to enlightenment. When we do any practices, if we feel like it’s wrong, we have doubts, it’s disturbances immediately. That’s why for people who do meditation, it’s very important to have dharma protector practice:
~ Lama gives you the knowledge and blessings.
~ Yidam gives you the attainments.
~ Protector gives you the protection.
Why it’s important to have dharma protector? And how does he help us? It’s doesn’t take away all our problems but it makes it less and helps us solve it even better. (For example, if you want to do business, you have more enemies.) This is like when you try to achieve something that’s bigger, there will be more disturbances. It’s natural. It’s very important to do protector practice everyday so we can build up the energy, connection, affinity and link, with this dharma protector. Dharma protector practice is very very powerful for removing obstacles. Very very important daily to do black tea and prayer. Disturbances and negative things become less and less and less. Protector practice is just to help us along the way. What we need to focus is yidam practice, that should be Lama Tsongkhapa.
If your karma to suffer that obstacles are too big till it can throw you off completely but making you to go into a situation where you create even more negative karma until you have no chance to come out again, enlightened Dharma protector can temporarily help you or push you to recover back faster by making propitiation to him. You can collect a temporary merit for them to do something for you. When you make offerings of black tea, you do the praises, you do protector practice by reading it, you are actually generating Bodhicitta. You generate the immediate merit for them (protector) to do something for you so that it lays and pushes away those problems so it doesn’t get so big. (Ex: you are not aware when walking in traffic but someone pulls you out. That doesn’t mean you’ll safe tomorrow if you don’t pay attention.) So we do this propitiation daily to dharma protector it definitely can help us a lot for removing obstacles. When we do Dharma protector practice daily, the energy will build up so the protection will be there and swift even we don’t do it in the future. Dharma protector is like a powerful ally and friend.
With oral transmission of mantra from Lama, it is much more effective because there’s something to pass to you a transmission. Propitiate means to solicit, something like enact the seven limbs with the dharma protector. The seven limbs invitation: rejoicing, confession, offering, requesting to turn the wheel of Dharma, dedication. When we propitiate a Dharma protector, we are using the seven limbs to make direct contact with an enlightened being in a ferocious form not necessarily but ferocious form according to the seven limbs. When we do that according to the seven limbs, every benefits that are accrued will be received from propitiating the Dharma protector. Propitiating is more than praying, it’s also confession, rejoicing, making offerings, invitation, requesting the wheel of Dharma to be turned etc. Therefore, propitiation is the whole ritual according to the seven limbs and the Dharma protector. Whereas when we pray, we just fold our hand, offer incense and request something. Therefore, propitiation is more extensive.
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