May 17

Kalu Rinpoche | The purpose of the mandala (Part 1)

Q: Lama, I’m having a trouble getting back to my preliminary practice, I’m doing a mandala offering?

A: If you are struggling with the preliminary practice, I think the most important you can do, is that instead of visualizing the planet and the galaxy and all the different objects of the eight auspicious symbols and all of that, instead of doing that, you can visualize and think that everything that is to exist in this universe, I offer this to the all the Buddhas and the bodhisattvas.

Keep your mindset open. The purpose of the mandala is to reduce our attachment. In order to reduce the attachment, the very cause and the very idea, the very essence of the attachment has to be reduced.

You cannot say “the attachment is bad. So therefore, I really don’t like to have attachment. I don’t want attachment”. That’s not how you avoid, that’s not how you overcome, that’s not how you dissolve it.

In order to reduce the attachment, you need to have the understanding that the attachment itself has a source. It has its own source where it appears from. So the attachment comes from our own lack of understanding of reality. When we have a lack of understanding of the reality, I’m not, when I’m talking about the reality, what I meant is that, you know, I’m talking about the spiritual reality, I’m not talking about, in a way that we discuss, that we say, “Ah be realistic”, you know, not in that metaphor.

What I’m trying to say is that, when you have a true about the reality and see everything as it is. And then the attachment will reduce by itself. You don’t have to demonize the attachment, if you try to demonize the attachment, it really, it doesn’t help, it will inflate even more. To see the suffering as it is is very important. And you don’t have to force yourself to that.

The most important it’s that training yourself to have a clear mind, that’s number one.

 

Kalu Rinpoche
Instagram Livestream – 15 May 2022 (2’ 50”)

To be continued …