The Longchen Nyingthig Lineage is about the Greatest Peace

Hungkar Dorje Rinpoche [1]

Shamballa, 10.10.2023

Lotsawa[2]:

Dear Hungkar Dorje Rinpoche, our Guru,

Dear Lama Jigpa,

Dear the anis la our honorable guests,

Dear the monks, nuns and Drama friends presented.

With the permission of our Guru, Hungkar Dorje Rinpoche, and with the permission of the organizers with the head – Ms. Tran Diep, today we, An Lac center Ho Chi Minh City branch, have a meeting with our Guru, Hungkar Dorje Rinpoche.

So, I would like to say just a few words about our sangha, our Center. An Lac center was initiated by Hungkar Dorje Rinpoche in 2013, ten years ago. Since then, for 10 years, he has been helping us, guiding us on our Path, guiding our building – the sangha building -and today we have over 80 official members of the sangha, of the center.

Thank you very much.

Rinpoche: What is “An Lac” in English?

Lotsawa: It means “peace”.

We have to try to be peaceful externally and internally, secretly; physically and mentally.

Rinpoche: So, Peace and Peaceful group (laughed). It’s is a very beautiful title and even the meaning of that title is more beautiful and more important than anything else. I try to accomplish it, I try to be peaceful every day, every hour and every minute. At least, I’m trying. We have to try to be peaceful externally and internally, secretly; physically and mentally. That’s very important and this is the [correct] way to be peaceful. There is a big difference between Buddha, Boddhisattva and ordinary people.  Buddha and Bodhisattvas pretend to be wrathful externally but they are always peaceful internally; and ordinary people try to be or pretend to be peaceful externally, but they are wrathful inside (laughed). This is not the correct way.

So, [for the Buddhas] being externally wrathful doesn’t mean [being] wrathful inside, but it is true that for us to be externally angry means [to be] angry inside (laughed). This is reality. So, I think we should train to be peaceful both externally and internally together, all the time, because we don’t have that kind of skills – to be externally wrathful but internally peaceful. So, for us our outer look and inner look are the same. That is when you are externally aggressive, your mind is also very aggressive. Your mind is at anger very strongly. That’s a very powerful and negative karma. So, the essence of Dharma or the nature of Dharma is peace and the reason to practice Dharma is to achieve great peace in our mind; to be at peace without distractions. This is the meaning, this is the reason, and the essence of Dharma practice. The nature of great peace is to be free from fears and attachments. What makes our life full of lots of fears? Lots of attachments? This is because of our wild mind which is the main thing, the source of all problems. And what can cut the roots of this mind is Great Peace. Therefore, training one’s mind and one’s understanding is very important and [this is] the only way that one can train one’s own mind correctly – according to Buddha Dharma. This is because Dharma has no negativities, no stains and it is natural. It is very pure. Dharma itself is very pure so it has the power to purify our negative minds. The opposite of Dharma is what is stained or unclean. So, what is the opposite of Dharma? Of course, this is mental distractions like ignorance, anger, attachments that are stained, dirty and ugly. When we do not study, when we do not practice Dharma, we are heavily polluted by negative emotions. Negative karmas arise due to our mental kleshas. Therefore, we are not clean, we are not pure and we are not peaceful. I think that we have to purify oneself through Dharma practices and through nectar-like Dharma.

We are not talking about your bodies, about cleaning your faces, not that. Obviously, it is important to clean your face; but the most important is to clean your mind, to clean your hearts through the way of Dharma, through the way of instructions given by our kindest Buddha Shakyamuni. We can show our kindness and sweetness through your eyes, through your smiles but when you are not at peace, when you are angry, unhappy, you look scary to others, even though you are very clean externally. It is true. And when you are at peace, you are compassionate then you are sweet and you are cute although you do not wash your face.

If you wish you are sweet to people around, you have to be peaceful, you have to be compassionate. If you wish other people to see you a good person and with gentle mind, you have to be at peace. And Buddha said that human beings are sometimes a little too much for their desires and they are a little too much selfish. And they don’t have compassion for other sentient beings or creatures like fish, like chickens, or other animals because they eat them too much. And naturally, these animals have a lot of fears when they see human beings because of our habitual tendency, our aggressiveness. I think it is true that we have a lot of fear to the so-called demons or beings that eat flesh of humans. When we hear their name, we have a lot of fear because they eat us. It’s understandable why animals have a lot of fear when they see us. So being peaceful externally means we have peaceful conducts. Conducts in your daily life – when you eat, what you eat, when you talk and with whom you talk … – we have to check oneself and to be peaceful all the time externally. Of course, internally [peaceful] means we have to check our mind all the time [so as] not be distracted by any negative emotions. “Internally peaceful” means to be in the nature mind, nature of phenomena, that is emptiness, all the time. It is difficult, of course. Without having a very strong and genuine foundation, and not having enough instructions or accumulations of merit, it is difficult. Nonetheless, try to train your mind to practice compassion and develop your kindness. There is a way to be peaceful internally. Buddhism is of course about training the mind to reduce distracting thoughts and to be at peace. And Great Peace is about how to be compassionate and how not to have so many thoughts in mind and to be free from all attachments and fears – that is great.

The Longchen Nyingthig Lineage is about the Greatest Peace, how to achieve this Great Peace and how to see through the Great Secret of the mind. The Path of Longchen Nyingthig, or the result of the path of the Longchen Nyingthig Lineage is the Great Secret, the highest result which, at that, one can achieve through Dharma practices. It is accepted by many great scholars and panditas, and many other lineages that the Great Secret taught in Longchen Nyingthig is the shortest and most deducted way for a person to reach the Great Secret. Many great Tantras have mentioned that anyone who has a chance to meet this great practice, this great Dharma, the great Yana, the great Yoga, is very, very fortunate. When someone does not have great accumulation, there’s no chance to meet this kind of Yana. So, it is very important to build a good foundation for the practice of this Great Secret, the Great Perfection, Great Wisdom. And to have this good foundation one is to practice the Ngondro and to accomplish the 500,000 Preliminary practices like 100,000 prostration, 100,000 mandala offering, 100.000 recitations of 100 syllables, and bodhicitta and refuge prayers. It may sound very scary (laughed) but it is not that scary if you’re really into it. I don’t think it’s that hard. Those people who have read the biography of Patrul Rinpoche and other great masters in this lineage see how many practices they did in their lives. Patrul Rinpoche had completed 25 times of these 500.000 practices. It’s now still going on a lot. We have really diligent people in our monastery in Golog and some of them have completed nearly 30 times of these 500,000 Preliminary practices; and there are many of them, actually. Not only Longchen Nyingthig but all great lineages of Kagyupa, Sakyapa, Nyingmapa are based on this preliminary practice for the highly pure realization. The main reason is to purify oneself. Like doing prostration has the power to purify your physical stain, physical negativities. So do the recitation of 100 syllables. It has natural power to purify your internal negativities.

So, I really think it is very important to understand the meaning or the use of these preliminary practices. We have to fix our habitual tendency to be lazy, right? (laugh) “I’ve been lazy and then to be more diligent.” Our laziness affects our practice, which makes it very, very, very slow and we are very forgetful (laughed). We forget to practice Dharma many times, many days. Therefore, we have to fix this problem. I think we give ourselves a lot of excuses to be lazy, but this is not the smartest way because time doesn’t give us many chances. Time is passing. Time is going into the space, into emptiness every day, every second. The more you wait, the more difficult it is in the future because we are older and may suffer sickness, and many other problems can appear in our lives. Hence, using your time to practice as diligently as possible; using your time as tightly as possible.

There arose two questions for consideration. The first one is: “Do you really believe in Buddhism? Why do you believe in this? Does Buddhism make sense to you? Is Buddhism truthful?” That’s the first question. If we say “yes” and I guess you say “yes” (laughed). Then the second question is: “Why don’t we follow the instructions diligently? Why you are so slow and why we are being very lazy?” Some people say “no”, right? I know. OK. So, I wish people are more diligent and people are more understanding, more compassionate, kinder and everything [be better] for you. So, that’s my heart speech and also advice that I can give to everyone here and who are not here, to those who have been trying to do something for the Buddha Dharma. And this [wish] is also for the people in this country. I highly appreciate your motivation and your conducts to benefit our tradition and people here.

One important thing is that until we reach the very genuine sort of realization, our minds are not stable. The mind is very complicated. It thinks this way or that way and changes every day, probably sees different things and follows different things. But it is very important to maintain your devotion and your faith and do whatever you can to benefit others. Thank you so much!

End of an expert on 10.10.2023

Transcript by Tri Minh Tara & Dieu Hue

Excerpt from MP 3 Hungkar Dorje Rinpoche teaching on 10.10: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1a-hkacutpiPhRHy7D-nk0vTmK1xneTHM

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[1] This is Hungkar Dorje Rinpoche’s teaching at the meeting with An Lac center on October 10, in Vietnam. Title is taken from Rinpoche’s Dharma words.

[2] Lotsawa, the head of An Lac Center, is making a brief speech on how An Lac Center was initiated and developed by Hungkar Dorje Rinpoche.