KECHARA

66 FEATURES • TSONGKHAPA TEACHING
If you existed for nine months in
your mother’s womb, you must
have existed at conception. If you
existed at conception, you must
have existed one minute prior
to conception. If you existed
one minute prior to conception,
you must have existed one hour,
one day, one month, one year,
10 years, 100 years and 1,000
years prior to conception. This
is because if you didn’t exist
100 years prior to conception,
you couldn’t have existed at
conception, you cannot exist now
and you will not exist tomorrow.
Therefore it’s a continuation. On
that basis you can subjectively
say reincarnation exists.
The Buddha Lama Tsongkhapa
sits with his legs crossed, wearing
monk robes and is smiling. He
has a pink body and is holding
two lotuses. The iconography is
that of a gentle smiling Buddha
with a yellow hat, blessing you
with lights coming from heaven.
The meaning behind it is very
profound.
When you meditate on the
form of Lama Tsongkhapa,
everything on his body – the
symbology, the colour, the
iconography – represents a
facet of the enlightened mind,
which when you meditate on,
opens up a potential within you.
So what you’re doing
when you’re praying to
Buddha is opening up a
facet within you, opening
the Buddha in you. So
it’s a type of worship
or respect of an end
product of which you are
engaging to accomplish.
Consequently, you are
worshipping your result.
Why do we need to
worship at all? Because
there are enlightened
beings and if we
associate with them,
they will bring about
abundant blessings for
us. When we meditate
on Lama Tsongkhapa
and we focus on him and
recite his mantra and we carry
out meditation, the immediate
benefit is that it counters
depression. Now, when we carry
out Lama Tsongkhapa’s practice
over a period of time, there are
higher attainments and normal
attainments. But immediately,
we can relieve our depression,
and we can relieve our mind of
the feeling of senselessness,
loneliness and purposelessness.
And when we meditate on Lama
Tsongkhapa and recite the
mantra further, we gain wisdom
and the seven types of memories.
We gain clarity, sharpness of
the mind and as we age, we
don’t become incapacitated or
forgetful. This is because when
we recite Lama Tsongkhapa’s
mantra, we move the energies
in the body to increase the flow
of wisdom – prana, chakras, chi –
different languages that describe
the same thing. We move the chi
in our body, so that we become
alert. A good example is when we
see old Chinese people, about
90 or 100 years old who are very
alert. The same goes for old
Hindu people in India – imagine
a 110-year-old man practising
yoga! They are very alert and
very healthy because they are
using their energies to make
their minds attentive. This shows
how powerful these two ancient
cultures are.
reference:
www.tsemrinpoche.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Mind-5.jpg
For the full teaching of THE MIND AND LAMA TSONGKHAPA please go to:
http://www.tsemrinpoche.com/tsem-tulku-rinpoche/buddhas-dharma/the-mind-and-lamatsongkhapa.html