Chapter 3 - Some Questions Answered

Question: Why was everything offered in the Kurukula Fire Ceremony red?

Answer: Red is a color that can symbolize danger as a red light or it can symbolize Maoism as connected with cruelty as well as with blood, but here red symbolizes Love. In Buddhism there are five main colors, which are the colors of the five Buddhas. For fire sacrifices Red is for Love, White is for Purification, Yellow is for Increase (our gold is yellow colored and gold is a very dear thing so Increase is symbolized by the color yellow), Green is for Peace and the power of different kinds of Karma, while Blue is for Truth. Of the five Buddhas, the middle one is Blue, as the blue sky, as the Adi Buddha is blue, for blue shows the final truth. When there is fine weather and a blue sky, there can be many different colors of clouds, so this blue is thought of as a central color showing the final truth, the whole entity, on which some other colors can be placed.

Red usually is for Love and occupies the western space of Amitabha. If you perform a red puja for Love, this is not necessarily for marriage or sex. For if a person in an upper position loves a person in a lower position, that person can be easily promoted. If the person in the lower position asks for Love then he can get his promotion. So the red sacrifice can be used to get a good marriage, a good reputation and promotion or a good job as the person giving the sacrifice is always being loved by the powerful person.

Question: What color is the healing sacrifice?

Answer: If you offer a sacrifice to the Buddha of Healing, you use white cloth and other white things. White implies the merit of purification and therefore healing; our bodies were healthy but got some disease and so our bodies must be purified, to return to the original color.

Question: What is the meaning of Green? For example, if you see a thanka painting with a green halo around a figure, what does it mean?

Answer: Green is a kind of color to show peace and to show the Karma. Like a green light means to go, to pass. it implies action, and it also implies harmonization without any fighting, as the peace of grass and trees. Karma is to make peace to save others and green is a peaceful color. There is no certainty of the color drawn as a halo around a head, although green is sometimes used to show harmonization and peace.

There is also a killing puja, which uses black because most of the powerful protectors as Mahakala and Padenlongmo are black. You can offer every kind of poison and these protectors like it; you can offer rose thrones, as is shown in Christianity, and they do not fear it; you can offer blood of a pig, lamb, or cow and offer this meat. The mandala for this offering must be in a triangular form and the offerings of food are also offered in triangular form. This kind of killing can be used against demons but not against people, although the Tibetans sometimes used it to kill people. There was even a Gelugpa Lama named Lalotzawa who wanted to kill Milarepa, the kind sage. He threw Milarepa into a fire but Milarepa just sang in the fire, "Your oil is all finished but my song is still not finished." Lalotzawa could not kill Milarepa but he was very powerful and did kill many sages. When Lalotzawa fell into Hell he immediately remembered his Yidam Yama, the God of Death, became identified with him and was liberated. The reason he killed those sages actually can be seen as reasonable. There was a kind of Dharma teaching, which was being learned and imparted to others at that time which was very dangerous to good sages. This Phowa Drungjyu teaching enabled the practitioner to move his own consciousness and to come into your consciousness and occupy your body. So your body becomes his body and your own consciousness is sent by him to a Buddha land and his consciousness occupies your body. Lalotzawa thought that if everyone practiced this and all the sages became good at it and everyone liked it, then they could use that power to come into his own mind and then he would be just like dead. He thought, "All who know this Dharma must be killed, otherwise it will not be good." For this reason he killed the experienced sages. But Milarepa did not perform this kind of Dharma teaching and did not practice it so he did not deserve such punishment.

There is a Karmic System and an Enlightened System. The Karmic system is very dangerous and everybody must try to stop their Karma and follow the Enlightened system. This you can choose to do. The Karmic system is not just fatalism, that is, you definitely must do this and do that based on past actions, but it is changeable. If you read many books on Buddhism and have faith, you can change and stop your Karmic direction. Even though there may be bad seeds in your consciousness, if you do not put them into the earth, do not give them sunshine and water, then they cannot sprout and grow. In this way you can stop your past habits and when you find some reason in Buddhism and you like it and you can take this as your central thought, as your right view. You keep this right view and let it guide your actions at every moment. Thus you do not move to the Karmic system but follow the Enlightened system. Thus you can succeed.

Question: Who decides that?

Answer: The deciding factor is your Right View. Right View is from where? From your reading and listening, your thinking, your choice and your free will. You choose, "Oh, this system is very good, this kind of teaching is very good, so I like it and choose to follow it."

Question: How is the choice related to ones Karma?

Answer: The teaching of every religion has some explanation for this. Why you are in such a condition and how you can get another condition. Each religion has its own doctrine and these must all be distinguished by you. Then you can choose the best one from among them. Our action is guided by our thought and our thoughts in the Karmic consciousness are confused and confounded, without certainty. Today you like this, tomorrow you like that, today you are a Hindu, tomorrow a Christian. This is because you have not arranged your thoughts well and have not gathered Right View. Such a person has no right view and no central thought. One must think and read and make a comparative study, then one can choose. After you choose a doctrine, then you must hold it through meditation. You must keep it and never change it; for such a person, action follows the same system of central thought. Nowadays there are very few people who are like this; the thoughts of most people are constantly changing. First one may learn Buddhism in Ceylon and like Hinayana very much, then move to China and like Mahayana very much, then move to Tibet and like Vajrayana very much; so one does not learn the whole system, why first Hinayana, then Mahayana and then Vajrayana. So there are many teachers but none really hold Right View. If one has right view he does not say, "Oh, I come to America, I must follow the American system. I must lure the American youth to follow me so I must change the Dharma." This cannot be done.

Question: Will there be an American Yana?

Answer: Americans must change their habits to practice the Dharma; the Dharma cannot change its doctrines to suite the American way of life. Some means may be changed but the Final Truth cannot be moved. For example, in Tibet you used your hand to turn a prayer wheel round and round while here you can use electricity to do it. This is good and these kinds of things can be changed but the Final Truth cannot be changed. That is why the Truth means "it is, it was, it will be." The Truth is the same in America as in China. The Truth has no limitation of time and space. Killing is bad in China and bad in America.

Try to be humble, to loosen yourself from your old habits, try to learn something new, to make contact with teachers; dont say to them teach me this and not that. You should just think, "What I dont know about may be good for me, so I will try it", then you can get good teachings. When Karmapa came, everybody gave something to him but did not actually get anything in return; this kind of merit is also good. They did not actually receive teaching from Karmapa as they like their own way.

Question: Somebody told me they got twenty initiations from Karmapa. What good is this?

Answer: Yes, I have gotten more than five hundred initiations from many teachers. But if you do not change yourself, what is the use?

Question: How many different kinds of fire sacrifices are there? Answer: Each Yidam can have its own one, just by changing the incantation. I have written down about ten kinds for the common functions, but actually each Yidam has its own ritual of the fire sacrifice.

Question: Is it possible to participate in the fire sacrifice without being a Buddhist?

Answer: Every religion has a fire sacrifice, in Hinduism, Taoism, Confucianism. The philosophy behind each is different so the meaning is different. In China for example, a replica of a house is made out of paper complete with rooms, servants, and a cat, and is then offered in the fire sacrifice and burned up.

Question: What is Samaya?

Answer: Samaya can be said to be a kind of Vow. Once you have taken a Vow, you develop the will to keep the vow and you keep this will. We call this human body the Samaya body because we have taken this vow and have come to this world to be a man again to do our service. Samaya can be said to be a kind of Vinaya because you have taken a vow and you must keep it. Whether you take the Vinaya or not, if you do something evil you are punished; but if you have taken the Vinaya and then break it, you are doubly punished. So once we have taken this vow we say this flesh body is the Samaya body. In our heart we visualize another body called the Wisdom body and inside this Wisdom Body we visualize a bija, a word as HUNG, which is called the Samadhi Body because the meaning of truth is there.

When we get full Enlightenment we have three bodies: the Nirmanakaya Body is from the Samaya Body, the Sambhogakaya Body is from the Wisdom Body, and the Dharmakaya Body is from the Samadhi Body. The Samaya body contains much information, for a vow is taken before Buddha that I must save this, I must save that and all this kind of knowledge and information is in the Nirmanakaya. So this Nirmanakaya Body is very important.

Not everybody has a Samaya Body. You must first change your Karmic body into a Samaya body. Our body is due to our consciousness. We pursued something, desired something, and something from our last lifetime remains here. Suppose I love my parents; I think that this lifetime I do not do many good things for my parents, so next lifetime I must serve my parents very well. Such a person has a Karma with his parents. Most people come to this world with their own Karma. Why you have such parents, such a wife, such children, is because in the last lifetime you had some Karma, which was not finished. All this Karma is in transmigration. So this system of a Karmic person, born in a certain place in a certain time to certain parents, is from past Karma and all are part of transmigration. There is some good Karma enacted as a vow: "Next time I must be a Buddha or a God or do something for others." Some have such a vow, so he must go to such a family and be born there, have a good education, meet good sages and become initiated and follow the Buddhist system, the enlightened system.

Question: About the ritual you performed for Kurukula. You put oil in a cup, heated it in the fire and then put brandy in it, ignited it and threw it up in the air. What does this show?

Answer: This symbolizes a kind of kunda, a kind of love. The oil put in the fire is as the male, excited by love. Then we add the Dakinis ovum, her red bodhi, represented by the brandy. The white bodhi is excited, her red bodhi enters and combines so that both together make the kunda grow and increase. This makes Kurukula happy. You want love, she also wants love, you know. You must make her love well satisfied, then she will share something with you.

Question: What was the meaning of the crooked finger mudra used in the Kurukula ritual?

Answer: This is the gesture of a hook. During the love sacrifice I say for you, "Now I am going to help Robert get love. So the very good one, the best and most beautiful girl with everything perfectly good I hook for you."

Buddhism recognizes three kinds of mysticism: the Body Power, the Speech Power, the Mind Power. The Mind Power is by prayer, by visualization, and the Body Power is by gesture. The Speech Power is by incantation, which everyone can repeat as "OM KURUKULA SHYE SOHA." The objects of the ritual offerings are chosen by their form. For example, for the love sacrifice, some offerings are like the reproductive organ of the male or the female. So the offering is by form, color and meaning. You must make contact with these things. The condition is fixed and when the Yidam is satisfied, then inspiration will come.

Question: A question was asked concerning who can participate in the ritual. Sometimes we do things that we feel are meaningful and productive and other times we are lost in a ritual that we do not understand. How are we to relate to both the ones we think we understand why we are doing and the ones that we do not understand?

Answer: A ritual as is done here is mainly experienced out of curiosity by most people. I answer that everyone can participate because we hope that by making connection with such a holy Dharma and by listening to Buddhist talk, eventually the curious will develop right view and right faith. Actually you must have right faith and the initiation of the yidam before you can really participate, otherwise you are not allowed. Yesterday a Lama in Berkeley gave a fire sacrifice to kill a demon that was making someone insane, so at night he performed it but forbid anyone to see. Usually no one is allowed to see such killing rituals. And the love ritual also, the uninitiated are not allowed to see. The ritual for wealth everyone can see. This is because for love or killing it is not good if there is someone who holds doubt. For this reason, to keep the ritual without bad faith and without bad impressions, the uninitiated are forbidden.

Question: Why have you never performed a black killing sacrifice?

Answer: I have no such a demon, and nobody ever asked me to perform it for them. The killing ritual has special conditions. Suppose you ask me to kill Mao Tse Tung. I cannot do this because only someone in the same position as the victim, as President Nixon or Chang Kai Chek can ask for this. They must have deep Karma against the person and must also bear the responsibility. My Guru liked to do such things. For the sake of Karmapa he killed four persons, but then he himself was also killed by another. My Guru told me that the Dalai Lama wanted one of his relatives presented as a false Karmapa, so as my guru was a Mahakala Tulku, he did some incantation and killed the imposter. Afterwards it was not known who killed this person.

One day my Guru said, "Oh, someone is killing me" and the day after he said "I will go to Bhutan to be reborn; after three years you must go there to bring me back." (He was brought back, this I know quite well.) His dying was unusual; one day he could no longer see although his eyes were still there. "Tomorrow," he said, "I will go." So the killing conditions are very important. I know about this quite well, do not wish other persons to kill me and do not do this practice.