The Deeper Meaning of the Single-Syllable Golden Wheel Mantra and the Maṇḍala Offering, and a Teaching on Liberation of the Mind

Disciple: Rinpoche, I'd like to ask — a while back I dreamed I was reciting "Oṃ Bhrūṃ" in a dream.What does it mean?

Rinpoche: Reciting Oṃ Bhrūṃ makes the brain burst in that spot.It's said to "hurt the bodhisattvas, hurt beings" — really, it means it hurts your brain cells.

Disciple: So that whole time my head was foggy — because of the injury, because of this one Bhrūṃ (the Single-Syllable Golden Wheel Mantra)?

Rinpoche: Because in that state it's easier to be injured.

Disciple: Because of this one Bhrūṃ (the Single-Syllable Golden Wheel Mantra).

Rinpoche: Yes.

Disciple: But I'm not even familiar with this Bhrūṃ.It really isn't normally in my head.

Rinpoche: Your head stores these things.In emergency it searches — the subconscious.You've got things in storage.When an intruder comes, usually you can't remember what's in the warehouse — you've forgotten — so you rush in to look for whatever tool: a hoe, anything.You happen upon this heavy-caliber weapon and in panic you use it.

Disciple: So this also means I injured my Yuan-Chen Palace (natal palace).

Rinpoche: Injured.So the sūtras say: use this syllable casually and you "shock the bodhisattvas, scare beings, injure much of the dharmadhātu." Really it means you injure brain cells.

Disciple: How do I repair it?

Rinpoche: Buddha-Locanā.She can repair you and disperse it.Otherwise the thing creates resistance in the brain — because of the instantaneous high voltage, many brain cells burn out, and you become dull, dull, dull.

Disciple: No wonder I've been so slow at things.

Disciple: Later I went to find what the syllable was, and when I recognized it — turned out it's in our liturgy.

Rinpoche: I've taught about it before.

Disciple: My impression — it appeared in the liturgy as part of the SOP.

Rinpoche: The Karma-Clearing Lotus Grudge-Dissolving Empowerment liturgy has this syllable.

Disciple: An important character in the liturgy.

Rinpoche: Why does the liturgy open with Oṃ Bhrūṃ?First, it opens the spacetime between human and dharmadhātu.If you recite it very strongly it differs from reciting it gently — the energy follows the capacity of mind.If I'm subduing demons now, the sound of Oṃ Bhrūṃ comes out one way; if I'm opening the barrier and space between me and the dharmadhātu, the sound comes out another way.It arises from the mental state.Why open the dharmadhātu?Because I'm about to practice.So the second syllable of the liturgy is Oṃ Rum, the protection — Mañjuśrī's protection mantra.That's the order of the liturgy.

Disciple: Oṃ Bhrūṃ — this mantra is that potent.

Rinpoche: Several Dharma commentaries explain this syllable.When the Buddha taught, he said: in the age of degenerate Dharma, only the Single-Syllable Golden Wheel can save you.What is the age of degenerate Dharma?You're about to die, and no other Dharma can save you — only this one can perform phowa, open your crown chakra, instantaneous phowa, the only one that can rescue you.

Disciple: In my dream, reciting Oṃ Bhrūṃ — did I perform phowa too?

Rinpoche: Once phowa starts, you must visualize the crown gate.In the dream you did not visualize the crown gate; the explosive power of the Oṃ Bhrūṃ sound shot out in all directions.When it bursts, like a sudden power surge — see how many appliances burn out?Your brain cells burn out.

Disciple: So my ears burned out.During that period, you said you couldn't hear my mantra recitation, no sound.And I couldn't even read the liturgy clearly, couldn't recognize the syllables.

Rinpoche: Last time, repairing your Yuan-Chen Palace, I already repaired your flower.

Disciple: After the repair I was clearer, I could see the syllables again.Before, I couldn't connect — word and voice didn't match.Do I need to additionally practice Buddha-Locanā?

Rinpoche: Buddha-Locanā you must practice.She can soothe the trauma from that instantaneous blast.

Disciple: Though I repaired my Yuan-Chen Palace, I feel I haven't fully recovered my old clarity.

Rinpoche: None of you studies the Dharma commentaries.Every time I transmit, I give the commentary.The commentary tells you how this mantra is used, its origin, the safety rules you need to know — not just reciting at random.This Single-Syllable Golden Wheel is one I treat with real caution.Light casual recitation is fine; but in a situation of trouble you'd push it out with full force, like an explosion.

Disciple: Reciting this Single-Syllable Golden Wheel in the dream was truly light.

Rinpoche: In degenerate Dharma times, this Single-Syllable Golden Wheel is what you'll use.Buddha-Locanā has a long mantra and a mudrā — she doesn't have her own standalone liturgy.

Disciple: Buddha-Locanā repairs brain cells, because my whole head was blown up and many brain cells died.

Rinpoche: Practice has to make sense.Why do we do it this way, why practice Buddha-Locanā, why does reciting this one syllable injure bodhisattvas, injure beings, injure everything in the dharmadhātu — meaning: injure brain cells.

So where is Mount Meru?Inside the head.Where are the Four Great Continents?Why in the sea, in the middle of the sea?Inside the brain it's all brain fluid; the brain floats in water like a sphere.The Four Continents are the brain divided into four regions.The center point, Mount Meru, is the pineal gland.The whole maṇḍala plate is telling you this is the brain.

Disciple: Then what does practicing the maṇḍala offering mean?

Rinpoche: So you practice maṇḍala offering by loading jewels in, loading precious herbs in — loading things you can't quite account for into your head, through the receptive channels of eye-ear-nose-tongue-body-mind: eyes see, hands move, then load ring one, ring two, ring three, ring four.That is already loading into your brain's layer one, layer two, three, four, and five — Mount Meru.

Disciple: So the maṇḍala plate you just mended in my Yuan-Chen Palace —

Rinpoche: — that maṇḍala plate is replenishing what's in your head.

Disciple: Do we not need to practice it in this present life then?

Rinpoche: You do.The phenomenal world and the dharmadhātu must be in sync.What happens there matches here.That's how it's established.So you don't know why we do maṇḍala offering.Because in the dharmadhātu it's also five rings — macro-cosmos and micro-cosmos.The phenomenal world uses the maṇḍala plate to display, and the human uses the brain to display.Human brain, maṇḍala plate, and cosmos — a three-fold link.When you do the practice, the maṇḍala plate coordinates with you; while that action is done, the brain is already moving; the maṇḍala inside the brain is already turning."Hands and brain used together" — heard the phrase?Your hand does the maṇḍala offering; the brain conducts the same action; the same action is in sync with the maṇḍala in the dharmadhātu.This is called the three-fold aspect — guru, yidam, Dharma protector; Buddha, Dharma, Saṅgha; essence, breath, spirit; discipline, concentration, wisdom; sun, moon, stars.Nothing leaves this three-fold.Einstein's relativity is also three-fold.So the ritual implement, you connect to the yidam three-fold; visualization, mudrā, mantra — three-fold.Nothing escapes this three.So practice is meaningful this way.Maṇḍala offering is not stupidly offering — you're offering your own brain.In the brain, if there's wealth-information, you get wealth-information.If there's medicine, you self-repair.Whatever you offer in the maṇḍala plate, the brain absorbs the same; whatever is taken from the cosmos enters the maṇḍala plate.This is called three-fold practice.From now on when you do maṇḍala offering — "ah, so that's it, this is how the connection works."

Disciple: Thank you, Rinpoche.

Rinpoche: There's a Tārā maṇḍala-offering accumulation liturgy.

Disciple: Is it in the Green Tārā text?

Rinpoche: There's a Tibetan version I haven't printed — the Green Tārā maṇḍala offering, requesting Green Tārā — this one is the practice, it has the maṇḍala offering in it.Green Tārā maṇḍala offering.

Rinpoche: If you want to practice for health, you can put noble herbs in — ginseng, astragalus, that kind of thing — offer them, and you can repair the brain.Load wealth-information and opportunity-signals into the brain, letting the brain generate the inspiration-power for making money.Jewels, cash, money — doesn't matter — they're just things loaded into the head.

Disciple: So you are changing yourself?

Rinpoche: Really, it was always a matter of self-repair.This is the secret of tantra.Only when the guru is willing to pull back the veil.

Disciple: So this is a secret — and effective only when the guru transmits.

Rinpoche: Telling you to self-practice maṇḍala alone, you can't make it work.When you know the dharmadhātu can be worked this way, it gets fun.

Disciple: Only the guru has the ability to link to the dharmadhātu.

Rinpoche: That day with the two vegetarian sisters — when we went into their Yuan-Chen Palace, two big rocks were blocking the way.I said her palace was Japanese-style and had a sign of practice, more pure; wanted to walk in, two rocks pressed together, couldn't pass.I said her religion must lean Japanese.She said yes — before she took refuge in Nam-myōhō-renge-kyō, Nichiren Shōshū.Can't fool anyone — the Yuan-Chen Palace reflects it, two rocks blocking, won't let you in.I said: you got the obstruction, then left that Lotus school, then went to the sūtra school.Two rocks blocking — later we couldn't see the palace, couldn't enter.I said only one can do this — Vajrapāṇi.I then practiced Vajrapāṇi, and the rocks were pushed open.

Disciple: Vajrapāṇi is that powerful?

Rinpoche: Vajrapāṇi can turn around many things in the dharmadhātu.

Disciple: Vajrapāṇi is like a protector-master.

Rinpoche: The maṇḍala has invited a Vajrapāṇi from Nepal — the bronze medallion, the round shield one.Vajrapāṇi is the Mahāsthāmaprāpta of the sūtra school.

Disciple: His implements are a vajra and a hook?

Rinpoche: Vajrapāṇi's hook-summons is the most powerful.In sūtra school he's one of the Three Saints of the West; in tantra he stands alone — Vajrapāṇi, very strong.

Disciple: Is Vajrapāṇi the same as Vajra-Hook Bodhisattva?

Rinpoche: Vajrapāṇi and Vajra-Hook Bodhisattva are different.In tantra there's Vajra-Hook, Vajra-Chain, Vajra-Lasso, Vajra-Bell, Vajrapāṇi — each one a figure.Vajra-Love — also one.

Disciple: Vajrapāṇi is a protector-type like Mahākāla.

Rinpoche: Vajrapāṇi's hook-summons power is strong, and the vajra's destructive power is strong.Practice Vajrapāṇi and the rocks are pushed open.

Disciple: Rinpoche, in the dharmadhātu many mantras can be used, only you don't know how?

Rinpoche: You don't.

Disciple: In that scenario you have no idea what mantra matches.All I found was that one big syllable of the Single-Syllable Golden Wheel — and it had that much destructive power.

Disciple: After repairing the Yuan-Chen Palace for over a month, I still need to observe and check its state.

Rinpoche: If your state of mind doesn't change, the palace reverts.So after repairing the palace, your present state of mind must shift accordingly.If I move your life-flower to a beautiful place with mountains and water, you must remember it yourself — "my life-flower has reached a place of mountains and water." In sync — three-fold means in sync.

Disciple: If I repair my father's Yuan-Chen Palace, and he still does as he pleases, won't it quickly revert?

Rinpoche: If he's stubborn, it'll revert fast, back to original.

Disciple: Environment follows mind — if the mind can't shift, environment can't shift.

Disciple: Any way to lock it in, practice to send light to bless relatives?

Rinpoche: Every Saturday practice Green Tārā — you can do it this way.

Rinpoche: Meaning: the power of prayer and the power of intention.

Disciple: Children have practiced for parents — for example when there was the 49-maṇḍala Guru Rinpoche session, I went to co-practice every day and visualized my mother beside me.Doing the practice, visualize them beside us, co-practicing.When emitting light, visualize them receiving the light too.

In full prostrations, Rinpoche taught: like practice, you must visualize — you and all beings offering together to the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas.This is a key.In the three secrets' blessing, visualization is key — one of the three secrets.Visualize your karmic beings and karmic creditors prostrating to the Buddhas together with you, or sitting beside you to hear the Buddha or guru teach.From the beginning, visualize them present.

Rinpoche: Visualization is somewhat insubstantial.If your visualization is weak, it vanishes in a flash — a stray thought comes and it's gone.The best method is to make an effigy.Two kinds — paper, or dough made of flour or barley wheat, kneaded.With a paper figure in sight you'll feel "this is my father, this is my mother" — a concrete target for intention.Then practice on this effigy.

Rinpoche: Dedication practice — your dharma siblings have learned it before, making effigies, the effigy as substitute.

Disciple: Then dissolve it?

Rinpoche: Right, dissolve it.Why use summoning?To hook the other's spirit-consciousness onto the effigy, then teach for them, practice for them.

Disciple: Also use Vajrapāṇi?

Rinpoche: Vajrapāṇi's mantra — his summoning is fierce.Whether to hook a nāga-maiden, nāga-king, consort, whatever — he can hook them.

Disciple: Visualizing ancestors coming to your side is like summoning ancestors.Deities too?

Rinpoche: Today's lesson — the key is "invocation." Guard-invocation, that's the order.They aren't just sitting around for you to practice.In Taiwanese it's called "calling in." If your practice has no specific target, there's no force.

Disciple: Group practice's Dharma-power is also larger.Group practice is to create the magnetic field.When we often co-practice, the energy field of this space becomes strong.Like what Rinpoche taught before — a car crash: why does the soul keep walking in that space, unable to leave?In that time, in that space, his consciousness halts there, can't walk out.When time's up it rewinds and loops.

Rinpoche: You have to break that self-loop.He's bound by time and space.

Disciple: Just telling him "break it" — can he?He has no energy of his own.

Rinpoche: Awakening of consciousness — the officiant must do the deliverance practice, give the teaching, lead the soul.Why lead the soul?To pull him out of that space, otherwise he'd be locked by time and space there.

Remember: year, month, day, hour — each has its own plate, its own time.Year runs its own, month its own, day its own, hour its own — all separated.Pieced together they become today.So today's date is: Minguo year 107, June 2, so many o'clock.All summed up they equal this moment of today.Strip away month, day, hour and keep only year — like the four pillars in Chinese astrology.Year, month, day, hour combined is the Four Pillars; it can read your whole life.Year reads ancestors, generations ordered down from there; hour reads descendants; day reads husband-wife; month reads parents.All separated.So year-month-day-hour are split.Time-space wealth-summons practice is also split.Each is an independent space, independent space, independent space, independent space.When your soul reappears, it's determined by time and space.At the moment of death, it's pinched between time and space.

Disciple: Just like birth — he grabs the spacetime of that moment.

Rinpoche: The master leading the soul is pulling the deceased out of that circle, calling him out, so he can leave the magnetic field.If no one saves him, he loops.Like that British haunted house centuries ago — the duke still appears there.They did no soul-leading; a hundred years on he still appears.

Disciple: They're trapped by a boundary.

Rinpoche: Another force must appear and break that bondage — only then can liberation be possible.

Human fate is also bound by this stuff — year-month-day-hour.

Disciple: How to break?

Rinpoche: Break out from inside, or break in from outside.Only then can you save someone.A man locked in prison — one way is dig a tunnel out, another is outsiders blast in to save him.

Disciple: Some people's ancestors are foreigners — Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese.When these ancestors return, they don't speak Mandarin with me; I can't understand what they're doing.No way out.

Rinpoche: There's a way.

Disciple: Before the Japanese era, they were polyandrous.The grandfathers over there were obedient — whatever grandmother told them to do, they did.Matrilineal society, large women.In that kind of family you have to keep the rules, or roll out.

Rinpoche: That's called tradition — traditional bondage.Since the word is "bondage" — sometimes in the spirit world you're also bound.In your life you're often bound.A family's curse binds.A family's taboo binds.From birth to death a person is in bondage.In bondage you will certainly fall into bardo saṃsāra, because that's the force of bondage.

Disciple: Isn't it just the force of bondage simply?

Rinpoche: No — it's infinite bondage.So you practice to leap out.How?Zen teaches you to contemplate emptiness, meaning to remove these bondages.But if emptiness doesn't produce another energy to break through, emptiness still hasn't liberated bondage.Your thinking is liberated, but in reality you aren't.

Disciple: Escape or liberation?

Rinpoche: Not even escape — locked in prison with eyes closed, imagining I'm already at a bar drinking.Eyes open — still locked up.Taiwanese slang: secret delight, solo pleasure.No energy practiced out, consequences no different.

Fate's bondage, affection's bondage, kinship's bondage — like that is kinship's bondage.Economic bondage, emotional bondage.How many rings box us in — can't jump out.You try to fly up and someone drags you down.That's bondage.How do we make bondage not exist?You turn.Originally there's no bondage; you willingly treat it as bondage.The mind turns, the thought turns.If you feel it binds you, it binds you.

Disciple: This "turning the thought" is not fantasy.

Rinpoche: This is real turning.Your view of the problem has changed.It no longer works on me.

Rinpoche: How to liberate from bondage?That's a huge lesson.The Diamond Sūtra tells you how.Bodhidharma's Bloodstream Treatise tells you how.Mind's bondage — not body's.

Disciple: If it's body's bondage, no way then?

Rinpoche: Still ways.Mind's bondage is hardest.If body's bondage is painful — well, those in retreat are also an odd breed.Only mind's bondage is most painful, but it can't be spoken, can't be explained.

Disciple: That time, why did I recite Bhrūṃ?Because many people around me were about to attack.And I couldn't speak.

Excerpted from a teaching by Master Urgyen Topden Rinpoche on 2018-02-06.