Open Buddha

Guhyagarbha Tantra Empowerment – Day 1

So, I’ve never attended an empowerment for a particular tantra as a whole before. Is there a translation or commentary in English anywhere for the Guhyagarbha Tantra? Like most Tibetan empowerments where they’ve recited text, no one is explaining most of it. The lama, Kilung Rinpoche, actually apologized for this and said that he normally would explain quite a bit but that the tantra is so long that he’s afraid we won’t get through it if he just doesn’t just go full bore.

The game plan seems to be:

Friday night – Preliminaries
Saturday from 1:00 to near midnight – Empowerment for the Peaceful deities
Sunday from 1:00 to near midnight – Empowerment for the Wrathful deities.

Last night, we showed up, did some preliminaries for opening like usual (Seven Line Prayer, 100 syllable mantra, Mandala Offering) and then some preliminary work for the empowerment. We cleansed our mouths with blessing water on going in as normal but then Rinpoche had us do it a second time with some “special blessing water” that he had brought.

He did some prelimary explanations as to lineage for the tantra, some visualization, and then a number of practices that I hadn’t seen before.

First, he and his assistants did something with a color-coded “flower” drawn on a piece of paper on a tray that was carried around. You, as an individual, would be handed a special wooden toothpick (as he jokingly called it) that was a fairly large (hand length) thin, pointed wooden stick. You would hold it point up in a particular way and then swing the point down, rest it in the middle of the diagram and let go. It would fall in one of four “petals” that were color coded for the four directions and Buddha families. From what I understood of his explanation, this told you something about what Budda family you belonged to (??). Mine came down in the West, which was Red. We all chanted a mantra while this was done.

Second, there was more blessed water brought around to each person to drink. We all chanted another mantra while doing this/

Thirdly, red cords (groups of string knotted in a few places) were brought to each person. Men were to knot them on their left bicep, women on their right bicep. (Of course, this led to an amusing amount of confusion.) We’re to wear them for the empowerment.

Finally, we were each given two different types of grass to take home. One type (the longer) was to go under the matress and the other under the pillow. It was symbolic of the grass that the Buddha slept on while he was under the Bodhi tree. This grass was to bring good sleep and, perhaps for some, propitious dreams.

After this, we closed per normal and went home.

Given how stiff my hips got after sitting on a pillow unable to move for a couple of hours, this might be a long day. ;-)

Kilung Rinpoche seems a stickler on protocol without being too anal. If you need to use the bathroom or somesuch, you just need to signal someone and can go but he will stop the entire puja until you come back. We won’t start until everyone who has signed up arrives and we have to stay the entire time on each day. (We do get a dinner break though and supposadely a couple of breaks during the day.) So far, I like him but a textual recital of a text that I can’t read or understand is going to be a patience developing practice. The empowerments should be good and I did specifically ask him to attend since I don’t meet his official prerequisites (and he knows it).