Small Golden Key

Advice on What to do Before Beginning Daily Meditation

~ DudjomTersarNgondro

Before we begin our daily meditation, we should clean our room and prepare our altar by cleaning it and making offerings. If we have no altar, we do not need to worry, we can simply visualize Padmasambhava in front of us.

The seven offering bowls which are offered on the altar symbolize the seven offerings:
🔸Water for drinking,
🔸Water for washing hands and feet,
🔸Flowers for adorning the head or hair,
🔸Incense for smelling to please the nose,
🔸Lamp for seeing to please the eyes,
🔸Perfumed water to sprinkle on the body, to refresh it, and
🔸Food to please the taste.
Music to please the ears can be an eighth offering.

The offerings which we make on the altar are symbolic. In our minds, we offer all pleasant things that we see, hear, taste, smell, and feel. We offer the light of the sun and the moon, all fresh flowers, all pleasing smells, all delicious food, and so forth, everything wonderful. Since these offerings are made to the Three Jewels and the Three Roots, who do not have any greed or desire for these offerings, they are made for the benefit of all sentient beings. After we have prepared our room and our altar, we begin our meditation with the common outer practice which is the four thoughts to turn the mind.

These are:
🔸The preciousness of human birth,
🔸 Impermanence and death,
🔸the cause and effect of karma, and
🔸The suffering of saṃsāra.
By meditating on these four thoughts, the mind is subdued and one is led to renounce saṃsāra.

Then we do the extraordinary inner preparation, which is the preliminary practice. Within the Ngondro, there are:
🔸going for refuge,
🔸generating Bodhicitta,
🔸Vajrasattva purification,
🔸maṇḍala offering,
🔸and the prayer of Guru Yoga

Thinley Norbu
Small Golden Key
Translated by Lisa Anderson
Shambala ©️2012

The Four Obscurations

~ DudjomTersarNgondro

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The four obscurations (sGrib.pa bzhi) are the karmic obscuration (Las.kyi sgrib.pa), the obscuration of passions (Nyon.mongs.kyi sgrib.pa), the intellectual obscuration, or obscuration of not knowing (Shes.bya’i sgrib.pa), and the obscuration of habit (Bag.chhags kyi sgrib.pa). Karmic obscuration comes from committing any of countless unvirtuous deeds, which may be summarized as the five inexpiable sins (mTshams.med lnga), the ten unvirtuous deeds (Mi.dge.ba bchu), the breaking of the various vows (samaya) of the Hīnayāna, Mahāyāna, and Vajrayāna, etc. The attainment of a precious body such as that of a god or human is obstructed by karmic obscuration. Obscuration by the countless passions or emotions can be condensed into the obscuration of the five passions, (1 )the obscuration of the three passions, (2) or the obscuration of ego. The states of attainment for Hīnayāna practitioners are obstructed by the obscuration of the passions. The obscuration of not knowing is the “threefold sphere” (’Khor gsum), which is the three concomitants of object, subject, and action. The obscuration of habit, according to sūtra, is a very subtle form of the obscuration of not knowing. According to tantra, it is the basis of “habit inherent in the three phenomena of body, speech, and mind” (sNang gsum ’pho.ba’i bag.chhags), which is also a very subtle obscuration. This obscuration of habit is the cause, latent residue, or habit of the white phenomenon, or subtle seed, which gives rise to the body; the cause, latent residue, or habit of the red phenomenon, or subtle seed, which gives rise to speech; and the cause, latent residue, or habit of the vital air, which gives rise to the mind. Freedom from the obstructions of the obscuration of not knowing and the obscuration of habit is the “state of omniscient wisdom” (rNam.pa thams.chad mkhyen.pa’i ye.shes).

1. Desire, anger, ignorance, jealousy, and pride.

2. Desire, anger, and ignorance.

Small Golden Key 

Thinley Norbu