completed these five days, use Trinley Dringpo on the first and last days of the main practice. For the principal part, based on Trinley Nyingpo, use seven days for reciting Amarani and seven days for the Seven Syllables. Recite four times 100,000 of the Vajra Guru mantra. Use three days for reciting Tötreng Tsal mantra and about one day for the activity application. This way will also be right.
Whether you practice in the extensive or short way, complete the set numbers of recitations and, when drawing close to finishing retreat, recite as many of the Hundred Syllables as you can at the end of each session. The evening before the final morning, change the offerings for new ones and elaborately arrange whatever feast articles you have. At the dawn session the next morning, follow the root text of the Practice Manual (Trinley Dringpo) and recite as much as you can. Make offerings and praises, Barchey Lamsel supplications, and apologies for faults in a more extensive way.
At the break of dawn, invoke the siddhis with the lines from Trinley Gyepa, the Extensive Practice Manual. Touch the torma visualized as the deities to your three places, do the visualization for receiving the siddhis, and enjoy some of the torma. Receive the empowerments and dissolve the recitation mansion. After that, perform 100 feast and mending chants as a thanksgiving. If you cannot do this, still make an elaborate feast offering, with a mending apology.
Place all the residual offerings gathered earlier outside. Make a torma offering to the teaching guardians, invoke their heart-samaya, give the covenant and Tenma offerings, and complete it with the horse dance. Then make a thanksgiving, offerings, praises, apologies for faults, and so forth, as before. Make elaborate dedications and aspirations in the extraordinary Mahayana way and utterances of auspiciousness in the general way.
If you mend the number of recitations with a fire offering, do the pacifying fire offerings in a number equal to one-tenth of the approach recitations. If you cannot do that, you should be sure to complete one-tenth of the set number of each of the recitations from the earlier occasions of doing the approach.
The visualization for recitation described in the Medium Practice Manual (Trinley Dringpo) is only like a seed. The details should be done according to the Dzapkyi Köljang, the Recitation Manual. In other words, perform both dharmakaya and sambhogakaya recitations as clearly described in the root text. For the nirmanakaya, first visualize a moon disc in your heart center, upon which there is a five-pronged golden vajra. In its center, upon a moon disc, is the radiant white letter HRIH. Around it, the white, self-resounding garland of the Vajra Guru mantra circles uninterruptedly in a clockwise direction. To focus your mind on that, like the moon with a garland of stars, is the intent of the approach, invoking the mind of the deity.
A second mantra garland then streams forth uninterruptedly from the first one, coming out through your mouth. It enters into the mouth of the wisdom being in front of you. It passes through the bodily figure and comes out through the navel. Entering your own navel, it circles around your heart center as before. The clear essence of light rays gathers within the bindu of your heart and hereby stabilizes the wisdom of great bliss and brings mastery over the two kinds of siddhis. To imagine this, like the wheel of a firebrand, is the intent of the close approach of oneself to the deity.
Boundless rays of light then stream forth from the mantra circle. They permeate all the infinite buddha realms, becoming cloud banks of outer, inner, and secret offerings to please the Three Roots, the victorious ones, and their offspring. All the blessings of their three secrets are then gathered back. They dissolve into you, purifying the two obscurations; perfecting the two accumulations; and bestowing all the empowerments, blessings, and siddhis. Again rays of light stream forth. They touch all the sentient beings of the three realms, purifying their obscurations of karma and disturbing emotions along with their habitual tendencies. Imagining this, like sending out the king’s emissaries, is the intent of mastering the accomplishment of siddhis.
At the conclusion, the outer vessel-like world is the vajra realm of Akanishtha; all that appears as the inner content-like beings are mandala deities; all animate voices and inanimate sounds are the spontaneous tones of mantras; and all thinking is the play of the great self-existing wakefulness. Thus, to recite within the continuity of appearance and existence, as being the great manifest ground, known as the yoga that is like a bee hive breaking open, is the intent of the great accomplishment, the actualization of the siddhis.
According to the tantric system, these four described aspects of recitation intent are chiefly applied to the single mudra form, the elaborate mudra form, and the accomplishment of the group gathering. It has been taught that one gradually engages in each of them after achieving the vivid presence of samadhi in the previous one. However, here I have described the intent of the oral instructions of Guru Rinpoche, which is to combine the fourfold recitation intent of approach and accomplishment into one single sitting, since that is taught to be the profound key point for the quick occurrence of the signs of blessings and siddhis.
In this way, you can fully complete the recitations for approach and accomplishment. The way of benefiting others, by accepting them through the elaborate, medium, or condensed empowerments, is clarified elsewhere.
The way of accomplishment in a group assembly, according to the Siddhi Vase Practice, a treasure revealed at Blazing Light Rock in upper Go, is described in an appendix to the practice discussed here. So, instead of performing that, if you combine it with the Root Heart Practice and so forth, the analogy will be like putting a goat’s head on a sheep.
Furthermore, you can learn the key points of the development stage, what to avoid or adopt during retreat practice, from the rudimentary scriptures and from the general presentations of approach and accomplishment. Here I have not elaborated on these for fear of involving too many details.
Although this vajra verse supplication had appeared in the past,
Its sadhana has formerly not been widely known.
Having newly appeared by the power of it being the right time,
It is complete and concise, a treasure teaching that exceeds all others.
I wrote this in order to show the direction for the practice of all fortunate ones,
Who, after discerning the reason, have acquired confident trust.
And so, may the correct practice of the meaning of the text expanded here
Be like the sun spreading light everywhere.
Although I could have expanded upon this in great detail, due to fully possessing the excellent fortune of the ripening and liberating instructions from both of the two great treasure masters, the lords of this profound teaching, I, Padma Garwang Lodrö Thaye, merely aiming to write a convenient practice for beginners, composed this at the practice place of the third Devikoti, the Tsari-Like Jewel Rock.
May virtuous goodness increase.
THE PRACTICE MANUAL FOR THE RECITATION OF APPROACH AND ACCOMPLISHMENT%
According to The Guru’s Heart Practice, Dispeller of All Obstacles%
Dzapkyi Köljang
The Practice Manual for the Recitation of Approach and Accomplishment, the Dzapkyi Köljang, and the text Opening of the Mansion of Recitation (dza pra khang dbye ba), also called Gzhi Bstod, are like skeletons of the practice that are interwoven at appropriate places. Additionally, verses from the Barchey Lamsel are inserted as a supplication
