His Eminence Rinchen Dorjee Rinpoche’s Puja Teachings – September 5, 2021

His Eminence Rinchen Dorje Rinpoche presided over the auspicious Medicine Buddha Puja for the first time at the Glorious Jewel Buddhist Center in Taipei. After lighting lamps as an offering to the Buddha, Rinpoche ascended the Dharma throne to bestow precious teachings.

“The Dharma which will be performed today is called the Sadhana of Medicine Buddha with Perfect Completion in Main Yidam of Sambhogakaya (Reward-Body) and in Wrathful Yidams of Family Members.

In Taiwan, there are many practitioners in Exoteric Buddhism practicing the Medicine Buddha Sutra. What they have practiced on about this sutra are the parts taught in Exoteric Buddhism; there are no empowerments. As such, in the classification of the Dharma, what has been taught then is about Buddha’s Nirmanakaya (emanation-body). If one wants to achieve attainments in this life by practicing the Medicine Buddha so as to benefit sentient beings, one must practice such methods about a Buddha’s reward-body. Then again, there must be empowerments on these practices. I will wait for His Holiness granting me the pith instruction, and then I will transmit the empowerment to you.

The Dharma text for today’s Dharma performance belongs to the Drikung Kagyu specifically. In Tibet, before pharmaceutical factories produce Tibetan medicine, they always have this Dharma performed. This is the first time that it will be performed in our Center. Many people have a misunderstanding, thinking that when one is ill, after reciting the Medicine Buddha’s name or chanting the mantra of Medicine Buddha, one’s illness will get treated. However, before you have mastered the Dharma methods and are attuned to a Buddha’s reward-body, your chanting of the mantra of Medicine Buddha or your reciting of the Medicine Buddha Sutra is just forming an affinity with this Buddha. Practicing the Medicine Buddha with methods shown in Exoteric Buddhism will take longer time to attain achievements. Also, there are differences in placing items on a mandala. In Exoteric Buddhism, for practicing the Medicine Buddha, there are mainly 12 Yakshas (‘guardian spirits’ or ‘generals’ in a modern term) involved. In Tantra, such practices are about the yidam of Medicine Buddha’s reward-body, with four major family members around it. The yidam’s attainments (siddhi) are different. Actually, Medicine Buddha is not just a Buddha vowing to practice for the aim of curing illnesses; it just happens that the name of such a Buddha is ‘Medicine Buddha’.

Shakyamuni Buddha had taught that there are three major types of illnesses. The first type is caused by much of negative karma created in past lifetimes, and in this lifetime, the karmic retributions are manifest; illnesses then occur. The second type is from much of negative karma generated in this lifetime, and in it, karmic retributions have matured to make illnesses happen. For these two types of illnesses, they cannot be cured by physicians and medicine in this mundane world. The third type is brought about because of the unbalance in certain parts of the five elements – earth, wind, water, fire and void – in one’s body. For example, some part might have too much of that element, and some part, not enough of a certain element. These kinds of illnesses can be cured. In the Sutra of Bodhisattva Ksitigarbha’s Fundamental Vows,it is mentioned that the attitude of caring for, or paying attention to, patients from a physician or a person in medical profession, is the biggest merit for him or her. It is not indicated that curing patients is the biggest merit. Bodhisattva Ksitigarbha would not have spoken wrong words. The fact is that some sentient beings’ illnesses are karmic-hindrance illnesses, and these cannot be cured, except under such situations: there are very big causes, conditions and good fortune occurring; patients are willing to make a great repentance thoroughly and a great offering; they deeply believe in the Dharma and this belief will not be transformed or changed. If these things have happened, perhaps their illnesses can be cured through the Dharma or through their physicians.

In Tibet, performing this Dharma before Tibetan medicine having been produced is to hope that, besides the medicine of the earth, through the blessings of Medicine Buddha, patients who have taken the medicine will get a stronger effectiveness of the treatment, and will have some of their karmic hindrances eliminated, too. Hence, the ways of taking Tibetan medicine are different from those of taking Chinese medicine or western one. In taking some types of Tibetan medicine, there is a specific time for it or a need of combining it with other sorts of ingredients of some particular medicine. This is why there are differences between taking Tibetan medicine and other types of medicine.

In today’s performance of the Medicine Buddha, it is not to get illnesses treated; rather, it is to help you form an affinity with Medicine Buddha. After such an affinity is formed, I will give you the empowerment later. When our monastery’s construction has been completed in the future, there will be a retreat center; then you will have opportunities to conduct retreats. If you want to practice this Dharma text, completing it will take at least a month conduct your retreat. After such a one-month retreat, are you Medicine Buddha then? No, you are not. You are then able to be attuned to Medicine Buddha and his family members. If you are a physician, when you are treating a patient of his or her illness, occasionally there is a sudden bright light appearing in your mind; you are then seeing some patient’s problems that others cannot see. Or, maybe when you are doing a medical treatment, there are some types of medicine that you usually do not utilize for the patient; then suddenly, you feel that the patient can use such medicine. These are exactly the blessings received from the yidam.

If you are not a physician, but an ordinary person, and if you often practice this Dharma method, based on what are mentioned in sutras and the Dharma text, you can get yourself free of illnesses, and your wealth will increase as well. There is a popular saying in Taiwan nowadays that frequent recitation of the Medicine Buddha Sutra can make one rich when doing one’s businesses, or get one’s wealth in smoother ways. Actually, it is not to let you get rich when you are running your businesses. There are two types of wealth. One is Dharma wealth, which is in the aspects of the Dharma. If you do not have good fortune, and even if you have been transmitted Dharmas, you will have no opportunities to practice them. Even if you do the practices, you cannot master them to achieve attainments. This demonstrates that you do not have the Dharma wealth in the aspects of the Dharma. The other type of wealth refers to the resources needed to live, whether practitioners being monastics or being laity, such as food, clothes, or living places. When you are conducting your retreats, if you do not have enough resources, there will be no one cooking meals for you.

Only after you have clearly understood this yidam, will your involving in this Dharma be useful to you. Do not be greedy for getting it, thinking that once you have learned about the Medicine Buddha, your medical knowledge or skills will be great. I have let several physician-disciples attend this puja today. As I mentioned earlier, they, as well as you, non-physician-disciples, still need to go through stages of conducting retreats and receiving empowerment. Some physicians do not know how to treat their patients’ illnesses, no matter how much, or how hard, they have thought about medical methods. This is because physicians also have their karmic hindrances. If such hindrances have been heavy, and even if such physicians are at Ph.D. level, unaccountably, they will not know how to treat patients. After practicing the Medicine Buddha, these physicians will have their karmic hindrances decreased, and naturally they will have better diagnoses, then treatments, for their patients.

In Esoteric Buddhism, it is divided into these groups for practicing methods: Buddhas, Lotus, Dharma Protectors, Vajrayana and Gurus. Every sentient being has an affinity with each group. For the ‘Buddhas’ group, it does not mean that if your practices are on this group, you will immediately attain Buddhahood. Rather, it means that you have an affinity with a certain Buddha. If this group is what your practices are on, you should know even more clearly what you are doing. There cannot be any errors.

In Tibetan Buddhism, there are fewer practitioners practicing the Medicine Buddha. In fact, every Dharma method in Tibetan Buddhism can treat illnesses; it is not necessary to practice the Medicine Buddha. Why will I perform the Medicine Buddha today? This is because a physician-disciple of mine mentioned to me that when he was learning Exoteric Buddhism, he had recited the Medicine Buddha Sutra. I will then perform the Medicine Buddha’s reward-body in Tantra for you. In aspects of your practices, the speed will be faster to master a method if you put your practice on a Buddha’s reward-body.”

(Rinpoche started to perform the Dharma, and bestowed the teachings.)

“Medicine Buddha has been protecting all sentient beings be free of illnesses from poverty, the cold or the heat.

In Chinese medicine, there is a term called ‘look, smell, ask and care’. (If you are a physician of Chinese medicine, while feeling a patient’s pulse,) you should smell about the patient for unusual odor, and observe his or her facial look. When facing a patient, a physician is like entering a forest full of ‘medicine-related’ fog, not knowing much about the patient’s illness. The physician then should carefully examine, and care for, the patient. If not, the performance of this Dharma will not make you be attuned to it. If you make a careful medical examination of your patient, you will receive the blessings, and your karmic hindrances will get eliminated. These will let you see the features of the illness so that when you make your diagnosis, you can tell the patient about the results in an inambiguous way. Such a talk will be like a peacock spreading its tail, and your patient, when hearing what you say, will feel glad in his or her heart, and will be calmer. Thus, it is not good if physicians tell patients about their illnesses in threatening or ambiguous ways. When a physician makes a diagnosis, his or her voice should be steady, affirmative, like a low sound uttered by a dragon, and not be ambiguous, saying something like ‘it’s like this’ or ‘it’s like that’. If physicians’ talks have been kept around the subject of illnesses without giving patients some certainty on results of diagnoses, these physicians are not qualified to be physicians. It is just like what that disciple had mentioned when sharing his story before this puja started. When he and his family members came to seek an audience with me, I told them very clearly about their situation; I did not say what the percentage would be (about some person’s illness and related diagnosis).

If this Dharma has been performed, because you have given rise to pity and compassion towards your patients, the family members of Medicine Buddha or fairy deities will bless you, eliminate your karmic hindrances, and make you treat patients as if you have supernatural powers. Actually, you don’t have them, but you will be able to figure out lesions in patients’ body, and know how to treat them. In later part of the Dharma text, it is also mentioned about the results of taking the medicine.

Physicians cannot make fame and profit as the purposes of their profession. They are to consider their profession as one to service sentient beings because of the pity and compassion they feel for sentient beings. If physicians work for fame and profit, are even impatient, feel very tired, or are unwilling to face or treat their patients, then these physicians have failed being in medical profession.

This repentance prayer in the Dharma text has been written very well indeed, and has been taught to physicians. It is mentioned in this section that physicians should make repentances in these situations: giving wrong medicine, making reverse combination of medicine as in combination of western and Chinese medicine or getting wrong proportion of various medicine. Physicians often make such mistakes. Why have they not repented yet? If you are one of them, you should give rise to right belief, and should respect the Buddha, Bodhisattvas, your guru and your patients. Your patients get sick and they suffer; such sickness and suffering let you make money (because they pay you medical fees); do not feel proud of yourself and do not think that you are an expert. Will people look for you if they are not sick and not in suffering? Hence, you definitely need to treat your patients kindly and care for them.

Although you are very careful in prescribing the medicine, because of karma from past lives, at a patient’s moment of death, he or she still believes in you very much. Even when such a patient knew that he or she was dead, the patient still believed in you; however, you have not protected and guarded the patient. ‘Protecting and guarding’ does not mean that you should have cured the patient’s illness. The physicians, who have not done the part of protection and guarding, would say, ‘It doesn’t matter; I will come back later and see the situation. Let him be whatever he is.’ There is such a mindset because physicians do not have the ability to get someone liberated. They are unlike me; I can wait until sentient beings are dead and then I will liberate them. Many physicians have this kind of issue. For example, one of them might say, ‘What is the blood pressure? At about 8:00 tonight, it would be the time (the patient passes away).’ Since you are the attending physician, you should watch over your patient because he or she believes in you.

In addition, there is a situation when a physician gives the wrong medicine because he or she has worries in the mind. You have used such medicine, even before having understood its characteristics; then you should join the palms of your hands together, make repentances to, and implore forgiveness from, the Four Great Goddesses of Medicine-Protection. Do not think that by attending the Medicine Buddha Puja your medical skills will get better. No, they won’t. Instead, you have been scolded. Some methods mentioned in this Dharma are very profound and very special; there are knacks in them. Although these Dharma methods have been transmitted to you one-on-one (to physician-disciples only), you have violated the rules described. For example, one rule is not to randomly change old prescriptions of Chinese medicine; you think that they are not right in that the modern views on such prescriptions should be taken into account. If you make changes on them, then, you will not cure your patients’ illnesses.

If you have accepted wrong apprentices or if you do not want your master around, you need to make repentances, too. You, as a physician, should not look down on your teachers. The ‘teachers’ here does not mean just masters who have taught you how to treat illnesses; all those who have taught you things are your masters. You will not dare to kill Acharyas (teachers), but you will disdain physicians of older generation, thinking that you are very amazing, and the methods they have used are outdated. If you look down on elderly or ancients, you are the equivalent to the emanation of a demon.”

(Then the Tsok Ritual and tea-offering ritual were in progress. Every person present received a share of offering items that had been blessed by Rinpoche, as well as the rare and auspicious causal condition to dine with the guru, the Buddha and Bodhisattvas during the puja.)

(Rinpoche continued the teachings.)

“Those, who have been practicing the Medicine Buddha and want to get rich, need to completely finish the practices of all rituals of this Dharma. Also, such practices need to make Dharma-protection deities, fairy deities, devas and nagas, et cetera, feel satisfied, therefore, one cannot get rich by just reciting the sutra; there are many things to be done.

In this Dharma text, it is mentioned that the skills of most physicians are like a blind person eating food, being able to only get the taste of the food but unable to see the looks of the food. Physicians always feel that others’ medical skills and treatments are better than their own. In order to cure illnesses, one must practice on bodhicitta. If not, it will be like a blind person, who has been led to the edge of a cliff, destroying oneself (because of not seeing the cliff) and not benefiting others either.

What have been mentioned in this Dharma text are to let physicians know that they should be watchful about themselves, not to be arrogant or self-satisfied, thinking that they are experts. You must practice on having pity, compassion and bodhicitta. With these senses in you, you are to use them in the methods utilized in your work as a physician. Even when you are unable to cure your patients’ illnesses because of their own karma, at least you will not create new karma for yourself. Being a physician, you cannot just think of money. On your patients, if they can be treated, give them treatments; if they cannot be, tell them so, honestly. You cannot have a ‘try on’ attitude either. Also, (if the treatments have shown problems,) you cannot say these things about your patients: ‘Maybe he has not listened to me….’, ‘Maybe he has not taken the medicine….’, or ‘Maybe because….’ There are not so many talks with ‘Maybe’ in them. If there are more ‘Maybe’ in your reviews of patients’ conditions, it demonstrates that you are incompetent. Do not regard the job of a physician as an occupation; it is also a type of cultivation. In ancient Tibet, the Medicine Discipline was very important because birth, old age, sickness and death had been humans’ four basic sufferings. You cannot stop the birth of humans, nor can you stop their death. However, you can lessen a little the sufferings of being in an old age and in sickness. The most important thing of being a physician is having the sense of caring, as taught by Bodhisattva Ksitigarbha. If you practice medicine in such a way, you will not have negative karma.

It is mentioned in sutras that when physicians treat patients with acupuncture, and if patients feel pain, physicians will fall into hell. When doing acupuncture, physicians should know very well the acupuncture points (the position of the body) and the level of hand-strength when needles are inserted. Physicians should also care for their patients, letting them know about acupuncture points, the feel of insertions, et cetera. On how to make patients not to feel the pain, physicians should make use of their medical skills; besides that, it is also necessary for physicians to clearly understand in advance that patients feel differently about the pain, so physicians cannot be negligent on such differences. As they are on this path in their work, they should be the same as Bodhisattvas in that they cannot be careless about their patients.”

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Updated on February 5, 2022