Q: Is it important during retreat that there be no children around?

Lama: It depends. If they’re older, like six or eight, perhaps they can go to somebody’s house nearby to play, but if they’re too young to be left alone like this and somebody can take care of them during the sessions, it’s OK. Then during the breaks the parents can feed and play with them and give them some love. You need to be flexible.

Q: Lama, if we cannot stay for the retreat is there some way we can carry the initiation over to daily life?

Lama: Definitely. If you like, you can practice the main body of the meditation every day, but to be practical it’s probably better that you focus on just one meditation technique a day. You can’t cover all the techniques in one day if you’re working and have other responsibilities. Do whatever your time allows. Also, it might be hard to do the whole sadhana every day; Western life can be difficult that way.

For example, if you have to go to work and don’t have time to meditate in the morning, when you get home you can shower, relax and, when your mind is clean clear, practice the meditation techniques. If your mind is really busy, first meditate on your breath for a while and then go into the experience of shunyata, manifest as Maitreya and practice developing your concentration. It’s better to focus on one particular practice in a session rather than try to do several, which prevents transformation.

The sadhana looks simple but it’s not. I’ve tried here to explain its essence; to do it in detail would take more than a month. It’s really profound. It contains the entire lamrim—every type of Buddhist meditation. But although you can integrate every kind of meditation into this sadhana, what you need to focus on is putting your wisdom energy into the nuclear essence of the practice.

That’s why these particular yoga meditations are so useful. If you understand the gradual, step-by-step transformational process clean clear, you know how to reach enlightenment and don’t get confused. Even if you hear non-Buddhist teachings, you know how they relate; when a Christian minister talks about the Bible you come away thinking, “Wow, that helps my practice of the Maitreya yoga method.” No matter what you listen to, you have the wisdom to understand where it fits into the path to enlightenment.

If you don’t understand how all the teachings fit together into one coherent path, the more you read and hear, the more confused you get. Instead of producing clarity, everything you encounter simply produces more superstition. Instead of destroying delusion, the things you read and hear increase doubt and indecision and leave you with no spiritual strength or understanding of how to better yourself or others.

Therefore it’s good to understand how the sadhana is set up and how all the Buddha’s teachings fit into this one essential framework.

Q: Is it important to receive conscious transmission of a mantra? I’m not sure if I received the Maitreya mantra or not. Perhaps I received it unconsciously.

Lama: The mantra was given during the initiation; if you were there, you received it. But don’t worry if you don’t remember; experiences can be conscious or unconscious. Sometimes you can experience something in meditation that you don’t recall after the session. It’s like a dream. You can also have unbelievably profound experiences in a dream but when you wake up they’re too subtle for you to remember. When your gross mind restarts there’s no space for you to comprehend what happened when you were asleep.

Q: I have to leave halfway through the retreat. Would it be better not to start and try to do the whole thing another time?

Lama: It’s better to do what you can whenever you can. Two days are better than nothing; two days’ Maitreya yoga method practice is actually very precious. The more you practice the sooner you get enlightened.

That’s logical, isn’t it? Then, in future, according to your time, you can do the retreat alone at home or perhaps a longer group retreat somewhere else.

Retreat is an incredibly powerful way to develop and transform yourself. You can make much more progress by retreating intensively for ten days than you can by listening to teachings for a year, because in retreat you deal with things on a more organic level. Words are kind of artificial; listening to teachings can produce more confusion because words are confusion—it doesn’t matter how many you use, they still all come from superstition. So retreat is super; very useful.

Also, the Tibetan yoga system is set up very practically. When you go into retreat you feel that there’s already a system, so you don’t have to ask, “What do I do now?” It’s all set up as a graduated path—you can tell what level of development you’re on and what you have to do next.

With respect to group retreat, even though the retreat leader might be reading the sadhana aloud and everybody else is meditating accordingly, you don’t necessarily have to follow along. You can do your own Maitreya meditation. The leader is obliged to read the sadhana as writ.ten but even though you’ve come for group retreat, as an individual you don’t necessarily have to follow. You’ve received the commentary and know what it’s about, so you can choose whatever aspect of the practice you like and just meditate on that.

So now you’re going to ask, “Why bother coming for group retreat? I might as well do it alone.” But a group situation gives you energy; the more Maitreyas come, the more energy you get. Therefore it’s helpful. I’ve done many group retreats but I didn’t always do what the group did.

Q: I practice a Guru Padmasambhava sadhana and I’m wondering if it’s possible to combine it with Maitreya practice, especially the sleep yoga?

Lama: That’s simple. The qualities of Guru Padmasambhava are those of Maitreya and the qualities of Maitreya are those of Guru Padmasambhava, so what’s the problem?

Q: The technical visualizations are a little different. How can I combine them?

Lama: I’m not sure how you want to combine them; there are hundreds of ways you could. Still, I think the best way would be to practice one in the morning and the other in the evening because they emphasize different energies. Padmasambhava practice is especially useful for guru yoga.

Q: My question is mainly in relation to going to sleep because each practice has a different visualization for doing that.

Lama: Then you can choose whichever you like according to what you think you need but if you really want to combine them, perhaps you can first do Guru Padmasambhava meditation: he sinks into you, you become one with Guru Padmasambhava, your body becomes light and you disappear into the experience of shunyata. When you come out of that, emerge as Maitreya. That would be an excellent way to combine the two practices.

Q: Can you tell us something about the meaning of the Maitreya mantra?

Lama: To really explain it would take more than a month but I can briefly mention the meaning of the short mantra, OM AH MAITRI SARVA SIDDHI HUM.

* OM is the unity of the pure, or divine, qualities of Maitreya’s holy body, speech and mind. What do I mean by unity? At present, our body, speech and mind are split. Our body functions differently from our speech and mind, our speech functions differently from our body and mind and our mind functions differently from our body and speech, but when we attain a certain level of realization, all three function as one. That’s why developing unity is one of the things we practice.

* AH is Maitreya Buddha’s pure speech.

* MAITRI is Sanskrit for universal love and compassion.

* SARVA means all; SIDDHI means realizations; together they mean all realizations.

* HUM means universal wisdom; the omniscient wisdom that understands universal reality.

But this is just a literal explanation. When you explain the actual meaning of a mantra you have to go beyond the literal, so there are many ways of explaining it. If I were to really explain the meaning of OM MANI PADME HUM, for example, it would take me a year.

Conclusion

Well, I think that’s all we have time for. Buddhism believes that my consciousness and yours can unite in the ocean of universal conscious energy, so that’s the beauty of our having come together here. Even though we have different personalities, different noses, different mouths, different ears, and different nationalities, we have still somehow come together and been able to communicate with each other. That really signifies universal love, the meaning of Maitreya. In the true sense of the word I think we are Maitreya. So we’re very lucky and I’m grateful for this opportunity. Thank you for having listened to my garbage words and I would especially like to thank all the Maitreya Institute people who worked so hard to organize this event. I will dedicate the energy you have expended for you to grow in the universal love and compassion of Maitreya. Thank you so much.

Finally, let’s dedicate whatever experience we’ve had generating love and compassion and touching reality to the benefit of all beings in the universe—through this energy, may they attain the qualities of Maitreya.