Category Archives: Teachings by Bardor Tulku Rinpoche

It does not matter whether you are practicing in your own personal shrine room or in the great and elaborate shrine of a Dharma center. If in your practice you have a fantastic generation stage visualization, you sit immovably with perfect meditation posture of the seven dharmas of Vairochana, and you recite the liturgy with beautiful voice and impeccable melody, even if you do all of that, if then you get up off the cushion, leave the shrine room, and there is no trace whatsoever of Dharma in your behavior, if your words are coarse of most degraded individual, if your mind is utterly unruly, then there is simply no point. It is said, “Those who become jaded with Dharma are impervious to it.” Once we become jaded with Dharma, then forget about helping anyone else. We ourselves are beyond help.

One of the other tertöns predicted by the Fourteenth Karmapa was Terchen Barway Dorje. Terchen Barway Dorje received from the Fourteenth Karmapa an empowerment that the Karmapa called The Embodiment of All Victors in the Three Jewels. It is a sadhana of Guru Rinpoche. When the Fourteenth Karmapa gave him this empowerment, he did it entirely from memory. He did not use a text. He gave Barway Dorje the empowerment, the transmission, and the instructions, and allowed Barway Dorje to commit it to writing. It was evident that this was a mind terma of the Fourteenth Gyalwang Karmapa himself. In the context of that empowerment, the Gyalwang Karmapa prophesied to Terchen Barway Dorje that he would also discover terma.

As for the authenticity of the treasures of Barway Dorje, we have the testimony of every great master of our tradition, starting with the 14th Gyalwa Karmapa, Thekchok Dorje, and including great masters such as Khenchen Mipham and others. Many of those masters not only made statements testifying to the authenticity, but also composed liturgies, prayers, aspirations, and so on, for the propagation of these teachings. So, we can be certain that Terchen Barway Dorje was not a charlatan who made this stuff up.