the heart drop of the pure radiant essence

The main meditational deity practice of Osel Thegchog Ling is a sadhana of the Zhi Tro—the Hundred Peaceful and Wrathful Deities of the Bardo. This sadhana dawned in the Rinpoche’s mind as a terma.

Just hearing this sadhana read aloud is said to place within one the seeds of liberation, to say nothing of actually doing the practice.

Zhitro is the main practice in the Nyingma school of Tibetan Buddhism. Countless hundreds of thousands have attained rainbow body, mainly through this practice of the magical net (Guhyagarbha Tantra). The peaceful and the wrathful are indicative of both dynamic expressions of emptiness and compassion. In dependence on emptiness, peaceful; in dependence on compassion, wrathful. If you wonder what expressions of emptiness and compassion are, it is they.

The greatest seeds of cyclic existence are desire and hatred, and our task is to overcome these through meditation. That is the very gist of the practice of the Hundred deities; cutting through attachment and aversion.

The wrathful aspect is all a manifestation of compassion, it is not a wrathfulness of anger. There is no affliction at all in their wrathfulness, their exceedingly wrathful appearance is to sever the root of anger, they are not angry. Why is this necessary? Because the angry persons need to be trained. Those wrathful deities are manifesting in order to overcome anger are addressing their compassionate activities to those who are predominantly influenced by anger. So they need this rugged appearance because the person to be tamed is kind of rugged. When that kind of person is tamed through wrathful deities they will be able to bring anger on the path to enlightenment, and so they will overcome the limitations of cyclic existence by severing the very root of anger and utilize the energy of anger for Buddha activity. They are beyond any kind of limit.

If one does not completely liberate the enemy of ego-clinging internally, initially, then one will not be able to benefit other beings through one's compassion. So, initially one needs to cut through the ego clinging which is the main enemy, the killing kind of liberation, through wrathful activity. Then one's resonating concern for others will effective.

Therefore since at Buddhahood one achieves the three Buddha bodies, this is a Zhitro of the three Buddha bodies. Such a Zhitro is very rare. It is an instruction with such potency that simply through hearing it one's mind stream is liberated, the seed of liberation is planted. So it is known as the heart drop that is the pure radiant essence.

What is attained is nothing other than the three kayas and what one trains in is nothing other than the three kayas. What is revealed here is the unsurpassed level of complete realization. All the key points of the Maha, Anu and Atiyoga tantras are complete here.

There is no more excellent practice than this Zhitro, because it essentializes these key points and is easy to practice. It is like the heart blood of the Lama, Yidam and Dakinis for this reason, and in terms of the blessings involved. A teaching greater than this was not taught by Buddha nor revealed by Guru Rinpoche. It is the genuine meaning, the actual display of that expanse of luminosity and the play of that expanse of luminosity not contrived by the intellect unlike other sadhanas which involve mental ascribing and labeling.

Based on the teachings of Adzom Rinpoche