A Commentary on “Blessing the Speech According to the Instructions of Great Yogi Khyungpo”
The Benefits of Blessing the Speech
The benefits of blessing the speech are: (1) the power of your speech becomes perfect; (2) whatever you recite is multiplied ten million times; (3) the power of your speech is not taken away by eating wrong foods; and (4) gossiping becomes the recitation of mantra.
When you bless your speech, all the blessings and power of the holy speech of all the buddhas and other holy beings are received in your tongue, and you get an unbelievable number of benefits. I don’t know how many millions and zillions of benefits are received! However, there are four particular benefits.
The first benefit of blessing the speech is that it makes the power of your speech perfect. Due to this, when you teach Dharma, everyone listens to you and practices Dharma. When you do counseling, everyone pays attention and follows your advice. When you give a lecture, even a political speech, all the people pay attention and listen to you. When you give advice to someone, that person does what you say. When you speak to an important person, they listen to and help you. In short, when your speech has power, other people listen to you, pay attention to you, keep your words in their hearts, and do what you say.
If, on the other hand, your speech doesn’t have power, when you give advice to people or when you ask them for help, they won’t listen to you and won’t do what you say. For example, I was told many times by a student that drinking Coca-Cola, even diet Coke, was bad for me, that it could harm my bones and even cause cancer, but still I kept on drinking it. I didn’t pay attention to her advice and it didn’t have any effect on my mind.
Then I went to Salt Lake City, where the two daughters of Gomo Tulku, who was my teacher in his past life, live. The elder daughter, Pema, came to see me and told me all the problems that come from drinking Coca-Cola. At the end she said, “Stop drinking Coca-Cola! When you come back next time, I want you to tell me that you haven’t been drinking Coca-Cola.” She just said that one time and I had no difficulty at all to stop drinking Coca-Cola. After that I never had any attraction to it at all and I never drank it again. I didn’t even have the problem of missing it on airplanes. This is because her speech has much power. It affected my mind and I was able to give up Coca-Cola immediately.
Therefore, you should bless your speech in the morning, not only for your recitation of mantras to have power, but even for your ordinary speech to have power. Whether it is to do your job, to request someone for help, or to explain something to someone, your speech needs power. If your speech doesn’t have power, nothing will work.
The second benefit of blessing the speech is that any prayer or mantra you recite is multiplied ten million times. For example, if you recite a mantra, such as OṂ MAṆI PADME HŪṂ or the Vajrasattva mantra one time, you get the benefit of having recited it ten million times. It is unbelievably powerful. However, other mantras and practices also do that.
The third benefit is a particular benefit of the practice of blessing the speech—it stops the power of your speech, including the power of your mantras, from being taken away or degenerated by eating black foods. According to the Kadampa text Tenrim Chenmo, eating garlic takes away the power of speech for seven days, onion for five days, and radish for nine days. There are different types of radish but I think this is a particular radish that is large, round, and very strong; it makes the breath smell, produces a lot of gas, and pollutes the whole body. Eating nettles causes the power of your speech to be lost for half a year. When nettles are cooked well they are very delicious, but eating them has this shortcoming. Eating animal tongue, in particular sheep tongue, takes away the power of your speech for your whole life. Animals such as sheep are extremely ignorant, so when you eat their meat, in particular the lower parts of their bodies, the heart, and, worst of all, the tongue, due to a dependent arising it dulls your mind and causes your intelligence and wisdom to degenerate. Blessing your speech in the morning stops all the harm that comes from eating these wrong foods.
If you are very sensitive, you can feel the harmful effects of having eaten black foods. They make your mind unclear and can also make your body kind of tough and even cause it to change color. Because black foods destroy the power of your mind and body, in addition to the power of your speech, it is best to avoid eating them. However, it is different for a great yogi of secret mantra who has complete control over their mind and the winds that are the vehicle of the mind. Such a person can eat black foods, and even poisons that would normally kill an ordinary person, and not be harmed. Instead these foods only become a cause to increase their bliss and realizations.
The fourth benefit is also a particular benefit of the practice of blessing the speech—anything you say, even gossip, becomes the recitation of mantra. If you do the practice of blessing the speech in the morning, from then until sunrise the next morning, by the power of this practice all your gossip becomes the recitation of mantra. This probably means that whatever you say becomes virtue.
There are also other specific benefits of blessing the speech. For example, Lama Atisha taught that when reciting a certain number of mantras, such as twenty-one or a hundred, if you engage in ordinary talk before you finish the recitation, your mantras are as if stabbed with a phurba[1] and their power is taken away. If you do this blessing of the speech, that doesn’t happen.