Samantabhadra’s King of Prayers is a practice text composed to help us cultivate the heart qualities of kindness, care, concern, love and compassion. Developing these qualities will help bring us peace of mind, confidence and a heightened sense of purpose, as well as nurturing and strengthening our relationships.
Geshe Tashi returns to Jetsun Drakpa Shedrup to guide us through the material, who in turn references a series of commentaries including one by Nagarjuna in the 2nd century CE.
As always, Geshe Tashi’s emphasis in these teachings is on how we can best experience the material for ourselves. He takes special care to help us build up and strengthen the foundations of our mindfulness and meditation practices.
As an introduction to this class, Geshe Tashi gives a detailed word by word translation and guidance on the traditional refuge and bodhichitta prayer, used at the beginning of Buddhist classes and teachings. We think that those of you on the Foundation of Buddhist Thought Course, or in the early stages of your Buddhist journey, will find this extremely helpful.
Geshe la then begins the main body of the class by once again reading from The Guide to the Bodhisattvas Way of Life, this time translating for us and commenting on Chapter 3, verses 30, 31 & 32. He gives us a summary of what the bodhichitta mind of love and compassion is, including the two main aspirations involved. Once again this is particularly on topic for those of you who have just started the Awakening Mind module of the Foundation of Buddhist Thought Course.
Turning to The King of Prayers, Geshe la looks at just how vast the bodhisattva aspirations are and helps us get our heads around the concept of limitless living beings and limitless activities to help them. He guides us through the verses:
45. Concluding Aspiration 16
46 Extent of the Aspiration
Geshe la then finishes with a Q&A.
Experiencing The King of Prayers classes will begin again on March 7th for five weeks. We look forward to seeing you again soon.
With our very best wishes,
Your Admin Team
You can find details of upcoming classes as well as the text available for download here.
https://foundationsofbuddhistthought.org/