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.
Geshe la continues discussing the different ways we can dedicate the good works we have done. Verses 60 to 63 are beautiful verses of dedication under the titles: ‘Dedication towards Serving Others’ and ‘Concluding Verses’.
To conclude this series of classes on The King of Prayers, Geshe la gives an oral transmission of the entire prayer. He himself received this oral transmission from His Holiness the Dalai Lama, and His Holiness’s two tutors.
He also gives an oral transmission of four mantras:
· The Tara mantra
· The Medicine Buddha manta
· The Vajrasattva mantra
· The Buddha Migtrugpa mantra.
Geshe la finishes with an explanation of the importance of The King of Prayers in Tibetan Buddhism. In a package of prayers called The Nine Prayers, all traditions place this prayer first. And all traditions place the prayer we studied last, Maitreya’s Prayer of Love, second.
We hope you will join us again on Sunday 9th May for our next series of teachings with Geshe Tashi. We will be studying Lama Tsongkhapa’s Prayer for Birth in Sukhavati, the fifth of the Nine Prayers.
With best wishes,
The Admin Team
You can find details of upcoming classes as well as the text available for download here.
https://foundationsofbuddhistthought.org/live-teachings-with-geshe-tashi-tsering/
https://foundationsofbuddhistthought.org/