King of Prayer – 2
༄༅ །།འཕགས་པ་བཟང་པོ་ སྤྱོ ད་པའི་ སྨོན་ལམ་གྱི་རྒྱལ་པོ།།
PHAG PA ZANG PO CHÖ PE MÖN LAM GYI GYAL PO
King of Prayers
The Extraordinary Aspiration of the Practice of Samantabhadra
Samantabhadracaryā pranidhānaraja
PHỔ HIỀN HẠNH NGUYỆN VƯƠNG
འཇམ་དཔལ་གཞོན་ནུར་གྱུར་པ་ལ་ཕྱག་འཚལ་ལོ།
JAM PAL SHYÖN NUR GYUR PA LA CHAK TSAL LO
I bow down to the youthful Arya Manjushri.
༡ ༽ ཇི་སྙེད་སུ་དག་ཕྱོགས་བཅུའི་འཇིག་རྟེན་ན།
1) JI NYE SU DAK CHOK CHÜ JIK TEN NA
དུས་གསུམ་གཤེགས་པ་མི་ཡི་སེང་གེ་ཀུན།
DÜ SUM SHEK PA MI YI SENGE KÜN
བདག་གིས་མ་ལུས་དེ་དག་ཐམས་ཅད་ལ།
DAK GI MA LÜ DE DAK THAM CHÉ LA
ལུས་དང་ངག་ཡིད་དང་བས་ཕྱག་བགྱིའོ།
LÜ DANG NGAK YI DANG WE CHAK GYI O
You lions among humans,
Gone to freedom in the present, past and future
In the worlds of ten directions,
To all of you, with body, speech, and sincere mind, I bow down.
This is our second class for ‘The King of The Prayers by Samantabhadra’. Earlier we have been through the general, some of the points and also importance of this prayer and what its prayer is all about. Today we will try to go through maybe the name itself because last time I couldn’t go through the name and today we will go through the name as well as maybe a verse if it is possible. The book written by Tibetan Masters or the explanation written by Tibetan Masters does come with the outline. In English books we generally have the content or the different chapters or the name of the chapters. But many books written by Tibetan Masters or even if it is explanation, it is not just the chapters as an outline, but the link between the previous and this chapter and this and the next chapter. So it’s more like you have the whole book in your mind before and then you write “OK, I’m going to talk about this after that, I’m going to talk about this” because there is a reason behind and then there is a link to the main point, so they pretty much divide the whole context and then explain it in such a way. Of course, ‘The King of the Prayer’ that we are studying right now is not something written by Tibetan Masters, but there are lots of commentaries written by, of course, Nagārjunā, Dignāga, I think there is also a commentary of Vasubandhu and then many other Nalanda Masters as well as many great Tibetan Masters.
So I won’t go too much details into the different explanations of different Masters, it can be quite confusing sometimes, unless you’re doing some profound analysis or studies on this. So I’ll just go through the words itself, and when we all get to see it in the English right now, I will also go through in Tibetan, I have the Tibetan text here somewhere. If there are some differences I will just mention the differences and then we’ll try to go through the text itself.
So before that, as I’ve mentioned in the previous class, it is very important to understand that this is not just a prayer that we are trying to study, but it is a prayer, this is a set, a collection of the practices, the extensive and profound practices by Bodhisattvas, those beings with most powerful compassion, those beings with most powerful altruistic mind. This is the way they practice and this is such a wonderful opportunity to understand the way they practice and also to put into practice, so that we also know how we are supposed to practice as a Bodhisattva.
Because in many countries where they practice Theravada Buddhism, they mainly focus on how to practice to get rid of Samsara and to try to achieve the state of foe destroyer, Arhat (Sankrist), Aluohan (Chinese) or Arhant (Pali), these are all same in a bit different languages. What they mean is they want to get rid of this suffering full of world, that’s how they are aspired, and that’s why they’re practicing, so the way they practice is very much different, the way Bodhisattvas practice is not just to be free for themselves, to be free from suffering. Bodhisattvas, they are those practitioners who aspire themselves to benefit each and every sentient beings on this planet, they are the ones who tried to eradicate or eliminate each and every single negative actions along with the imprints and habituations.
There are two obscurations, the obscuration of afflictive emotion and obscuration of knowledge. So Boddhisattvas are trying to get rid of both of these obscurations and to achieve the Buddhahood. The reason why they are trying to get rid of the obscuration of knowledge and to achieve the all-knowing mind, or omnipresent or omniscient mind. The reason why they’re trying to achieve ominiscence to help sentient beings: you must know what kind of teachings is suitable, it’s more like that trying to be a perfect doctor who knows the patient very nicely and so that they can treat the patient according to the condition of the patient. They try to be a perfect teacher, by being Buddha, by achieving the state of Buddhahood, they’re trying to be a perfect teacher so that teacher knows all the different skills, so that he will be able or she will be able to teach the students according to the understanding or the mental disposition of the students.
The mundane teaching in this world, he or she might be a perfect teacher doesn’t mean that he or she might be perfect to teach each and every one of us, because we all have the different set of background, different mental disposition, intellectual capabilities which is why Buddhas or those practitioners who are trying to achieve Buddhahood, they’re trying to achieve omniscient mind so that they know each and every minds, they know each and every Dharmas, they know each and every methods to get rid of each and every negative emotions. Otherwise, if you just want to free yourself then you are the one who you should concentrate, you have to understand your emotions and you gotta get rid of those emotions and to achieve arhat. But Buddha, no, you are not satisfied with just understanding your emotions, you could understand each and every emotions, each and every antidotes, each and every methods to get rid of the emotions. So that’s why Bodhisattvas the way they practice it’s so different, at the same time, so profound.
When we talk about practice, of course we will go through this, the practice of course, physical body, verbal and then the mind. The practices or the trainings we are supposed to train our body, physical body to subdue negative actions that we engage in with our physical body, at the same time we have to train our verbal, because there are many negative activity or negative action in which we engage through verbally negativities, verbal negative actions – Does it make sense? Yes, OK – and then of course, most importantly, it is the mental negative emotions.
A negative action which comes from mind, I mean in a simple words I would say negative thoughts, negative emotions, so they train their mind to get rid of those negative thoughts, including the ignorance, not just like attachment, jealousy, envy, ego, pride and all these things, but at the same time trying to eliminate the ignorance, ignorant mind as well. So here in this book we’re going to find the way they’re training their physical body, the way they’re training their verbal, the way they train their mind. Most importantly here, you’re going to find majority of these practices, mental practices.
The reason is even the physical and verbal negative actions comes from negative mind, if you don’t have a negative mind, then obviously, automatically or naturally it will influence physical and verbal outcomes. It’s more like if you have an apple seed, OK, I’ll change if you have a mango seed in a ground – The reason why I’m changing here is apple is something that has been already taken in example in Christianity, so I leave that example for that, so let’s take an example of mango. The reason why I come with apple is because there is only few fruits that grow in my hometown, and of course, one of that is apple and another one is apricot. So apricot is not something that everyone is familiar with, and I’m not sure if everyone understands apricot, in India, rest in southern part of India many people don’t know what there is, to be honest. But apple is something that everyone knows at the same time I’m so much used to that because that’s what it grows, and when you are small in Ladakh in earlier times, you don’t have lots of candies because there are no shop, majority of the villages don’t have any shop or maybe they have one or two where they have few necessities. If you put it in a bag, you might not feel the bag, so these fruits are the candies, and then apricots we dry, apples we dry, I’m not sure if people dry apples, but in Ladakh we’ve been dry apples because in winter we don’t have candies if we don’t dry that. Anyways, so let’s keep it to mango.
If you put a mango seed in the field, then mango tree grows. So the outcome, mango tree, is because there is a seed which goes along with it which is called cause, which is similar in some entity, the apple seed and apple tree, apple tree grows because of apple seed. Similarly, negative outcomes of physical body and verbal are like apple tree, those come to exist only when there is a apple, mango seed in there. So similarly, negative outcomes of physical body and verbal come to exist only when you have a negative thought.
Let’s say killing, if somebody is killing an animal, then to go there to kill an animal, to lift the hand, or to lift a weapon to kill an animal and to shoot or to hit, it’s very gross that we know that our hand, even the small movement of our hand is because of some intentions, even if it is a habit, it again comes out with some subtle intentions. Some people if they feel like there is a mosquito bite, they may take less than a second to hit the mosquito, but even that comes out with certain amount of intention or a thought before that, you know that “something is hurting me” and then you feel a sort of very slight angry, you feel that anger, then one of the faces of anger is to harm back, so it motivates you to harm back and then you know that “OK there is something over there, I’m going to hit it, I’m going to harm back” that is when the mosquito dies. Similarly any kind of animals when a person killed that, the gesture of hand to kill that comes to exist only when there is a motivation to kill, motivation to hurt or kill. So that’s why the among the practices of Bodhisattvas, it is mainly or in this book that we are going through, it talks about mainly the mental training. OK, let’s go to the book, maybe Chessy, you can open because earlier in the last class I was thinking to go through the name but we couldn’t go through if I keep talking, we might also skip or reach.
King of Prayers
The Extraordinary Aspiration of the Practice of Samantabhadra
Samantabhadracaryā pranidhānaraja
‘phag-pa zang-po chö-pe mön-lam-gyi gyal-po’
‘The Extraordinary Aspiration of the Practice of Samantabhadra’, it says. First we will go through the name, in English, it says that ‘The extraordinary aspiration of the practice of Samantabhadra’, but in Sanskrit, the name Samantabhadracaryā pranidhānaraja. So I’ll explain each point which is very important to understand, I’ll explain by looking at the Tibetan version, it would be easier for me. So here first day you see, Samantabhadra, Zang-po chö-pe [བཟང་པོ་ སྤྱོ ད་པའི།], generally, the Samantabhadra is a name of the Bodhisattva who said this prayer when Sudhana requested to teach him the way to practice after expiring or after promising or after aspiring to achieve Buddhahood. Sudhana was looking “what other practices that I’m supposed to practice?”. Then after lots of teachers, at the end he met with Bodhisattva Samantabhadra. Samantabhadra gave these teachings but still the name itself, Samantabhadra is actually, here it just left Samantabhadra itself, but Samantabhadra in Tibetan we call Kun-tu zang-po [ཀུན་ཏུ་བཟང་པོ།]. Kun-tu zang-po is positive from all the aspects or good from all the aspects, bhadra is good, Samantabhadra is good from all the aspects. Caryā is sort of a conduct, and also when you say engaging into the Bodhisattva’s way of life or engaging to the Bodhisattva’s practices, caryā can be a practice, but it is more of a conduct, here caryā it can be a caryā of body, caryā of speech and caryā of mind, the conduct or the behavior or conduct of body, speech and mind. So that is arya.
But in English, as you can see, there is extraordinary but in most of the time, you also see ‘phag-pa’[འཕགས་པ།], ‘Samantabhadracaryā pranidhānaraja’, the Sankrist I can’t see arya here. But in Tibetan, when you write below, is the Tibetan word with p,h,a,g, ‘phag-pa’. Here you can see, ‘phag-pa’ means arya. Arya in English is extraordinary. There are many good conducts in this world, everybody has some good conducts in some ways where is from body, speak and the mind, but here it is talking about extraordinary good conduct, not just ordinary good conduct but extraordinary. The reason why these are extraordinary, because these are good conducts that Bodhisattvas perform, not in an ordinary way, these are the good conducts. Among good conducts, these are very special, so that’s why these are good conduct which is extraordinary.
Then you can say pranidhāna, pranidhāna is more like the prayer or aspiration, you can say, but more of a prayer since we call it ‘the King of Prayer’, in Tibetan, we call it ‘mön-lam’ [སྨོན་ལམ།], so ‘mön-lam’ is the prayer, it is what it means. ‘Gyi’ is of and then ‘gyal po’ [གྱི་རྒྱལ་པོ།], in Sanskrit you can see raja at the end, so raja is, even nowadays, even in Hindi Indian language, it means ‘the King’.
As I said Samantabhadra arya, the reason why it called arya is because the caryā is a conduct, the conduct of body, mind, and speech, the reason why it called arya is because these are extraordinary conduct.
The reason why it is called pranidhāna or a prayer, the reason why it’s called prayer, because it is true that Samantabhadra gave this instruction so that Sudhana can understand the practices that you should practice in order to achieve Buddhahood. But the Sudhana thought all these in the form of prayer, so why this is called pranidhāna.
And then the raja, this is called ‘King of the Prayers’, among the prayers this is like a King. The reason why it is being known as the King it is because it includes all the extensive and profound practices of Bodhisattvas. There are lots of prayers where some prayers focus on some specific practices, but here in these texts you’re going to find the practices of Bodhisattvas, not just a partial practices or focus on some specific points of the practices, but here it is talking about all the extensive and profound practices of the Bodhisattvas in the form of prayers, the practices of body, mind and speech.
So this is what the name itself means, but of course this is just the name and the reason why the name is so very important is to find the sutra. For example, even for a human if we were not given any name, then it is really difficult to know who you are talking about. You have to mention this, this, this and this or a son of this father, son of that mother who lived there, who have these, who have a long hair, short hair, etc… you have to explain lots of features in order to mention a person, if you don’t label a person a name. So this is the reason in order to know the subject easily, the system of name is there, because of the name that we have ‘car’, otherwise if somebody don’t know the name ‘car’ then you have to explain that the one who run, they have one with 4 wheels, there’s something smaller, da da and da, something which is this, something which is this, you have to explain like one page.
So instead of that, the reason why we give the name is because of that. Although the name of this sutra was not mentioned by Samantabhadra or no, this name is in the sutras, but still the name is very important because of that.
འཇམ་དཔལ་གཞོན་ནུར་གྱུར་པ་ལ་ཕྱག་འཚལ་ལོ།
JAM PAL SHYÖN NUR GYUR PA LA CHAK TSAL LO
‘I bow down to the youthful Arya Manjushri’.
So then comes ‘I bow down to the youthful Arya Manjushri’. This is again not in the sutra, but this is something that the translator has added, and again, the reason why the translator has added this is because when you translate such a sutra from Sanskrit to Tibetan language, the English version is being translated from Tibetan, the Tibetan has been translated from original Sanskrit. The translators in the past when they translate certain books from Sanskrit, it is more like they pay homage to their own deity sometimes, sometimes they pay homage to the Buddhas and Boddhisattvas, the Manjushri or to the all knowing Buddha.
The reason according to the different subjects, I won’t go too much details into that, but here the translators they bow down, they pay homage or they prostrate to the youthful Arya Manjushri. The reason why they call ‘youthful’ is like this is how they visualize Arya Manjushri and some of the great practitioners have seen Arya Manjushri in a youthful manner, and even in some texts we talk about the youthful Manjushri, actually Manjushri is in a God form, so of course it’s in a youthful form. Arya is extraordinary, that’s what it means. Manjushri is the Buddha of wisdom.
The reason why they pay homage is because so that the translation, the works of translation go smoothly, and also it is a sort of a culture in the past in Tibet or in India before they do some important work, they pay homage to Buddha, Dharma or Sangha. So this is sort of a culture as well, but again, this is not the actual sutra. The actual sutra starts below that.
When we go through the actual sutra, the actual sutra explains generally by putting into the four categories, so I will also go through the four categories. The whole sutra can be divided into 4 four parts:
- The first part of the sutra is talking about how to accumulate merits and how to purify the past negative karma and the reason for why this comes at the beginning of this sutra is because this is a prayer so it is very important to accumulate merits and purify the past negative karmas so that all your prayers comes true.
- The following are prayers so that all the wishes that we made in the following prayers, so then all of those accomplish or come true. It is very important to purify the past negative karmas and accumulate lots of merits and to accumulate merits and purify the past negative karmas there is nothing. None of the practice is better than the seven branches of practices. So the seven branches of practices are:
-
- First one is ‘chag tsal wa’ [ཕྱག་འཚལ་བ།], the first one is prostration,
- Second one is offerings.
- The third one is confession or purification.
- The fourth one is rejoicing other good qualities.
- The fifth one is requesting Buddha to give teaching.
- The sixth one is requesting Buddhas to live long.
- And the seven one is dedication.
So through these seven points or seven branches, the first part concludes: the first part which is accumulating merits and purifying negative, the practices of accumulating merits and purifying negative karmas so that all the wishes that is in this prayer comes true.
This is the first part among the four parts, so whole sutra has been divided. So the first part which is been divided into seven; by in the seven prayers, seven branches of the practices, the first one is prostration, paying homage or a prostration. The prostration itself is divided into two. The first verse is the prostration from body, mind, speech altogether, so then the prostration of the body, the second verse, the prostration of the mind, the third verse, and the prostration of the speech, the fourth verse.
Among these four, we will go through the first one today. Hopefully we can go a bit more, let’s see. The first one it says:
‘You lions among humans,
Gone to freedom in the present, past and future
In the worlds of ten directions,
To all of you, with body, speech, and sincere mind, I bow down’.
So let me look at the Tibetan version. All right here it says:
༡ ༽ ཇི་སྙེད་སུ་དག་ཕྱོགས་བཅུའི་འཇིག་རྟེན་ན།
1) JI NYE SU DAK CHOK CHÜ JIK TEN NA
དུས་གསུམ་གཤེགས་པ་མི་ཡི་སེང་གེ་ཀུན།
DÜ SUM SHEK PA MI YI SENGE KÜN
བདག་གིས་མ་ལུས་དེ་དག་ཐམས་ཅད་ལ།
DAK GI MA LÜ DE DAK THAM CHÉ LA
ལུས་དང་ངག་ཡིད་དང་བས་ཕྱག་བགྱིའོ།
LÜ DANG NGAK YI DANG WE CHAK GYI O
I better just go on with the English. ‘You lions among human’, here it is, of course, a prostration part. Now the reason why among the seven limbs of practices, the prostration is the antidote of ego and pride. And these practices have been practiced in all the parts or in all the branches of Buddhism, let’s say. This is something that is also been practiced in other religions and they might have their own explanation, but the Buddhist practice prostration is to reduce the ego and pride, to bow down is to reduce the ego and pride. It is one of the physical therapy, when you bow down physically, is a physical therapy to train your mind to respect others, to be humble and do not to have ego and pride.
I’m not sure how it is outside India, but in India many people have these in thought that “OK, I’m a King of this part, so there is no, I will never bend down in front of others because I’m a King, I’m a head of the village so I’m not going to bend my head before somebody else” so they show a sort of ego and pride. In a place like Japan to show their humbleness or even to greet they bow down, it’s a very good way. Also in India, they touch the feet of the parents, but this is a gesture of humbleness and this is a very good physical therapy to reduce one’s ego and pride.
Here is a bow down or a prostration with body, speech and mind, again here the physical respect of bowing down is a physical paying homage, practice of paying homage. And the speech saying polite words and talking in very respectful manner and also saying that “I pay homage to you”. These all comes into the prostration of speech and the prostration of mind is to respecting others and seeing others as superior than yourself, more important than yourself and also to feel humble in front of others. So these are the prostration of mind.
And these are again, if the prostration is to reduce ego and pride then why it is not just as an antidote, why it is not just the prostration of mind, why there is need of prostration of body and speech? From one point, this is a physical therapy and verbal therapy to affect the mind and from another perspective to purify the negative karmas out of ego we might have done lots of negative with our body and speech. Because of the ego, we don’t bend down in front of others, we don’t respect teachers, we don’t respect elders, we don’t respect our parents who sacrifice pretty much or everything of them.
And also, because of the ego, you might have cheated others, because of ego you might have harmed others physically. To purify those negative karmas is very important to practice the prostration physically and also there are huge benefits of that which we will go below.
The prostration of speech is also very important because we might have out of the motivation of ego and pride, we might hurt others by saying something wrong, or something which is not good or even saying something which might be true but it with the intention to hurt others. So to purify those negative karmas that we have accumulated in the past is very important to practice the prostration of speech.
Here the first verse about that and then the reason why it is called with body, speech and mind we are paying homage to Buddhas. So the first line is more of to whom we are prostrating that ‘you lions among humans’, Dü sum shek pa mi yi senge kün [དུས་གསུམ་གཤེགས་པ་མི་ཡི་སེང་གེ་ཀུན།] in Tibetan and here it talks about the object of prostration is the Buddhas who are like the lions among humans. The reason why they are like lions because lion is considered, I’m not sure, still considered a King of forest, a King among the animals, but in ancient time, at those time, lions are considered as the fearless or the strongest, I’m not sure, the strongest one, but most probably, the most brave and fearless one among the animals, which is why Buddhas are like the most brave and mentally most powerful among humans.
The reason why they are powerful is because they don’t have to fear of the emotions anymore, they’re not controlled by negative afflictive emotions, they’re not controlled by karmas and destructive emotions. So they don’t fear of any consequences because all they do is positive actions and then positive action only bring happiness. So there is no fear of suffering or a pain because they eliminate the causes of that for the sake of all the benefits. So that’s why Buddhas are like ‘the lions among humans’.
The reason why it says ‘humans’ because humans are the most suitable boat, human body is the most suitable boat to get rid of the ocean of Samsara. Among the humans, Buddhas are the best, like the lion or the king, this is what it refers to and it also shows the object of prostration.
The second line shows ‘Gone to freedom in the past, present and future’. Here not just the Buddha, historical Buddha, we are doing the prostration to the Buddha, now which Buddha? The second line shows which Buddha during this prostration and I’m talking about the second line of English version, of course, in Tibetan it comes at the first line [Ji nye su dak chok chu jik ten na – ཇི་སྙེད་སུ་དག་ཕྱོགས་བཅུའི་འཇིག་རྟེན་ན།]
‘Gone to freedom in the present, past and future’, it is talking about not just the historical Buddha, not just the Buddha of the past, but also the present Buddha. The Buddha of the past means that before Buddha Shakyamuni came to this world, there are many other Buddhas who also have been to this world. So “I also prostrate to those Buddhas” and of course, Buddha Shakyamuni is the present one, and also there will be many Buddhas in the future currently in the form of Bodhisattvas. So “I prostrate to all those Buddhas who went into freedom”, freedom from two afflictive obscurations. All the Buddhas who not only of the past or present, but even to the Buddhas of the future.
If somebody may wonder, yeah, Buddha of past, present and future, but of which world I’m talking about? This world or earth that we are living because this earth that we are living also have the present, past and future Buddhas? So to clarify that ‘In the worlds of ten directions’, it is not just this earth that we are living where there are humans, there are also other worlds where humans exist, there are many countless worlds where sentient beings exist. So past, present and future Buddhas, not just of this world, but the countless worlds of ten directions.
Now here, ten directions is four directions East, West, North, South and the four between East and South, South and West, West and North, North and East, so between that there is one direction which makes eight directions and the nineth and the tenth ones is the up and down, the worlds above and the worlds below. The reason why they call it ten directions is because instead of saying all the directions, all the directions including the ten directions, so there are many sutras where they use it quite often just to make sure in a simple body, it means that the past, present and future Buddha, all the worlds that exist not just in one universe but in everywhere.
So ‘To all of you (to all of the Buddhas) with body, speech and mind, sincere mind, I bow down’. Here is like ‘chag tsal wa’ [ཕྱག་འཚལ་བ།], here is like a bow down, I don’t know how to dig it out, in Tibetan we call it ‘chag tsal wa’, the English word is bow down, in Tibetan we have ‘chag tsal wa’ which holds a very profound meaning, ‘chag’ is more like hand, ‘tsal wa’ is I’m trying to achieve or I’m looking forward, I’m desiring to achieve. So bow down, in Tibetan we call ‘chag tsal wa’, which literally means ‘I’m looking forward or I am desiring to achieve the qualities that you have in your hand for what purpose to achieve such a qualities that you have, so that I can benefit all sentient beings’.
This is what you translate, sometimes you lose a lot of meanings, so this is the reason why I’m looking at the Tibetan version so that I can clarify those. So anyways ‘I bow down’ means, it is true that, in a direct word, in a very simple word, I bow down, I pay respect to you, I prostrate or I pay homage, that’s all it means. But actually the Tibetan words or ‘chag tsal wa’, the Tibetan word ‘bow down’ mean ‘I am seeking the qualities that you have’, and the underlying meaning is ‘to achieve your qualities’.
So if you are a Mahayana practitioner to benefit all the sentient beings that comes along as a flow of motivation or a thought, here the reason why is it paying homage to one Buddha, why there is a need to pay homage to ten Buddhas or 15 Buddhas or here it talks about the Buddhas of the ten directions like it literally means the countless Buddhas, to all the Buddhas of the past, the present and also all the Buddhas that come to exist in the future. Now the reason why they say this is because to pay homage to one Buddha is a way it helps to accumulate countless merits, but imagine how strong and how powerful, how many number of strong merits you will be able to accumulate if you pay homage to the countless Buddhas of 10 directions not just of the present time but also of the past and future times.
So this is a sort of a technique that bodhisattvas apply in their practice, even if they might do one prostration, they might say one bowing down, they might do one prayer, but the prayer that they do is there literally manifesting or thinking or imagining the countless of Buddhas that you are protrasting, that you’re bowing down so that you accumulate a number of the Buddhas, you accumulate merits as the number of Buddhas.
So by understanding this as a Buddhist practitioner, as the Mahayana Buddhist practitioner, I think these are the techniques in the ways to accumulate a lot of merits in a very small time. It might be taking a lot of time for words, but this is how monks are learning and this is how it is important to understand. You may understand small but very clearly so that you can implant or you can utilize, you can put in your daily practice. So this is very important to understand very clearly.
There is all about practices and by understanding in this manner, I’m sure you will not just be able to practice or pray but also to put into your day to day life practice. So with this I would like to conclude today’s class, thank you very much.
So yes, maybe just one verse of the prayer, my prayers from Dharamshala to all of you.
Thank you very much.
Source.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zTkn1NquWSK7GjvzOwuKBvHxO8jQ9t5o/view?usp=sharing