These prayers are now available to listen to under the Audio/ Video tab… and now include the introductions you’ll find below.
If we’re trying to join two pieces of wood together… then hammering a screw into them is not likely to be effective…and likewise, we’d use a different approach and tools if joining steel plates.
The more we learn about the nature of the material … alongside that which tools to use and how to use them, the easier the task becomes.
And just as with the tangible tools of the world, each dharma tool or method we use has a particular function and an effective way to use it.
These prayers are like tools for opening… to the open…
The introductions James has written for them explains their function, their meaning, maybe their provenance…and so are invaluable for their effective use.
Some introductions, like these two, are like prayers in themselves …
The Aspiration of the Vajra Knot
This prayer is a brief summary of the path…emphasising our wish never to be separated from the dharma.
The fourth stanza points to the heart of our tantric practice:
Whatever appears is forever inseparable from the ever-changing net of illusion.
All sounds are the ungraspable sound of mantra.
The movements of our mind are actually our own uncreated awareness.
May we fully open to the infinite happiness which is neither gained nor lost.
The more frequently we can recite the precious words of this aspiration written by the great Mingling Terchen, the more the mutually collaborative aspects of our practices will become clear.
Through this aspiration the blessing of the path is absorbed through our body, voice and mind preparing us to meet the Lotus Born.
The Prayer of Aspiration Which is a Wish-Fulfilling Jewel
This is a treasure terma spoken by Padmasambhava, then hidden, and later revealed by Rigdzin Godem. It begins with the confessing of mistake made during practice.
When you recite it you can also add any other errors that you are conscious of in your practice.
The root of the many different ways we cannot fulfil our intention to practise correctly is set out in the seventh stanza:
“I and all sentient beings without exception, from the beginning of this great aeon until now have been drawn to the karmic activity of grasping at appearances as if they were substantial entities.
Due to this we have gone under the power of the five poisons, have broken our vows and insulted the Dharma.
We humbly confess these actions which have become obstacles to our liberation.”
All merit and demerit arises from the orientations of our mind.
Once we turn away from the actual, delusion corrupts our intention like sewage released into a river.
Until we are fully enlightened we need to be vigilant in purifying the errors and stains arising from reification and attachment.
Then, as Buddhas, the purification of all will be our ceaseless activity.
May we gain the merit and wisdom that will let us benefit others by our mere presence, just as Padmasambhava is able to do.
It comes to an end with the aspiration that we will purify the five poisons so that their true qualities of great happiness, great love, benign control, great peace, and helpful activity become effortlessly apparent.
By frequently reciting this prayer we immerse ourselves in the tantric Buddhist tradition and thereby soften our self-affirming ego-structure… so that we become sensitive, pliable and responsive in the service of others.
Once as a young child at school, one break-time as a punishment, I had to write out the lines…’I must not skip in line’ one hundred times. The line was a crocodile of children walking in pairs from the school to the church hall where we eat our lunch.
Though my typing is so much slower than my writing…typing this out was another good reminder…and writing it out or saying-praying it a hundred times, could be a good use of time…
Thanks to the dharma we may skip down the road… metaphorically if not physically, perhaps enjoying both…working with circumstances and easing out of fusion with constricting karmic knots…
Image…thanks to Pedro…an edited screen shot from one of his video introductions