There is no way to navigate across the river to the ‘Further Shore’… or cross the ‘Ocean of Samsara’… using the map we found in our hands when we first started out on this journey.
That map only shows the land-locked features which are taken to be significant in samsara…and the routes which our habits, inflected by our conditioning, might take either towards or away from them.

These are routes and features which are personalised, individually highlighted…seemingly ‘for us’.
So to find and take other routes which don’t feel familiar… where we feel incompetent, where there are no star charts to indicate progress, where the destination is not another place… is not easy.

However although it’s far easier to continue with the old map we’ve been using for years, lifetime after lifetime…you know – the one with ‘me’ at the centre – as with the geographical world-map we’re most used to…the reference point and intention affect the projection … and distortion is the inevitable result . With distortion there is tension… and thus we keep wandering in samsara.

Latterly new projections of the world-map have emerged. Each shifts the reference points and the perception offered…just as when we engage with different dharma teachings we alter the lenses and the perspective with which we view our world.

Although they are vital and helpful, no dharma teacher can download and replace the out of date maps we’re using…they can show us it’s possible, give us methods and much more…but it we who have to engage reflect and apply, working with our tendencies and what we can access of what’s offered to us.

Being recovering samsaraholics our efforts and success in this are a bit variable to say the least.
It’s a bit like the first time I had too much to drink, when I could clearly see that the tables on one side of the pub were taller than on the other side…so best thing to do in such an unusual situation seemed to be to walk at an inclination between the two… : ) …not exactly a position of equipoise!

What we have in this next sutra, the Aspiration for Pure Discernment, is a dharma transmission directly from the openness, through one manifestation of Padmasambhava to another…and another… to us – to help us to navigate in as a straight a line as we may… in the direction ‘Home’…

It highlights the wrong turns and cul-de sacs we are likely to encounter en-route…and the consequences of falling asleep at the wheel.
The pot-holes and pit-falls which will inhibit us from realising our inherent potential are illuminated… and the straight ways and good surfaces which will help us… are clearly laid out.

These dharma reference points are so valuable…without the reliable route…and the bogs… being marked for us on our dharma route map…we would be hopeless lost.
The title of this prayer says it all….it’s The Prayer by which one Recognises ones own Faults and Remembers one’s Refuge together with a Repentant Confession and Rectification and a Very Pure Aspiration to be very clear about what is to be Adopted and what is to be Abandoned.

The Colophon should make us sit bolt upright with full attention …
The urgency of the lady’s request for this prayer arises from a profound sense of its necessity for the welfare of we dharma-practitioners…
and it’s from our requests, and to our need …that the dharma responds so clearly

The recording was completed during the night of the full moon… 1st August 2023

Thanks to Sean for the photo from which this was taken