Chanted Prayers

If you enjoy meditating with others, chanted prayers are a great opportunity for you to engage in group meditation. These chanted prayers are also known in Sanskrit as "pujas", meaning "offering", or as "sadhanas", which means "method for receiving attainments".

All our prayers and meditation practices are recited in English with beautiful, easy-to-learn melodies and CD accompaniment. (Listen to an audio sample.) We recommend that you arrive about fifteen minutes early to be seated and relaxed at the start of the session. For prayers with tsog offerings, it is useful to arrive a half hour early to help set up offerings.

These spiritual practices create a strong connection with the Buddhas, and help us purify our negativity and fill our mind with positive, healing energy.

Pujas are open to everyone and you may sit on a chair or cushion.

Heart Jewel/Wishfulfilling Jewel

In this practice we combine the practice of one of the 21 Lamrim (Stages of the Path) meditations with Heart Jewel or Wishfulfilling Jewel sadhana. This is the very essence of the New Kadampa Tradition of Mahayana Buddhism.

This sadhana includes two practices revealed by the Wisdom Buddha Manjushri. The first is a special Guru yoga in which we visualize our Spiritual Guide as Je Tsongkhapa, who himself is a manifestation of Manjushri. By relying upon this practice, we can purify negativity, accumulate merit, and receive blessings.

The second practice is a method for relying upon the Dharma Protector Dorje Shugdän. Through this, we can overcome obstacles to our practice and create favourable conditions so that we can nurture and increase our Dharma realizations.

Offering to the Spiritual Guide

Special chanted prayers with making prostrations, offerings, and sincere requests to our glorious Spiritual Guide to increase our compassion, wisdom and spiritual power. The essence of Guru yoga is to develop a strong conviction that our Spiritual Guide is a Buddha, to make prostrations, offerings, and sincere requests to him or her, and then to receive his or her profound blessings.

According to the Guru yoga of Offering to the Spiritual Guide, we develop conviction that our Spiritual Guide is the same nature as Je Tsongkhapa, who is an emanation of the Wisdom Buddha Manjushri.

By relying upon Je Tsongkhapa, our compassion, wisdom, and spiritual power naturally increase. In particular, because Je Tsongkhapa is an emanation of the Wisdom Buddha Manjushri, his faithful followers never experience difficulty in increasing their wisdom.

Melodious Drum

By chanting a long prayer and making offerings, we request our Dharama Protectors to purify our transgression of downfalls, remove obstacles, fulfill our wishes and attain Dharma realizations at the end of every month.

A Dharma Protector is an emanation of a Buddha or a Bodhisattva whose main functions are to avert the inner and outer obstacles that prevent practitioners from gaining spiritual realizations, and to arrange all the necessary conditions for their practice. Beings in this present time have a strong karmic link with Dorje Shugdän, and so he is the Dharma Protector who is most able to help them. Therefore it is said that, Now is the time to rely upon Dorje Shugdän. Dorje Shugdän always helps, guides, and protects pure and faithful practitioners by granting blessings, increasing their wisdom, fulfilling their wishes, and bestowing success on all their virtuous activities. 

Precepts

The practice of taking and keeping the eight Mahayana precepts is a special practice of moral discipline that        is performed with a strong motivation to benefit others.     In this practice, we take eight precepts and vow to keep them purely for a period of twenty-four hours.  In so doing, we acquaint ourself with the practice of pure moral  discipline and thereby make our human life meaningful.

 

Quick Path to Great Bliss

Vajrayogini self-generation sadhana

In many respects the practice of Vajrayogini is ideally suited to the present day. By relying upon this practice sincerely, with a good heart and a mind of faith, it is definitely possible to attain full enlightenment; but to accomplish such results we must practise the extensive sadhana regularly. This particular sadhana, Quick Path to Great Bliss, was composed by the great Lama Phabongkha Rinpoche. It contains all the essential practices of Secret Mantra. To practise the sadhana successfully we should first receive the empowerment of Vajrayogini, and then study authentic instructions on the practice such as those found in the book Guide to Dakini Land. This sadhana is suitable both for our regular daily practice and for retreat; and we can practise it alone or in a group. Open only to those who have received Vajrayogini Empowerment.

Dakini Yoga

Six-session Guru yoga combined with self-generation as Vajrayogini

Everyone who has received a Highest Yoga Tantra empowerment has a commitment to practise six-session Guru yoga. This six-session yoga has been specially arranged for those who have received a Vajrayogini empowerment. Six-session yoga can be practised in different ways according to our ability and how much time we have. If we are new to the practice, or if we are very busy, we can keep our basic commitments by reciting the Condensed Six-session Yoga according to the instructions given in the second section of this sadhana. If we have more time, we can recite the main six-session practice, Dakini Yoga, for one session, and the Condensed Six-session Yoga for the remaining five sessions. We can then gradually increase this according to our time and ability, until eventually we are able to recite Dakini Yoga in all six sessions. When we have the time, it is very helpful to read through the vows and commitments listed in the third section of this sadhana.

Green Tara

Tara is a female Buddha, a manifestation of the ultimate wisdom of all the Buddhas. Each of the Twenty-one Taras is a manifestation of the principal Tara, Green Tara. If we rely upon Mother Tara sincerely and with strong faith she will protect us from all obstacles and fulfil all our wishes.

Since she is a wisdom Buddha, and since she is a manifestation of the completely purified wind element, Tara is able to help us very quickly. If we recite the twenty-one verses of praise we shall receive inconceivable benefits. These praises are very powerful because they are Sutra, the actual words of Buddha. It is good to recite them as often as we can.

Meditation & Recitation of Solitary Vajrasattva

Any living being, even a worm or an insect, can commit negative actions; but only humans have the fortune to be able to purify them. We have been accumulating non-virtuous actions and experiencing their suffering results since beginningless time; but now we have an opportunity to purify them completely.

Since purification is the root of future happiness and spiritual realizations, we should strive to cleanse our mind of delusion and negative karma by practising this sadhana. This is a very powerful method of purification. 

Avalokiteshvara

Avalokiteshvara is an enlightened being who is a manifestation of all Buddhas' compassion. He is known as the Buddha of Compassion. This practice of thousand-armed Avalokiteshvara is very powerful for purifying negative karma of body, speech, and mind, and for pacifying strong delusions such as desirous attachment and hatred. It is also a special method for receiving blessings and improving our experience of love, compassion, and bodhichitta.

 

Powa Practice

In general, transference of consciousness, or powa, involves the mind leaving the body and going to a higher state through the force of meditation. Thus, when we are training in powa we are learning to separate our mind from our body through meditation. Although it is sometimes said that successful powa training will gradually shorten one’s life span, the training presented in this sadhana poses no such danger.

 

Purification Practice

In our previous lives, while under the influence of deluded minds, we created a great deal of negative karma, and we also transgressed our commitments and incurred root and secondary downfalls. As a result, we now experience difficulties in developing faith and conviction in Dharma and in making progress on the stages of the path to enlightenment. Moreover, if we do not purify all this negativity while we have the chance, we shall have to experience great suffering in the future.

One of the best methods for purifying negativities and downfalls is the Mahayana Sutra of the Three Superior Heaps, otherwise known as The Bodhisattva's Confession of Moral Downfalls, or the Bodhisattva Mahayana Confession Sutra.

Prajnaparamita

Great Mother Prajnaparamita is a female Buddha who is the manifestation of Buddha's perfection of wisdom. Her function is to overcome maras - the outer and inner obstructing demons - and to bestow the realization of the higher perfection of wisdom. Through sincere practice of the yoga of the Great Mother Prajnaparamita we can accomplish the perfection of wisdom and become an enlightened being. How wonderful!

 

Vajrapani

This sadhana, a method to accomplish the attainment of the enlightened state of Vajrapani, can be practiced by those who have received the empowerment of Buddha Vajrapani. During the empowerment we receive the special blessings of this Buddha upon our continually residing body, speech and mind. For these blessings not to degenerate, and to make progress in our training in common and uncommon paths, we need to practice this sadhana with clear understanding of its profound meaning.

Through sincerely practising the self-generation of Buddha Vajrapani with the compassionate mind of bodhichitta we can heal both ourself and others. Finally, we shall attain the supreme happiness of enlightenment.

Prayers for Meditation

We all have the potential to gain realizations of all the stages of the path to enlightenment. These potentials are like seeds in the field of our mind, and our meditation practice is like cultivating these seeds. However, our meditation practice will be successful only if we make good preparations beforehand.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chanted Prayers