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.
At the beginning of this class, Geshe la once again returns to His Holiness’s book of Daily Inspirations, taking the inspiration for October 4th on impermanence. Challenges are bound to happen, Geshe la says, because our life is a product of the afflictions and karma. But no matter how difficult the situation, and here Geshe la gives the example of the Coronavirus pandemic, we need to remind ourselves that all the difficulties we face are transitory, impermanent, and won’t stay for ever.
Turning to our main text, The King of Prayers, Geshe la continues discussing the benefits of holding the aspirations we’ve been studying, both in this life and future lives (verses 51 to 54), which include being purified from the five immediate retributions or misdeeds and having both internal and external beauty in a future life. These headings are:
The Thirteen Benefits in Detail.
The Benefits in Brief
He ends by looking at first two of a number of ways we can dedicate the good work we have done (verses 55 and 56), under the headings:
The Dedication that Follows the Bodhisattvas
The Dedication that Follows the Buddhas
It was good to see you live and on Facebook, and we hope you will join us again on Sunday 21st March at 2.15pm for a 2.30pm start.
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/