What's in a Prayer?

What’s in a prayer?
JJ Chong

In different faiths and beliefs, we all have one common thing called prayer. What is it really? A means of communication with the Divine or is it something which we can do in order to let a higher or bigger force come into our lives? Each of these prayers sum up a mass of energy when tapped correctly and is able to help solve some of our pending mundane and supramundane problems.

Within our lineage and practice is Lama Tsongkhapa’s Guru Yoga. A lot of our members here have come week in and week out to attend meditation classes based on this lovely composition. I would like to share with you my craze over this beautiful deity whom I call Buddha Je Tsongkhapa. It is not a craze really; it is more like life in itself.

\When I first met my Guru in 2003, His first teaching to me was the Guru Yoga of Lama Tsongkhapa. Back then I didn’t know who Tsongkhapa was and how was it related to other deities of Buddhism. Why was he so different? Why the yellow pointy hat? Why can’t I just do my own practice and say my Namo Amituofo? All these thoughts soon derailed in my mind.

What Lama Tsongkhapa embodies is the every single perfection which we all have within ourselves! We want love and security, Lama Tsongkhapa who is the embodiment of Kuan Yin can bestow us 

with the necessary love and care which cannot be found elsewhere. How? It is simple yet profound, when we do this practice, we evoke on the power of Kuan Yin through Lama Tsongkhapa. This enables us to seek peace with ourselves by facing our insecurities and creating causes for us to love and be loved.

We are able to free ourselves from the obscurations we implicated onto ourselves whether it is via our conscious actions or even if it is inflicted by karma. Lama Tsongkhapa releases the energies of boundless love which is free of the Ego and blesses us to gain that same type of selfless love. By virtue of practice, obstacles will arise and we will feel disillusioned sometimes as we are thrown off track but in faith we should rely on and persevere. I believe that potent medicines are never nice to be taken, only with bitterness one can obtain a higher chance of cure. Don’t u think  so?

I do my daily prayers with meditations of Lama Tsongkhapa with the following eight verses which helps me a lot in my daily undertakings:

Eight Verses of Training The Mind

(By Kadampa Geshe Langri Tangpa 1054 – 1123)

With the determination to accomplish
The highest welfare for all sentient beings
Who surpass even a wish-granting jewel
I will learn to hold them supremely dear.

Whenever I associate with others I will learn
To think of myself as the lowest among all
And respectfully hold others to be supreme
From the very depths of my heart

In all actions I will learn to search into my mind
And as soon as an afflictive emotion arises
Endangering myself and others
I will firmly face and avert it.

I will learn to cherish all beings of bad nature
And those pressed by strong sins and sufferings
As if I had found a precious
Treasure very difficult to find

When others out of jealousy treat me badly
With abuse, slander, and so on,
May I suffer the defeat
And offer the victory to them

When one whom I have benefited with great hope
Unreasonably hurts me very badly,
I will learn to view that person
As an excellent spiritual guide.

In short, I will learn to offer to everyone without exception
All help and happiness directly and indirectly
And respectfully take upon myself
All harm and suffering of my mothers.

I will learn to keep all these practices 

Undefiled by the stains of the eight worldly conceptions
And by the understanding of all phenomena as like illusions
Be released from the bondage of attachment.

I will blog this another time but for now. We can do our daily meditations and have a better outline to get our prayers going more effectively.