The Buddhist tradition of making pilgrimages began with Buddha Shakyamuni, who advised that when he passed away, disciples could visit four main sites and make aspirational prayers there. He advised that all Buddhas of the past had…
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Guru devotion is the heart of spiritual practice in Tibetan Buddhism. Without it, we would make very little progress in our spiritual practice. Below is advice from Tsem Rinpoche on the importance of keeping good samaya with the guru.
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The community of Kechara Forest Retreat has been spending a lot of time every day at the Tsem Rinpoche Incarnation Chapel engaging in recitations of powerful mantras and dharanis on-site. This is done following sacred instructions from His Eminence Kensur Rinpoche Lobsang Phende of Shar Gaden Monastery…
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This advice was given to the Kechara Forest Retreat team in 2015 by our Dharma Protector Dorje Shugden. It is shared here as it is applicable to everyone who wishes to advance in their spiritual practice and maintain a supreme Guru-Disciple relationship with their own teachers.
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A spiritual checklist can keep you moving forward, ensuring that you’re always working towards your long-term Dharmic aspirations. The good thing about checklists is that they are easy to create. Here’s a sample to help you get started.
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If you have a pile of old or damaged Buddhist texts, Dharma materials or images that you no longer need, it’s important to dispose of them in the correct way. Watch the video for a method to dissolve and discard Dharma items that you don’t want to keep.
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It was always Rinpoche’s wish to construct a stupa of Tulku Drakpa Gyaltsen to create the causes for the lineage of Dorje Shugden to flourish. The Stupa will enshrine the precious relics of Tulku Drakpa Gyaltsen and his previous incarnations…
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Through the act of prostrating and taking refuge in the Three Jewels, we can purify our negative actions accumulated through our body, speech and mind. We purify karma accumulated from our body because our body is engaged in the act of something holy, which is the prostration itself. As we do the prostration and recite the refuge prayer “Namo Guru Beh, Namo Buddha Ya, Namo Dharma Ya, Namo Sangha Ya”, we are purifying the karma that we have accumulated from our speech. Finally, when we prostrate, there is a visualisation that accompanies the prostration.
Physically, prostrations benefit our body by increasing our endurance and purifying the negative body karma that causes diseases and illnesses. On a spiritual level, prostrations benefit our mind. For countless lifetimes, our actions and thinking have revolved around ourselves, namely, what we want to do, where we want to eat, what we want to study, how to be rich, how to be famous, etc. This habitual thinking makes us very well-practised at being self-centred. It is not our fault. We just have not been trained or taught in any other ways.
In a prostration retreat, we continuously prostrate and “lower ourselves”. Gradually, we will understand the need to modify our mindset and to destroy our ego. As we become less self-centric, we naturally open ourselves up more, and for those on the spiritual path, this increases our ability to absorb the Dharma.
Given the effectiveness of prostrations in purifying the karma of body, speech and mind, these are teachings on prostrations given by Tsem Rinpoche to a group of students before they embarked on a group retreat to accomplish 100,000 prostrations. These guidelines can be followed for all group or individual prostration retreats now and in the future.
As you engage in any retreat or Dharma activity, you should hold your motivation at the highest level. It is very, very important that you engage in Dharma practice free from the eight worldly concerns. This is an excellent guide for you to check your motivation.
You should also constantly contemplate on the benefits of engaging in Dharma work and activity. You should think that you are engaging in this retreat to transform your mind, purify your karma, create merits for your spiritual attainments and ultimately, be of benefit to many people.
To be free of the eight worldly concerns, you should avoid the following:
Throughout the retreat, you should maintain very clean and good samaya with your guru. Clean samaya with the guru is of utmost importance in the beginning, middle and end of any Dharma activity and practice.
If you are engaging in a group retreat with fellow Dharma students, you should be very harmonious and maintain good samaya with each other too. As you are collecting merits and purifying group karma collectively, group harmony, cooperation, sincerity and your united goals and motivation will help greatly to make your retreat more effective, powerful and meritorious.
Before you start doing the retreat, you should prepare a beautiful altar with representations of the Buddha’s body, speech and mind. This is so that when you do your prostrations, you are prostrating to the Buddha’s body, speech and mind, thus creating the causes to attain the same. You should place on your altar:
You should ensure that the place of the retreat is cleaned very well. Make offerings on your altar such as water offerings, eight sensory offerings, flowers, light or anything you think is beautiful. The more extensive your offerings the better.
If you are doing a group retreat with colleagues or fellow students, do not chatter idly or make jokes.
Sit in front of your altar and consciously think of why you are doing this practice, such as for purifying negative karma, creating merit to support your spiritual work, attainments and understanding of Dharma, or creating the causes to attain the qualities of the Buddha’s body, speech and mind to be of ultimate benefit to all sentient beings.
If this is too difficult, consciously think that you are engaging in this retreat so that everything stated in the Yonten Shigyurma prayers will come true.
Then recite the preliminary prayers:
Spend some time in meditation to contemplate the prayers above, then begin your prostrations.
If you are doing a group retreat, the whole group should sit together to do these preliminary prayers.
Do your prostrations while visualising your Guru and yidam as one. There are short, medium and long prostrations, but for prostration retreats, you should engage in the long form.
Begin by standing with your feet shoulder-width apart, your body straight and hands folded, with your thumbs tucked inside your palms.
Then, recite:
At the same time, you should think:
Go down, landing first on your knees. Put your hands down on the floor and slide yourself forward. As you go down, stretch your hands all the way forward in front of you until you are horizontally flat on the ground, face down, touching your forehead to the floor.
Slightly lift your palms off the floor, from the wrist.
Then rise out of the prostration as quickly as possible, signifying that you come out of samsara quickly.
Repeat each prostration as many times as you like, all the while meditating on the qualities of the Guru, Buddha, Dharma and Sangha.
If you get tired, sit quietly in front of your altar and rest until you wish to resume the prostrations. Contemplate on why you are doing this retreat.
You may use aids such as a mat, cushions, towels or gloves to ease your prostration practice.
Watch this two-part video of Tsem Rinpoche demonstrating how to engage in prostrations.
At the completion of each session of prostrations, recite:
If you are doing a very long retreat, it is good to do a black tea (serkym) offering and prayer before reciting the dedication prayers in each session. This helps to clear obstacles during the course of your retreat.
At the completion of the whole retreat, when you have achieved the number of prostrations you set out to do, it is very good to seal the merits of your retreat by doing a Lama Chopa puja.
There are two options:
During the course of your retreat, you must do a minimum of one session every day, with a minimum of three prostrations in each session. This is very important for maintaining continuity throughout the retreat. If you break this daily requirement, all previous sessions will be nullified, and you will have to start all over again!
You can do as many sessions per day as you like. One complete session includes:
If you leave halfway through a session, then that session cannot be counted.
If you are doing the retreat as a group, the whole group must participate in every session for it to be included in your collective count.
It is extremely good if you make continuous offerings throughout the retreat such as candles, sensory offerings and all beautiful, good things. This helps you tremendously to create even more merit to support your practice and retreat.
You can also choose to sponsor retreatants to do prostrations if you are unable to do it yourself or do not have the time. For example, you can offer a sum of money to the Dharma centre when a retreatant has completed a stipulated number of prostrations. This is also an extremely beneficial practice for sponsors which will help them to create the causes to engage directly in this Dharma practice themselves in the future.
During the retreat, you should not talk or make jokes. Keep your handphone on silent mode to allow you to focus better on your meditations.
Negative, difficult things may arise during the retreat. Regard these as purification of your karma that arises as you are doing the prostrations. It is considered a very good sign if these negative things arise during retreats so you should not talk about it to others and complain. Think of these difficulties as good opportunities to control your mind and speech.
Sensory offerings can be found on almost every Tibetan Buddhist altar. They represent offering all the things that we are attached to to the Buddhas in order to reduce and dispel our attachments.
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We can be adversely influenced if our space is affected by negative energy. Fortunately, there is a safe and simple way of removing negative energy and mild spirit disturbances from your environment.
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