Prayer to the Stages of the Path

by
Geshe Kelsang Gyatso

The path begins with strong reliance
On my kind Teacher, source of all good;
O Bless me with this understanding
To follow him with great devotion.

This human life with all its freedoms,
Extremely rare, with so much meaning;
O Bless me with this understanding,
All day and night to seize its essence.

My body, like a water bubble,
Decays and dies so very quickly;
After death come results of karma,
Just like the shadow of a body.

With this firm knowledge and remembrance
Bless me to be extremely cautious,
Always avoiding hamlful actions
And gathering abundant virtue.

Samsara' s pleasures are deceptive,
Give no contentment, only tonnent;
So please bless me to strive sincerely
To gain the bliss of perfect freedom.

Oh Bless me so that from this pure thought
Come mindfulness and greatest caution,
To keep as my essential practice
The doctrine's root, the Pratimoksha.

Just like myself all my kind mothers
Are drowning in sam sara' s ocean;
O So that I may soon release them,
Bless me to train in bodhicitta.

But I cannot become a Buddha
By this alone without three ethics;
So bless me with the strength to practice
The Bodhisattva' s ordination.

By pacifying my distractions
And analyzing perfect meanings,
Bless me to quickly gain the union Of
special insight and quiescence.

When I become a pure container
Through common paths, bless me to enter
The essence practice of good fortune,
The supreme vehicle, Vajrayana.

The two attainments both depend on
My sacred vows and my commitments;
Bless me to understand this clearly
And keep them at the cost of my life.

By constant practice in four sessions,
The way explained by holy Teachers,
O Bless me to gain both the stages
Which are the essence of the Tantras.

May those who guide me on the good path
And my companions all have long lives;
Bless me to pacify completely
All obstacles, outer and inner.

May I always find perfect Teachers
And take delight in holy Dharma,
Accomplish all grounds and paths swiftly,
And gain the state of Vajradhara.





NOTE: Verses 1-2 review foundation practices; 3-4, those of the Small Scope; 5-6, the Medium Scope; 7-9, the Great Scope,. 10-12, the Vajrayana level,. 13-14 dedicate our merit from all of these to the attainment of full Enlightenment far the benefit of all sentient beings.




Verse translation ofFoundation of All Perfections by Je Rinpoche (Tsong Khapa). Cited from The Meditation Handbook, and other works by Geshe Kelsang Gyatso. His verse translations are usually more easily chanted than those of other published translators.

This author, Geshe Kelsang Gyatso, heads a distinctly separate group of Dharma centers not affiliated with either the Lama Tsongkhapa Center, nor with our parent order Gaden for the West.

Vows to abstain from: killing; taking what is not given; willful deception motivated by gain or loss; sex with an ineligible partner; intoxication.

In countless myriad former lives all beings have been all things to one another. To generate bodhicitta quickly, hold in mind the dearest of these, recalling how all were once our mothers. Foment the will fully to repay their kindness.

Three divisions of the precepts: Pratimoksha, those proscribing individual unskillful actions; Bodhicitta, actions contrary to Enlightened love & compassion; Vajrayana, Tantric precepts. Stress here on the second.

Realization of Emptiness & dependent arising.

Calm abiding, shamata. One-pointed focus free of artificial conceptualization.

As in shared together among two or more distinct levels of practice.

Vajra (Diamond or Adamantine) Vehicle, meaning the Tantric aspect of the Enlightening Path.

Two sets of eight special powers, supramundane and ordinary , possessed by fully Enlightened Beings.

Given at the time of initiation.
Not to literally trade one's life, but to value vows as highly. A broken vow may be purified and renewed. Human rebirth cannot be reobtained so easily.

In a full Lam Rim retreat, four sessions are the nonn. If this is not possible at this time, aspire toward fuller opportunities for the future.

Generation & completion stages of Tantra.

Degrees and levels of transcendence carefully described in scripture.

The Tantric emanation of the historic Buddha, Shakyamuni.