Prayers for Peace

For Afghanistan, Padmasambhava prayers came out best: the prayer for simultaneous success, Sampa Lhundrupma, (100,000 times) and the prayer for quick success, Sampa Nyur Drupma, (300,000 times). It is good for these prayers to be recited at the nunnery, but not the best.* 

Also, recitation of the Prajnaparamita in 8,000 verses (Tib: gye tong pa) five times. It’s best if this is recited at the nunnery of Kyabje Sengtra Rinpoche, who has passed away now. He received all his teachings orally from his guru, then he meditated and achieved the path—like the lama from Zigar Monastery who I received lungs from. He received teachings in the same way, and became learned, pure in morality and good-hearted, and he teaches his disciples in the same way.

Drugchuma puja: to be recited one hundred times by Gyume Monastery in India. Actually, it came out to do thousands of these, but start with one hundred.

I have composed this dedication for Afghanistan. My request is to have great peace in Afghanistan, for the people not to be tortured by the Taliban (the people’s great fear), and for the Afghan people and the Taliban to have great peace.

[Recite the Dedication Prayers recommended by Rinpoche, followed by this dedication especially for Afghanistan.]

May the people of Afghanistan never be born in the lower realms, may everyone generate loving kindness and compassion, be kind-hearted, not harm each other and benefit each other. May they generate bodhicitta in this life, and only benefit others in this and future lives, bringing them liberation from samsara and enlightenment.

May the rest of the world, not only Afghanistan, also be like that, having loving kindness and compassion based on education. May all beings benefit each other, stop harming and give happiness.

For our own peace (and also for others) may we have satisfaction and contentment, free from drugs, alcohol, uncontrolled sex and other things like that, for which we end up in prison or are executed.

May everyone practice forgiveness and when we make mistakes or harm others may we immediately apologize, thus bringing peace to the world.

May all beings practice the source of happiness, ethical discipline, as His Holiness says, and ultimately, may everyone achieve enlightenment as soon as possible.

May there be much freedom, and perfect peace and happiness in our own country. May everyone generate loving kindness and compassion, and patience, all this, and may all beings have a positive mind, only benefiting each other.

* The Padmasambhava prayers recommended by Rinpoche were recited by Kopan Nunnery and sponsored by the FPMT center in Hong Kong.

My most dear, most kind, most precious wish-fulfilling ones,
In regards to the recent election in the United States, I wanted to suggest that you make prayers that loving kindness, compassion and bodhicitta be generated in the heart of Mr. Trump, all the government people and everybody else in the country, and even in the heart of people in other countries. In that way everybody in the United States and in the world can enjoy perfect peace and happiness.

Pray also to pacify war, famine, disease, economic problems and the dangers of fire, wind, water, earthquakes and tsunamis in the United States and the whole world—may these things never happen and may there be perfect peace and happiness in the United States and the rest of the world.

Pray that America will help and bring harmony to other countries and cause perfect peace and happiness to them and to help everyone to develop the correct wisdom that pacifies suffering and brings ultimate, everlasting happiness.

Prayer has power since everything is created by the mind; everything comes from the mind. So prayer does have power. As the Buddha said, “The results of whatever prayers are done will happen.”

We all need to develop the correct ultimate wisdom realizing emptiness and bodhicitta. If we ourselves do not wish to suffer, we need to be free from samsara. That is why wisdom is so important.

The Buddha also said, “Do not engage in unwholesome actions [because you don’t like suffering], engage in perfect wholesome actions [since you wish for happiness] and subdue your own mind.”

Don’t harm yourself and don’t harm others—practice the good heart towards others. This will bring peace and happiness to all living beings in this world, to the United States, to your own family and lastly, to you yourself. You are the last one.

Thank you very much.

When there was unceasing war in Kham (Me Nyak), Tibet, and nobody was able to create harmony, the Great Lord Yogi (Tang Tong Gyalpo) came to Kham, generated bodhicitta, and just by merely saying these true words and sprinkling flowers, all the vicious minds (jealousy and anger) were completely pacified and the war that had been continuous, ceased. There were prosperous harvests and so forth. The country became auspicious and peaceful. This is blessed vajra speech.

This is one of the prayers of the Great Tantric Yogi Tang Tong Gyalpo. The other prayers that he composed were to stop famine and epidemics.

His Holiness Chobgye Trichen Rinpoche, who is a guru of His Holiness the Dalai Lama (His Holiness received the Sakya Lam Dre teachings and initiations, including Dorje Phurba from him) and also one of the main teachers of His Holiness Sakya Trizin, was invited to one part of Nepal by the Nepalese government. I checked what could be most beneficial for them and what prayer was most needed to benefit them. It came out that the best practice for them to do was these three prayers composed by Tang Tong Gyalpo. So then I decided to give the oral transmission of these three prayers. That is how I found out about these prayers and I received the oral transmission from His Holiness Chobgye Trichen Rinpoche.

Through whatever merits have come from making this translation available, may wherever this text is (whichever country) and also by reading this prayer, cause all the people's hearts be filled with loving kindness, bodhicitta, and the thought to only benefit and not harm. May the sun of peace and happiness arise and may any wars that are happening stop immediately. May there be harmony, peace, and may there never be war or violence again.

Here are the Words of Truth Pacifying the Dangers of Weapons

OM MANI PADME HUM

Great Loving Victorious One (Maitreya Buddha), Transcendental Sublime Compassionate Eye Looking One,
Wrathful Victorious Hayagriva, Fully Accomplished Totally Pure (Jetsun) Tara and so forth,
Merely hearing your holy names eliminates all dangers,
Objects of refuge in the nature of compassion, please pay attention!

When the sentient beings of the time of quarrelling and five degenerations
By the explosion of the great ocean of evil karma and jealousy
Are tormented by the intensive suffering of fighting and quarrelling
Please dry this up by the power of transcendental wisdom and compassion.

By letting great rainfalls of the nectar of loving kindness fall
On the migratory beings who are enflaming the conflagration of hatred-fire
Please grant blessings with the recognition of each other like father-mother
Then increase happiness and auspiciousness.

May the multitudes of the vicious evil spirits
Who enter the mental continuum and
Change it instantly to the mind of asura
From now on never run in this area (country/world).

I am requesting for even all the sentient beings who have died in the war
To abandon from that time onward all the evil karma, cause and effect,
Then having entered and been born in the Blissful Field (Amitabha's Pure Land)
To lead all others to that Pure Land.

Please bless all those who are born and die (samsaric beings)
To have a long life, no sicknesses, to pacify all quarrelling and fighting,
Enjoy the ten virtues, have rainfall at the right times, always have good harvests
And for all the habitat and inhabitants to be auspicious and increase.

By the ultimate reality which is pure by nature,
By phenomena having ultimate reality, cause and result are unbetrayable,
And by the compassion of the Guru, Mind-seal Deity and Rare Sublime Ones,
May these pure extensive prayers be completed.

My very dear Ronnie,
How are you? What a terrible thing happened in New York. According to the news, there was a terrorist attack. It seems they planned to commit this unbelievable destruction that killed so many thousands of people who were in those buildings, and also those who were in the airplanes. According to the news, there was a man on one of the planes that was hijacked who got suspicious. He was able to ring his wife on his cell phone, and told her he was going to try and stop the hijackers, with some other men on the plane. Then, suddenly the message stopped. The phone went silent, so something must have happened. He may have tried to interfere with the hijackers, which would have prevented the plane from crashing into possibly the White House or Camp David. Instead, the plane crashed to the ground in a forest.

The other solution in order not to receive harm, like this or any other kind, is to purify the past karma of having harmed others and abstain from doing it again.

The ultimate solution to prevent enemies from harming the world is to change their minds from anger into loving kindness and compassion, and to help them eliminate their delusions completely, even the seed, which is the imprint of the delusion. Only then can they stop harming others completely. And, of course, there is no question that this helps them to have stable realizations of compassion and loving kindness.

Even if the body is destroyed, completely disintegrated, the body is just the house for the mind, so the mind still exists. The mind continues to take different forms, so it can be harmed again and again. You harm others and they harm you back, and it goes on like this, and there is no end to the suffering. Therefore, it becomes very important, an urgent issue, to eliminate the delusion and anger, and to transform their minds into loving kindness, compassion, and a good heart that cherishes others. This is the ultimate solution in order for ourselves and others not to have any enemies. Others don’t become an enemy to you, and you don’t become an enemy to them.

For those who want to help, my suggestion is to take the eight Mahayana precepts and to recite as many Chenrezig mantras—OM MANI PADME HUM—as you can, with strong prayers to Chenrezig, praying for loving kindness to be generated in the minds of everyone, especially those who have caused this harm. You can also pray for their minds to change, to stop the thought of giving harm to others, especially those in the USA, and pray to have much peace and happiness here and in the rest of the world—as much happiness as possible. You can visualize beams of nectar emitted from Chenrezig, entering everyone in the USA, especially those who have died or have been hurt, and also entering everyone in the world, purifying all the pain, sicknesses, and negative thoughts of harm. Purify all the suffering, including one of the shortcomings of samsara: war. War is just one of the vast sufferings of samsara. Then, of course, practice this while meditating on bodhicitta. Without question, that is very important.

However, these practices are also good for you to do for yourself. Without war, cancer and so on, death will still come, and can come at any time. There is the war within our own mind, the disaster with the elements in our bodies, and, of course, there is karma. Delusions and karma are the cause of death—as long as delusion and karma exist, we won’t be able to overcome death. We will always have to go through the cycle of death and rebirth. Nobody has ever lived without dying.

Of course, it is impossible to overcome death and rebirth without Dharma, which means the end of delusion and karma. This means correctly practicing the Dharma yourself. This way you become free of death and suffering forever, and achieve everlasting happiness.

Preventing war, so that you never experience it again, comes down to Dharma, realizing emptiness, and developing the wisdom that eradicates the root of samsara: ignorance. This ignorance causes all the rest of the vast amounts of suffering.

Besides these practices, there are pujas that can be performed that take many days. They are practices to protect against the dangers of earthquakes, floods, and other such obstacles, including war. These methods definitely work against these obstacles, but they need to be done for a long time, and they need to be done by pure practitioners, who have been living a pure life with spiritual attainments. This gives more weight to pacify such obstacles. Of course, when karma has already ripened, it is much more difficult to stop. There is more opportunity to change the karma that has not yet ripened.

Bluntly speaking, at this present time it is best for us to perform strong refuge practice, and purify the negative karma of doing harm to others. In general, to prevent war in this situation, it is good for us to practice strong refuge, to practice and pray for peace. With refuge, it is good to do the prayer for preventing war, composed by the great yogi and mahasiddha Tang Tong Gyalpo, which I am translating this afternoon and will send to those who sincerely want to prevent war in the future.