Ablution

At the very beginning of the nyung nä practice, do the samaya mudra of the lotus race: hold both hands at your heart, with the palms facing upwards, in the mudra of a blossoming lotus.⁷⁵

Action, or Kriya, Tantra has three divisions: tathagata, lotus and vajra race. It’s important to know the mudras of the three different races.⁷⁶ Since this aspect of Chenrezig, Thousand-­Arm Chenrezig, belongs to the lotus race, say OM PADMA UDBHAVAYE SVAHA as you hold your hands in that lotus mudra at your heart.

Next offer your body to all the buddhas and bodhisattvas. It is said that if you offer yourself in this way you will be guided by the buddhas and bodhisattvas and will also be protected from harm from others, whether human beings or nonhuman beings.

Visualize all the buddhas and bodhisattvas of the ten directions in front of you. Thinking that you are prostrating at their holy feet, recite the following mantra and verse:

OM SARVA TATHAGATA KAYA VAK CITTA VAJRA PRANAMENA SARVA TATHAGATA VAJRA PADA BANDHANAM KAROMI 

I offer my body at all times to all the buddhas and bodhisattvas of the ten directions until I achieve the essence of enlightenment. Please, all you buddhas and bodhisattvas, accept me. Please grant me the peerless realization.

Think that, having offered your body to all the buddhas and bodhisattvas, you now belong to them. Think, “I should now do what the buddhas and bodhisattvas want, what accords with their holy minds, which is to always benefit sentient beings.”

Please grant me the peerless realization means that, in order to lead all sentient beings to the peerless happiness of full enlightenment, you request the buddhas and bodhisattvas of the ten directions to grant you the peerless realization. To be able to receive that, you first need to achieve the realizations of the graduated path to enlightenment.

Lam­rim prayers

There are many different lamrim prayers, many of which have been translated into English. We recite these short lamrim prayers to inspire us to have a pure attitude to do the practice and to develop devotion, the root of the path to enlightenment, and compassion. It’s good to read such a prayer before the nyung nä session starts.

Calling the Guru from Afar

When you recite Calling the Guru from Afar, whether the long or short version, visualize your root guru above your crown, with the awareness that this guru is the embodiment of all other gurus, buddhas, Dharma and Sangha. The root guru is the one among all your gurus who has most benefited your mind, who has most directed your mind into Dharma. So, you could have two or three root gurus.

Always meditate that this root guru is all your other gurus. In fact, every guru is one with all your other gurus. The basic thing you have to realize is that they are all one. All the buddhas are one, and all the buddhas are the guru; and all the gurus are buddhas. They’re all just one. When you think that the guru is buddha, all the gurus have to be one. Thinking otherwise interferes with having the realization of guru devotion.

In the long version of Calling the Guru from Afar there is quite an elaborate description of what the guru is and of the kindness of the guru.

When the prayer describes the different manifestations of the guru, it might be helpful and effective to visualize a specific object like the Lama Chöpa merit field in front of you so that you can relate to it. All those different aspects manifest in one, the guru, and the guru manifests in countless aspects. The many manifest in one, and the one in many.

Please bless me to follow after the ocean of conquerors with the will to cross to the very end of the great waves of deeds of the conquerors’ children.⁷⁷

This verse is related to bodhicitta, renouncing the self and cherishing others, which enables you to bear the greatest hardships to work for sentient beings. No matter how hard it is to work for others, you have no worry or fear, and you don’t get discouraged. You have a big mind, a strong, altruistic mind, to accomplish the extensive works for sentient beings and bring them to enlightenment. Even if you need to make charity of your body for eons equal in number to the atoms of this earth to achieve enlightenment for sentient beings, you are able to bear all those hardships. Instead of your mind getting smaller and more discouraged, it gets bigger and stronger, willing to bear whatever responsibility is involved. You’re willing to bear the whole responsibility for freeing each and every sentient being from all their suffering and for gradually leading them to enlightenment. You have great will to practice the conduct of the bodhisattvas.

Calling the Guru from Afar (abbreviated version)

With the first part of the abbreviated prayer, you remember the kindness of the guru. You can relate the lines to yourself in the following way:

Magnificently glorious guru, dispelling the darkness of my ignorance;
Magnificently glorious guru, revealing the path of liberation
to me;
Magnificently glorious guru, liberating me from the waters of samsara;
Magnificently glorious guru, eliminating the diseases of my five poisons . . .

In the second part of the prayer you request for success in realizing the whole graduated path to enlightenment.

Magnificently glorious guru, who is my wish-­granting jewel,
I beseech you, please grant me blessings.
Magnificently glorious guru, please grant me blessings
To remember impermanence and death from my heart.
Magnificently glorious guru, please grant me blessings
To generate the thought of no-­need in my mind.

No-­need means anything that interferes with Dharma practice, with achieving the happiness of future lives, liberation and, especially, enlightenment.

At the end of Calling the Guru from Afar, whether the long or short version, make the strong request that you and all sentient beings, from life to life, never give rise to heresy for even a second, do actions only pleasing to the guru and accomplish all the guru’s holy wishes by yourself alone. Since this is a most important prayer, with the root of all development dependent on it, pray not only for yourself but also for all sentient beings. Every time you dedicate merit or recite a prayer, you should also dedicate for all other sentient beings.

May I not give rise to heresy even for even a second
In regard to the actions of the glorious guru.
May I see whatever actions are done as pure.
With this devotion, may I receive the guru’s blessings in my heart.

After this, you can also make the request from the mahamudra teaching by Panchen Losang Chökyi Gyältsän, who also composed Lama Chöpa:

Please grant me blessings to see the guru as buddha, to have renunciation of samsara and to take upon myself the whole responsibility for liberating all sentient beings from all their suffering.

You can also recite the following verse:

O virtuous teacher, whatever your holy body,
Retinue, life span, realm and so forth,
Whatever your supreme and excellent name,
May I become only like you, to benefit all sentient beings.

The guru then absorbs into you, blessing your body, speech and mind. You can do the same meditation of the guru entering the heart as at the end of Lama Chöpa or Lama Tsongkhapa Guru Yoga.

Praise and Prayer to Noble Avalokiteshvara

Because this prayer is so long, you might think, “What’s the point of saying all this? It takes such a long time.” But this is the admiring prayer to Chenrezig written by His Holiness the Seventh Dalai Lama. This prayer has the benefit that if one recites it every day, at the death time, when one passes away, one will be able to see Chenrezig, and one’s life will always be guided by Chenrezig. It contains the lam­rim, including the sufferings of the beings in the six realms, and also the qualities of Chenrezig. It’s a very interesting prayer. It causes to arise unbearable devotion and also strong renunciation of samsara, because it describes the nature of people in degenerate times. It also mentions that the pure teachings of the Buddha are about to finish.

In previous times, when the Seventh Dalai Lama was living in Lhasa, one old monk in Drepung Monastery used to say this praise to Chenrezig every day. He wasn’t a monk who knew much Dharma; he wasn’t a geshe or a particularly learned monk.

One day, looking surprised, His Holiness the Seventh Dalai Lama suddenly mentioned to the people around him, the monks and servants, “What has happened this morning? It has become so quiet. The old monk isn’t making any noise. I think he has gone.” This means that every morning His Holiness could hear the old monk saying this praise to Chenrezig that His Holiness had written, even though Drepung was many miles away from the Dalai Lama’s palace. The morning that His Holiness said that the old monk must have gone, the old monk had actually died in Drepung. Somehow the Dalai Lama’s holy mind could understand and see this.

Request to the Supreme Compassionate One

I received the oral transmission of this requesting prayer from Kyabje Trulshik Rinpoche, a former head of the Nyingma tradition. It was composed by Kyabje Trulshik Rinpoche’s root guru, who had many visions and other good things happen while doing Chenrezig retreat when he was fifteen years old. He wrote this requesting prayer to Chenrezig during that retreat. I find this prayer very inspiring; it’s very soothing and very effective.

Behold with compassion tough-­skinned beings like me
Who maintain a religious manner but do not achieve the great meaning . . . 

Here, great meaning refers to practicing Dharma. On the basis of guru devotion, correctly following the virtuous friend once you have found him, you then practice the graduated path of the being of lower capability, seeking the happiness of future lives, such as a good rebirth and so forth. You seek rebirth in a pure land of buddha where you can become enlightened or rebirth with a perfect human body qualified by eight freedoms and ten richnesses. Also, there is the human body with seven qualities⁷⁸ and the one with eight ripening qualities (nam min gyi yön tän gyä),⁷⁹ highly recommended by Lama Tsongkhapa. If we want to have quick development and great achievement of the path to enlightenment, we must achieve a human body with the eight ripening qualities. Lama Tsongkhapa emphasized that very much.

By practicing the graduated path of the being of middle capability, the three higher trainings, then with renunciation, the determination to be free from samsara by realizing how it is only of the nature of suffering, you can then achieve liberation from samsara, freedom from the oceans of samsaric suffering and its causes, karma and delusion.

Then, by practicing the graduated path of the being of higher capability, with the bodhicitta motivation that seeks enlightenment in order to bring other sentient beings to enlightenment, you achieve enlightenment.

These are the three great meanings, or purposes, of life.

Look upon us with compassion, O Lama Chenrezig,
Mother attached by compassion to all sentient beings,
Who is the special sole refuge of the Snow Land.
May I and all others quickly attain your state of enlightenment.

The compassion of all the buddhas manifests in Chenrezig, and Chenrezig manifests to us in the human form of His Holiness the Dalai Lama. You can see that this description exactly fits Chenrezig. You can also say, “. . . Mother attached by compassion to us, all sentient beings.”

In the past, many years ago, during Lama Yeshe’s time, I used to go to Lawudo to do nyung näs. I did this when I was building the monastery at Lawudo, of course, but even after that. The Thamo nuns from the nunnery-­monastery down below Lawudo used to come up to do the nyung näs, and they would chant Request to the Supreme Compassionate One.

It’s a very good prayer, in which you are expressing your mistakes. You are trying to practice Dharma with your body, speech and mind, but when you check, in reality, nothing has become Dharma. Nothing has become pure Dharma because your motivation has always been the eight worldly concerns. You have been looking for the happiness of this life, with attachment to the pleasures of food, clothing, a good reputation and other things. And because of your attachment to the happiness and comfort of this life, you dislike it when there’s discomfort. Because of your attachment to having a good reputation, to having people say nice things about you, you dislike having a bad reputation. Because of your attachment to receiving praise from other people, you dislike it when you don’t receive praise or when you receive the opposite, criticism. Because of your attachment to people giving you presents or offerings, you dislike it when you don’t receive them. Both are suffering: attachment clinging to these four desirable things is suffering; and because of the attachment, your mind becomes unhappy with these four undesirable things, so this is also suffering. Your life is tormented by attachment to this life. These eight worldly dharmas torment you, keeping you suffering in the prison of samsara. And if you think about from life to life, the eight worldly dharmas make you to be born again and again in samsara.

I cried for quite a long time when the Thamo nuns chanted this prayer during a nyung nä at Lawudo.