Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this brief three-minute segment, Geshe Dhawa Gyaltsen clarifies a fundamental distinction in Buddhist practice: the difference between dedication and prayer. While prayers are aspirations and wishes expressed without prior conditions, dedication requires actual virtuous action already created, which is then consciously directed toward a specific purpose. He explains that virtues accumulated during a teaching session should be dedicated not for personal benefit, but specifically toward generating compassion and bodhicitta—the altruistic intention to attain enlightenment for all sentient beings. This closing instruction offers practical guidance for anyone engaged in merit-making practice.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 08 SoM no date.mp3
UUID: 95898715-21a3-4530-aa67-ac64c25a42e6
Teacher: Geshe Dhawa Gyaltsen
Collection: Stages of Meditation (Geshe Dhawa Gyaltsen)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Words: ~280
But therefore, there isn’t any fault in terms of the teaching, but it is our duty now. It is our enthusiasm and our practice whether or not we achieve such realization. So thus, I urge you once more to strive or to exert your energy in terms of practising what is most beneficial to you in terms of receiving the purpose of this life as well as the future. I don’t know what to say. Just think very strongly that whatever good virtues we might have created during this course — may we be able to dedicate that for all.
Before doing the main dedication, probably I might like to speak once more. So when we say to do the dedication or to do the prayers, right, there’s a slight difference between the two — dedication and the prayers. When we do dedication, there must be some material to be dedicated for a certain purpose. Right? So at the moment, we might have created some virtuous action during this course.
So that virtue should be dedicated for the sake of generating the compassion and love and the bodhicitta mind for all sentient beings. Right? So in this way, we are going to do the dedication. And normally, when someone is doing prayers, we don’t have certain materials to be dedicated. So just we’re wishing, saying, you know, may we be able to obtain blah blah blah.
That is called prayers. And if we have something already been created before, that is called dedication. Okay? So today, we will do dedication because we might have created some good energy. So just dedicate that for the generation of compassion and bodhicitta mind.