Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Lama Zopa Rinpoche guides practitioners through the Guru Puja text in this 28-minute morning session, concluding with direct instruction on recitation quality: pray slowly, mindfully, and in English if time is short, rather than rushing through Tibetan that loses its power. The puja covers requests for the guru’s blessings, refuge prayers to the Three Jewels, and bodhisattva dedications on compassion and the six perfections—verses on transforming suffering, purifying obstacles, and dedicating merit for all beings’ liberation. Understanding and sincere intention matter far more than pace or language. For practitioners familiar with the Guru Puja.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 03 MP.mp3
UUID: 14d7f1c8-3598-4289-9d53-7938bd8459e6
Teacher: Lama Zopa Rinpoche 1
Collection: z Morning Puja (Lama Zopa Rinpoche 1)
Date: 1990 (exact day not recorded)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 28.0 minutes
Words: ~3,156
Like mine has spontaneous wisdom and three high trainings and cause and result. I make request. Make request. Endowed with love, morality, ārya jewels, and the rest. Your excellent mental continuum holding the instructions of the teachings, wearing the robes of all four vast activities.
To the old pervading venerable guru, I make request. To the old pervading venerable guru, I make request. To Yongzin Jampel Zangpo, Losang Yeshe Tenzin Gyatso, You are the first among upholders of the Buddhist stainless teachings. You have the wisdom of Jetsün Kāśyapa and the Buddhas. You emanate and safeguard Mandala oceans without limit.
At your feet, most precious guru, I make this request. Send forth to me ways of inspiring strength. At your feet, most precious guru, I make this request. Send forth to me ways of inspiring strength. Jeweled treasury of the close lineage to the unified state.
By attaining unified state in this very life, you liberate the fortunate. You who show the part of that unified state now in Ganden La, I make request to bestow the simultaneous transcendental wisdom. I make request to bestow the simultaneous transcendental wisdom. In great admiration of your perseverance to have generated within your mind the entire method of the conqueror, lojong, sūtra, tantra teaching, venerable kindness, you will hold aloft the banner of Buddha’s teaching. I make request that the holy feet of the glorious and magnificent guru.
I make request that the holy feet of the glorious and magnificent guru. Noble heart with all the wisdom of the conquerors, principal embodiment of all the stainless teachings of the conquerors, protector emanated from an ocean of infinite mandalas. To you, kind guru Losang Yeshe Tenzin Gyatso, I make request. To you, kind guru Losang Yeshe Tenzin Gyatso, I make request. Hear our prayer, O Lama, whom we revere.
You who bear the name of he who fearlessly holds the living essence of the pure paradigmatic doctrine of conquerors. Of he alone, adornment of the earth. Of he, a guide to sublime liberation, the spirit of peace. Eyes to view all the vast teachings, supreme gateway to liberation for the fortunate, using skillful means to lovingly subdue, to illuminating spiritual friends, I request. May not rise heresy even for a second in the actions of the glorious gurus, and may see whatever actions are done as pure.
For this devotion, may receive the blessings of the guru in the heart. So now verse forty-three on page nineteen of Guru Puja. We make our request to you, oh, holders of the elders Vinaya, oh, masters, second Buddhas clad in saffron. You bring with the treasury of the jewels of much hearing and a source of excellence and immense ocean of moral discipline. We make our request to you, Mahāyāna Gurus, lords of Dharma, representing the victorious ones without exception.
You possess the ten qualities that render you suitable guides along the path of those who have gone to bliss. We make our request to you, our foremost holders of the vajra. You are skilled in explaining and composing, are endowed with both sets of ten qualities, and a knowledge of tantra and its rituals. You are honorable without pretense or guile, patient broad minded with your three doors well subdued. We make our request to you, compassionate refuge protectors.
With precision, you impart a good way of those contemplatives, the unruly beings of this degenerate age who are difficult to curb and unwanted by the countless Buddhas of the past. We make our request to you a compassionate refuge protectors. You enact the deeds of the victorious ones for the many beings who lack a protective refuge at this time in the twilight teachings of the sage are setting. We make our request to you a compassionate refuge protectors. Even a single hair from your pores is for us a field of merit more highly praised than all the victorious Buddhas of the three times and ten directions.
We make our request to you a compassionate refuge protectors from an immaculate lattice, mirage like skillful means, emblazoned with the three bodies, wheels of those contemplatives. You manifest in ordinary guides to lead all beings. We make our request to you as supreme gurus, the essence of the Three Jewels of refuge. Your elements, sensory limbs, and limbs are in nature the fathers, mothers, male, and female bodhisattvas, and the wrathful protectors of the five Buddha families. We make our request to you as protectors of primordial unity, foremost holders of the vajra, all pervading lords of hundreds of Buddha families unfolding from the play of omniscient pristine awareness.
You are the contestants of ten million mandala cycles. We make our request to you immaculate Samantabhādra, who are in reality ultimate bodhicitta, free of beginning or end, the nature of all things pervading everything in motion and at rest, inseparable from simultaneous place and play without obstruction. You are our gurus. You are our yiddoms. You are our dakinis and dharm protectors.
From this moment until our enlightenment, we need seek no refuge other than you. In this life, the Bardo and all future lives, hold us with your hook of compassion. Free us from saṃsāra nirvana’s fears. Grant all attainments. Be our unfailing friend and guard us from interferences.
You are our gurus. You are yidams. You are dakinis and Dharma protectors. From this moment until our enlightenment, we need seek no refuge other than you. This life, the Bardo and all future lives, hold us with your hook of compassion.
Free us from saṃsāra nirvana’s fears. Grant all attainments. Be our unfailing friend and guard us from interferences. So we do the third repetition in Tibetan. By the force of having thus requested three times, nectars and rays, white, red, and dark blue, stream forth from the centers of our gurus, body, speech, and mind.
And one by one and altogether, they absorb into our own three centers, individually and then altogether, the four obstacles are purged, the four pure implements implanted, and seeds of the four kayas received. A smiling emanation of our Guru dissolves into us, and we are blessed with inspiration. Through the power of having made offerings and respectful requests to you, oh holy and venerable gurus, supreme field of merit, we seek your blessings that protect us and root of well-being and bliss that we may come under our joyful care. Realizing how this life of these endowments is found but once, is difficult to obtain, is easily lost, we seek your blessings partake of its essence, make it worthwhile, and not be distracted by the meaningless affairs of this life. A guard from the searing blaze of suffering in the lower realms, we take heartfelt refuge in the Three Precious Gems, and seek your blessings that we may eagerly endeavor to practice the various means for abandoning what is found to misfortune and accumulating virtuous deeds.
Finally tossed amidst waves of delusions and karma, plagued by hordes of misery denizens and three kinds of suffering, we seek your blessings to develop an intense longing to be free from this monstrous ocean of boundless and vicious existence. Having abandoned the mind that views this unbearable prison of cyclic existence as a pleasure grove. We seek your blessings to partake of the treasure of various jewels and the three higher trainings, and thereby to uphold liberation’s banner. How all these pitiful beings have been our mothers and have raised us in kindness again and again. We seek your blessings develop unaffected compassion like that of a loving mother for a precious child.
There is no difference between ourselves and others. None of us wishes even the slightest of sufferings nor is even content with the happiness we have. Realizing this, we seek your blessings that may enhance the bliss and joy of others. This chronic disease of cherishing ourselves is, of course, giving rise to unsought suffering. Perceiving this, we seek your blessings to blame, begrudge, and destroy the monstrous demon of selfishness.
The mind that cherishes all mother beings and would secure them in bliss is the gateway leading to infinite virtue. Seeing this, we seek your blessings to cherish these beings more than our lives, even should they rise up as our enemies. In brief, infantile beings labor only for their own end, while Buddhists work solely for the welfare of others. With the mind understanding distinctions between the failings of one and the advantage of the other, we seek your blessings to enable us to equalize and exchange ourselves for others. Since cherishing ourselves is the doorway to all torment, while cherishing our mother is the foundation of all that is good, We seek your blessings to make our core practice a yoga of exchange of self for others.
And thus, oh venerable compassionate gurus, we seek your blessings that all coming deaths, obstacles, and sufferings of mother beings may without exception ripen upon us right now, and that we may give our happiness and virtue to others and thereby immerse all beings in bliss. And thus, so venerable compassionate gurus, we seek your blessings that all coming deaths, obstacles, and sufferings of other beings. May without exception ripen upon us right now, and that we may give our happiness and virtue to others, and thereby invest all beings in bliss. And thus, so venerable compassionate gurus, we seek your blessings that all come in death, obstacles, and sufferings of mother beings may without exception ripen upon us right now, and that we may give our happiness and virtue to others, and thereby invest all beings in bliss. Should even the environment and the beings therein be filled with the fruits of their karmic debts, and unwished-for sufferings pour down like rain, we seek your blessings to take these miserable conditions as a path by seeing them as causes to exhaust the results of our negative karma.
In short, no matter what appearances may arise, be they good or bad, we seek your blessings to transform them into a path ever enhancing the two bodhicittas through the practice of the five forces that condense the entire Dharma, and thus to tune ourselves solely to the bliss of the mind. Whatever we occasion to meet, we seek your blessings that may adapt it to our meditation by the scope of means of the four applications. May we render this life of leisure and endowment equally meaningful by putting into practice the advice and commitments of training of the mind. In order to rescue all beings from the vast seas of existence, we seek your blessings to become adept in bodhicitta through a pure selfless wish and by loving compassion, conjoined with the actual technique of mounting giving and taking upon the breath. We seek your blessings that we may eagerly endeavor to put into practice the three Mahāyāna moral codes and restrain our minds with pure bodhisattva vows, a single path journeyed by all victorious ones of three times.
We seek your blessings to perfect the perfection of generosity through the guideline teaching for enhancing the mind that gives without attachment, namely transforming our body’s wealth and collection of virtue over the three times into the objects desired by each and every sentient being. We seek your blessings to perfect the perfection of the moral disciplines of working for the sake of sentient beings and acting virtuous deeds and not transgressing the three vows of pratimoksha, bodhicitta, tantric vows even at the cost of our lives. Should even the myriad beings of the three realms, without exception, become angry at us, humiliate, criticize, threaten, or even kill us, We seek your blessings to perfect the perfection of patience not to be distraught, but to work for their benefit in response to their harm. Even if we must remain for an ocean of eons in the fiery hells of Avici, even for the sake of one sentient being, we seek your blessings to perfect the perfection of joyous effort to strive with compassion for supreme enlightenment and not be discouraged. Having abandoned the faults of dullness, agitation, and mental wandering, we seek your blessings to feed the perfection of meditative concentration through the samadhi of single point and placement upon the nature of reality, which is that all things devoid of true existence.
We seek your blessings in perfection of wisdom through the space-like yoga of single-minded placement upon ultimate truth conjoined with the ecstasy and great bliss induced by discriminating wisdom analyzing suchness. We seek your blessings to perfect Samādhi on illusion by realizing how all external phenomena lack true existence to appear like a mirage of dream or the image of the moon in still water. saṃsāra and nirvana lack even an atom of true existence, while cause and effect and dependent arising are unfailing. We seek your blessings to discern the import of Nāgārjuna thought, which is these two are complementary and not contradictory. And thereupon, we seek your blessings that may cross the labyrinth ocean of tantra through the kindness of our navigator, Vajradhāra, and to hold more deed than our lives the vows and words of honor, which are the roots of powerful attainments.
We seek your blessings to cleanse all stains of ordinary appearance and grasping through the first stage yoga of transforming birth, death, and the Bardo into the three bodies of Buddha, so that whatever may appear arises the body of the yidam. We seek your blessings to actualize in this life the path of unity of the clear light and illusory body, which arise from placing your feet, oh protector, at the very center of the central channel at the eight-petaled lotus of our hearts. Should we not have completed the points of the path at the time of death, we seek your blessings that we may be led to a pure land, through either the instructions of applying the five forces or by the forceful means of enlightenment, the guru’s transference of mind. In short, we seek your blessings, oh, protector, to be cared for by you from birth unremittingly throughout all our lives and thus become your chief disciples holding every secret of your body, speech, and mind. Oh, protector, please grant that all be auspicious for us to be amongst your very first circle of disciples wherever you manifest Buddhahood, and hence, all our temporal and ultimate wishes without exception be effortlessly and spontaneously fulfilled.
There is another prayer on page nineteen of the Guru Puja text. The nature of the four kayas is the exalted guru deity. To you, Buddha Vajradhāra, I make request. The nature of the unobscured dharmakaya is the exalted guru deity. To you, Buddha Vajradhāra, I make request.
The nature of the great bliss Sambhogakāya is the exalted guru deity. To you, Buddha Bajada, I make request. The nature of the various Nirmānakāya is the exalted guru deity. To you, Buddha Vajradhāra, I make request. The embodiment of all gurus is the exalted guru deity.
To you, Buddha Vajradhāra, I make request. The embodiment of all the Buddhas is the exalted guru deity. To you, Buddha Vajradhāra, I make request. The embodiment of all the holy dhamma is the exalted guru deity. To you, Buddha Vajradhāra, I make request.
The embodiment of all the Sangha is the exalted guru deity. To you, Buddha Vajradhāra, I make request. The embodiment of all the dakinis is the exalted guru deity. To you, Buddha Bajada, I make request. The embodiment of all the protectors is the exalted guru deity.
To you, Buddha Bajada, I make request. Embodiment of all refuges is the exalted guru deity. To you, Buddha Bajada, I make request. Verse a hundred and fifteen on page fifty three of Guru Puja. Having thus been entreated, our supreme gurus pray grant this request so that you might bless us happily alight on the crown of our heads, once again set your radiant feet firmly at the corolla of our lotus hearts.
Whatever white virtues we have thus created, we dedicate as causes enabling us to uphold the holy Dharma of scriptures and insights, and to fulfill without exception the prayers and deeds of all the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas of the three times. By the force of this merit and all our lives, may we never be parted from Mahāyāna’s four spheres, and may we reach the end of our journey along the paths of renunciation, bodhicitta, the pure view and the two stages. Through the excellence of whatever white virtues there are in saṃsāra nirvana, may all be auspicious, may we be free here and now from all misfortune and hardship, and thus enjoy a glorious and perfect celestial treasure of temporal and ultimate bliss endured. May all be auspicious for the Buddhist teachings to endure along through your centers of Dharma, omniscient being, filled with host of monks and yogis striving single pointedly to master the true pure view of mind. And may I pledge with your blessings, who, from the time of your youth, may request the supreme Guru Yidam.
May all be auspicious for you, Losang Vajradhāra, spontaneously fulfilling. May all be auspicious for all our desired endowment to spring up the lake in summer rains, bringing an unbroken flow of rebirth of leisure and faultless families, that we may fill our days and nights with your holy Dharma, Losang, and that’s the life we do. So concluding with the long life prayer at the end of the If the chanting is done fast When the chanting is done when it needs to be done faster or however it is done faster, then it loses that it doesn’t have much purpose, so it’s better to recite in English. But when time is done, then just do it according to that slowly. Otherwise, case there’s not much time or something, better for us to just straight English.
Also is going faster. It doesn’t have a it doesn’t have much purpose. It doesn’t it doesn’t it lost the sweetness. It lost the, you know, the sweet tune, so it doesn’t fulfill the powers. I saw them better to understand English like that.
And generally, the the morning prayer, Lama Sangyay, this, that part maybe needs to be more slower. When it’s done quickly, it needs to be done slower. And also the Mandala offering. This Mandala offering, this present chanting is according to Chag Mandala offering. The Lama Chöpa Mandala, the Chag Tsel Ja, there’s little bit different.
The last part is a little bit different. From each verse, the last part is a little bit different. However, that is matter. The basic shape is saying. This I’m just generally saying.
More or less. So this needs to run slower. Then usually, the voice goes up higher and higher. That’s how it ends. Thank you very much.