The Kechara Pocket Prayers book has been my most trusted spiritual companion for the last seven years. It has kept me connected to the Three Jewels every day, through prayer, whenever I was at home or even while travelling. This small book of prayers was specifically compiled by His Eminence the 25th Tsem Rinpoche. It includes recommended prayers from the most commonly practised prayers within the Kechara Buddhist Organisation. The book contains essential prayers for daily practice which are suitable for everyone, including beginners, and can be easily learned and mastered. As Rinpoche says in the foreword:

“Prayers, aspirations and requests directed toward enlightened beings serve as a portal to connect us to the outer divine, which leads to the opening of the inner divine. Hence, this can serve a very powerful purpose.”

Therefore, we can make connections to the outer Buddha through the prayers we recite daily. This leads to the opening up of the Buddha nature within us – the potentials of kindness, commitment, and clarity.

Regardless of which tradition you follow, all Buddhist practices from any school refer to the power of prayers to accumulate merit and purify karma

To Wish Upon a Prayer

As Rinpoche has stated “Prayers are aspirations in words that we offer to the deities, hoping that what we prayed for will manifest.” Simply put, aspirations can be categorised as Ordinary Aspirations and Extraordinary Aspirations and through relying on the Kechara Pocket Prayers book, we can create the causes to accomplish these aspirations.

Ordinary Aspirations

The Kechara Pocket Prayers book recommends reliance on the Dharma protector Setrap for clearing obstacles. Setrap is the wrathful emanation of Buddha Amitabha.

During our daily prayers we usually make aspirations or wishes for our good and stable health, extended lives, healing of our illnesses or that of our loved ones, including our pets; for overcoming obstacles such as financial difficulties, and problems in our relationships with others. We may also pray for help to resolve problems such as harm from spirits and black magic, or even problems at our place of work which cause us unhappiness. We often pray for our dearly departed loved ones as well, that they may take good rebirths in places where they meet the Dharma.

Prayers to Clear Obstacles

As spiritual practitioners, we view the above problems and negative situations as obstacles. These everyday situations can be obstacles to our smooth progress in our spiritual path towards ultimate peace and enlightenment. Therefore we can pray to a Dharma protector for his/her help to clear these obstacles and help create conductive conditions for our practice.

Prayers for Purification & the Accumulation of Merit

Through prayers such as the Seven-Limbed Prayer, we accumulate merit and purify our negative karma. The accumulation of merit is important as it is the cause for attaining our mundane and spiritual aspirations. Merit also helps to pacify our obstacles, illness, financial difficulties, and problems in our relationships or at our workplace. Furthermore, the accumulation of merit helps us to overcome obstacles relating to spirit harm and black magic.

Over and above this, merits help us on our path to enlightenment to gain realisations and attainments to facilitate our progress. All prayers from the Pocket Prayers book, done with good motivation and pure aspirations, will enhance our accumulation of merits.

Purifying Negative Karma and Negative Imprints

It is equally necessary to purify negative karma and their imprints. Obstacles and problems arise as a result of the ripening of our negative karma which was created by the negative actions of our body, speech and mind. Without purification, the conditions for the negative karma to ripen will manifest in its full blown form, and will bring heavy obstacles and suffering in its worst forms.

In purifying our negative karma and thus purifying the causes for obstacles to arise, we are therefore taking measures to ensure smooth progress in our spiritual practice. The purification prayers that can be found in the Kechara Pocket Prayers book are Vajrasattva’s 100-Syllable Mantra and the Prayer to the 35 Confessional Buddhas.

Extraordinary Aspirations

Aspirations for Achieving Enlightenment

Our main goal in our Dharma practice is to attain ultimate peace and enlightenment. When we have achieved this state of peace and enlightenment, our minds will be totally free from any mental disturbance, traces of disturbance or their causes.

His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama is regarded as an emanation of Chenrezig, the Buddha most commonly associated with compassion and bodhicitta.

Prayers help us achieve this enlightened state through a path of practice of transforming our minds from an egoistic mind filled with delusions of anger, hatred, pride, jealousy, and strong grasping and attachment, to a mind that is filled with clear-sighted wisdom and an altruistic heartfelt undiscriminating concern for all others, as though they were our only child. This is known as bodhicitta.

With the correct motivation and aspirations, our prayers will set us on this course of attaining full enlightenment. In this highest aspiration to attain full enlightenment for the sake of all mother beings, all other wishes and aspirations (including the mundane ones) are encompassed.

Praying to the Buddhas and Dharma Protectors

We pray to the Buddhas for attainments such as wisdom and compassion to enable us to ultimately achieve a mind of Bodhicitta and enlightenment; and we pray to Dharma protectors to help create conducive conditions and remove obstacles on our path of practice to achieve this enlightenment. In this Pocket Prayers book are prayers to both the Buddhas like Lama Tsongkhapa, Manjushri, Green Tara, White Tara and Vajrasattva, as well as to the Dharma protector Lord Setrap. There is even a short prayer to Vajrayogini!

Mantras are the enlightened energies of the deity captured in the form of sound. Each mantra recitation, for example reciting OM MANI PADME HUM once, is counted as one bead on the rosary (Sanskrit: mala; Tibetan: trengwa). The rosary is primarily used as a counter to keep track of how many recitations we have done.

Mantras

Mantras of specific Buddhas are the prayers that can be taught to anyone as their first steps in spiritual practice. Rinpoche describes mantras as mystic formulas that carry tremendous blessings. Anyone who recites these holy words will be tapping into their source (which is the Buddha deity) and connecting with the sacred energy that will help to transform their minds.

The Power of Mantras

“When the three countless aeons of virtue of a Buddha manifest in sound, it is called mantras. Mantras are the sound emanation of a Buddha’s three aeons of ethical conduct, virtue, practices, asceticism. When you recite the mantra, through your speech, you invoke upon the Buddha’s three aeons of countless merits, virtues and practice to go into you. So you gain the imprints to also achieve what that Buddha has achieved.

When we recite the mantras, we counter our delusions, based on the sound coming from the power of three aeons of practice of the Buddha. The sound of the mantra has the power to transform our delusions – our hatred and our impatience – and everything else in our mind that makes us unhappy and negative and evil and rotten people. We are ultimately transformed into the real us, kind, compassionate, altruistic people.

~ H.E. the 25th Tsem Rinpoche”

Mantras in the Kechara Pocket Prayers Book

In the Kechara Pocket Prayers book, the mantras to specific Buddha deities are Lama Tsongkhapa’s Migtsema, Manjushri’s mantra of wisdom, the mantras of Green Tara and White Tara, and the mantra of the Dharma protector Lord Setrap.

There are also mantras for special purposes. For purification, there is the 100-Syllable Mantra of Vajrasattva. There is also the Heart Sutra Mantra, a powerful prayer we can recite for specific situations including countering spirit harm. In fact all mantras, recited with focus and pure motivation as well as correct aspirations will result in our accumulation of merits and in purification of our negative karma.

Attaining Higher States of Concentration and Awareness Meditation With Mantras

“When you recite the mantras, it propels your mind into a higher state of awareness and it creates a great amount of merit. It is on the basis of merit one gains enlightenment and the purification of negative karma and higher thoughts, higher insights and realisations.

~ H.E. the 25th Tsem Rinpoche”

Reciting mantras thus invokes the particular energy of that particular deity. Mantras are the deity’s essence in the form or aspect of sound; it is a particular representation of enlightenment within the deity’s mantra. So whatever the deities represent, when we recite their mantra, we are invoking upon that particular aspect of enlightenment. Hence, if we invoke upon White Tara, we will gain healing. Reciting White Tara’s mantra taps into White Tara’s energy to heal our body, and free it from the causes to become sick and unhappy so that we can use our body to benefit others.

Mantras are thus powerful expressions of the compassion of the Buddhas. They are, in fact, so powerful that when countering spirit harm and black magic, we invoke upon the power of the deity’s compassion to protect us. Thus in reciting mantras, we gain innumerable benefits for our practice. These are benefits that will never lead us to harm, even superficially, and can only result in our spiritual progress.

The Design and Structure

The Kechara Pocket Prayers book is designed to serve our main spiritual needs and aspirations. Its contents are carefully arranged as follows: The Preliminary Prayers followed by the Core Prayers, then the Dedication Prayers and lastly the Additional Prayers.

Preliminary Prayers

The Pocket Prayers book gives us a comprehensive range of prayers for us to select those which will adequately serve our needs for a daily practice. In a normal daily practice, we begin our prayers from the Preliminary Prayers section, starting with the Multiplying Mantra for a multi-fold increase of merits and the Mantra to Bless the Rosary, then Taking Refuge in the Three Jewels and the Prayer for the Generation of Bodhicitta. This is followed by the prayer of extraordinary aspiration – the Four Immeasurables.

It is essential for us to recite preliminary prayers like Taking Refuge and Generating Bodhicitta to gain the blessings and protection of the Three Jewels. Only refuge in the Three Jewels can protect us completely from samsara and from the three lower realms, because the Three Jewels lead us to eradicating the causes for our continuous rebirths in samsara. Generating Bodhicitta sets the right motivation for our prayers – it is the developing of altruistic love and compassion that will lead us to attain full enlightenment.

If possible, it is recommended for us to do our sadhana in holy places of pilgrimage, to tap into the enlightened energy that has been imbued into the surroundings thanks to the sacred activities to accomplished meditators before us. Tsem Rinpoche here does his sadhana and puja in front of the Naropa Caves in Nepal.

Hence we recite the Four Immeasurables which are beautiful aspirational prayers that all beings may have happiness and its causes, and be free of suffering and its causes. It is the highest kind of motivation that we can set when we engage in our practice, because we are wishing for them to accomplish the causes to never suffer again. We make this wish with no agenda or intent for ourselves to benefit. Thus through making these aspirations for all beings, we are given the impetus to develop boundless love, compassion, joy and equanimity for all beings, be they our friend, our enemy or a stranger to us. This will in turn enhance our ability to develop Bodhicitta, altruistic love and compassion for all beings equally.

Core Prayers

Following on from the preliminary prayers are the core prayers, which can be incorporated into our normal daily practice. This includes Practising Guru Devotion with the Nine Attitudes, Gaden Lhagyama (or the Guru Yoga of Lama Tsongkhapa) followed by the Prayer and Serkym Offering to one’s Dharma protector. In the Pocket Prayers book, this Dharma protector is Lord Setrap but if we should have our own Dharma protectors assigned to us by our teachers, we can use those prayers in the place of Setrap.

Dedication Prayers

The daily prayer session concludes with the completion dedication prayers, necessary to ‘seal’ the merits attained from whatever virtues we have gathered in prayer.

The outlined prayers are just the minimum, so to speak and besides them, we can add other prayers and practices like Gangloma (Praise to Manjushri), the Eight Verses of Thought Transformation, Heart Sutra and a purification practice such as Vajrasattva’s 100-Syllable Mantra or the Practice of the 35 Confessional Buddhas to our daily practice.

Additional Prayers

The Additional Prayers section of the Kechara Pocket Prayers book contains very powerful and meaningful prayers for specific occasions and situations. Prayers for the Deceased is a practice we can do for anyone we know who has passed away, to invoke Avalokiteshvara’s blessings and protection for them and to pray for them to be reborn in his Pure Land. The Food Offering and Blessing Prayer is to be recited before we begin a meal. We need to make it a practice to make an offering of our food to the Three Jewels for every meal, remembering their kindness. This is one of our refuge commitments which we received when we took our refuge vows. Blessing the feet mantra is a mantra we can recite daily before we leave our beds and step on the ground. This is to bless the animals that we may inadvertently step on or kill whenever we place our feet on the ground. The prayer for Recognising Everyone’s Buddha Nature is truly beautiful. It consists of our visualising our favourite Buddha on top of every precious being’s head and focusing on this and remembering this as their true nature.

Thus the prayers in the Additional Prayers section are designed to enhance our mindfulness as we carry out our daily activities.

The Daily Sadhana

A more recently published text that we can use as our daily sadhana. This text incorporates the practice of the Dharma protector Dorje Shugden.

Our attainment of enlightenment is accomplished through traversing a path of transformation of the mind from an egoistic mind filled with delusions of anger, hatred, pride, jealousy, and strong grasping and attachment, to a mind that is filled with clear-sighted wisdom and an altruistic heartfelt undiscriminating concern for all others, as though they were our only child.

We set ourselves firmly on this path through our daily practice of a sadhana. It is important to make a daily connection to the Buddhas, so that in times of great need you can spontaneously turn to them for help and they will come to your aid as swift as thought.

What is a Sadhana?

A sadhana is a self-transformation manual and guide to enlightenment. It is a daily practice manual. The purpose of doing a sadhana is to ultimately achieve our spiritual goal of transforming the mind from a delusional self-centred mind to a mind of wisdom and altruism that always thinks of helping and benefiting others and easing their sufferings. This is the mind of enlightenment.

In order to achieve this mind of enlightenment, we need a collection of prayers and mantras that are designed for us to achieve the qualities of a particular Buddha Deity with whom we have close affinity. After all, every Buddha deity has achieved full enlightenment; from their side, they possess all the qualities and attainments we ourselves wish to accomplish but from our side, the deity we have the closest affinity to depends on our karma. When we pray and meditate before a Buddha Deity, visualising his iconography which is a road map to enlightenment, we create the causes to eventually achieve the Buddha Deity’s enlightened qualities.

The collection of prayers designed for us to achieve these qualities is the sadhana. Thus through the daily performance of this sadhana, we recall the qualities of the outer Buddha and this will lead us to open up our Inner Buddha qualities of kindness, commitment and clarity.

An Invaluable Companion

Whenever I have to leave home for a while, whether the trip is close by or brings me far from home, the first thing I pack into my travelling bag is this Pocket Prayers book. Over the years, this small prayer book has become a well-travelled companion. It has ensured that I do my daily prayers and sadhana wherever I go, and that I make my daily connections with the Three Jewels. It has the main prayers I need, as well as prayers for various occasions such as a friend falling sick or the passing away of someone I know.

This little powerhouse is packed full of prayers for different needs, and I have found it to be an invaluable friend for all seasons and occasions. I can do a simple mantra recitation with it or fulfil my daily sadhana commitment, which is my manual for my path of practice to ultimate peace and enlightenment. Our daily prayers invigorate our spiritual practice, especially when they take us on a mind-transformation path from a delusional self-centred mind to a mind of compassion and altruistic love that focuses on benefiting and serving others. On this note, I wish to offer my humble thank you to Tsem Rinpoche and Kechara for coming out with this most precious book.

About the Book

Pages: 200
Size: A6
Language: English
Published: July 2009

Find out more here.
For more interesting information:

• Pocket Prayers
• Mantras – Holy Words of Power
• MANTRA can change me!
• Shize: A practice for healing and long life
• Dorje Shugden Gyenze to Increase Life, Merits and Wealth
• Dorje Shugden Trakze to Dispel Black Magic & Spirits
• Dorje Shugden Wangze for Power and Influence
• Ingredients for a successful relationship
• Tsongkhapa’s daily practice (video commentary)
• All About Manjushri / 关于文殊菩萨
• Homage to the Supreme Mother Tara
• Spectacular White Tara…
• A Special Setrap Meditation
• An important purification practice
• The 35 Confessional Buddhas
• SETRAP Prayer composed by Tsem Rinpoche
• Sadhana & Prayers

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