Chanted Meditations (Pujas)
Chanted Meditation Sessions - Roanoke
(see Calendar for dates and times)
If you enjoy meditating with others, chanted meditations are a great opportunity for you to engage in group meditation. These chanted meditations are also known in Sanskrit as "pujas", meaning "offering", or as "sadhanas", which means "method for receiving attainments".
All our prayers and meditation practices are recited in English with beautiful, easy-to-learn melodies and CD accompaniment. (Listen to an audio sample.) We recommend that you arrive about fifteen minutes early to be seated and relaxed at the start of the session. For prayers with tsog offerings, it is useful to arrive a half hour early to help set up offerings.
These spiritual practices create a strong connection with the Buddhas, and help us purify our negativity and fill our mind with positive, healing energy.
Pujas are open to everyone and you may sit on a chair or cushion.
Heart Jewel
The Heart Jewel practice is the heart essence of Kadampa Buddhism. In the first part of this practice, we visualize Je Tsongkhapa and make prayers and requests to purify negativity, and accumulate merit. This prepares our mind for a period of silent meditation on the Lamrim, or stages of the path.
The second practice is a method for relying upon the Dharma Protector Dorje Shugden. Through this, we can overcome obstacles to our practice and create favourable conditions so that we can nurture and increase our Dharma realizations. If we rely upon the Dharma Protector Dorje Shugden sincerely, our faith in Je Tsongkhapa will naturally increase and we will easily gain experience of the pure Buddhadharma transmitted directly to Je Tsongkhapa by the Wisdom Buddha Manjushri.
Offering to the Spiriual Guide
This is a special Guru yoga of Je Tsongkhapa in conjunction with Highest Yoga Tantra that is a preliminary practice for Vajrayana Mahamudra. The main practice is relying upon our Spiritual Guide as a Buddha and making praises and requests, but it also includes all the essential practices of the stages of the path, and training the mind, as well as both the generation stage and completion stage of Highest Yoga Tantra. By relying upon Je Tsongkhapa our compassion, wisdom, and spiritual power naturally increase. This practice includes a tsog offering, so please bring a food or other beautiful offering with you. It usually takes place on the 10th and 25th of the month, but be sure to check our calendar for specific dates and times.
Melodius Drum (Long Protector Puja)
This monthly practice consists principally of prayers to our Dharma Protector, Dorje Shugden. A Dharma Protector is an emanation of a Buddha or Bodhisattva whose main functions are to avert the inner and outer obstacles that prevent practitioners from attaining spiritual realizations, and to arrange all the necessary conditions for their practice. Dorje Shugden always helps, guides, and protects pure and faithful practitioners by granting blessings, increasing their wisdom, fulfilling their wishes, and bestowing success on all their virtuous activities. This practice includes a tsog offering, so please bring a food or other beautiful offering with you. It usually takes place on the 29th of the month, but be sure to check our calendar for specific dates and times.
Green Tara
Tara is a female Buddha, a manifestation of the ultimate wisdom of all the Buddhas. Each of the Twenty-one Taras is a manifestation of the principal Tara, Green Tara. If we rely upon Mother Tara sincerely and with strong faith she will protect us from all obstacles and fulfil all our wishes.
Since she is a wisdom Buddha, and since she is a manifestation of the completely purified wind element, Tara is able to help us very quickly. If we recite the twenty-one verses of praise we shall receive inconceivable benefits. These praises are very powerful because they are Sutra, the actual words of Buddha.It is good to recite them as often as we can.
The Yoga of Enlightened Mother Arya Tara
When we have received the blessing empowerment of Arya Tara we have received the instructions on training in common paths and training in uncommon paths, and we have received special blessings. To make these instructions effective we need to engage in the practice of the yoga of Enlightened Mother Arya Tara self-generation sadhana.
Having received the blessing empowerment of Arya Tara we should apply effort to practise the yoga of Enlightened Mother Arya Tara self-generation sadhana. By doing this we shall accomplish our final goal, the supreme happiness of enlightenment.
Meditation & Recitation of Solitary Vajrasattva
Any living being, even a worm or an insect, can commit negative actions; but only humans have the fortune to be able to purify them. We have been accumulating non-virtuous actions and experiencing their suffering results since beginningless time; but now we have an opportunity to purify them completely.
Since purification is the root of future happiness and spiritual realizations, we should strive to cleanse our mind of delusion and negative karma by practising this sadhana. This is a very powerful method of purification.
Avalokiteshvara
Avalokiteshvara is an enlightened being who is a manifestation of all Buddhas' compassion. He is known as the Buddha of Compassion. This practice of thousand-armed Avalokiteshvara is very powerful for purifying negative karma of body, speech, and mind, and for pacifying strong delusions such as desirous attachment and hatred. It is also a special method for receiving blessings and improving our experience of love, compassion, and bodhichitta.
POWA Practice
This practice of transference of consciousness, known as ‘powa’, can be done either by a group of practitioners or individually. The purpose of doing this is to lead countless deceased beings to the Pure Land of a Buddha.
We understand that throughout this world millions of humans and billions of animals die every day from so many different causes. If these living beings have the opportunity to take rebirth in a Buddha’s Pure Land they will attain permanent liberation from suffering and experience pure and everlasting happiness. Our practice of this powa offers them this precious opportunity. By engaging in this practice we ourself will create a great collection of virtue, which will also lead us into the pathway to the Pure Land of a Buddha.
We perform this powa practice on behalf of those who have recently died, traditionally within forty-nine days of their death.
Medicine Buddha
Medicine Buddha is a Buddha Doctor whose function is to release living beings from outer and inner sickness by bestowing blessings upon them. Buddha’s Truth Body, or Dharmakaya, appears in the form of Medicine Buddha, with a blue-coloured body, one face and two hands, holding a jewelled bowl and a medicinal plant.
By relying upon Medicine Buddha sincerely, living beings in these impure times can be cured of heavy physical and mental disease, and find release from the internal pain of the three poisons: attachment, anger, and ignorance. They can also receive protection from many other dangers and obstacles. Since beginningless time, we have experienced the pain of the three poisons and all the sufferings to which they give rise. Now, by relying upon this Buddha Doctor, we can be released from this pain forever. Moreover, by practising the sadhana of Medicine Buddha sincerely, we receive a special power of body, speech, and mind, which we can then use to help others through healing actions. Therefore, we should practise this sadhana purely and sincerely.
Purification Practice
In our previous lives, while under the influence of deluded minds, we created a great deal of negative karma, and we also transgressed our commitments and incurred root and secondary downfalls. As a result, we now experience difficulties in developing faith and conviction in Dharma and in making progress on the stages of the path to enlightenment. Moreover, if we do not purify all this negativity while we have the chance, we shall have to experience great suffering in the future.
One of the best methods for purifying negativities and downfalls is the Mahayana Sutra of the Three Superior Heaps, otherwise known as The Bodhisattva's Confession of Moral Downfalls, or the Bodhisattva Mahayana Confession Sutra.
Prajnaparamita
Great Mother Prajnaparamita is a female Buddha who is the manifestation of Buddha's perfection of wisdom. Her function is to overcome maras - the outer and inner obstructing demons - and to bestow the realization of the higher perfection of wisdom. Through sincere practice of the yoga of the Great Mother Prajnaparamita we can accomplish the perfection of wisdom and become an enlightened being. How wonderful!
Vajrapani
This sadhana, a method to accomplish the attainment of the enlightened state of Vajrapani, can be practiced by those who have received the empowerment of Buddha Vajrapani. During the empowerment we receive the special blessings of this Buddha upon our continually residing body, speech and mind. For these blessings not to degenerate, and to make progress in our training in common and uncommon paths, we need to practice this sadhana with clear understanding of its profound meaning.
Through sincerely practising the self-generation of Buddha Vajrapani with the compassionate mind of bodhichitta we can heal both ourself and others. Finally, we shall attain the supreme happiness of enlightenment.
Prayers for Meditation
We all have the potential to gain realizations of all the stages of the path to enlightenment. These potentials are like seeds in the field of our mind, and our meditation practice is like cultivating these seeds. However, our meditation practice will be successful only if we make good preparations beforehand.
Dakini Yoga (for HYT Practitioners Only)
Everyone who has received a Highest Yoga Tantra empowerment has a commitment to practise six-session Guru yoga. This six-session yoga has been specially arranged for those who have received a Vajrayogini empowerment.
The Yoga of Buddha Heruka (for HYT Practitioners Only)
Those who are unable to recite the extensive sadhana, Essence of Vajrayana, can begin with this brief essential yoga of Heruka body mandala self-generation. The detailed meaning of this practice should be understood from the extensive sadhana and its commentary, Essence of Vajrayana.
It is extremely important to improve our understanding of and faith in this practice through a careful reading of its commentary. With clear understanding and strong faith we can enjoy this quintessential practice of Highest Yoga Tantra and attain the ultimate goal of human life.
Quick Path to Great Bliss (for HYT Practitioners Only)
This particular sadhana, Quick Path to Great Bliss, was composed by the great Lama Phabongkha Rinpoche. Compared to other sadhanas it is not very long, but it contains all the essential practices of Secret Mantra. To practice the sadhana successfully we should first receive the empowerment of Vajrayogini, and then study authentic instructions on the practice such as those found in the commentary Guide to Dakini Land. This sadhana is suitable both for our regular daily practice and for retreat; and we can practice it alone or in a group.