Tony Duff

Samantabhadra's Prayer Volume II Tony Duff

Publisher Marketing: The Prayer of Samantabhadra, also known as "a prayer of excellent conduct" and also as "a king of prayers" is one of the five great prayers of the Great Vehicle tradition and one of the most popular prayers in that tradition. For example, it is recited every day without fail by many Tibetans. While using the prayer in Tibetan and English, the author discovered that existing English translations from Tibetan sources have many mistakes, all of which give readers a wrong understanding of what the prayer actually says. Therefore, the author undertook a major study of the sutra in order to provide practitioners with a reliable translation and a complete set of explanations that would explain correctly and in depth every facet of meaning contained of the sutra. Volume II is taken up with a single, very large Tibetan commentary. There are a number of commentaries by Tibetan masters. The one was chosen for this second volume is by Ontrul Tenpa'i Wangchuk, who was regarded as one of the greatest living scholars and Dzogchen masters in Tibet until his recent passage. His commentary goes through the verses word by word, in a level of detail not seen in any of the other Tibetan commentaries. More than that, it is unique amongst all of the Indian and Tibetan commentaries in that it was not given as a scholarly exploration of the meaning of the verses but was given as practical advice to his lay disciples on how to follow the excellent conduct of a bodhisatva. Therefore, his commentary is particularly useful for anyone wanting to use the prayer not only for recitation but as a basis for developing himself as a bodhisatva.