Publisher's Synopsis
This is a very thoughtful and uplifting book of prayers and mantras. You will feel the blessings it gives. Buddhism is a religion of the mind. Much in the same way that water ripples fade, so too does Buddhism see the nature of the mind. In Buddhist philosophy, the four noble truths are the descriptions of reality revealed by the Buddha. Dissatisfaction. The cause of dissatisfaction. The end of dissatisfaction. And how to get there. The way to end dissatisfaction is called the Eightfold Noble Path and is the formula for generating only good things rather than bad, and avoiding dissatisfaction. This leads into the idea of the Triple Gem. The Triple Gem is the language used within Buddhism to describe three things. The Buddha. The Dharma. And the Sangha. The Buddha is the teacher, and also represents the potential all of us have for becoming free from our suffering. The Dharma is the teachings he revealed. And the Sangha is the community to which you can go to for support in following the path. These prayers will honor various beings known as Bodhisattvas. In several traditions of Buddhist thought, Bodhisattvas are people who are almost at Enlightenment, or the end of dissatisfaction, but stay. They stay not out of doubt or fear but out of compassion for those who they would leave behind. They vow to stay within the cycle of suffering in order to liberate the beings around them first. The prayers will also honor the Triple Gem and the nature of the mind. Within these prayers, there will be mantras used to focus the mind and to condense the teachings of a particular idea into a simple phrase. The prayers will also be written in the style of traditional Buddhist prayers, and as such will use a lot of Buddhist terminology.
