In Tibetan Buddhist tradition, there are two forms of prostration. They are: short and full prostrations.
(1) It helps to overcome from your ego and deluded pride, and makes you peaceful and humble.
(2) In short prostration you touch the five points of your body on the ground - forehead,
two hands, and two knees.
(3) In full prostration you lay down your whole body on the ground like a
tree trunk falling on the ground.
It is best to ask your teacher to teach on how doing it properly and traditionally.
When is the right time to make Prostration?
You can do at any time of the day or night. However, doing prostration on a particularly sacred or
holy day is extremely powerful and effective. Due to the sacredness of the day, the merit or virtue
created through the practice of prostration becomes much more powerful.
It is said in the Sutra
that your merit and virtue become a thousand times stronger compared to the rest of the time. So,
doing more prostration on a sacred day is important. For instance, doing more prostration on the
day of a full moon generates greater merit.
What should one recite when making prostrations
There are several mantras, and prayers that one can recite while doing prostrations. Your mind
must be filled with mantra sound or mantra syllables. Or one should recite the following mantras
mindfully with a feeling of respect and humility. Also, one should have a feeling of regret towards
the negative actions that one has committed in the past followed by a firm resolution and feelings of admiration to enlightened beings’ spiritual qualities.
Mantras.
(1) Tayatha - Om Muni Muni Maha Muniyeh Soha [ Sakyamuni Buddha ]
(2) Om Benza Sattva Hung Phet [ Vajrasattva Bodhisattva ]
(3) Om Mani Pad Me Hum [ Cherenzig / Avalokestisvara / Kuan Yin Pusa ]
(4) Om Ah Hung Benza Guru Padma Siddhi Hung [ Guru Rinpoche ]
One can recite any of the above mantras when you do prostration. It is important and highly
beneficial when you employ your body, speech, and mind during the entire prostration
time. Bodily perform the prostration, verbally recite the mantra, and mentally reflect on the
meaning of the mantra.
The benefit of making prostrations
The practice of Prostration is one of the most effective ways to generate merit and virtue.
Doing prostration is not that difficult and painful. In general, there are many benefits to
making prostrations. However, the following are some of the most prominent:
• Purification of negativities and karmic obscurations created over the series of past
and present lifetimes.
• Accumulation of merit for uninterrupted spiritual growth and to gain swift spiritual
realization.
• It implants the seeds of the three Kayas within your mind stream.
• It helps to overcome from your ego and deluded pride, and makes you peaceful and
humble.
• It releases physical and mental tension and knots .
• It unblocks and clears out the psychic nervous system and other channels through
which the vital energy flows.
• It creates lightness, agility, flexibility, or even suppleness in your body by getting rid
of physical lethargic feelings.
• It burns fats in your body and helps one lose weight. It also helps to increase your
digestive function.
• It cures many of the chronic illnesses primarily caused by karmic debts.
• It reshapes your body and mind, since the prostrations are a good exercise in the
ordinary sense, and in the ultimate sense it is a yogic training of body and mind to
lay down the groundwork for a sound base for spiritual development.
You will most likely feel an incredible contrast in your body, speech, and mind subsequent to making 21 or 108 prostrations each day for two to three weeks.
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Aspiration For Bodhichitta
For those in whom the precious Bodhichitta has not arisen
May it arise and not decrease
But increase further and further.
Dedication of Merit
By this merit may we obtain omniscience then.
Having defeated the enemies wrong-doings.
May we liberate migratory from the ocean of existence.
With its stormy waves of birth, old age, sickness and death.
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