The Seven Branches Prayers

His Holiness the 17th Gyalwang Karmapa, Ogyen Drodul Trinley Dorje stated: “The key points of the Seven Branches Payer is to gather the accumulations and purify the obscurations. 

There is no practice that is not included within these two. Gathering the accumulations means gathering all the favourable conditions for developing the path within our beings. Purifying misdeeds and obscurations means clearing away the conditions that counteract developing the path within.”

Seven Branches or Seven Limb Prayer serves as the basic structure of many Buddhist prayers, sadhanas and pujas.  It consists of following seven branches: 

1. Prostrations - antidote to pride and ego-clinging; the result of the practice is that one will never be separated from the Three Jewels and will be held with kindness, love and compassion of Lamas until Awakening. 

2. Offerings - antidote for desire and attachment; cultivating generosity and offerings (material and visualized) result in liberation of attachments and habits of attachments and it accumulates merit. 

3. Confession - antidote for negativities accumulated since time without beginning; results of such practice brings experiences of better forms of rebirth, for instance, a body which is an appropriate vessel for the practice of Dharma. 

4. Rejoicing - antidote for habitual patterns of envy and jealousy; it brings about support and inspiration of good Dharma friends and conditions favorable for practice of Dharma. 

5. Requesting the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas to teach Dharma - antidote for ignorance; by the power of this aspiration one can develop the wisdom to understand the profound meaning of the Teachings. 

6. Requesting the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas not to pass away - antidote to wrong views; this request purifies disturbing emotions arising from our wrong perceptions and gives rise to the proper view. 

7. Dedication - antidote to unskillful or stupid acts; proper dedication is characterized by two facts: one dedicates whatever merit for nothing less than Enlightenment and aspires to it in order to benefit all sentient beings; it results in the development of skillful means of Bodhisattvas and attaining complete Awakening.

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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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