Daily practices

The Guru Puja, or Lama Chöpa, is a guru yoga practice aimed at developing our enlightened qualities for the benefit of all sentient beings. The Guru Puja strengthens our deepest causes for enlightenment. From the point of view of a rigorous, more experienced practitioner, the Guru Puja is one of the most perfect and complete activities, containing every stage of the Mahayana and Vajrayana path.

Within the Lama Chöpa we make the offering of Tsog, or Ganachakra. In this part of the ritual we offer to the Guru, to all the Buddhas and to sentient beings a collection of offerings that delight the senses, for the benefit of all beings without exception. The Tsog is also the best means of renewing our commitments, vows and promises with the holy beings. By making these offerings to the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas we accumulate virtue and receive the blessings of the holy beings to keep progressing on our spiritual journey.

Moreover, because it brings together all the skills and qualities of a Buddha, the Guru Puja is a practice for every kind of practitioner, whatever their needs: it deepens the faith of those who seek an object of devotion, removes outer, inner and secret obstacles, and sets out all the teachings of sutra and tantra for all sentient beings.

The practice of the Four Mandalas of Tara Chittamani nourishes the roots of positive karma and stops the endless, uncontrolled ripening of negative karma. Supreme Tara Chittamani, of boundless compassion and with a perfect collection of skills, cares for each and every sentient being as if it were her only child and guides them through every stage of enlightenment. Tara Chittamani uses each being's everyday experience to keep us on the path to liberation; she accompanies us as we face and overcome the Eight Fears and the Eight Worldly Dharmas, and comforts us in the pains of impermanence. The Four Mandalas of Tara Chittamani are practised because they are an infallible method for improving causes and conditions in this and future lives.

The mandalas of Tara are known as the mandalas of liberation, and practising them counters all 404 roots of disease. During this practice we invoke Supreme Tara and her retinue of twenty-one Taras, who display different activities and implements, to help us in each particular situation of our lives.

That is why, traditionally, the Four Mandalas are used for everyday matters:

• relationships;
• family matters;
• financial difficulties;
• professional challenges;
• situations beyond our control.

Since the spiritual path cannot be separated from worldly experience, everyday life becomes the direct object of our practice.

The Four Mandalas are therefore also used for the development of practitioners at different stages of concentration on Bodhichitta: they strengthen its power and raise it to a higher state, marked by the signs of compassion for all sentient beings. Practising the Four Mandalas of Tara Chittamani with the right motivation leads unfailingly to the realisation of Bodhichitta in a single lifetime.

The Melodious Drums of Victory, the Kangso, bring glory and joy to practitioners. The Kangso is one of the most profound guru yoga activities and is reserved exclusively for practitioners who have completed their highest yoga tantra classes.

The Kangso has four parts:

• we invite the Dharma protectors into our presence;
• with deep sincerity we confess and purify the negative conduct and actions that destroy the causes of enlightenment;
• we make perfect offerings of the substances and elements that make up the Protector's Mandala;
• and in return the Dharma Protectors, by their promise to protect practitioners on the path of the Dharma, undertake to fulfil our wishes and guide us in our practice.

Performed every day, the Kangso is also dedicated to all the sponsors who seek the protectors'help with their difficulties and their personal, spiritual or professional challenges. Click here to find out how you can sponsor the Kangso (in the section on the Kalarupa and Dorje Shugden Festival) and have your name included in the daily recitation, or click here to sponsor it directly for 90-day cycles that can be renewed throughout the year. Taking part in the puja is reserved for practitioners who have completed their highest yoga tantra classes.