Praying to the guru is not necessarily a matter of chanting mantras or reading a supplication composed by others. The real prayer, on the relative level, is just thinking of the guru — his form, his name, his activities, his color, his shape, even his movement.

If you forget to pray to the guru for a long time, he will not complain that you haven’t been offering enough prayers. But the moment you remember the guru, he is there; his compassion is there, and his blessing is there. The notion of the guru being there comes from remembering the guru. Remembering is the presence of the guru.

We can supplicate to the guru for mundane things like longevity, prosperity, good health, materializing Rwandan hunks. The main aim is to have compassion, bodhichitta, renunciation mind, and to experience the enthusiasm and joy of supplication itself so that we will have devotion. We supplicate to understand the meaning of nonduality, beginning with actualizing the nonduality of guru and student.

It helps to recite supplication prayers in a loud voice with all kinds of tunes, so as to penetrate your stubborn shell of impure perception.

Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche

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