“Lama Atisha explained why reciting the names of the Thirty-five Buddhas has so much power,” Lama Zopa Rinpoche said, speaking on purification practices during the Lama Tsongkhapa Guru Yoga retreat at Istituto Lama Tzong Khapa in 2003.

“In the past, when the Thirty-five Buddhas were bodhisattvas, they made many prayers to be able to benefit sentient beings, to easily purify our defilements and negative karma. When they achieved enlightenment, they achieved the Buddha’s ten qualities or powers, one of which is the power of prayer. So, their names have the power of all those past prayers. That is why, when sentient beings recite their names, they have so much power to purify defilements and eons of negative karma. Every single quality the Thirty-five Buddhas attained was in order to benefit sentient beings, there was no other reason or motivation for it, so we should use this advantage.”

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