Pathgate News
Publication of the First English Edition of the Nyingma Monlam Chenmo Prayer Book
The Nyingma Monlam Chenmo - the Annual Prayer Assembly of Ngagyur Tradition has been held every year since 1989, attended by the Sangha community of all six branches of the Nyingma Tradition. The objective of this annual prayer festival is to pacify diseases, famines and wars, to increase peace, prosperity and harmony throughout the world.
With an ever-increasing number of non-Tibetan speaking students attending the Nyingma Monlam Chenmo each year, Venerable Lama Dondrup Dorje was granted permission from His Holiness Penor Rinpoche to oversee the translation of the Tibetan texts of the Nyingma Monlam Chenmo Prayer book into English with English phonetic and English meaning alongside the original Tibetan texts, so that it may benefit the English speaking students who attend this Annual Prayer Festival.
On the 27th January this year, the first day of the 20th Annual Nyingma Monlam Chenmo in Bodhgaya, India, a copy of the first English edition of ‘The Wish-Granting Tree of Enlightenment’ - the Prayer book of the Annual Prayer Assembly of Ngagyur Tradition – was presented by Venerable Lama Dondrup Dorje to His Holiness Penor Rinpoche, the Chairman of the Nyingma Monlam Chenmo International Foundation, who was delighted at the publication of this prayer book, and gave the advice that the prayer book should be recited each day and not merely during the Monlam Chenmo. This prayer book was distributed free of charge to visiting English-speaking students during the annual Nyingma Prayer Festival for World Peace.
Translated from Tibetan into English by Lopen Phuntsho Gyaltsen and edited by Venerable Lama Dondrup Dorje, ‘The Wish-Granting Tree of Enlightenment’, is their second collaboration in translating Tibetan text into English. The first one,'Wish-Granting Attainments’ - the daily prayers of Namdroling Monastery - was published in March 2005. Like their first book, their latest effort is jointly published by Namdroling Monastery and the Pathgate Institute of Buddhist Studies. Comprising 369 pages with foreword given by His Holiness Penor Rinpoche, it is hoped that the translation of ‘The Wish-Granting Tree of Enlightenment’ will assist English-speaking students in their understanding of Tibetan Prayer. There is also a plan to translate this prayer book into Chinese, with Chinese phonetics and Chinese meaning in the near future. For the latest update, watch this space.