Also, read His Holiness Sakya Trichen’s teaching on Emptiness: The Heart Sutra.
—along with a commentary by Khenchen Appey Rinpoche, translated by Jhampa Losal and Jay Goldberg at the International Buddhist Academy under the auspices of the Khenpo Appey Foundation, 2014
The Buddha taught this sūtra near Kapilavastu, to a Shakya youth named Supremely Radiant Face who requested a ritual to protect him from harm while traveling. The Buddha described the names and realms of the Buddhas in each of the various directions, and taught the youth that paying homage to and imagining those Buddhas before him would protect him from fear during his journey and bring about the accomplishment of his goals.This sūtra is often chanted at the beginning of undertakings to overcome obstacles and bring success.
The Three-Part Sutra is one of the most popular scriptures for the practice of purification. Purification practices are the skillful means to eliminate emotional burdens, i.e. guilt, and to remove our obstacles to happiness that were created by our past negative actions.
The Buddha taught this sūtra to an audience of monks at his main monastery in Srāvasti. This sūtra provides practical advice on how to practice giving, one of the six perfections. It explains thirty-seven appropriate gifts, how to properly give those gifts, and the karmic results that ripens from those gifts.