The Prayer of Samantabhadra, also known as "a prayer of excellent conduct" and also as "a king of prayers" is one of the five great prayers of the Great Vehicle tradition and one of the most popular prayers in that tradition. For example, it is recited every day without fail by many Tibetans. While using the prayer in Tibetan and English, the author discovered that existing English translations from Tibetan sources have many mistakes, all of which give readers a wrong understanding of what the prayer actually says. Worse, translations into other languages such as German and Russian from the mistaken English translations have carried all the mistakes along with them. Therefore, the author undertook a major study of the sutra in order to provide practitioners with a reliable translation and a complete set of explanations that would explain correctly and in depth every facet of meaning contained of the sutra.

Firstly, the prayer was not composed as a prayer. It is actually a set of verses that were spoken by the bodhisatva Samantabhadra to summarize an amazing teaching he had just given to a young bodhisatva. The teaching was on the subject of the excellent conduct of a bodhisatva. The teaching and the verses were later recorded in one of the Great Vehicle sutras. Later still, the verses were extracted from the sutra and written out alone for ease of recitation. An unfortunate consequence of that has been that many people have mistakenly thought that the verses actually were composed as a discrete prayer, and so have lost the all-important connection to the actual teaching given in the sutra. To rectify this problem and make the fullness of the prayer available to English-speaking practitioners, the author went on to make a translation of the entire sutra and its concluding verses.

However, still more was needed because there is an enormous amount of meaning hidden in the words of the verses, meaning that cannot be seen let alone understood without assistance. Therefore, the author assembled everything needed to explain every facet of meaning of every word in the verses and published all of the work in two full volumes detailing the prayer. The two volumes share a very extensive introduction that clarifies the nature of the prayer. Following that, they share a translation of the entire sutra, including the verses. After that, each volume presents its own commentaries in order to show the meaning of the verses.

Volume II is taken up with a single, very large Tibetan commentary. There are a number of commentaries by Tibetan masters. Unfortunately, for several centuries these masters have explained the verses in ways that do not agree with the explanations of the Indian commentaries. In fact, the Tibetan system of explanation of the prayer has been corrupt for several centuries, an issue which is explained in detail in the introduction to each volume. Nevertheless, the Tibetan commentaries have much to offer, so one was chosen for this second volume. The author of the chosen commentary was Ontrul Tenpa'i Wangchuk, who was regarded as one of the greatest living scholars and Dzogchen masters in Tibet until his recent passage. His commentary is regarded as very useful because it goes through the verses word by word, in a level of detail not seen in any of the other Tibetan commentaries. More than that, it is unique amongst all of the Indian and Tibetan commentaries in that it was not given as a scholarly exploration of the meaning of the verses but was given as practical advice to his lay disciples on how to follow the excellent conduct of a bodhisattva. Therefore, his commentary is particularly useful for anyone wanting to use the prayer not only for recitation but as a basis for developing himself as a bodhisattva.

Samantabhadra's Prayer : Volume II : The original sutra with prayer and the Tibetan Commentary by Ontrul Tenpa�i Wangchuk, PKTC, Paperback, 298 Pages, 2015, $25.00

The author, well-known translator and teacher Tony Duff has practised extensively with Gelug, Kagyu, and Nyingma traditions. He has been translating, teaching, and practising in these schools for thirty-five years. He is well known for his teaching, contributions to the translation of Tibetan Buddhism, and major works in preserving and re-publishing Tibetan Buddhist texts.

Contents: Samantabhadra's Prayer, Volume II with Tibetan Commentary by Ontrul Tenpa'i Wangchuk
Introduction	v
1. The Importance of Samantabhadra's Prayer	x
1.1. It is one of the Five Important Prayers of the Great Vehicle Tradition	x
1.2. The Prayer's Place in Tibetan Buddhist Practice with a Note on its use in Dzogchen Practice in East Tibet	xii
2. The Origin of Samantabhadra's Prayer	xiii
3. The Prayer is an Extract	xiv
3.1. What are the Extracts like?	xiv
3.2. Problems with the Extracts	xv
3.3. Fixing Problems	xv
4. Explanations of the Prayer	xv
4.1. Indian Commentaries	xvi
4.2. The First Tibetan Commentary on the Prayer	xvii
4.3 Later Tibetan Commentaries on the Prayer	xviii
4.4. A Recent but Very Useful Tibetan Commentary	xx
4.5. A Western Commentary	xxi
5. Translating the Prayer into English	xxii
5.1. In General	xxii
5.2. Specific Issues	xxiii
6. Arrangement of the Materials	xxvi
7. Gender Issues	xxvii
8. Sanskrit	xxviii
9. Supports for Study	xxviii
10. Tibetan Texts	xxix
11. Make a Practice Text	xxix
From the Gandavyuha Sutra: Sudhana Meets with the Bodhisattva Samantabhadra and Samantabhadra expresses the Prayer	1
Samantabhadra's Prayer as Arranged for use by Tibetans	33
Samantabhadra's Prayer as Arranged for use by Non-Tibetans	37
A Tibetan Commentary to Samantabhadra's Prayer by Ontrul Tenpa'i	43
Glossary of Terms	157
Supports for Study	175
Index	181