A Precious Crystal Rosary
One Hundred and Eight Verses Praising Great Compassion
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Bhikshu Lobsang Tayang -
Texts to Recite and Contemplate
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Feb 28, 2026
Bhikshu Lobsang Tayang 
Texts to Recite and Contemplate 
Feb 28, 2026 
The author of the original Tibetan text is the famed Mongolian master, Lobsang Tayang (1867-1937). He studied at Drepung Gomang Monastery in Tibet but wrote this particular text while in Mongolia when he was among the crowd listening to an oral transmission of the Tengyur canonical works of Tibetan Buddhism.
The first English translation of the text below was done by Prof. Jose Cabezon, which is posted here. This present version, undertaken by Geshe Dadul Namgyal and Dr. Monica Halka with editorial assistance from Venerable Thubten Chodron, is a revision of that translation, finalized in December 2022.
Homage to the One of Great Compassion.
Door to the path of the Great Beings,
Great seal of the Mahayana,
Seed of Great Awakening,
I prostrate with devotion to Great Compassion.
Mother who gives birth to all Victorious Ones,
Essential wealth of the boddhisattvas,
Anonymous benefactor of all beings,
May I be protected by Great Compassion.
Prostrating to that alone
Encompasses making prostrations and offerings
To all the Victorious Ones and their boddhisattvas.
I praise Great Compassion.
I praise you, Great Compassion,
The ultimate and unrivaled
Root cause and the condition from which
Sravakas, Pratyekabuddhas, Buddhas, and Bodhisattvas are born.
I praise you, Great Compassion,
Who are important at the beginning, like a seed,
In the interim, like water, and at the end like the ripened fruit
In producing the excellent harvest of the Victorious Ones.-
I praise you, Great Compassion,
Whose defining characteristic is the desire to protect
All aged mother sentient beings
From the great and subtle fears of samsara and nirvana.
I praise the compassion that attends to sentient beings,
That sees them all in their suffering nature
Under the power of their ignorance in cyclic existence,
Like buckets on a water wheel.
You see all beings to be like ripples on [the surface of] a river—
They do not last even a moment.
I praise the compassion that focuses on phenomena
And sees them in their impermanent aspect.
I praise the compassion that focuses on the objectless,
That sees all beings, however they appear,
To be empty of inherent existence
Like the reflection of the moon in water.
When the potential for meditating on great compassion
Reaches full bloom,
One becomes perfectly awakened.
Therefore, you are the quality that makes a Buddha a Buddha.
All the Buddha’s teachings,
Which have the nature of nonviolence,
Are informed by compassion.
Thus, you are the quality that makes the Dharma the Dharma.
The disciples of our Teacher, the Conqueror,
Are distinguished by their execution of the four duties of a sramana,
The discipline that ensures the conduct of compassion.
Hence, you are the quality that makes the Sangha the Sangha.
There is a great deal of difference
Between those who do and do not possess you in the mindstream.
For example, the Supreme Teacher restored the life breath of a swan,
While Shariputra could not.
Hence it is you, Great Compassion,
Who liberates one from all fears,
Who is the sole and definitive source of refuge
For the world with its gods and other beings.
The determination that the Conqueror, the Lord Buddha,
Is a reliable spiritual guide
Comes down to logically establishing
You, Great Compassion, as the [foremost] reason [among many].
Therefore, even the conviction that only the Buddha’s teachings
Serve as the holy gateway
For those desiring liberation
Depends upon skill in your ways.
Although there are numerous reasons why
The Buddha Jewel is a fitting object of refuge,
Great impartial compassion
Is the chief reason.
That same reason means that the Dharma and the Sangha
Are also fitting objects of refuge.
Hence, you are the chief arbiter
Distinguishing what is an object of refuge and what is not.
Although Shravakas and Pratyekabuddhas can remain alive
For hundreds of eons through the power of concentration,
They have not paid you enough attention.
Hence, they remain long inactive in a sea of peacefulness.
But the perfect Buddhas and bodhisattvas
Have already offered into your hands
Whatever authority they have, and so
They continue benefiting others until the end of samsara.
When inferior minds like my own speculate,
They worry that adopting you, Compassion,
Means that all the sufferings of others
Will become their own to remedy.
If a single pleasure arises without compassion,
Later it grows into a great deal of suffering.
If a single suffering arises along with compassion,
Later it disperses all suffering.
If adopting a certain method
Causes eradication of much suffering,
Then, whatever kind of suffering is in question,
Are you not the one who alleviates it?
Moreover, in order to prevent the onslaught
Of harm that could strike beings,
You, oh protector, absorb suffering into yourself,
As did the Bodhisattva Supuúpachandra.
To protect the lives of many beings
And so that wrongdoers will not fall into a hellish abyss,
You might even [physically] harm another,
As did the compassionate Merchant Trader.
Though one may enter the Avici hell for the sake of others,
An expert in the ways of compassion will nevertheless
Have body and mind pervaded by happiness and bliss,
Like a swan in a sea of lotuses.
In liberating sentient beings,
You impart happiness vast as an ocean.
In comparison [the joy of] obtaining personal liberation
Is like the water in a hoof-print. What is that next to you?
For those heroes who have as their permanent partner
The one they admire—Great Compassion,
It doesn’t matter where they are born among the six types of beings.
By the force of their karma or prayers,
Their bodies are happy due to the power of their merit,
And their minds are happy due to the dexterity of their wisdom.
So, even though they abide for the sake of others until the end of samsara,
How could they experience weariness?
O mind of Compassion, how astounding
That you are wholeheartedly devoted to the welfare of others.
But how much more astounding that you do this
Without conceit or hope of reward.
There is no better example of how
You wish to protect all beings from suffering
Than the concern that a wise mother feels
For her beloved child.
Though she has many children,
A mother feels special concern for the one who is sick.
Likewise, you show the greatest kindness
To beings who are tormented.
As for an ordinary person like me,
I cherish and value nothing more than myself.
Even [all] my self-cherishing is no match for
How much you cherish and value all beings.
Even though I greatly fear suffering
I have no fear of wrongdoing—that is how I am.
But your nature is to fear wrongdoing
Millions of times more than you fear suffering.
For as long as the fetters of afflictions
Bind sentient beings to Samsara,
You bind the Buddhas
To this Samsaric world.
Therefore, it was the custom of the bearded Indian masters
To bow first to you and then to the Buddhas.
For you are what causes them
To remain in the three realms of existence.
Who has power of insight like yours,
Which can even prompt the Tathagata Lord of Nagas
To leave the peaceful lake’s swirling expanse
And appear in the parched land of disciples?
Even while deeply immersed in the state of peace
The Able One knows all phenomena that can be known,
And subdues the haughty ones.
This is your charm and skillfulness, Compassion.
By rubbing it on the Kashi rock of Great Compassion
One tests the gold of the victor’s noble qualities
Of power and fearlessness,
[And] infers their quality.
The chief object of others’ attachment
Is centered on their own being.
That your own being is not the object of your attachment,
This is [truly] amazing.
Nevertheless, as you also acknowledge,
If they did not consider their own lives to be of secondary importance,
How could the stable [boddhisattvas] engage in the myriad offerings and gifts
They make of their own bodies?
There are many who when being helped by others
Think themselves being harmed instead.
But you consider even those who inflict harm
As being of great benefit to you.
Beings may treat you as anything
From friend to foe to stranger.
Yet how wondrous that you constantly manage
To think of each of them as you would your only child.
If one’s aged mother went insane under the influence of spirits,
Who in their right mind would see her as an enemy?
How amazing that your caring mind
Perceives all beings as your kind mother.
That the Buddhas teach beings
The path to liberation while watching over them
Both day and night during the six times—
That is your kindness: the wide eye of compassion.
And when the same Buddhas
pronounce with a lion’s roar,
“I am the refuge of all beings who lack protectors!”
That is your magic: the noble voice of compassion.
The spirits have spells
That can harm beings in all sorts of ways.
It is your blessing of great kindheartedness,
That transforms these [spells] into beneficial effects.
Even when the hordes of Mara’s army
Rained their frightening weapons upon the [Blessed] One,
The power of the mighty armor of compassion
Made them crumble into a shower of flowers.
An arm that firmly embraces
All beings without exception,
Such that it cannot part from them—
That is you: the long arm of compassion.
What is the tool
With which the Supreme Guide lifts all beings
Out of the intense, frightening chasm of samsara?
It is only the hook of compassion.
Hence, where is there
In either the realm of samsara or nirvana
A misfortune out of which you don’t lead embodied beings
Or an excellence to which you don’t introduce them?
I tend to pour my misery on others
And share with them all my suffering and loss.
I covet whatever excellence they may have,
Praying, “May it be mine.”
But you share and give to others
All your happiness and good fortune.
And towards their sufferings, cultivate the attitude:
“May they be my own.”
All the suffering in the world is the fault of self-centeredness
All its happiness is the result of cherishing others.
Only you, Protector,
Enable us to trust that this is so.
While some others revere the Victorious Ones,
They revile sentient beings.
But you respectfully serve even unruly ones,
Just as if serving a Buddha.
To attain the state of a Victorious One,
One must rely on Buddhas and sentient beings alike.
That this is so can be understood
Only through the wonder of your skillful means.
“The Sages do not cleanse living beings’ wrongdoing with water.
Nor do they sweep away suffering with their hands.”
This is stated in the Buddha’s own words [Kangyur]
And in [later] commentaries [Tengyur].
How is it then that the Yogis who meditated on compassion
Could actually take away
Swelling from a dog
And lice infestations from a person?
The power of the mind of a Yogi
Who meditates on giving others his own happiness
And accepting their suffering is inconceivable [to us].
Only the Omniscient One can understand it.
In a previous life, our Supreme Teacher
Pulled a chariot in hell.
At that time, he was in the same position as we are now,
[Caught] in the depths of Samsara.
Yet today that strong man is a Buddha,
While we are left behind.
When we contemplate this, we realize the difference
Clearly depends on whether or not great compassion arose in the mindstream.
Does this mean that you, Great Compassion,
Are involved in partiality? No, it does not.
Rather, fault or merit ensues from striving
Only for one’s own welfare or for the welfare of others.
It is said that even when a person had the karma to remain in hell for many eons,
The moment you, Compassion, were generated [in their mind],
That same karma was exhausted right then and there,
And they were reborn in [the realm of] Thirty-Three Gods.
Therefore, in quenching the massive fires of suffering
You are like a great rain.
And in burning the heaps of wrongdoing
You are equal to the fire at the end of an eon.
If, as soon as he generated the compassion
That wished to relieve limited sentient beings of headaches,
Priyaputra was liberated
From the hell of the revolving wheel,
How immeasurable must be the merit
Amassed through meditating on supreme compassion
That wishes to eliminate the hundred and ten forms of suffering
From all sentient beings throughout space?
When other bodhisattvas of the Fortunate Eon
Looked upon sentient beings in the frightful time
Of the five rampant degenerations with their 100-year lifespan
They gave up on these beings, seeing them as difficult to subdue.
But at that same time, with the courage of his great compassion
the Brahmin Samudraraja perfectly made five hundred aspirational prayers
And adopted the supreme gesture
Of assuming personal responsibility to tame them.
The Buddhas and boddhisattvas of the ten directions,
Such as the Sugata Ratnagarbha,
Abundantly showered the Brahmin with flowers of praise,
Calling him “The Precious White Lotus.”
All these accounts serve as a celebratory tribute
To the excellence of Great Compassion
And determine that you are the original great tutor
For the Buddhas of the three times.
Even though Shakyamuni generated bodhicitta
Forty-two great eons after the Protector Maitreya,
He attained the state of Buddhahood
Long before Maitreya did.
This, too, is your kindness, O mind of compassion,
Who assumed the responsibility of an inner tutor,
And strongly urged him to strive mightily toward the triple [goals]
Of perfecting, ripening, and purifying.
The activity of the boddhisattvas,
Who possess the pure mind of the compassion
That takes on the burden of others’ welfare,
Is difficult for the minds of ordinary beings to fathom.
Even to hear about, let alone see
Someone under a tree
Giving up his [own] head a thousand times
Rouses dreadful fear in the hearts of many.
The supreme children born into the family
Of the King of Dharma, the Sugata,
Are raised by you, Compassion, as their nurturing mother,
Like lotuses nourished by the water.
The sages have said that the only difference between
The pure determination to be free
And you, Great Compassion,
Is that one faces inward, the other outward.
All the stages—birth, enduring, and growth—
Of the wish-fulfilling tree of Bodhicitta
Depend upon the firm root of compassion
Within the context of the dual directives of seven causes and effects.
When the great ocean of emptiness is repeatedly churned
Through the powerful Mandara of skillful methods,
You, the nectar of compassion,
Erupt as its essence.
There are many who either truthfully or deceitfully claim to have attained
The five extrasensory powers and the four results,
But it is rare to encounter one who even deceitfully
Claims to have attained Great Compassion.
Those who show signs of having attained other qualities
Are [bountiful] as stars in the night sky,
But those who show signs of having attained Great Compassion
Are even rarer than those stars [seen] in broad daylight.
That is why sources such as the Prajñāpāramitā sūtras attest
That the existence in the billion world-systems
Of one who has achieved the precious supreme mind of Compassion
Is just barely possible.
Everyone—sage or fool—must suspect
That you reside in the mindstream of someone
Who would cut his own flesh and give it away
And yet experience more joy than the one who would devour it.
The joy that comes to one [a bodhisattva]
When his ears register a cry for charity
Cannot be rivaled even by the bliss of Shravakas and Pratyekabuddhas.
It is amazing that humans who possess you excel in this way.
It doesn’t matter how much of the poison of sensual delights
The hosts of peacocks—the heroic boddhisattvas—may ingest.
It only enhances the beauty of their feathers,
Which is your splendor, [Great Compassion].
Other precious jewels
Can fulfill only their individual purposes.
But the powerful wish-fulfilling king of jewels
Is the one that can satisfy all needs and desires effortlessly
[Likewise] each of the six perfections, such as generosity,
Brings about its own particular [result]—such as wealth.
But Great Compassion fulfills the dual aim of benefitting self and others
With all its manifold excellences.
Hence, if one has the supreme jewel of compassion
In the palm of one’s hand,
All the Buddha’s qualities will come into one’s grasp
Without even being sought.
What does it mean to say that someone is “The Fully Perfected Buddha?”
How could it possibly mean one
Who demonstrates incongruous works of magic
From some abode wreathed in rainbow light?
Instead, a Buddha is defined as one who,
In fulfilling your wish, Great Compassion,
Always keeps watch over the world
And protects it from suffering.
Moreover, in giving up a fifth of his lifespan
The superior teacher, the Compassionate one,
Ensured that the teachings would be long-lasting.
Thus, allowing himself to pass early into peace,
He expressed the extent
Of the extreme mercy that he had for us.
Such kindness as this, Great Compassion,
Is beyond the scope of verbal description.
The protector Avalokiteshvara
Even blessed his own name
So that whoever might hear it would lose all fear.
This, too, is the magic of boundless compassion.
Although the Venerable Asanga meditated on the Protector Maitreya
For twelve years in a forest,
Still nothing happened.
But on one occasion, when he encountered a dog in agony
A powerful compassion overwhelmed him,
And in that instant, he had a vision of [Maitreya].
Therefore, those who meditate on you as their single deity
Will effortlessly behold the faces of a hundred deities.
The incomparable Master Atisha,
Unconcerned that his lifespan
Would be shortened by nineteen years,
Journeyed to the Land of Snows:
That is definitely the power of Great Compassion.
Due to his having sustained the embers of the Doctrine,
Even to this day they have not gone out.
That is the enlightened activity of his compassion.
There are many amazing stories
Of cats and even wolves who ceased hunting
Near the place where the great bodhisattva, the glorious Bhadra,
Was engaged in the practice of compassion,
During the age of the final five hundred years of extreme degeneration,
The Protector Mañjushri, Lama Tsongkhapa,
Beautified the world with his pure discipline
And stainless preaching and practice.
This is said to be the later ripening into a good result
Of a prayer that he previously made in the presence of Indraketu:
To uphold the holy Dharma.
Here again, his mind was moved by great compassion informed by emptiness
In short, whatever vast or narrow rivers of benefit and happiness
Cascade and fall into the great seas of samsara and nirvana,
Their source can only be found
In the great snowy [peaks] of compassion.
What immense reaches of the vast and noble qualities
Of the sky-like supreme mind of compassion
Could an unresourceful pauper like me fathom
That an Omniscient One doesn’t see?
Yet just as a sparrow in the rain is satisfied
By a few drops of the nectar of the clouds,
My spirit is uplifted when I articulate
Even a few of the noble qualities of Great Compassion.
Since infancy this tongue and palate of mine
Have been accustomed to the four non-virtues of speech.
Only now, today for the first time,
Are they imbued with purpose.
I take refuge in Great Compassion,
which, when it arises in the mindstream,
Differentiates the thinking capacity of humans from [that of] animals.
It is what makes one a great human, both in name and action.
If you yearn from the heart to obtain Buddhahood,
Then, in the presence of a kind-hearted master,
Abide with less worry in your heart
And meditate on the supreme heart of compassion.
By the accumulated virtue of praising in this way,
May the mind of compassion quickly arise in my heart,
And may it never degenerate,
But always spread and increase.
May I become a great captain
Skilled in navigating the ship of Great Compassion,
Carrying the hosts of guests, my aged mothers, innumerable as space,
To the sea of Great Awakening.
May all beings of this degenerate age who lack compassion
And who are themselves objects of compassion
Be blessed by the deity of compassion.
May their minds be saturated with the nectar of compassion.
