Question asked by irene
dear rinpoche how do prayers remove obstacles and the ripening effects of negative karma or create merits and the cause for ripening of positive karma ? how does one bridge the rigorous intellectual discipline of studying understanding or directly experiencing the teachings of the buddha and the practice of devotions to a pantheon of deities ?
I am not sure about your questions.
But…
1. Karma definitely exists. Since karma exists, the accummulation of karma exists as well as the elimination. If you do not wish to experience the negative results of karma, you must eliminate them. To eliminate them, there are powerful methods.
2. Studying the dharma helps you to know what you are going to experience and how to recognize what you might experience. There are non-scholars that experience directly as well as scholars who remain dry their whole lives just intellectualizing and speaking of what they don’t practice. There are non-scholars who delude themselves into thinking they are experiencing and scholars who learn, contemplate then put into practice and hence experience. Cannot generalize.
3.You do not need the pantheon of deities. Each deity is a representative of all enlightened beings. Take one, practice it well and go all the way.
Good luck.