Dear Dharma Friends,
Tashi Delek ! Thrangu Monastery Canada would like to invite everyone to celebrate Chinese New Year with us!
Schedule
1:30pm- 5:30pm (Mahakala Prayer)
7:30pm (Potluck) – Please bring one dish of food
After potluck, we will conduct butter lamp offerings.
【Mahakala Prayer】
Khenpo and monks will perform the Mahakala prayer on January 22 (Sunday) from 1:30 pm to 5:30pm. Mahakala Bernakchen, a two-armed form of Mahakala also known as the Great Black One, is the principal protector for the Karma Kagyu Lineage. Bernakchen is the wrathful aspect of Dojie Chang. He manifests as a fierce and wrathful form of compassionate activity by which he destroys inner and outer obstacles.
Note: Any amount of donation for the Mahakala Prayers including butter lamp offerings, flower offerings, meal offerings, and fruit offerings are most welcome.
【Lamp Offering】
You have reached a place from where you can make a difference in this world for all the sentient beings. Light your Virtual Butter Lamps with a prayer and wish to develop inner peace, kindness, love, compassion and for world peace. Let the light glow until we attain ultimate happiness for all sentient beings.
In the Tune of Brahma, Shakyamuni Buddha mentioned the 10 benefits of offering lights:
One becomes like the light of the world
One achieves clairvoyance of the pure eye as a human
One achieves the Deva’s eye
One receives the wisdom to discriminate virtue from non-virtue
One is able to eliminate the concept of inherent existence
One receives the illumination of wisdom
One is reborn as a human or deva
One receives great enjoyment wealth
One quickly becomes liberated
One quickly attains enlightenment
The offering of light is a means of dispelling the darkness of our own ignorance, giving rise to clarity and wisdom. We offer to all beings with the wish that their light may illuminate the lower realms and the bardo, assuaging the torment of beings who suffer in darkness. We also aspire that all beings will develop greater mental clarity in order to discover the causes of long-lasting happiness in virtuous actions of body, speech and mind. Finally, we offer the light to all sentient beings so that the inner light of great knowing will arise in the minds of all beings, and remove the darkness of ignorance and intellectual obscuration.
For the deceased – we make light offerings to ease their passage after death, with the wish that they make a positive future connection with a true spiritual path.
For someone undergoing suffering – we offer butter lamps and dedicate the merit to those who are suffering, with the wish that suffering and its cause may be dispelled.
As a prayer for someone’s long life – you may also offer butter lamps on the occasion of someone’s birthday or at anytime, with the wish that they remain long living in this world to bring benefit to other sentient beings.
