Monthly Archives: May 2013

Five Extraordinary Treasures : A Supreme Method to Accumulate Merit

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Chokgyur Lingpa Foundation is proud to announce that Kyabgön Phakchok Rinpoche will be performing the Five Extraordinary Treasures Grand Puja in Hong Kong and Malaysia this year.

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The Five Extraordinary Treasures – Long Life, Health, Wealth, Harmony and Dharma – are based on a teaching by Guru Rinpoche in the treasure text The Heart Essence of Oral Instructions (Sheldam Nyingjang), from the New Treasures of Chokgyur Lingpa. These five treasures encapsulate all the qualities that are necessary to render meaning and bring forth true joy and happiness in our lives.

Hong Kong : Tsimshatsui Community Hall, Kowloon, Oct 4 – 6, 2013
Malaysia : ChinWoo Auditorium, Kuala Lumpur, Nov 22 – 24, 2013
(Nov 24 coincides with Lhabab Duchen)

To participate in the Hong Kong Grand Puja, click here.

Whilst there will be specific activities related each of the Five Treasures, the puja will centre around the accumulation of 100,000 feast offering (Tib. tsok) based on the practice of Sampa Lhundrup and the offering of 100,000 butter lamps.

Feast Offering

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It is taught that the most supreme method to gather the accumulations of merit and wisdom and to purify one’s obscurations is feast offerings (Tib. tsok, San. ganachakra). Through a genuine feast offering, one gathers all the positive conditions and perfects the common and supreme accomplishments. Within the feast offering practice, one is practicing the whole path of Buddha’s teachings, beginning with refuge and bodhicitta, followed by offerings and confession embraced by pure perception and non-conceptual wakefulness, and ending with dedication of merit.

Sampa Lhundrup (Spontaneous Fulfiller of All Wishes) is a blessed teaching given by Guru Rinpoche and revealed as a treasure by the great treasure revealer Chokgyur Lingpa. This practice is said to be extremely effective in helping us and others achieve good fortune and protection from all types of calamities, temporary and ultimate, such as conflict, disease, poverty, obstacle-makers, vicious animals, disturbances of the four natural elements, robbers, sudden death, the intermediate state, clinging to reality, and the sufferings of the six classes of beings.

Watch the following video for Phakchok Rinpoche’s explanation on the benefits of this practice.

If we sincerely and wholeheartedly chant the Sampa Lhundrub prayer and feast offering, just like a wish-fulfilling jewel, all of our temporary and ultimate fears will be cleared away and thus all of one’s aims and wishes will spontaneously be fulfilled without effort. Seeing the mass of natural catastrophes, mental suffering, and obstacles that face us in this present age makes this blessed practice especially timely and imperative.

Lamp Offering

Lamp OfferingThe only remedy for our continual cycle of suffering is the two accumulations of merit and wisdom which liberate us by cutting through our afflictions and dispelling the shroud of our ignorance. In order for wisdom to be able to dawn within us we need a vast store of merit and one of the best ways to accumulate merit is to make offerings to the three jewels. While there are so many different ways to make offerings, in Buddha’s own discourses as well as in many treatises by other great masters, it’s said that making lamp offerings is one of the most effective kinds of offerings, the lamp being a symbol of the wisdom that dispels the darkness of ignorance and expands the light of wisdom. For this reason, all of the great masters of the past up until the present have stressed the importance of making daily lamp offerings as a support for our progress on the path. 

Watch the following video below for Phakchok Rinpoche’s explanation on the benefits of lamp offering.

Bodhisattvayana Retreat 2013, Nepal

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This year’s Nine Yanas retreat was an eventful one. Coinciding with a week of teachings and practice, was the first annual Nepal Lamas’ Gathering held at the Ka-Nying Shedrub Ling Monastery. During this ten day event, Kyabje Tsikey Chokling Rinpoche g ave numerous empowerments and reading transmissions to the gathered lamas which lasted from early morning to late evening every day. It was during this atmosphere of daily empowerments and thousands of people bustling about, that the 2013 Nine Yanas Retreat with Kyabgön Phakchok Rinpoche took place.

Crowd during the Nepal Lamas' Gathering

This year was the third year of teaching held in Nepal. Dharma teachings and meditation instructions were given to students participating in their first, second and third year. As Phakchok Rinpoche was receiving the empowerments everyday in connection with the Lama Gathering, it was a very tight and ever changing schedule of teachings and meditation sessions.  Often Phakchok Rinpoche would come from the empowerments and then give three to four hours of teachings, seeming to have an endless amount of energy. The participants were a combination of practitioners from around the world, monks from Rinpoche’s two monasteries, Vajravarahi and Riwoche, as well as many who were new to the dharma and came to learn for the first time.

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The Nine Yanas are the general layout of the progressive path of the Buddhadharma according to Nyingma school of Early Translations.  In particular the Nine Yanas courses taught by Phakchok Rinpoche follow the treasure teaching of the great 19th century treasure revealer Chokgyur Dechen Lingpa and are part of a larger revealed cycle of teaching called Dzogchen Desum. Guru Rinpoche in his great compassion and foresight for future generations of dharma practitioners prepared this cycle of teachings so that an individual may be able to learn and practice the essential meaning of each of the Nine Yanas. This gives the opportunity to create a solid foundation of knowledge and experience of each yana before going on to the next and helps to make one’s practice effective throughout one’s life.

Phakchok Rinpoche always stresses the importance of sincerity, dignity and dharma practice in one’s life and was a great example of this during this year’s retreat.  All the participants showed much flexibility, patience, determination and devotion during the retreat.  With these elements of the teacher and students coming together, the 2013 Nine Yanas retreat in Kathmandu was unique and a great success!