CGC's Dharma Activities for the Month of August 2009‏

Sunday, 2nd August 2009 (2 pm) - Discovering Buddhism

Wednesday, 5th August 2009 (8 pm) - Medicine Buddha Puja

Sunday, 9th August 2009 (2 pm) - Discovering Buddhism

Saturday, 15th August 2009 (8 pm) - Guru Puja

Sunday, 16th August 2009 (2pm) - Discovering Buddhism

Sunday, 23rd August 2009 (11 am) - Animal Liberation, (2 pm) Discovering Buddhism

Friday, 28th August 2009 (8.30 pm) - Tara Puja

Sunday, 30th August 2009 (11 am) - Guru Puja, (3 pm) Discovering Buddhism

Death & Dying Workshop

Death is a subject that most people do not like to hear about, talk about, or even think about. Why is this? After all, whether we like it or not, each and every one of us will have to die one day. And even before we have to face our own death, we will most probably have to face the deaths of other people— our family members, friends, colleagues, and so forth. Death is a reality, a fact of life, so wouldn’t it be better to approach it with openness and acceptance, rather than fear and denial?

Tibetan Buddhist teacher Geshe Tenzin Zopa will conduct a two-day workshop on death and dying on 5/9/2009 (Saturday) & 6/9/2009 (Sunday) at Chokyi Gyaltsen Centre (CGC), 37-Y Lorong Zoo 1, Air Itam, Penang. He will impart knowledge on how to handle dying and death, using the Buddhist teaching and way.

The Death & Dying workshop will light up the world of darkness which you and I are fearful of since beginnigless time. It will lay out to us the most difficult process in our life, and show us the actual fact that death isn't fearful after all. What is death? How does death happen? The dying process, the difference between clinical death and actual death. Also, what comes after death, and the continuity of mind that takes up one's next rebirth. The workshop will teach you the method on how to deal with the dying person and how to prepare death for oneself.

The workshop comes with a package of materials which include:-
1) Death & Drying Book (355 pages)
2) Sand Mandala Powder
3) Deity and Mantra Card
4) Medicine Buddha's Tsa Tsa

The fee is RM70.00 per participant, which covers the 4 items above.

If you are interested about this Death & Dying Workshop or have any questions regarding it, kindly register/call Stephanie at (012) 4282929 or email us at fpmt.cgc@gmail.com before 01/09/2009 (Tuesday). Thank you.

Extensive Medicine Buddha Puja‏

In conjunction with the “Ghost Festival” month, CGC will be organizing an extensive Medicine Buddha Puja on 06/09/2009 (Sunday) at 8.30 pm. It is a very opportune time for conducting the Medicine Buddha puja, and the benefits of doing the Medicine Buddha are extracted below.

Geshe Tenzin Zopa who is the resident Geshe at LDC in KL, will be presiding over the puja.

The minimum sponsor for this Extensive Medicine Buddha Puja starts from RM20, RM50, RM100 and RM250, which is 8 sets offering (water, water, flower, incense, light, perfume (water), food and music).

If you are interested to participate this extensive offering during this event, kindly write to us at fpmt.cgc@gmail before 28/08/2009 (Friday) because we need to do a lot of preparation as well.

For further queries, please contact Stephanie (012) 428 2929.

Benefits of Medicine Buddha, by Kyabje Lama Zopa Rinpoche

During this time in Holland (August 2004), Rinpoche talked about the Medicine Buddha practice. (Notes taken and edited by Kendall Magnussen).

One of the benefits of Medicine Buddha practice is that it helps to bring success. Why was Buddhism so strongly established in Tibet? This was due to Medicine Buddha practice (the long version by the Fifth Dalai Lama). It brought so much success and so he was able to preserve and spread the Dharma. All of the lineage lamas did this. When they passed away, there were incredibly inspiring stories. (Rinpoche just read about this in a text from Mongolia).

Medicine Buddha practice helps to bring prosperity, both in spiritual practice and materially. The benefits are contained in the Medicine Buddha Sutra. There are mind-blowing benefits! Therefore, Rinpoche is advising all the centers that it would be extremely good to do the Medicine Buddha Puja.

This helps in spiritual development and to receive all the needs to benefit other sentient beings, all the conditions, the material needs, for success in all the projects.

Medicine Buddha is a powerful purification. It is one of the best things to do for someone who has passed away. It is not only for sickness, it is for anything.

You can download a copy of the Extensive Medicine Buddha Puja‏ Sponsorship Form here:
DOWNLOAD FILE

Benefits of Animal Liberation - by Kyabje Lama Zopa Rinpoche

I started the tradition of how to liberate animals. The way we do animal liberation causes long life but that alone doesn’t ultimately help the animals, so the best thing to do is to circumambulate the animals around holy objects and to bless them with mantras and prayers. So you can carry the animals around a table in the middle of a room with many, many, many holy objects on it piled up, many tsa tsa, pictures of Buddhas, texts, whatever you have and then you take the animals around these holy objects.

If there is 1000 statues and holy objects on the table then if you take the animals and insects around once it creates 1000 causes to achieve enlightenment and by the way 1000 causes to achieve liberation from samsara, 1000 causes for good rebirth and happiness in future lives. So each time you go around with the insects it creates that many causes of all those happiness’s as well as long life. So if you have one billion insects and they are carried by many people in a container, you are giving enlightenment each time you go around to that many sentient beings. If you have 1000 sentient beings or 100,000 or 10,000 sentient beings then however many holy objects you have (like 100, 1000 or 10,000) then each time you are going around you are giving enlightenment that many times, as well as giving happiness in future lives and good rebirth. So as many holy objects you have then you are creating that many causes of enlightenment.

Also there are skies of benefit create by circumambulating the holy objects with the animals especially if the holy objects contain the 4 powerful mantras (the root mantra, heart mantra near heart mantra): 1) the most precious heart mantra of Stainless beam, 2) the most precious mantra of secret relic, 3) the most precious mantra of ornament of enlightenment, and 4) and the very precious root mantra of stainless beam.

Just by circumambulating one time in a holy object, such as a stupa, that has one of these mantra, like the Dharmakaya secret relic mantra, then the negative karmas that you had collected to be born in all the 8 hot hells which would have resulted in experiencing the heavy sufferings gets purified. Just by one time going around or doing prostrations, making offerings to that stupa or holy object that contains these mantra. Also ones negative karma gets purified.

If there is the stainless beam mantra inside the holy object then just one time going around it purifies the 5 unending negative karmas (killing ones mother, killing ones father, killing an Arhant, drawing blood from a Buddha and causing a schism in a sangha community) no question about other karmas, negative karma and non virtues.

If one offers a bell to that stupa that contains these mantras, then any animal or human that hears the sound of the bell are purified of the 5 unending negative karmas. So you can see these mantras have unbelievable power.

In this way any holy objects that contain these 4 powerful mantras creates unbelievable benefit for the animals and then by the way for the people who come there to help carry the animals around, so by the way they get all these benefits. So it liberates both the animal and also the human beings carrying the animals from the lower realms and from samsara and bring them to enlightenment.

So that is your greatest gift for these pitiful suffering sentient beings.

THE SANGHATA SUTRA

The Sanghata Sutra is a direct record of a teaching that was given by Buddha Shakyamuni on Vulture's Peak in Rajagriha. This discourse of the Buddha, like all Mahayana sutras, was memorized by his disciples and later written down in Sanskrit. However, the Sanghata Sutra is unique in that it is a teaching that the Buddha himself had heard from a previous Buddha, and it is also unique in the scope of the effects it has on those who recite it.

1. The Sanghata Sutra is one of a special set of sutras called dharma-paryayas, or 'transformative teachings' that function to transform those who hear or recite them in particular ways. One very powerful benefit is that at the time of death, any person who has recited the Sanghata Sutra will have visions of Buddhas who will come to comfort them during the death process. A further benefit is that wherever the Sanghata Sutra is established, the Buddhas are always present, as explained in the text itself. As such, the recitation can bestow a powerful blessing on the place where it is recited.

BENEFITS – BY KYABJE LAMA ZOPA RINPOCHE

The merit of just one set of buddhas equaling the number of sand grains in the River Ganga, even just one set – how much merit that is…is beyond words, unimaginable. Even just the merit that one buddha has collected is beyond words. So, now, beyond that, the merit that you collect every time you hear the Arya Sanghata Sutra is equal to twelve times the merit of the number of buddhas as there are sand grains in the River Ganga.

This means that anyone hearing it - animals, frogs, birds, so no question about pets like your beautiful cat, your darling cat, even spirits – collects that much merit. Can you imagine? It is like an impossible thing in the life that happens. When those animals, your cat and other animals, hear you recite Buddha’s teachings, it definitely makes them to receive higher rebirth and to meet Dharma.

The very minute you hear it, the five uninterrupted negative karmas - the extremely heavy negative karmas that right after death, immediately without interruption of another life, you get born into hell; you get reborn in the lowest hot hell, which has the heaviest suffering of the lower realms, of which the life span lasts for one intermediate eon – those get completely purified. So, (if the five uninterrupted actions get purified), that means no question about the ten non-virtuous actions, they get purified also.

It is such an unbelievably easy way to make the life meaningful. You just put the CD in the car and you play it, that’s it. As long as you are not deaf and can hear, you don’t need to put much effort there. It’s the easiest way to purify negative karma, the easiest way to collect unimaginable extensive merit. That means it is the quickest easiest way to achieve liberation from samsara, to finish all the oceans of samsaric suffering that one has experienced over and over numberless times without beginning, from time without beginning. Not only the people in the car, but also for anyone who hears it – it is a quick way to achieve enlightenment.

Also, more merit makes it easy and quick to realize the emptiness of the “I,” the aggregates, phenomena; it is a quick way to eliminate the root of samsara, ignorance, and a quick way to actualize bodhichitta. You need so much merit, unbelievable, unbelievable merit to actualize bodhichitta. If you have bodhichitta, you are a bodhisattva. In that second, you become the spiritual son of all the buddhas, you receive the name. You become the supreme object of offerings of all the sentient beings.

They collect inconceivable merits when they make offerings to you. So when they see you, hear your voice, or you give something to them, or touch them. Even if some of the sentient beings harm you, after you have realization of bodhichitta, then from your side, you only benefit in return. You pray for good things to happen to that person. There is a saying with the bodhisattvas, “if you can’t make a good connection by doing good things, then by doing some harm, make a connection with the bodhisattva.”

So, if you read the Arya Sanghata Sutra, there is far greater merit (than just hearing it); then, if you write it – much, much more. Remember the merit of the buddhas equaling the number of grains of sand in the Ganges River times twelve? The amount of merit if you write it is eight times that (e.g., 96 x one set of buddhas).

The last time that I went to Singapore, and Malaysia, because of my little advertisement about how much more merit there is if you write it, many people wrote it and have finished it already. This is unbelievable. The director of the Singapore center told me about when they recited it - incredible things happened. Each time they gave me a little bit from that. That happened already two times. Also, it happened in Malaysia. Somebody offered $100K for a school. In New Zealand, Bruce Farley just read it maybe one time. When he read it in the gompa, he thought, “Buddha wouldn’t lie,” and with that strong faith he read it. He won the lottery – a large house in Australia. He didn’t tell his wife or his parents. He invited his wife and his parents to Australia to see the house. He didn’t tell them about the house, he just invited them. He wanted it to be a surprise. His idea was to sell the house and to use the money for Dharma projects. Then, a lady in Istituto Lama Tsong Khapa (in Italy) who had been smoking her whole life - she has been translating Dharma texts for Dharmarucci Publishing. She was unable to stop smoking for so many years. When she read this the first time, she was able to stop smoking like that (finger snap). That means that, really, Buddha is working, blessing through this text. Buddha is really in action.

So many people who have recited the Arya Sanghata Sutra have received so much benefit to their mind and to their heart, becoming more and more Dharma. So, also, every day to write even a few lines is extremely, unbelievably good. When you write it, of course you don’t finish many pages, it is quite slow, but when you write, also you read, so that is the benefit. The only thing is if you only read it, you can finish in that day, in those hours. Of course, one can do a few lines writing and then read the whole text. That also can be done. Like that then, gradually, you can finish writing. I am extremely happy that you enjoy so much. You see the benefit that is working for your mind and you see that it is an amazing sutra.

For a copy of the Sutra, please click on the following:

http://www.fpmt.org/teachers/zopa/advice/pdf/sanghatajan07a4.pdf

Advice from Rinpoche on Sickness‏

My very dear Brothers and Sisters,

Human life is much more precious than mountains of gold and diamonds, more than the world filled with wish granting jewels, because without this precious human life we cannot be liberated. With all this wealth alone we cannot achieve higher rebirth, [especially the] extremely difficult to achieve human rebirth, so impossible to achieve cessation of the ocean of suffering of cyclic existence, including the cause; karma and delusion.

Not only that, but the great liberation of enlightenment cannot be achieved for sentient beings, that which benefits the numberless sentient beings. Of course that means one cannot liberate the numberless sentient beings who are most dear, most precious, most kind from the oceans of samsaric suffering and its cause. Not only that, but one cannot bring them into the great liberation of enlightenment, which is cessation of all the mistakes of the mind and completion of all the qualities.

Since so many people are all of sudden getting cancer, swine flu and other life threatening diseases and dying, which is happening all the time, those who have faith, who are able to practice Buddha Dharma and who purify the past negative karma, will not experience [diseases] such as this swine flu.

So here I am offering some suggestion of a short practice, what you can easily try to read everyday. This very precious method from Buddha, from the Buddha's teaching in the Kangyur [is called] The Dharani Called Possessing the Limbs of All the Buddhas and is extremely worthwhile to try to do. Recite three times if possible, if not then one time. Buddha has explained the benefits of this practice are that you will not get a bad disease, harm from the four elements of earth, water, fire and wind, poisoned, or a life threatening disease, and that it will help you not get reborn in the lower realms of hell, hungry ghost or animal and you will be able to benefit the lives of all sentient beings.

The motivation is not only for your own health and life success, think of all the sentient beings, to benefit their life and to bring them peace and happiness, not only temporary, but ultimate as well.

Thank you very much.

With much love and prayers,
Lama Zopa

PS: “I thought may be good to put this prayer on the web site: “The Dhahran Called Possessing the Limbs of All the Buddhas” which protects from cancer, swine flu as well as new diseases, and also stops untimely death, possibly stops old age.”

Mitrugpa Mantra Accumulation By CGC

From time to time, the FPMT checks for practices that the centres can do to pacify any obstacles for our precious Guru, Kyabje Lama Zopa Rinpoche. At this time, FPMT centres and members have been advised to recite 700,000 Mitrugpa mantras to clear away obstacles and to create the causes of long life for Rinpoche.

Mitrugpa, the 'Immovable Buddha' has been said by Rinpoche to be "very powerful in degenerate times in purifying negative karma, particularly the negative karma of having broken vows, such as the eight Mahayana precepts, lay vows, or vows of nuns and monks.""As to the benefits of the Mitrugpa mantra, anybody who hears the Mitrugpa mantra does not go to the lower realms."

CGC managed to accumulate 74,295 times of Mitrugpa mantra for Rinpoche's health and long life. Although this is nothing compared to many other centers, CGC members are feeling good to have contributed more than 10% of the target number. Rejoice!!!

The painting above depicts the enjoyment body (Sambhogakaya) form of Akshobya, one of the five Dhyani Buddhas, known as Mitugpa (Mitrugpa). The "Unshakable" one, or "Unmoving Diamond Buddha" transforms ignorance and stupidity into the wisdom of the all-pervading awareness. Meditation upon him purifies mainly karmic imprints left by harmful actions in this and previous lives. The vajra (diamond sceptre, Tib: dorje) in his right hand represents the knowledge of conventional and ultimate reality.

Talk on Healthy Eating, Vegetarian Food & Environment Protection

Vegetarian food has become popular over the years, with many people opting for meatless meals, for health reasons or for religious purposes.

There have been myths that vegetarian food does not have the nutritions vital for the growth of a child or to keep oneself as strong as an ox.

Some of these answers will be available at a talk by Island Hospital's clinical dietician Lim Fei Ai at 3pm on Saturday, July 18 at Chokyi Gyaltsen Centre, 37-Y, Lorong Zoo 1, Air Itam, Penang. Her topic is Healthy Eating, Vegetarian Food and Environment Protection.

She will also have a question-and-answer session. So please come to the centre on July 18 to know more about vegetarian food.

CGC's Dharma Activities for the Month of July '09

Thursday, 2nd July 2009 (8 pm) - Guru Puja

Sunday, 5th July 2009 (2 pm) - Discovering Buddhism

Monday, 6th July 2009 (8 pm) - Guru Puja, H.H. Dalai Lama's Birthday

Tuesday, 7th July 2009 (8 pm) - Medicine Buddha Puja

Sunday, 12th July 2009 (2 pm) - Discovering Buddhism

Friday, 17th July 2009 (8.30 pm) - Guru Puja

Sunday, 19th July 2009 (2 pm) - Discovering Buddhism

Saturday, 25th July 2009 (2 pm) - Sutra Recitation

Sunday, 26th July 2009 - (11 am) Animal Liberation, (2 pm) Discovering Buddhism

Wednesday, 29th July 2009 (8 pm) - Tara Puja

Friday, 31st July 2009 (8.30 pm) - Guru Puja

Animal Liberation Event at CGC on 28 June 2009

Chokyi Gyaltsen Center held an animal liberation event on 28 June 2009. A few of its members woke up early that Sunday morning to purchase frogs at the Ayer Itam wet market and thus saving them from imminent death by slaughter. Furthurmore, crickets destined to be fed to birds and fishs were purchased from a local pet shop with the intention of prolonging their lifes.

All in, 190 frogs and 2150 crickets were liberated that day.

The frogs and crickets were kept in plastic aquariums lent to us by the happy seller and were then brought to CGC.

Prayers were then conducted for the animals lead by Ven. Osel. The frogs and crickets were then carried by participants who circumambulated around a stupa while chanting various mantras.

The animals were then blessed by sprinkling of blessed water.

The frogs and crickets were then released back into their natural habitats.

Benefits of Liberating Animals (Source: http://www.lamayeshe.com/)

Rinpoche gave the following talk to a group of students in Malaysia and Singapore on the benefits of liberating animals.

If you liberate animals, it helps you to have a long life, or you can dedicate the merit from their liberation to those who have life obstacles. In this life we are human beings, which is due to our past good karma ripening. But human beings have so much physical and mental suffering, no freedom, and are completely overwhelmed by delusion and karma. Fortunately, we have met the Dharma. The animal realm has terrible suffering, and the best thing is to think of something that benefits them. The best thing one can do to benefit animals is to circumambulate them around a stupa or statue as many times as possible. This means they have a chance to purify negative karma, and have a cause for enlightenment and liberation from samsara. That is what they need. If you circumambulate 100 holy objects, you create 100 causes for liberation and happiness. If there are 10,000 holy objects present, then you create 10,000 causes for happiness and so on. Each insect, worm, frog, shell, fish, or ant creates 10,000 causes for enlightenment. That is the best thing to do. Start by reciting mantras over some water, which blesses the water, which you then pour or sprinkle on the animals. Then you can say prayers and take them around the holy objects. They get so many benefits from the blessed water. Not all animals can listen to your prayers, but birds and frogs can hear you chanting the mantras when they look at you with their big eyes and stop making a noise.

By reciting prayers and chanting powerful mantras for animals, they attain a higher rebirth and liberation. You can perform Refuge Practice, 35 Buddhas and Vajrasattva practice. This purifies so much suffering and can definitely help them. If you have strong compassion, bodhicitta, and a realization of emptiness, when you blow on the water to bless it, it has greater power, and karma can be purified.