[CASonline] An important appeal from Drikung Ontrul Rinpoche

Dearest Students & Friends @ CAS,

I have received an urgent appeal from our holy Master, Drikung Ontrul Rinpoche, who has been guiding us so steadily and unfailingly for so many years and lifetimes also probably, since the time when He was working with Guru Padmasambhava. ( The 16th Karmapa recognised Him as one of Guru Rinpoche's 25 seniormost disciples. )

Do please support our precious Lama fulfill all His selfless and holy aspirations for the world !!

Every prayers !!

bb @ Phuntsok Cho Ling ( CAS )

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An important appeal from Drikung Ontrul Rinpoche

Dear bb @ CAS and Sangha,

We are safely back home from Tibet and all went very well.

Especially, our Tibet monastery and teachings went very well and we also had a very wonderful pilgrimage to many holy places. There were such great blessings. We prayed and burnt lamps for all.

Moreover, our monastery at Tso Pema has three big butter lamps which was kept burning for world peace, the living and the deceased. We have already filled one big lamp with butter. Now, two are nearly finishing, so maybe you can find out if anyone will want to sponsor any amount. Each of the two big butter lamps need four big tins of butter. One big tin costs Rs 1000. So 8 tins are a total of Rs.8000

Please do help to keep the light burning in Tso Pema, which is one of the holiest places of Guru Padmasambhava.

Another request is that as we are extending our monastery, we are planning to make small prayer wheels ( which contains Guru Rinpoche, Mani and Vajrasattva mantras etc. ). We plan to make a total of 108 Prayer Wheels around our monastery. Each prayer wheel will cost Rs. 5000.

So, please, kindly contact my students and friends and also to put in CAS website / facebook and all, so that each family may sponsor one prayer wheel or more.

We will make the appropriate dedications for any students or friends who so request in relation to their offerings. The dedication can be for the living or a deceased loved one/s.

Thank you and with my prayers,

Ontul Rinpoche and family

How to offer to Rinpoche:

After discussion, we have decided not to use CAS's accounts as it inevitably gives rise to much auditing complications. Hence, I am again using my personal POSB Savings Accounts.

ONE

You could do bank transfer to POSB Savings. 039-22633-2. Email to inform me upon transfer at contact@casotac.com

TWO

You could deposit your crossed check into any POSB or DBS bank branches into my bank account above.

THREE

You could also mail your offerings in crossed checks in my personal name "Tan Boon Beng". My mailing address to send the check to: "Blk 719, Jurong West Ave 5, #01-66, Singapore 640719". Please indicate clearly at the back of the check, that it is for Drikung Ontrul Rinpoche.

Do attach any dedications for Rinpoche too and I will send it for you !!

All offerings will be fully accounted for through acknowledgement letter or receipt directly from Rinpoche.

The collection should be ongoing but we would all be leaving for Phuntsok Cho Ling ( CAS ) in Malacca from 28 Nov to 19 Dec. In-between, we may be dropping in for another mission trip to Laos again or other places requiring help.

Holy Achi bless !!

bb

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On Prayer Wheels

.... Just touching and turning a prayer wheel brings incredible purification and accumulates unbelievable merit.

.... One day when I was laying the texts out in the sun, I saw one old text with the title "Mani Kabum." It contains all the history of the evolution of the world, including how Dharma came into this world and how the sentient beings of Tibet, the Snow Land, became the particular objects to be subdued by the Compassion Buddha Avalokiteshvara. Amitabha and the Compassion Buddha are the same in essence and are very strongly linked. And for more than twenty years, the Compassion Buddha and Amitabha have guided not only Tibet and China, but also Western countries, especially by spreading Dharma.
In Mani Kabum I saw a short explanation of the lineage of the prayer wheel practice and a few lines on how to visualize and meditate when you do the practice. In Tibet, and generally wherever there are the Mahayana teachings of Vajrayana, the practice of the prayer wheel has spread. Nagarjuna gave the practice to Lion-faced Dakini, who gave it to Padmasambhava, who then brought it to Tibet.
After reading this, I developed faith that the practice was not nonsense, but had valid references and was valuable and meaningful. From this text, I got some idea of how powerful the prayer wheel practice is in purifying the mind and in accumulating extensive merits.
In 1987, when I was at Chenrezig Institute in Australia, I noticed that the place had become incredibly peaceful. It felt so serene that you wanted to be there, to live there. Chenrezig Institute had not been like that before, and I wondered why it had changed. At that time, Geshe Lama Konchog was there. Geshe-la has done a lot of Dharma practice. After he escaped from Tibet, he spent many years in retreat in Milarepa's caves in the Himalayas. He did 2000 Nyung-nays, the intensive two-day retreat on the Compassion Buddha, that involves taking the eight Mahayana Precepts and doing many prostrations and mantras. Geshe Lama Konchog has trained his mind well in the path, so I thought that the serenity of Chenrezig Institute might be due to his Bodhicitta.
However, one day near the end of my stay there, the thought came into my mind, "Oh, the change might be due to the prayer wheel it wasn't there before." The prayer wheel is much smaller than the one here at Land of Medicine Buddha, but it also contains many mantras on microfilm and is very nicely made. Some time later, when I was in Brazil at the invitation of a meditation center there, a student gave me a book written by one of Tarthang Tulku's senior disciples about his experiences when he was in charge of building stupas and prayer wheels in Tarthang Tulku's centers. In one section he mentioned that after a prayer wheel was built, the area was completely transformed, becoming so peaceful, pleasant, and conducive to the mind.
This confirmed my belief, based on my own reasoning, that Chenrezig Institute had become so peaceful because of its new prayer wheel. Somebody else experiencing a similar effect from building the prayer wheel helped to stabilize my faith.....
If you have a mani prayer wheel in your house, your house is the same as the Potala, the pure land of the Compassion Buddha. If you have a prayer wheel next to you when you die, you don't need powa. Having the prayer wheel itself becomes a method to transfer your consciousness to a pure land. Simply thinking of a prayer wheel helps a dying person to shoot the consciousness up the central channel and out through the crown to reincarnate in the pure land of Amithaba or the Compassion Buddha. Simply touching a prayer wheel brings great purification of negative karmas and obscurations. Turning a prayer wheel containing 100 million OM MANI PADME HUNG mantras accumulates the same merit as having recited 100 million OM MANI PADME HUNGs.
..... It is also mentioned that prayer wheels stop harms from spirits and other beings and also stop disease, so one idea I have is use them for healing. Anyone with a disease such as AIDS or cancer, whether or not they have any understanding of Dharma, can use the prayer wheel for meditation and healing. For example, sick people could come here to Land of Medicine Buddha for several hours every day to turn the prayer wheel and do the visualizations.
There are two visualizations. With the first, you visualize light beams coming from the mantras in the prayer wheel, illuminating you and purifying you of all your disease and the causes of disease, your negative thoughts and the imprints of these left on your mental continuum. You then visualize the light illuminating all sentient beings and purifying all their sufferings, as well as their negative karmas and obscurations.
With the second visualization, beams are emitted from the mantras and, like a vacuum sucking up dust, they hook all the disease and spirit harms and, most importantly, the cause of disease, the negative karmas and obscurations. All these are absorbed or sucked into the prayer wheel. While reciting five or 10 malas of the mantra, you visualize purifying yourself in this way.
At the end recite some malas while visualizing that the beams emitted from the prayer wheel purify all the sufferings and obscurations of the sentient beings of the six realms. These absorb into the prayer wheel and all sentient beings, including you, are then liberated, actualizing the whole path and becoming the Compassion Buddha. (You can also do circumambulations with the same visualizations.)
If someone with AIDS, cancer or some other disease meditated like this and every day, for as many hours as possible, there would definitely be some effect. I know quite a few people who have completely recovered from terminal cancer through meditation. Even though the person might not know about Dharma, about reincarnation or karma; because they want to have peace of mind now and a peaceful death; because they care about having a healthy body and a healthy mind, they should use this extremely powerful and meaningful method of healing.....
( Extracted from http://www.fpmt-osel.org/teachings/wheels.htm by Lama Zopa Rinpoche )

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The Benefits of Making Light Offerings

From the "Tune of Brahma" Sutra Clarifying Karma , the Buddha taught of the ten benefits of making light offerings:
1. One becomes like the light in the world.
2. One achieves the clairvoyance of the pure flesh eye [as a human].
3. One achieves the devas' eye.
4. One receives the wisdom of knowing what is virtue and what is non-virtue.
5. One is able to eliminate the darkness of ignorance, the concept of inherent existence.
6. One receives the illumination of wisdom, even in samsara one never experiences darkness.
7. One receives great enjoyment wealth.
8. One is reborn in the deva or human realms.
9. One quickly becomes liberated.
10. One quickly attains enlightenment.

Those devas or humans who accumulate the merit of making one light offering, or just a handful of flowers, will see the fully enlightened Buddha Maitreya. It is said in the Sutra of Arya Maitreya: "Those who offer 1,000 lights, or 1,000 blue utpali flowers, or who make the pinnacle of a stupa, who make the holy form, will be reborn when Maitreya Buddha shows the deed of gaining enlightenment and receive his first Dharma Teaching."

It is also said that even those who offer one flower, or who rejoice at the merit of others who offer, will achieve this Buddhahood. This means that even if one doesn't get enlightened during Shakyamuni's teaching, then during Maitreya Buddha's teaching one's mind will get ripened and liberated.

Offering light, in particular, is a special door of dependent arising to quickly complete the accumulation of merit and receive blessings. It is said in the Second Chapter of the Root Tantra of Chakrasamvara (who is the manifestation of Shakyamuni Buddha, "If you wish for sublime realization, offer hundreds of lights".

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