Excitement Over Empowerment Rituals
Good morning! The lama just left our village, and what an experience it was! His arrival yesterday morning was met with monks lined up all along the road towards the monastery, the path lit up by the colourful prayer flags and chalk drawings. I think every single person in the village came to the monastery for his teachings and blessings. The public rituals were very exciting, but what was even more exciting was that because I contributed towards the support of his visit I was included in private empowerment rituals.
In Vajrayana, Buddhism, also known as Tantric Buddhism, we believe that the fastest way to achieve enlightenment during meditation is to visualize that you have already reached it. This enlightened being that you visualize yourself as is known as yi dam. It is the individual’s deity that becomes the focus of their personal meditation. But before you can start exercising meditating yi dam, the yi dam must be chosen in consultation with a spiritual leader, also known as a lama. The teacher must perform a ceremonial initiation before the student can begin on their path of yi dam meditation. That’s what the lama did in the private empowerment rituals, he introduced us in the room to our yi dam. So now I can being meditating yi dam and continue on my quest for enlightenment.
The lama did this is by invoking the Lord of the Dance, Union of the Blissful, Lord of the Dance, Great Compassion; known in Tibetan as Bde gshegs kun’dus gar dbang thugs rje chen po. By calling on the deity the lama led us through a mystical experience where he was the guide. There were a lot of visualization and questions of perception vs reality. There was also a lot of of calls out from the lama where we were required to respond. Everyone in the room meditated on the Lord of the Dance and by doing this we were awakening the seeds of karma from our previous training that are dormant. The most crucial aspect of empowerment rituals is that the lama is giving us instructions that he entrusts us with. It is now up to us as individuals to put this advice into practice and empower ourselves with this knowledge for our own benefit.
My first empowerment ritual was very inspiring and I am very glad that I can now begin along my path with yi dam meditation. It will open new doors for me and my course to enlightenment. I’m very excited to start practicing yi dam meditation regularly and it is already becoming a big part of my life.
There is also more exciting news! The lama announced this morning before he departed that he is donating funds and resources to construct a printing press and develop a new library in the nunnery! This is huge news and I am so overjoyed by this announcement. This will be the first printing press in the village. I’ve never personally seen one before but I have heard that they are much more faster and require a lot less labour than what we currently do. Right now the only way we can make books is through woodblock printing. We do this at the nunnery in our library and it is a long, grueling process. A wooden block is carved out to create the text for one page and then ink is applied to the block and it is pressed against paper or cloth that will make up the book. There is great depth in both time and detail.
I’ve heard that a printing press is a machine that transfers ink onto the cloth that does not require nearly as much time or effort. The addition of a printing press will not only modernize our village and nunnery, but it will also increase the amount of text we are able to produce which is extremely important in a village like ours. All the scholars rely on text to advance their knowledge and also to every Buddhist text is very important. In the Pali canon, there have been many commentaries added throughout time. Every Buddhist reads the sutras and studies them to some extent. Many people grew up, and still practice, memorizing text and reciting them.
I also cannot believe that our library is being fixed! After all the damage done by the hailstorm a few weeks ago, repairs still have been slow and on hold. I can’t wait to get back to my studies and to be able to have more texts to learn from. I feel that fixing our library will not only help me, but aid everyone towards buddhahood. As they say knowledge is power, and I think that knowledge comes from texts!
