The Great Arrival of The Lama
As the Lama sat in the long hallway room, the nuns and monks sat separately before him. There was tea served for him as we prepared to make chanting offerings. At first, he was presented with the mandala. Placing the mandala before him, we have offered him a perfect universe. The senior monks rubs some butter oil on top of a black road on top of the mandala to heap rice around it. After that, the lama took some rice and threw it to our direction to bless us with prosperity.as he finishes his blessings, he expresses his insight about the cosmological aspects of universe: the cosmology goes through four stages which is formation, expansion, destruction and lastly ends of void. In the Tibetan belief the universe goes through stages of formation and gets destroyed by the fire. He provides signs by suggesting how the stars are dying every time. It was a crucial teaching about our world that interested me the most. Because, us nuns are less educated such teachings are great for our knowledge.
After the offering of mandala, five monks stood before him with images of Buddha, Dharma Text, Stupa, Bumpa, and Double Dorje; these images represented connection to our mind, body, quality and the activities. He engaged us to focus in our inner mind which is the purity of our body; the more we learn to control our mind and bodily activities, it would be easier for us to understand the bigger world. During this talk, he also mentioned attachment is necessary in our daily lives (towards our job, education, family) but never to go in extreme because that will bring pain and suffering. It was really interesting to hear the lama speak about attachment and here I thought you have to leave attachment to reach nirvana.
As we sat down for our meals, he was served with fruits, sweet rice and butter tea. After the meal, we had the chance then to speak of our dreadful event about the storm and how it flooded may parts of our village. Especially, the ground floor of nunnery was flooded too and destroyed many of the artifacts and drawings. The Lama was so generous to offer us with funds to reconstruct our nunnery and even more big deal he offered to set the first printing press in our nunnery. He showed us the printing press, the fine letters were carved in a block of wood. And there was a thin piece of cloth to put it on top and press on to create messages. It was such a clever way to print on a fine piece of paper. Our teacher was delighted to see the progress in our nunnery. And we all knew there will be more support from the villagers in the future. The Lama was even more generous to provide us with the fund to build a hospital. It will be the first hospital in our village. It will be a great help to protect the villagers from deadly sickness like the Naga curse. I still remember the horrific scenes from that day. The healers in our villager were greatly enthusiastic about the news and saw them to discuss with the traders to get some supply from other villages.
Before the Lama’s leave, the villagers one by one greeted him with presents. Some offered him with scarf, others offered him with shawl, money, food, and many others. The villagers were granted with his bless and spiritual teachings. And we all thanked him for his teachings; the lama provided both the nuns and monk teachers with scriptures and sacred texts of mantras. At the end of the day, we set up a ritual performance with the monk reading out loud from the scroll of scripture, songs, and instruments to appreciate his presence and to extend our strength to spiritually connect to this universe and our community.
