The Lama’s Visit — Week Five
I am so happy that the Lama came to our village! He was so generous giving the ritualists protective amulets to distribute as well as a printing press, the funds for a new library and funds for a medicine factory in our village. All of these donations will help our village a lot, and make our quality of life much better. He also performed many public rituals as well as some rituals with all of us who went over to the neighbouring village to help the sick and we got to meet with him in private! It was exciting to meet the Lama in private and have the opportunity to be involved with the rituals that he performed in our village.
The protective amulets, I was lucky enough to enquire one and intend to wear it as protection from specific events. Now that a lot more people in the village have protection amulets it puts my mind at ease for if we do come across another weather storm, such as the hail storm that did so much damage to those of us who were not lucky enough to have a protective amulet. The type of amulets that were given to us by the Lama are to be worn on the body for protection. The amulet that I have collected from the Lama has a demon as the central figure, which is surrounded by magic phrases. I will be sure to wear my amulet at all times so that I am protected in the event of a misfortune of any kind.
The library is very important for our community, as we will now have the opportunity to learn more in depth any questions we may have and to over come ignorance. It is important for us to overcome our ignorance because as the Buddha said the cause of our suffering is ignorance, profound misunderstanding of the nature of life. Ignorance warps our view of reality and binds us to a world of illusion wisdom can destroy that illusion and set us free. It is my hope that we all take advantage of the new library that will soon have teachings for us all to learn from.
The medicine factory is obviously important, as it will give us all a close place to travel to get our medicine if needed, as well as it can supply other villages to make us more money. There are three types of sicknesses that medication can be helpful to: thoroughly established diseases, sickness that comes from other conditions and imaginary diseases. The medication that will be made at the factory is made mostly of herbs, but can have up to fifty ingredients before being put into pill form for people to ingest. Although the medication is made into pill form it needs to be chewed and taken with hot water for the medication to go into our system. If we were to just swallow the pills the medication would just go right through us instead of dissolving in our body. Medicine is used to help cure most of the sicknesses one can endure because they do not have any side effects for the most part unlike modern western medication that I hear about that can make one more sick then they started off with. I may start trading medicine from this factory to other villages if it is possible, as it is a good that everybody needs in other villages, and I hopefully will be able to attain it some what easily as it will be made in our village.
