General Spiritual Director
Delighting in Buddha’s Presence
Nov 21, 2024
Festival in Brasil
In the last report from the three South American Festivals last weekend, today we cover the Festival in Brasil, where Gen-la Dekyong, General Spiritual Director of NKT-IKBU granted empowerment and teachings of Je Tsongkhapa and Dorje Shugden.
"In the introductory class Gen-la Dekyong reminded us of our good fortune in receiving these teachings regardless of where we are watching.
It shows us that we have everything we need to practice, like a precious book, Modern Buddhism, which is a sacred text, an emanation scripture. It is, or contains, the path of compassion and wisdom. This is all we need to follow. If we follow the path of compassion and wisdom, our sufferings will cease completely and we can live a pure life, in a pure world, experiencing pure pleasures and practicing pure activities, beneficial activities.
Je Tsongkhapa empowerment
By receiving this empowerment we established a special connection between us and Je Tsongkahapa and as Gen-la, told us this is a very happy day, we realize that the actual empowerment is faith. If our faith is manifest, then our minds will be happy.
We had the opportunity to receive special blessings of the sacred body, speech and mind from Je Tsongkhapa on our body, speech and mind. We receive special blessings from the Buddha of Compassion, the Buddha of Wisdom and the Buddha of Spiritual Power, all embodied in Guru Tsongkhapa. By receiving these special blessings, our wisdom, compassion and spiritual power will surely grow and, in this way, our inner peace will increase, so that we will become someone who is happy all the time and who, in the end, is able to give this happiness to others.
Dorje Shugden empowerment
On this amazing day we received the blessing empowerment of the Dharma Protector Dorje Shugden.
Gen-la showed us during the empowerment how to correctly identify Dorje Shugden, who is a manifestation of the Wisdom Buddha Je Tsongkahapa.
Gen-la gave advice straight from Venerable Geshe-la on how to practice Kadam Lamrim continuously.
'Whatever our body is doing, whatever our speech is doing, our mind must be keeping Lamrim. In our busy daily life it is mainly contemplation. But that is still meditation.'
'So, can I please encourage all of us. Any activity for a Kadampa practitioner is meditation. We try to meditate all the time.'
Wonderful!
On the last day of teachings we were able to receive clear instructions on the Request to the Lord of All Lineages prayer and how it is a prayer from the stages of the path - Lamrim. When we engage in this prayer, we must remember that it is a prayer of requests. We are asking, praying, for blessings for our practice of Lamrim (the stages of the path), Lojong (mind training) and Mahamudra (generation stage and completion stage of Supreme Yoga Tantra).
Gen-la Dekyong finished by reading to us what Venerable Geshe-la said during the opening of this Temple in 2010.
“Thank you for continuously helping with Kadam development in any area. This is wonderful. It is now your responsibility to spread the Dharma Kadam all over the world. The people of this world need Dharma.”
“The Dharma tells us to respect each other, to love one another, to offer victory to each other, to accept defeat, to exchange myself for others. So many good-hearted actions. So beautiful. If everyone practices the path of compassion and wisdom."
