It has been a very auspicious start to the year of the "water Dragon" for us at the centre. We have had many happening at the centre that we could rejoice, one of them being a visit by Geshe Lhakdor to our centre on Monday, 20 Feb 2012.
Many of you would know that Geshe Lhakdor has served as a translator and religious assistant to His Holiness the Dalai Lama and is currently a director of the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives in Dharamsala, India. (for more info on LTAW, pls click
HERE). So when we heard that Geshela would be in Malaysia to conduct a Dharma enrichment camp organised by BGF (see
our earlier post for more details), we decided that we should invite him to visit our centre. To our great delight, and through the effort of our Past President, Bro Lai SK, Geshela accepted our invitation.
On that Monday, namely 20 Feb 2012, in great anticipation of the visit and Dharma talk by Geshela, many members arrived very early at the centre, to prepare and wait for Geshela's arrival.
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| members waiting at the hall |
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| Preparing to welcome Geshela at the gate. |
Geshela arrived promptly at 8.00pm, before he entered our main hall, he made a light offering at the Namgyal Stupa at our Garden. Once Geshela sat down on his seat, we started our short prayer and made mandala offering to Geshela. (This a traditional ritual we do as a request for the teaching for a short explanation of it meaning =>
HERE. courtesy of
Berzin Archives)
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| Geshela arriving |
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| Geshela making light offering |
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| Geshela making offering at the main altar |
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| members making mandala offering |
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| members making mandala offering |
From the onset, we could see that Geshela was a very humble and friendly. As the talk progressed, it was also obvious that he also has a great sense of humour too. His talk was SIMPLE.
SIMPLE to understand
SIMPLE to implement; and
SIMPLY no excuse for us NOT to put it into practice.
It would do Geshela no justice to recount the full text of his talk, I would just set out my favourite quotes from the talk (sligthly edited and rephrased for the blog). They are as follows:
"What is DHARMA?
Dharma is simply the LAW of NATURE"
"BUSY! BUSY! BUSY!
But you're BUSY with WHAT?"
"We'll die. That's certain.
But we live and prepare our lives as if we'll live forever"
"The core of Buddha's teaching is Wsidom & Method....
...The Training of our Heads & Hearts...."
It was an inspiring teaching, it gave rise in many of our hearts, a sense of regret that we have not put the things we had learned into practice. It gave many of us new impetus to revitalise our daily practices.
After the teaching, some of the senior members of our centre took the opportunity to catch up with Geshela by looking through the old photographs taken in the 1990's when they first met Geshela.
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| Catching up with Geshela |
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| Catching up with Geshela |
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| Old photo from our archive (is that Geshe Lhakdor?) |
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| Old photo from our Archive (Audience w HHDL) |
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Old photo from our Archive (Audience w HHDL)
His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama (on the left)
Our teacher the late H.E. Khensur Jampa Yeshe Rinpoche (right) |
Then we took a group photo before proceeding to our garden for a light refreshment.
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| wow, what to eat? |
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| Geshela chating with Bro Lai SK, and Bro HP Lim |
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| light refreshment |
Thank you, Ven Geshe Lhakdor, for your Inspiring teaching!
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Group Photo
(many happy people!!!) |
