Tiny advice on tormas
(By Tsem Rinpoche)
Dear friends I care about,
Try to make the tormas big as usual the way it’s done daily, but much more refined and symmetrical also.
Not bulgy looking. The size we do daily is very good. Just more refined.
Offer the best tormas with best ingredients to the holy Buddhas daily.
This is worth our while.
We love to throw dinner parties and do the preps and days of advanced work and in the end, it just end in a ‘converstation’ about life and gets us nowhere much. Some love to dress up and go for dinners/lunches and spend hours talking and eating. Each time we do this, it is a few hours off our time on this earth spent on something which was originally meant for just sustenance-eating. 
When we make tormas, it’s like dinner parties for the Buddhas every day and that is worth something as the Buddhas have power to do something for us. 
Buddhas can help us now. Can help us when we are in trouble. Can help us when we are sick. Can help us when we are in danger. Buddhas can help us when confused. When we are alone and our high flying friends will abandon us. Buddhas can help us when we are dying and in the bardo and future lives. Buddhas can help us and assist us in any fashion and all facets of life. Our lives and time should invest in the Buddhas, their rituals, sadhanas, advice because the investment will ‘pay off’. Dinner parties and friends results are maybe a post on fb and a few hundred likes then it’s over. 
Even if posting on fb about our latest outfit, purchases and meals is even worth the time and effort…….
Make good tormas.
Do our sadhanas.
Keep samaya with our teachers/dharma friends. Never burn the bridges.
Develop our mind.
Use the very short time we have here for something we can use later and much more in the future.
In other words, everything we do but dharma has very little value because of it’s intrinsic nature and our inherent situation which is not permanent.
Om Ah Ra Baza Na dhi
Tsem Rinpoche
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Thank you Rinpoche for this precise teachings. Its advisable to create the causes to collect merits and be connected to the Buddha instead of wasting our time in something not meaningful. In life a comfort zone is the most dangerous area anyone can stay in. It’s a place of no growth and no challenges. To learn ,practice Dharma is the best choice and we can engage in Dharma work is much better. Its lovely and fortunate to be able to offer tormas to the Buddhas. I saw those beautiful tormas when I attended pujas at Kechara Forest Retreat, its beautifully made
Once, I was told to set objectives in my life. Start with daily objectives that are achievable, then make objective for the week, then the month and so on. This teaching reminds me of that as it is about setting motivations and working at it. With each longer term objective made, we would have been comfortable with the shorter term one. To be comfortable we would have dealt with the minor details of the sort term objective.
So, if we make the short term objective of making a nicer torma, we would have studied and practiced it to achieve it. Then we move on to make bigger tormas with the same attention to detail. The same attention to detail would be easily applied to sadhanas, developing our positive habits and mind to keeping our samaya with our Guru.
Thank you, Rinpoche for being so kind and gentle to us.
Thank you Rinpoche for this ‘tiny’ advice on tormas making but has such a hugh and profound meaning. It’s true that when we have dinner parties we take time off to do the preparation and when the party is over everything is back to normal. But when we do beautiful and refined tormas for the Buddhas we get more than what we bargain for as the Buddhas can do something for us.
Therefore it’s best to do more dharma work and not be lazy and never burn the bridges between our Guru and Dharma friends. We must make full use of our time here and accumulate more merits for our future lives.
Thank you Rinpoche for the profound teaching.
Jill Yam
Dharma has no size to it, all is relevant advice.
Dear Rinpoche ,
Thank you for sharing this advise that applies more than just torma making. We should have the attitude of doing our best when we are doing dharma work. We should not be lazy or take shortcuts just to satisfy our untamed mind.
Buddha and dharma is the only thing we can rely on when we move on from this life. We should not be have the “whatever” attitude when doing dharma work, because in reality we are doing ourselves a favor. The better we do it, the better the benefit we will receive.
Chris
It is true that most people like to throw parties and spend their time and effort looking good to impress others. Whatever we try to impress is just short term and at the end of our life, we leave all that behind. However, it will be much more beneficial for us to create the causes to collect merits and be connected to the Buddha who will help and guide us at the time of death.
Thank you, Rinpoche, for this tiny advice that is full of wisdom.
It is indeed lovely to be able to offer tormas to the Buddhas everyday. Sometimes, it’s just a matter of knowing how to do that. Not all have the opportunity to learn how to make tormas.
Dear Rinpoche,
Thank you for the huge knowledge from the “tiny” advice.
I agree that the efforts we placed into making dinner parties or posting of such similar functions on Facebook are better off made into making tormas.
The pujas I attended in Kechara, the tormas are always so beautifully made. This is how much efforts and time placed into making them.
Thank you.
As the advice from our Lama said, “Our lives and time should invest in the Buddhas and their rituals, sadhanas and dharma, because such investments will pay off.” So make good tormas, do our sadhanas, keep samayas with teachers and dharma friends, never burn bridges, but develop our minds. Everthing we do, but Dharma, has very little value! Om mani padme hung.
What Rinpoche said in this post is very true, we better spend time and money to make good tormas to offer to Buddhas instead of spending time enjoining eating and making ourselves look good as these are just short lived happiness! Thank you Rinpoche for this wise advice.
Dear Rinpoche,
Thank you so much for the short, concise and arrow straight wisdom on our “indulgences” daily but forgetting the bigger picture at the end when we face death itself.
Humbly yours,
_/\_
Lum Kok Luen
It is true with what Rinpoche have said. We put in so much effort to “look good” for someone else all the time. Yet, when it comes to our practices, many of us fail to put in the same amount of effort that we put into the samsaric pleasures.
We do not put in as much time and effort for Dharma, but we expect the results to be more. I really think that our mind is just so funny and twisted at the same time. I can just imagine that when we put in the same amount of effort that we put in for Dharma like how we put in for samsara, we will be much better off.
It is true that no matter how much we take care of that body that we have, how much parties we go to, and how we plan and organise things for others. When we are on our death beds, no one expect the Buddhas will be able to guide us and help us. At that point of time, if we have not done all the preparations that we should have, I believe that it will be difficult for the Buddhas to help us as well as we have not made that connection to be helped.
Thank you Rinpoche for teaching us this valuable lesson through this explanation of the troma making.
Wise and lovely post. The emoticons made it cuter lol. It seems you are right Rinpoche about our presence on social media. Used for updates on pretty much useless things in order to get attention and likes – what a waste of a time and in plural it could be, what a waste of a lifetime. Sad times!
Would love to learn making tormas someday. It requires lots of patience, time, effort, delicate hands and best of all, the significance represented by making these tormas and offering it up to all the Buddhas. I think many of us are like tormas nowadays and perhaps the best tormas of all (especially models), where we will be sitting down in a salon, the hairdresser will come and manage our hair, someone will make-up for us and perhaps another person will do the pedicure and manicure. Strange but it appeared to me as such.
Rinpoche, I think so far, Kechara House puja team members are among the best. Not only their tormas are nice but their efforts that counts a lot. They even can stayed up late at night to do the tormas (or perhaps waking up very early?). Kudos to the Puja House Team!
Thank You Rinpoche _/ \_ for the great sharing. May many people get connected to Buddhas through this post.
Thank you Rinpoche
jerry_sito
Dear Rinpoche,
Thank you for your “tiny advice” that is huge in wisdom and very appropriate for people like me. I particularly like this bit as it stands out to me – everything we do but dharma has very little value because of it’s intrinsic nature and our inherent situation which is not permanent.
With folded hands.
Thank you Rinpoche for the teaching.
I agree with Rinpoche that everything we do but dharma has very little value because of it’s intrinsic nature and our inherent situation which is not permanent.
Food, fame, money, travelling and other samsaric pleasure are useless when we are dying. All the happiness is just temporary.
Thank you Rinpoche for the reminder again.