Growing up with Rinpoche: Offering Vajra Yogini to visiting monks
Tsem Rinpoche blessing gifts for our visiting monks
Having had the fortune of meeting Rinpoche when she was just 11 years old, the ‘Growing up with Rinpoche’ series captures Pastor Jean Ai’s growth under Rinpoche’s guidance. In this series, she recounts some of Rinpoche’s myriad Dharma activities to benefit sentient beings.
For the past two months, we have had monks from Phelgyeling Monastery in Nepal visiting and staying with us. On the day they performed a Vajra Yogini ruchok and daju (self-generation), Rinpoche offered them a Vajra Yogini statue each. Auspiciously, these statues had just arrived in the Ladrang the previous day, spontaneously and unplanned, and in the exact quantity needed to offer to the monks. Needless to say, all of the monks were very appreciative of the statues.
Many of Rinpoche’s actions are driven by Rinpoche’s own past experiences, for example establishing a soup kitchen because of the hunger and homelessness Rinpoche experienced as a teenage runaway. Rinpoche also grew up watching his extremely generous adoptive mother invite homeless people into the family home for a good meal. Knowing what it is like to go hungry, and what it is like when someone shows kindness, Rinpoche used his own experience to establish Kechara Soup Kitchen so no one would ever suffer the same experience.
Rinpoche’s beautiful Vajra Yogini, offered by a Malaysian under the bodhi tree in Bodhgaya. It was not always easy for Rinpoche to be able to afford beautiful statues so remembering this, Rinpoche today always tries to make them available to others.
Similarly, there are numerous reasons for Rinpoche’s generosity to give gifts, especially statues. The first is a form of furthering and encouraging a genuine person’s spiritual practice, because they now have a beautiful spiritually-charged piece as an object of worship. Receiving gifts also opens people’s minds, helps them to relax and lets them know they are in a safe space because in a world where most people only take, it is extremely rare to find someone who consistently only gives and, what is more, does it without agenda.
The second is motivated by Rinpoche’s own experience as a teenager and later, as an adult living in the monastery in India. There was a time when Rinpoche found it extremely difficult to afford nice, iconographically accurate statues. As a teenager, Rinpoche would Xerox and print Buddha images, then frame them for his altar. Later on in India, Rinpoche had barely enough money to eat, let alone to buy statues. So whenever Rinpoche received a statue, like the Vajra Yogini offered under the bodhi tree in Bodhgaya, Rinpoche was always extremely appreciative. These are some of the kindnesses that Rinpoche never forgets.
Rinpoche shows by example what it means to be generous, what it means to have gratitude, and what it means to turn the difficult experiences we all have in our lives into a reason to make someone else smile.
Originally posted: http://wp.me/p3DGTa-1nn
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Rejoice to those monks from Phelgyeling Monastery in Nepal who had visited Kechara Forest Retreat and stayed there. They were here for two months performing many pujas. They even performed a powerful Vajra Yogini ruchok and daju (self-generation). It was on that day that Rinpoche offered them a Vajra Yogini statue each. Rinpoche has show us an example to be generous , through Rinpoche own experience while growing up.
Thank you Pastor Jean Ai for sharing your account of Rinpoche’s Dharma activities to benefit sentient beings.