On August 14, 2011, His Eminence Rinchen Dorjee Rinpoche, the abbot of the Glorious Jewel Buddhist Center, will preside over the auspicious Drikung Kagyu Great Indiscriminate Amitabha Puja for Transferring Consciousness at the Nangang Exhibition Hall in the Taipei World Trade Center, with 20,000 expected attendees, to benefit all sentient beings. It will be Rinchen Dorjee Rinpoche’s seventh time to preside over the auspicious Drikung Kagyu Great Indiscriminate Amitabha Puja for Transferring Consciousness. This year, August 14 happens to be the fifteenth day of the seventh lunar month in the Chinese calendar–the day of the Ghost Festival, according to the folk custom. On this traditional day of memorializing ancestors, one will greatly benefit one’s ancestors by attending the Grand Puja for transferring consciousness. Additionally, the puja carries great significance for reminiscing about ancestors.
Being concerned about the welfare of sentient beings, Rinchen Dorjee Rinpoche vows with great compassion to help all sentient beings to be liberated from the suffering sea of Samsara. Therefore, since 2005, Rinchen Dorjee Rinpoche has annually presided over the auspicious Drikung Kagyu Great Indiscriminate Amitabha Puja for Transferring Consciousness to propagate orthodox Buddhism, purify human beings’ minds, and pray for blessings for Taiwan and the Taiwanese people.
His Eminence Rinchen Dorjee Rinpoche compassionately enlightened that in the Indiscriminate Puja, there is no recognition of benefactors, and the merits accumulated in the puja are not determined by the amount of the participants’ donation and social status. Blessings, protection, and liberation will be equally bestowed by the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas on all attending sentient beings endowed with virtuous conditions. Therefore, the five representatives for making the mandala offerings to the Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, and the officiating guru–His Eminence Rinchen Dorjee Rinpoche, as well as the two thousand representatives who will light the lamps offered to the Buddhas, are selected by lot at the entrance of the Hall on the day of the ceremony. No one is selected in advance.
Admittance to the event, liberation for the deceased, and lighting of lamps are all free of charge as they were in the pujas of previous years. As in previous pujas, the members of the Glorious Jewel Buddhist Culture Exchange Association, under the supervision of Rinchen Dorjee Rinpoche, are solely responsible for the cost of the event, more than twenty million NT dollars. They have not solicited any outside donations. In the past six years, His Eminence Rinchen Dorjee Rinpoche has donated all of the offerings from the attendees to the Ministry of the Interior for social welfare services and post-disaster relief upon the perfect completion of the puja, thereby enabling sentient beings to extensively create the virtuous connections. Delegates from the Ministry of the Interior, an attorney, an accountant, and bank representatives will be present as witnesses. The total amount of donations contributed by His Eminence Rinchen Dorjee Rinpoche during the previous six years has totaled more than thirty million NT dollars. Every year, the Ministry of the Interior issues an acknowledgement letter and certificate of appreciation to express gratitude for His Eminence Rinchen Dorjee Rinpoche’s donation.
The immense compassion of Rinchen Dorjee Rinpoche has become well-known without radio, television, newspaper, magazine, or flyer advertisements, simply by word of mouth through the disciples of the Glorious Jewel Buddhist Center. During all pujas in the past six years, the venue has been at maximum capacity. The total people for this time period has reached 74,000. Amongst the attendees were those who specially traveled to Taiwan for the puja from places such as Japan, Hong Kong, Holland, France, India, New Zealand, Australia, the US, Britain, Canada, the Philippines, and Brazil. Additionally, the pujas were also attended by Ngakpas, Geshes, Khenpos, lamas, nuns of the Drikung Kagyu, Drukpa Kagyu, Nyingma, and Gelug lineages of Tibetan Buddhism, as well as ordained practitioners of Exoteric Buddhism who came to the pujas on their own initiatives. The previous Great Indiscriminate Amitabha Pujas for Transferring Consciousness were all auspiciously perfected and innumerable sentient beings were liberated.
Updated on July 14, 2011