All the lights in the temple for the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas are now lit up. You can imagine how great a merit Rigzin Namgyal, who sponsored all the LED lamps, has accumulated. Also, Nicolas Jigme Namgyel who has installed the lamps has also achieved great merit. I am really very appreciative of their effort because both of them have very good motivation for doing this. So out of my sincere appreciation, I did a lamp offering prayer just a few hours ago. Initially I thought I was going to be the only one in the prayer, without asking others to come. But surprisingly, almost all the nuns and the monks in Druk Amitabha retreat place joined together with me in the prayer. We ended up with 300 of us doing long prayers together. I really feel that it was a good omen.
Now Nicolas will work more on the lighting tomorrow. It is not at all a joke. It's very hard work to install all these things, but he is doing it full of love, affection and devotion to the lineage and towards serving all the beings by offering light to all the beings who are literally blind and ignorant about their own life and who do not have the skill to lit up their own primordial lamps within themselves.
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Lamp offering, if practised with pure motivation to benefit others, is actually a very skillful method to remove our ignorance. Light symbolises great wisdom. In darkness, we only have to lit up one candle and darkness can be gone. Lamp offering to the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas does not mean that they need the light, it is us who need it to light up our inner darkness due to ignorance. With the prayers today, I pray and wish for the happiness of every being and may they all be enlightened and free of suffering. Thank you, Rigzin and Nicolas.
