Building at the Center

For the four harmonious brothers that you are going to build, the elephant should offer a few apples with a durian in the center, on the end of its upraised trunk.

The monkey should be taking an apple from the elephant with one hand and giving an apple to the rabbit with the other upraised hand.

The rabbit should be taking the apple from the monkey with one hand and giving smaller fruit, maybe grapes, to the bird with its other upraised hand.

The bird is holding grapes in its mouth.

In this way the animals are helping each other through giving and it shows harmony.

There should be a big sign with the benefits of having the four harmonious brothers. At the end of the benefits, it should say: "When there’s a lot of disharmony in a Dharma center, an office, a company or a family, then you should put pictures of the four harmonious brothers around. This helps to bring harmony and success."

The four brothers have to be happy, pleased, not sad animals. The bird should not be a chicken but a bird that flies. And it seems the animals don’t have to be in a particular order.

Having Rinpoche present there at that time is, of course, a great blessing, but from a practical point of view, what is also very important is choosing the correct day for initiating the construction and then also checking if there are going to be any obstacles in the construction phase and, if so, which pujas can be done to remove those obstacles.

The next thing that should be done is an earth-breaking ceremony on the land before the actual construction begins. This is an important ceremony for receiving permission from other beings who may inhabit that land, asking their permission to build so they will not cause obstacles in the future.

To choose the right day we have a very qualified geshe who is able to choose the right day astrologically very accurately, so if you give him the time reference he can choose the best day within that period of time.

These are the main things from a practical point of view, to ensure that we choose the most auspicious time and no obstacles will happen.

Do the naga torma offering and the landlord torma offering, asking for permission. However, according to the observation [Tib: mo] it seems there are still obstacles.

You will need to recite the Tengyur first, with half read by the Kopan nuns and half read by the monks.

My very dear one,
I want to thank you very much from the bottom of my heart for happily taking on the responsibility of the new center building—our new pure land!

It came out good for both you and __ to work together. The time when you are busy going to the pure land, bringing sentient beings there. You transform them in the pure land, then bring them back to the human realm to work for peace.

Each and every merit that sentient beings receive, that they create by coming to the temple—every cause of enlightenment, liberation, future lives’ happiness, every single purification, every single positive imprint of the path to enlightenment, listening to the Dharma, praying, circambulating, prostrating and making offerings at the temple—you should know that all this is also coming from your effort, your dedication and service.

In other words you should think you are giving numberless benefits to others throughout the years, for as long as the building exists. For that many years, benefits will come and spread to the world. It is similar for the other people working for the center. They should also think in the same way. You are offering incredible benefits to sentient beings!

I will pray for success.

With much love and prayer... 

My very dear Jim,
Thank you very much for completing the stupa. The prayer wheels are also a very good idea. All these activities continuously benefit sentient beings and bring them to enlightenment, so I thank you very, very much. It’s so good to have many different ways to benefit sentient beings.

Of course, Brian is a good help. He also helped with a very beautiful altar at another center. His talent is very good and he has a lot of experience.

A billion thanks to both of you and to all those people who have been helping there.

With much love and prayer...

PS: This also helps so much to quickly purify negative karma. The stupa looks so good.

Dear Geshe-la and Sangha, who are looking for virtue and liberation, who are learning Dharma to help yourself and others, dear Laura and all my dear Dharma brothers and sisters,

When we invited His Holiness the Dalai Lama to the land in Bodhgaya for the Maitreya statue, to participate in the puja for 1,000 offerings to Maitreya, His Holiness at that time said that we would succeed in building the statue. After the puja, when everyone had left the land, the huge thangka of Maitreya and the altar with thangkas around it caught on fire and everything was burned and destroyed completely. All that was left was an image of Guru Shakyamuni Buddha. Immediately on hearing this, His Holiness’s ritual attendant said that everyone had taken it as an auspicious sign. Ribur Rinpoche also said that it was an auspicious sign.

I think what has happened at Istituto Lama Tzong Khapa, with the blazing fire destroying the gompa, is an auspicious sign that you have overcome all the problems through this blazing fire. Anyway, I thought Lama Tzong Khapa gompa was strange, even though it was blessed by so many high lamas, such as His Holiness Ling Rinpoche and Zong Rinpoche, and so much work and effort was made for this gompa.

The fire gives us the opportunity to build an enlightened and encouraging gompa, not a place to eat pizza and mozzarella. We definitely need a very beautiful gompa that becomes an encouragement to everyone, to depressed people, to people who believe they are helpless, something which brings the greatest joy and fulfillment to the heart for everyone.

It is also a teaching on impermanence. Do not hold onto things which are impermanent, which are a dependent arising, like a butter lamp, which depends on causes and conditions, like lightning, like a water bubble, like clouds, also like a star in the daytime, like the defective view of the senses … an illusion, a dream. All this was said by Buddha. We recite these lines every day. We should realize that the gompa was a causative phenomena, something that was but is not now.

Thank you very much and big love to everyone. I am waiting to see the wonderful beautiful nice new gompa. Thank you very much. Grazi. I am going to try to come and see you soon. When the new gompa is complete we will invite His Holiness to teach in it. Maybe we can invite Geshe Jampa Gyatso’s incarnation.

Much love and prayer...