Tibetan Buddhist monks organize prayers for victims, families of Sandy Hook school

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Mysore, India -- Tibetan monks are praying in Mysore, India, for the victims and families of Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, as well as the Newtown community. The school was the site of a horrific tragedy where a lone gunman killed 20 kindergartners and six adults last month, on Dec. 14.

<< Students and teachers at Sera Mey Monastery in India offer their prayers for the victims and families of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings and the community of Newtown. Gyumed Khensur Rinpoche, spiritual director of Do Ngak Kunphen Ling, Tibetan Buddhist Center for Universal Peace (DNKL), in Redding, and Geshe Dhargye, right, in the back row, resident teacher and scholar, organized the prayers. They are currently visiting and teaching at Sera Mey Monastery.

“We are all one. Even on the other side of the world people are praying for you. We send prayers of compassion from Sera Mey Monastery in India,” said Geshe Lobsang Dhargye of Do Ngak Kunphen Ling, Tibetan Buddhist Center for Universal Peace (DNKL), in Redding.

Currently, Gyumed Khensur Rinpoche, spiritual director of DNKL, and Geshe Dhargye, resident teacher and scholar, are visiting and teaching at Sera Mey Monastery in India. As neighbors in Redding to the Newtown community, they share the sorrow and suffering brought forth by the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Rinpoche and Geshe organized weekly prayer services for the victims, families and community.

Gyumed Khensur Rinpoche is also head of Thewo Khangsten in Sera Mey Monastery in India. As a senior scholar of the Gelugpa Tibetan Buddhist lineage, Rinpoche and Geshe offer traditional and authentic teachings in Redding and at the monastery in India.

Sera Mey Monastery history links directly to Buddha Shakyamuni. Sera Monastery is one of the “great three” Gelugpa university monasteries of Tibet. During the 1959 revolt in Lhasa, Sera monastery suffered severe damage. After the Dalai Lama took asylum in India, many of the monks of the Sera Monastery who survived moved to Bylakuppe in Mysore, India. They established a parallel Sera Monastery with Sera Mey and Sera Jey colleges and a Great Assembly Hall, similar to the original monastery.

There are now more than 3,000 monks living in Sera. This community has spread its teaching activities to several countries by establishing Tibetan Buddhist Dharma centers which share the knowledge of Buddhism, such as the DNKL Tibetan Buddhist Center in Redding (dnkl.org and facebook.com/DNKL.Buddhist.Center).

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Korean Buddhist monks pay tribute at Sandy Hook memorial

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NEWTWON, CT (USA) -- A group of Korean Buddhist monks came to pay tribute at the memorial in front of the firehouse near Sandy Hook Elementary Tuesday.

They arrived the same way everyone else had, walking between the grass and the traffic cones that line Riverside Road — the most obvious difference between them and the countless other pilgrims arriving that day being their distinctive orange and white robes. The hand bells they rang sounded their arrival.

Haejin, a monk ordained in 2006, said the group of five monks arrived with an entourage of 20 to 30, from the Borisa temple in Teaneck, New Jersey, Bul Kwang in Tappan, New York, and Tageo Zen Center in Bogota, New Jersey. The reason for their journey? To let everybody who died during the tragic attack know they are loved, Haejin said. The prayers they recited were meant for those passed.

“It lets us say to them, “We will digest your pain, we will live your experiences, and we will suffer them for you.”” Haejin said. “Let our love and our mind become your mind. Let our thoughts become your thoughts. May you know how much we love you, know how much we understand your suffering, and how much we pray that in your next manifestation, that wherever you're at, that they’re able to ease the earth in a world of suffering.”

After their first prayer, the monks lit incense and placed the smoking sticks in a candle that already held a bundle of burning, scented stalks placed by others throughout the day. Haejin said incense and its use has a long history in his tradition.

“One of the reasons that we burn incense is to represent our intentions,” Haejin said, “our intentions and our wills for the people that have deceased. That our wishes spread not only just in the smell - in wind - but around the whole universe, symbolically speaking.”

The memorial, Haejin said, and the monks visit to it, is a gesture to Newtown that they are not alone.

“People from all over the world are praying for this town — all over the nation, all over the state, continuously, continuously,” Haejin said. “They are loved and supported. We are all here. There is a world and universe to be there for them.”

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Tzu Chi raising funds to help Sandy victims

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Portland, WA (USA) -- The Buddhist Compassion Relief Tzu Chi Foundation, one of the largest charities in Taiwan, launched a fund-raising drive across the United States over the weekend to help victims of Superstorm Sandy, which recently ravaged parts of the U.S. East Coast.

Huang Han-kui, director of Tzu Chi's U.S. headquarters, called for donations via phone, Internet, or in person at its stations at supermarkets across the country.

In Portland on the northwestern coast of the U.S., volunteers put up posters and donation boxes at supermarkets and restaurants in areas with large Chinese populations, attracting crowds of passersby and shoppers.

The Buddhist charity also set up disaster relief centers in New York and New Jersey, two of the hardest-hit areas, to coordinate relief efforts such as the distribution of blankets, food and daily necessities.

Sandy, the biggest storm to hit the U.S. in decades, made landfall on the New Jersey coastline Oct. 29. It caused blackouts in millions of households, mass transit shutdowns in the eastern U.S. and flooding in large areas of New York City.

As part of Tzu Chi's relief efforts, members of the organization in areas of New York with large Chinese populations offered cooked meals to affected residents.

In New Jersey, Tzu Chi members traveled around the state, visiting residents and distributing relief supplies to an estimated 4,000 households in the four most heavily affected areas of Keansburg, Little Ferry, South Toms River and Atlantic City, according to the charity.

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