Karmapa in Dhagpo: final day (photos and report)

September 25, 2019

On the final day of the visit, three thousand students gathered excitedly in Dhagpo Kagyu Ling’s special tent to receive teachings from Karmapa.

During the morning, Karmapa offered profound and beautiful insights on the practice of compassion and generating Bodhicitta. With his inimitable humour and gentle seriousness, Karmapa’s teachings were met with joy and laughter.

In the afternoon, Karmapa led a Chenresig practice, using the sadhana (practice text) on the Four-Armed Chenresig, in accordance with the empowerment Karmapa gave on the previous day.

In preparation for the practice, Karmapa started once again by expressing his joy at all being together. He then gave some guidelines about how to comprehend and practice benefiting all sentient beings:

We shall go through the practice in the most traditional way, appreciate what we have, accumulate as much merit as possible, as much wisdom as possible, for our sake, and for the sake of all sentient beings. When we say ‘all beings’ we may reflect in terms of no more than twenty or thirty individuals. I really feel this introduces the practice in the most tangible way – beyond that it just becomes simply numbers. With our human capacity, we have our limitations, and it’s difficult for us to visualise everyone, and feel that all beings are included in our prayers. But those twenty to thirty, we somehow can. And then, all we have to do is to simply multiply that, because each of these individuals will have their own twenty to thirty individuals, and so on. In this way, it simply expands to all.

After the practice session, a thanksgiving mandala was offered to Karmapa, followed once again by the offerings of ku sung thuk and a group picture.

All of the participants left with a sense of great fulfilment and appreciation for the spiritual abundance that they had all received and shared over the three days with Karmapa.