New Year's Eve Celebration 

Remembering Those Who Have Shown Us Compassion

With the year nearly all behind us, we can practice simply remembering and calling to mind those beings in our life who have shown us compassion this past year – or throughout our life.

Sometimes we actually skip over this only looking ahead at the future or at the negativities of the past. When we're receiving compassion, receiving kindness, in that moment we may have skipped over it. Maybe we think “it's not really a big deal.” But this is a practice that actually helps us to recognize and sit with an act of kindness, sit with someone who's offered us something that we really need, someone who maybe let us skip in line in front of them, someone who offered us a kind word when we most needed it, someone who let us cry on their shoulders, the kindness of our families, the kindness of our partners, the kindness of our fellow classmates, our professors.

Kindness is always happening, and the practices of the bodhisattvas help us to actually embrace those acts of kindness that are always happening. The world is always trying to love us. But part of our discomfort actually arises when we block actually receiving that kindness because maybe we don't like the person. Maybe the person isn't wearing, saying, or doing the “right things.” Or maybe they didn't go to the right school, the right career, the right lifestyle, all kinds of things. Or maybe we're afraid of them.

So just to begin with, I want you just to notice your feet on the floor, just noticing your feet. So the ground is so important in our initial practices. So noticing our feet on the floor, noticing our bodies in the seats. And allowing yourself to trust that the seats will hold you.

And taking a few moments to reflect on the acts of kindness that you've been a recipient of just today. And as you reflect, noticing how these acts of kindness as you reflect on them have an impact in your mind and your body.

You can think about and reflect on any other act of kindness that you've ever experienced this past month, past year, or even in your whole life. And just notice how that makes you feel.

To end, as we move out of this session of practice, begin to say to yourself, may I experience the deepest well-being, happiness, and joy; may I be free from suffering; may I have everything that I need to be okay; and may my acts of kindness begin to deepen for others around me.

And so you may slowly begin to open your eyes if they're closed and returning your attention to the floor, the seat. Coming back into the space.

Repaying Our Karmic Debt

Through this past year, this life, and countless past lives we have accrued karmic debt. So we wish to repay this debt through the practice of making offerings. How wonderful it is to make amends and begin anew! Karmic debt offerings are offered to beings whom we owe karmic debts to. We can make "karmic debt torma offerings" out of flour, barley, gingerbread, or even PlayDoh. This is a small ball of roasted flour made into a dough that has been rubbed over the body from head to toe in order to absorb all illness and negative energy. Then, the ball of dough is rolled into a strip the width of the hand and squeezed so that each of the fingers make an impression. We mark the dough with our five fingers representing our actions of body, speech, and mind which has accumulated this karma through our own actions. Women make the impression with their left hands, and men use their right hands. This karmic debt torma is then placed with the other gifts around our altar. Then we can light a candle and offer these gifts with songs or prayers. We can reflect on all the unwholesome actions of body, speech, and mind that we have accumulated over the years. Actions which may have caused us, our loved ones, or being we don’t even know much suffering. And we can take these unwholesome actions and put them into the offering, transforming them from parts of us we don’t normally like to fresh offerings to give away. 

Once we are done we can take the offerings outside and leave them for the local troubled spirits.

“OM Come here, all you spirits who have a commitment to the teachings of the Buddha! Come all gods, humans, and demi-gods, all spirits that cause harm or disease, all male and female demons. Without excluding anyone, all you spirits, come! Accept this ransom torma which repays my karmic debts. Do not cause harm to this family or community and don’t create any obstacles to our spiritual practice! Now, each of you happily return to your homes and listen to the noble teachings of the Buddha. 

SO OM BA DZRA TRO TA SUM TRI GHA TSA YA GHA TSA YA NÖ JÉ JUNG PO A MU KHA RA YA HUNG PÉ”

Then after the celebration we can go outside in the dark and light candles or a fire as a physical symbol of burning away our negatives from the last year, as well as a symbol of the light of compassion shining outward in all directions to all beings. Our bodhicitta shining bright.

If you would like to learn more about repaying our karmic debts, please check out the ancient Bon ritual of Lu Sang; smoke offering to the Nagas. 

Beginning Anew

Having remembered those who have been kind and loving to us, reflecting upon our own karmic debt that has accumulated in this life and past, having made offerings and offered them to all beings, we can recite the Beginning Anew prayer.

With great respect, we turn towards the conqueror of afflictions,

offering heartfelt words of repentance. We have lived in forgetfulness for a long time.

As we have not had the opportunity to encounter the Dharma,

our habit energies have led us into suffering. We have made many mistakes out of unskillfulness.

We have been blinded by our wrong perceptions for a very long time.

Our heart’s garden is sown with attachment, hatred, and pride.

In us are seeds of killing, stealing, sexual misconduct, and lies.

Our everyday deeds and words do damage. All these wrong actions are obstacles to our peace and joy.

Let us begin anew.

We see that we have been thoughtless, straying from the path of mindfulness.

We have stored up afflictions and ignorance, which have brought about so much aversion and sorrow.

There are times we have been weary of life because we are so full of anxiety.

Because we do not understand others, we are angry and resentful.

First we try to reason with each other, then we blame.

Every day the suffering increases, making the rift greater.

There are days when we are unwilling to speak to each other,

unwilling to look each other in the face. And we create internal formations, which last for a long time.

Now we turn to the Three Jewels.

Sincerely recognizing our errors, we bow our heads.

We know so well that in our consciousness are buried all the wholesome seeds —

seeds of love and understanding and seeds of peace and joy.

But because we do not know how to water them,

the wholesome seeds do not sprout fresh and green.

We continue to allow sorrow to overwhelm us

until there is no light in our lives.

When we chase after a distant happiness, life becomes but a shadow of the reality. Our mind is occupied by the past,

or worrying about this or that in the future. We cannot let go of our anger,

and we consider of no value the precious gifts of life which are already in our hands,

thereby trampling on real happiness.

As month follows month, we are sunk in sorrow.

So now in the precious presence of the Buddha,

fragrant with sandalwood incense,

we recognize our errors and begin anew.

With all our heart we go for refuge, turning to the Buddhas in the Ten Directions

and all the Bodhisattvas, noble disciples, and self achieved Buddhas.

Very sincerely we recognize our errors and the mistakes of our wrong judgments. Please bring the balm of clear water

to pour on the roots of our afflictions. Please bring the raft of the true teachings to carry us over the ocean of sorrows.

We vow to live an awakened life,

to practice smiling and conscious breathing, and to study the teachings, authentically transmitted.

Diligently, we shall live in mindfulness.

We come back to live in the wonderful present,

to plant our heart’s garden with good seeds, and to make strong foundations of understanding and love.

We vow to train ourselves in mindfulness and concentration,

practicing to look and understand deeply

to be able to see the nature of all that is,

and so to be free of the bonds of birth and death.

We learn to speak lovingly, to be affectionate,

to care for others whether it is early morn or late afternoon,

to bring the roots of joy to many places, helping people to abandon sorrow,

to respond with deep gratitude

to the kindness of parents, teachers, and friends.

With deep faith we light up the incense of our heart.

We ask the Lord of Compassion to be our protector

on the wonderful path of practice.

We vow to practice diligently,

cultivating the fruits of this path.

New Year Prayer To Our Ancestors

Dear Beloved Ancestors, both Spiritual and Genetic,

We present ourselves before you at this solemn moment of the New Year to express our gratitude and deep aspiration as a spiritual family.

Though we are a young and imperfect community, we have all come with a heart to embody the practice, to generate compassion, and to serve.

Dear Ancestors, you have taught us not to forget ourselves, no matter how noble our goals, to come home to ourselves in each mindful breath and each mindful step, taking the time to enjoy the wonders of life – the moonrise, the stars, the murmurations of starlings surging and  flowing across winter skies – to get the nourishment and relaxation we need for healing to take place in our body and mind. For this we are so grateful. Now we have a path, there is nothing more to fear.

Looking back at the year and all that we have gone through together as a planet, we see that our unhealed traumas, our fears and deep rooted belief in our separateness continue to cause much personal and planetary harm. We vow to transform the roots of war, hatred and violence, by every day generating the energy of non-violence and non-discrimination in our thinking, speaking and acting. We shall continue to challenge the boundaries of our hearts by asking ourselves: Do we have enough wisdom and courage to forgive those who have hurt us? Knowing that only by releasing the grievances of the past can we move forward as a species. 

Dear Ancestors, you have taught us that no amount of wealth and power can guarantee our happiness, security and peace. True security and agency lies in our power to love and to be happy, here and now, and no one can take that away from us. We vow to actively cultivate generosity and cooperation as a way to help build a new vulture of simply living, sharing and mutual trust.

In the face of despair and division, we vow to always stick together, to be a refuge for each other, and to strengthen our spiritual family as a community of nonviolence, offering each other courage to turn the tide of collective consciousness toward a more peaceful and compassionate world.

Dear Ancestors, please accept our offerings of fruits, flowers, and the incense of our heart, as a sign of our deep aspiration, respect, and love.

In the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha

I take refuge until complete enlightenment.

Until all beings are free from the cyclic continuum of suffering

May I cultivate the heart and mind of compassionate beings.

May all sentient beings throughout space have complete happiness

May all sentient beings be free from suffering and the causal seeds of suffering

May all sentient beings never be separate from the happiness that is free from suffering.

Being free from the duality of happiness and suffering, may we realize the immeasurable

mind of equanimity.

Longevity and Prosperity Prayers

We do two prayers. Longevity prayer and prosperity prayer. Why these two? Because life is very important and precious. Without life, nothing else matters. Therefore out of all the five divine energies, which are life-force, health, livelihood, social, and the soul, the life-force is important because without life-force energy, there can be no other four energies. This is why we pray for longevity of the life-force energy. Each of the five divine energies depends on the quality of the one before it. If your life-force energy is good, you can have good health energy. If you have good health energy, your livelihood energy can prosper. With a good livelihood, your social or relationship energy can develop. Your social energy is the relationship or connection not only with other beings but also with yourself, but your body, speech, and mind as well as your relationship with the environment. Your relationship with the five elements need to be balanced. Your relationship with the three humors need to be balanced. When these outer, inner, and secret five elements are balanced you will have a strong foundation which we call our soul. So these prayers are for good health, and good prosperity.  

When you do these prayers, think about the long life and prosperity of yourself and all your family members and friends. We can say out loud our name and the names of all the loved ones we wish to include in these prayers.

We can hold our wealth vase close to our heart. We can imagine that the vase is our palace or our body. And we can imagine that our essence of our lifeforce, essence of our health, essence of our livelihood energy, essence of our social energy, and essence of our soul - the five divine energies are inside. Using our Long Life Arrow, we can circle it around our head and the wealth vase. Each of the five colored ribbons on the long life arrow, gather up all of the powers and blessings of the five divine elements in the ten directions. These are the foundation and basic building blocks of our being. All of the energies needed to bring long life and prosperity are gathered and brought into the wealth vase. Then imagine that once all the energies are collected in the wealth vase, they enter into you thus healing and repairing the five divine energies within you.

Long Life prayer: So Ma Ma Mu Wer Tsa Mun Hri Drung Mu She Tsu Dewa Tse Ni Drum Du Ma Ma Yam Ram Kham Tse Ni Si Ti Drum Du

Wealth Prosperity Prayer: So Ma Ma Mu Wer Tsa Mun Hri Redna Si Ti Samaya Hring Hring Ma Ma Hring Hring Redna Si Ti Dud Dud Ma Ma Ni Kung Dza

If you would like to learn more about long-life practices, please check out Tsewang Rigzin, the Long Life King.

Dokpa Ritual

When a storm arises in our body or our mind, we can recognize that the worldly winds are blowing us around and pause. Clapping our hands, Dok! Dok! Dok! we can send the storm back to where it came from. Where did the storm come from? Ah!

These are very troubled times. Events occur that show how very quickly a storm can arise and blow away everything we thought we knew. This kind of destruction has happened many times in history. There is no safety in the world. Everything is always changing. Wherever you look all over the world all kinds of sudden disturbance occur by which the security of our prediction that ‘tomorrow will be like today’ is just blown away.  Our minds are the root of all suffering. So let us practice an effective method of unifying the wisdom of emptiness with the skilful means of kindness to all.

When we say Dok! Dok! Dok! we clap our hands at each Dok! and imagine that all the negative forces are returned to where they come.

Dok! is a Tibetan word that indicates sending something back to where it came from. This is not revenge. It is simply returning a gift that we do not want and did not ask for. We are saying, “This is yours, please keep it!”

Takla Mebar Mask Dance

And finally, we can dance! The Takla Mebar mask dance is a traditional dance done in front of the temple each year. Dressed in a Takla Mebar mask, the dance master comes out and dances to melodic prayers. Even without a mask, prayers, or specific melodies, we can sing the prayer below to our own melody and dance with our friends and family to bring in the new year. We dance on our negativities and disturbing emotions that have given us trouble throughout the year. We trample these trouble makers so that they will not come back into the new year. So dance on your obstacles and negative emotions and bring in the new year. This is another form of Dokpa practice.

SO in the fierce É triangle shape of the house.

On the corpse of parting from the enemies and obstacles.

While the great terrifying and majestic Flaming Tiger performs a fierce dance.

It is the dance of emanations of compassion and wisdom.

The bad karmas, trouble making enemies, and obstacles,

Suppressed under it and don’t come back again.

Don’t bounce back from this attachment.

RAM NI HRO MAR SHAK DÜL NEN 

YAM NI LI TÜN SHAK DÜL NEN

KHAM NI TING MUR SHAK DÜL NEN

The fire “RAM”, wind “YAM”, and earth “KHAM” energies burn, blow away, and bury all of our negatives that have accumulated over the past year. Dance and be merry in the freedom and purity of beginning anew.

If you would like to learn more about Takla Mebar, please click here.

Lha Gyal: Prayer for Increasing Prosperity and Luck

Having cleansed and purified our actions of body, speech, and mind we can look to the new year, and recite prayers for prosperity, luck, and the benefit of all beings. We can recite the following prayer:

May the unsurpassable compassion of the Buddha extend everywhere.

May the good wishes and aspirations remain alive in each being.

May the teachings of the Buddha flourish.

May all beings meet with happiness and prosperity.

May all unwholesome thoughts and actions come to an end.

May all harmful conditions decline.

May all beings within cyclic existence

Be completely free of pain and suffering.

May the ultimate happiness and prosperity be realized.

KI KI SO SO LHA GYAL LO!

[Shout the mantra loudly and joyfully, throwing your hand up in the air as you do.]

We also can go around shouting "KI KI SO SO LHA GYAL LO!" as we gaze up into the sky during our walk outside on New Year’s Day.

Ki - Cry of Eagle.

Ki - Spell for the Sky.

So - Earthly deep Sound.

So - Spell for the Earth.

Lha - Basic Human Goodness.

Gyal lo - Be Victorious.

Lha gyal lo’ means “may all the good forces be victorious”

You’ll have to shout “ki ki so so lha gyalo” loudly. At that time, let your eyes gaze into the sky, and put your awareness into your eyes, one-pointedly. Stare straight into the middle of the sky, piercingly into the sky. Then bring your gaze higher and higher, while merging your mind indivisibly with the sky. You have to really concentrate on that, and not let ordinary conceptual thoughts stain the mind. Consider that your five divine energies rise limitlessly. If you do that, there is no doubt your five divine energies will increase.

If you would like to learn more about increasing prosperity and luck check out the wealth protector and prosperity archetype of the Shen, Blue Zambala, Kubera.  

Nine Generosities

In the spirit of giving, we can set our aspirations of a bodhisattva by reviewing the nine practices of the paramita of generosity. We can make the commitment to ourselves to try the best we can to practice these as individuals, as families, and as a community. 

May the day be well and the night be well.

May the midday hour bring happiness, too.

In every minute and every second,

may the day and night be well.

By the blessing of the Triple Gem, may all things be protected and safe.

May all beings born in each of the four ways live in a land of purity.

May all in the Three Realms be born upon Lotus Thrones.

May countless wandering souls

realize the three virtuous positions of the Bodhisattva Path.

May all living beings, with grace and ease, fulfill the Bodhisattva Stages.

The countenance of the World-Honored One,

like the full moon, or like the orb of the sun,

shines with the light of clarity.

A halo of wisdom spreads in every direction, enveloping all with love and compassion, joy, and equanimity.

Namo Shakyamunaye Buddhaya 

Namo Shakyamunaye Buddhaya 

Namo Shakyamunaye Buddhaya