See What’s inside Our Statues!!
(By Tsem Rinpoche)
The thousands of sacred mantras rolled, sealed and ready for insertion into our sacred statues for New Kechara Gompa. We roll these mantras ourselves in Kechara Saraswati Arts Dept.
Filling the in between spaces with fragrant potpourri.
Choi Sheem in the red and Patsy Lee on the right.
Last night, Paul Yap (Liaison, Head of Kechara Saraswati Arts & Kechara Discovery) sent these to me. They are figures of the number of Buddha images that have been placed inside the statues. These statues will be placed in the main prayer hall of the new gompa.
Lead by Choi Sheem and assisted by Mr Bean, Toh, Eddie Tan, Ng Yew Seng, these people have completed saving the Buddha images into 27 hard discs!….The total number of Buddha images that has been saved is 493,000,000,000,000…i.e. 493.4 billion!! How amazing!
This is the breakdown of how many Buddha pictures were placed into the 3 statues per image:
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GRAND TOTAL |
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1 |
TSONGKHAPA IMAGE |
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30.8 B |
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2 |
MANJUSHRI IMAGE |
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48.3 B |
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3 |
YAMANTAKA IMAGE |
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175.5 B |
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4 |
SHAKYAMUNI IMAGE |
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35.0 B |
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5 |
DUKKAR |
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41.9 B |
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6 |
VAJRA YOGINI IMAGE |
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30.7 B |
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7 |
VAJRA YOGINI MANTRA |
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47.3 B |
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8 |
SETRAP IMAGE |
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46.1 B |
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9 |
AMITABHA IMAGE |
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37.8 B |
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GRAND TOTAL |
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493.4 B |
The holy images we used are included below uploaded into hard discs for insertion into our sacred images…. Take a look.
Dukkar-41.9 billion images
Manjushri-48.3 billion images
Lord Tsongkhapa-30.8 Billion
Sacred and Swift Vajra Yogini-30.7 Billion
Sugata of the West, Amitabha-37.8 Billion
Our Savior, the Enlightened Shakyamuni-35 Billion
Setrap 46.1 Billion
Wisdom Buddha Yamantaka 175.5 Billion
Vajra Yogini’s sacred mantra-47.3 Billion
In Los Angeles, I requested His Holiness Kyabje Zong Rinpoche to write out the Vajra Yogini mantra for me. He kindly did. I wore this and kept it near me for over two decades. I decided to scan it in and have it available to insert inside our holy statues. This mantra is the king of mantras. No mantras surprass Vajra Yogini’s mantra. And it was written by the Great Mahasiddha Kyabje Zong Rinpoche who is Heruka Himself. Very blessed. So when you prostrate to the Vajra Yogini image in Kechara these are inside the holy statue. Very blessed. Be happy for the tremendous affinity you will make with Vajra Yogini.
The very first external hard drive for the images/mantras was bought from Sean Wang, a 12 year old boy! He sponsored the hard drive himself, and it was actually his idea to place in external hard drives…instead of pen drives!
Holy mantras, images of Buddhas, precious items, hair/clothes/nails of high monks, sutras, texts, Lam Rim books, wealth vases are all inserted into the images of the Buddhas. When they are filled with these items, it makes one image complete in being the representation of Body, speech and mind of Buddhas.
Traditionally we fill the in between spaces with powder incense, but we used potpourri instead as it is lighter and also has nice fragrance.
Here our volunteers are filling the three main New Gompa images.
Today over 50 volunteers are in Kechara moving items from old Gompa to new Gompa. Very exciting.
Tsem Rinpoche
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It is indeed a very blessed Vajrayogini that we prostrate to everytime we visit the gompa. It is also the kindness of Rinpoche that enables us to witness all that goes into the statue to enable us to connect and be blessed by Vajrayogini.
As such, most Kecharians do make an effort to have blessed items and mantras inserted into images of Buddhas that we invite into our homes.
Thank you for guiding us in having blessed items in our homes.
Cool…. Never knew that it was done in this way. It was lots of hardworks from beginning till the end. Really thank you for sharing this Article with us, Rinpoche. It was an eye opening for me. (Through this post, I aspire that someday I’ll be able to join in the statue making, filling in the mantras and consecrating it.)
Dear Rinpoche,’
What a great many cool stuff that entered our three Main Statues in the Gompa.
It is hard to believe that there were so much images of Buddhas inserted in to the statues.
It makes my head spin just to think that altogether in the 3 statues there 493,000,000,000,000 images in the statues.
To think that all this would not have been possible without the technology advancement of hard drives which makes it possible to store billions of images in them.
Thank you Rinpoche for sharing this great news!
Love
Jutika
Thank you Rinpoche for sharing and now I understand better why we make the statue hollow to insert holy mantras, images of Buddhas, precious items, hair/clothes/nails of high monks, sutras, texts, Lam Rim books, wealth vases into it. It makes one statue complete in representing the Body, speech and mind of Buddhas & also helps us to generating more merits when we are doing our practices! Really great ideas!
The combined effort of the hardworking and dedicated people who spent countless hours to prepare and place all these holy items into the statues will benefit many who come to pay respect and make offerings.
I am proud of Sean who at such a young age is committed to the dharma and thought of this brilliant idea to place in the hard drive; he even sponsored the first one.
This is so interesting, very seldom we will get to see what is being placed into statues. Thank you Rinpoche for allowing us to have the opportunity to know what is being placed inside and how it is being done. I am very happy and proud of Sean. At such a young age he has so much intelligence and wits, using it for something so positive like Dhrama work. It is just so holy and blessed to be able to view the Vajra Yogini mantra hand written by Zong Rinpoche.
Dear Rinpoche,
Wow that is just so cool!!!!
Until now I just can’s believe that inside the 3 statues there 493.4 Billion Holy Images in them!!!
It just so amazing how technology has helped to make it possible to have such great numbers of images to be in our 3 main Gompa’s statues!
Thank you Rinpoche for sharing!
Love
Jutika
Thanks Rinpoche for sharing this article. I am now preparing for my Lama Tsongkapa statue to be invited home. Will prepare buddha images and mantras as per written here so that my house and family may also be blessed.
[…] See What’s Inside Our Statues!! […]
Wow! Look at all the images that have been saved in the hard disks. There must be a great amount of merit to be received if one prostrates or makes offerings to this statue. I am really proud of all those people who took the time out of their busy lives and effort to roll the mantras and insert the images into the hard disks. They all have worked extremely hard. I believe that they deserve a lot of praise for the good work they have done as they are contributing to the growth of Dharma.
Dear Rinpoche,
Starting this week, one picture of you is in my autel, between the petals of a white lotus flower.
Even though I just know you by your videos, I respect you. I thank you for your teachings. I especially appreciate when you develop basic topics with a profundity that I would have hardly found in books (malas, khatas, posternations, offerings, guru devotion, etc.)
I would appreciate some minutes of your precious time:
• I just learned in one of your videos that wealth vases should not be touched with bare hands…I did it several times and for long periods because I felt a lot of energy… what is the consequence of that?
• For a practitioner how important the Linage is? I ask because I took refuge and practice with one linage but given that Rinpoche visit us once a year, in order to receive Ngöndro teachings I am attending to a center from a different linage, both Kagyu. Additionally I listen your teachings and I also received Tsa Lung and dream yoga teachings from a Bon Rinpoche. Currently I focus in developing the practices I already received, no more initiations or new Masters for the moment. However I already wonder if it is correct to take refuge in more than one Refuge tree? and to pray, during the Guru Yoga or Lama from Far practices, Rinpoches from different lineages & religions?
Thank you
Dear Dechen,
1. It is ok if you touched. the wealth vase with your bare hands. It is said theat we shouldn’t …but if you did…you did. The End. No negative consequences.
2. You can take refuge in as many refuge trees as you want. No harm.
3. It is ok to pray to different lineages. All are teaching the same thing, just different methods.
TR
For people who are very new in Tibetan buddhism and consecration of statues. They might be wondering what do we fill in the big hollow inside of the 3 huge statues of Vajayogini, Lama Tsongkapa and Setrap Statues. Paul head of Kechara Saraswati Arts or KSA and Choi Sheem lead Mr. Bean, Toh, Eddie Tan, Ng Yew Seng. They have completed 27 hard disc with a total of 493.4 Billion images saved and put into the statues. On top of that big rolled mantras and figures of various buddha images and fragrant potpourri are also placed inside. As the statues were so huge the smallest person has to climb inside Tsongkapa to place the Holy items inside. The person was Choi Sheem.
Dearest Rinpoche,
Do you think there is a chance that we can get into the Guinness World Records or Malaysian’s Guinness Records for the most holy images within a Buddha statue? That would be super cool! Not to mention, there are the mantras as well. Thereby, making Kechara New Gompa’s three statues one of the most highly blessed ever!
Imagine how much merits we collect when we prostrate, make offerings and etc.! WOW!
Dearest Rinpoche,
Thank You for sharing with us! It’s inspiring and amazing under Rinpoche years of teachings, guidance and training, Kecharian has become MULTI TASK today! It’s VERY PROUD to be a Kecharian! KECHARA BOLEH…!!!!
Love, angel
Love it Love it Love it. Give it up for Sean Wang too, The 12 year old who said to use large hard drives which store 100x more images than thumb drives do! Also read his blog! The link is on rinpoche’s blog’s side bar on the right hand side.
I thank you from the depth’s of my heart for shareing such wonderouse knowledge with us,
This is so good! Relatively speaking few people will put in so much effort into spiritual event. We are very lucky indeed.
I know in Germany, people put in guns in stupa and in Yunnan they put in pots and pans and the refrigerator (because to them it is expensive). Very interesting.