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Penitent Ceremony on Jul 07, 2017
Update: 08/07/2017
Prior to the main course, Venerable Thich Tam Dao, deputy Abbot of Hoang Phap Pagoda, delivered a Dharma talk with the topic "Merit of Donation, large or small?".
Everything in the world as property, material, and human are impermanent. At the end of life, we can bring along nothing but good deeds and bad deeds (from kalpa to kalpa).
The Buddha teaches us doing offerings to release the greed and stinginess in mind, build up the compassion and sharing to all. But what is the best way doing offerings?
The greatness of donation bases on following three factors:
1. Giver: with the same donation, donor with right occupation, good behavior, compassion, honest, tolerance, … will get more merits than the one with wrong-occupation, bad behavior or bad agenda.
2. Offerings: donations bought with clean money will create more merits than items from illegal funds.
3. Receiver: offering to the great and virtuous receivers will create more merits than giving things to the unvirtuous ones.
Additionally, Buddhist should be aware of the responsibility preserving Triratna and preaching Buddhism Dharma within his/her ability. It is not proper to think that offerings should be sent to small pagodas instead of the big ones. We’d rather allocate donations based on the merits and effectiveness of receivers (monks/pagodas) than the size or property of those. Regardless rich or poor, large or small, the ones can create benefits to Buddhism and sentient beings are deserving of offerings and supports from the mass. Seeds planted on good soil will give great trees. Items sent to the right receivers will create best merits and benefits to all. This is the best way of offerings.
Via the Dharma talk, the mass could enhance their knowledge of offerings so that they could carry out things properly for the benefits of all.
After that, the penitent ceremony kept on its course as usual.
Following are the recorded photographs:
BBT Website