Repentance ceremony on Nov. 29th, Year of the Cat

On Jan. 10th, 2024 (Nov. 29th, LC), good men and believing women inside and outside HCMC returned to Hoang Phap pagoda to attend the periodical penitential ceremony.

Before the rite, Junior Thich Tam Chieu, monks of the pagoda gave a dharma talk named Karma governed people.

The same being humans together, but some ones are rich and happy, the others are poor; or people with beautiful appearances, some the others with disabled senses, etc., these ones will complain to God about being so unfair! There is no god, saint to bless or bring disaster to anyone. By The sutra of Shorter Exposition of Action No. 135 belonging to the Middle length discourses, the Buddha taught, the reason why each person has different assets, appearance, and lifespan is because of karma.

We are the owner of karma, the heir of karma, karma is the womb, karma is the relatives, karma is the fulcrum. Whatever karma we have done, whether good or bad, we will inherit that karma.

Karma has good karma and bad karma. Buddhists learn about karma to practice and avoid creating bad karma that leads to bad consequences and suffering for ourselves. Buddha taught, karma has retributions in the present, retributions in the next life, or retributions for many generations to come. Then, he taught methods of practice to have a long life. We need to try to be vegetarian to reduce consequence and nurture compassion to advance on the path of cultivating and studying Buddhism.

After the Dharma talk, the mass entered the penitential ritual as usual.

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