Repentant Ceremony on April 30th, Year of Mouse

Before beginning the ceremony, Junior Ven. Thich Tam Khuyen had a dharma talk to the participants with the topic "Puppets in life".

In living, people always seek the goal to achieve happiness for themselves. It would be easy for us to become as puppets are controlled by the wires of desire if we can not control our essential needs. In the teaching of Buddhism, there are five wires of desire have tied us, they are wealth, beauty, fame, food, sleep, as the following:

- "Wealth" of material things: They are just inanimate objects, it will become useful or useless because of the way people have managed and used it.

- "Beauty" of attractive images: They are only temporary images and will be damaged following on time, but many people still want to own it and then trade off a lot of things.

- "Fame" of positions: This is the name of other levels in social that people put each other, but the common point of everybody will face the death being a unavoidable thing.

- "Food" of dishes: We need to have food in order to maintain our body activity; however, people have killed creatures for satisfying their senses causing many evil karma at present and in the future.

- "Sleeping" to rest body and mind: This is a natural mechanism of the human to balance the body and mind, but some of them are stuck in this very need and then become lazy and useless.

By clear explaining, the Ven. shared the antidote methods in the exact knowing of our needs. Since then, the Monk reminded the mass to maintain mindfulness, awakenness and diligence in doing good in order to bring about a harmonious body and mind.