The Repentance Ceremony in December 14th, Goat Year.

In the evening of January 23rd, 2016 (December 14th, Goat Year), Buddhists from inner and outer Ho Chi Minh city gathered at Hoang Phap pagoda in order to attend yearly Ksama (Repentance) Ceremony.

In this ceremony, Bhadanta (Junior Venerable) Thich Tam Manh, the monk of Hoang Phap pagoda,  had a presentation before the main ritual on the topic “Look back to live better”.

 In cultivating, looking back is important. The ancestors had studied hard and learnt from the exprerience, they showed us that: â€œBeing self reflected attaining the duty, ignoring others’ achievements .”  This saying confirmed that one of the cardinal matters of studying progress is looking back. What do we look back at? What should we look back at? In these last days of this year, we need to be honest to look back at ourselves, take notice the reflection of ourselves through three aspects: speech, actions and thoughts. This action of looking back helps us evaluate the result of our studying progress in one year, what we’ve done and what we’ve lost.

 There Karma of ourself, our words, our mind play important roles in determined whether our life is happy or not. By the stories in the Buddha sutras or reality stories, the Bhadanta showed people that gaining peaceful from the Three Karma is enough. If we can do that, we can refresh ourselves, then we can refresh our family, surrounding people then society. Therefore, everybody must look back at themselves for better life. By doing that, our studying progress improves and we get good results. After that, happiness appears, exists next to us. There is no need to find it everywhere.

 

After this presentation, the people entered the Ksama Ceremony, as usual.

There are photos from the ceremony: