To tell you the truth about myself, I’ve been in contact with Buddhism since I was a young kid. According to mum, our family’s immediate household did not have any divinity to help and protect us from the harm and hardship we faced in life. When my mother conceived me, my paternal grandmother advised my mum to invite a deity home to supplicate for the family’s harmony and protection from harm. Mum was brought up in a Buddhist missionary school so she thought that it would be good to bring a Buddha image back home. She invited a small stone replica of the Buddha Kamakura of Japan and had it consecrated by a local Chinese Buddhist temple before inviting him home to our humble abode. I guess it suggests a lot about the beginning of me and my affinity to the Teachings and inspiration to this Holy Being we all call the Buddha.
Growing up in a typical Chinese family in Malaysia, we’re bound to superstitions and other cultural related practices which we readily follow without much question because our elders did it and so did our ancestors. Daily rituals like offering incense to the deities of the home to celebrations of festivities like the Lunar New Year where you can’t do this and can’t do that which involves inauspiciousness, prayers and feasts at family graves during All Souls’ Day to the winter solstice festival at the end of the year. It is not without a month without any form of major celebration in this culture of mine but it’s with one benefit that it keeps the family members both young and old all intact together lest the family separates and falls apart.
It was not until the recent years which have turned my life and attention to a practice and study of one of the most appropriate practice of my life and all these are not possible if it wasn’t for His Eminence Tsem Tulku Rinpoche. My first meeting with him was rather special as he was giving a talk in the Buddhist Centre which he founded in Petaling Jaya named Kechara House at the end of a Stock Party of religious items to promote awareness on Buddhist crafts and iconography. In that talk, he explained how Lama Tsongkhapa’s Guru Yoga could help us in handling our daily problems and eradicating them at the end.
I could still remember exactly how the talk went and the words which he told all who were present and it very much touched my heart to know how the profound teachings of the great sage Lord Buddha could be easily practiced and very much absorbed in such an ‘easy’ matter and its in a form which suits and tailored for our daily needs! “How wonderful!” I thought to myself, now I can do some prayers on my own without having to supplicate to something or someone I’m unsure of because I have this very strong feeling that this in it for me – Lama Tsongkhapa, the one and only.
From that day onwards I did my little research and read a little about his biography and tremendous faith grew in me. I didn’t know how to put this in words so I continued to read more from what he had to say regarding the teachings of Buddhism which he has to graciously condensed the 84,000 teachings of Lord Buddha into three volumes of what we call the Lamrim dubbed to be the Great Exposition on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment. A guideline for people like us who don’t have time to go over everything the Buddha had said in order to practice. Lama Tsongkhapa has done the reading and contemplating for us and re-written what had needed to be studied in a concise manner for us to follow and practice and see the results for ourselves.
So let’s see how the worship of a saint from a little boy who offered a crystal rosary to the Lord Buddha became the Second Buddha himself in this human realm!
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