On the morning of February 13th, 2010, Chamgon Kenting Tai Situpa bestowed the Red Vajra Crown and Long life Empowerment in the courtyard of the main monastery at Palpung Sherabling Monastic Seat. The purpose of this blessing on this particular day was that every participant’s wish is to have the blessing of their Guru and to invite the New Year in with positive aspirations for a prosperous and long life. As a result, Chamgon Kenting Tai Situpa spoke about these important thoughts at this time. (as following)

I know today you have all come here for the blessing of the Crown and for the Long Life Empowerment. Your belief and hope is that through this blessing you will have a long life. But the truth is that every cause and condition has to perfect for that to happen, otherwise just having the empowerment of long life won’t guarantee that you will not die or that your life will be prolonged. No one has any guarantee that they will not die tomorrow. "Today I am healthy and because of that tomorrow I feel sure I will not die", is a kind of blind belief. There is no guarantee.

We must think about why we wish to have a long life through the blessing of these empowerments. We must also know what our purpose is in wishing for this long life. Without a proper purpose, a long life becomes rather pointless. We must all follow the laws of karma properly. Of course, the law of karma will work whether we follow it properly or not. So then the meaning of “properly” here is that we don’t like to suffer, and the same is true for others, they don’t like to suffer either. We like to have happiness and joy, and it is the same for others, they also want happiness and joy. So the law of karma would mean here that if we want these “positive” kinds of experiences, then we wouldn’t indulge in misbehavior in our life. For example smoking, taking drugs and gambling etc. are things we would avoid. We should look at our lives and see.

At the same time we must also try to be compassionate and have loving kindness towards everyone. This is the most important part. We should keep our lives close to the dharma, pray to the Buddhas and Boddhisattvas and try to develop a good heart with loving kindness and compassion. This doesn’t cost any money; we don’t need a name or fame to do it. Poor people can do it and rich people too. Our life should be spent with joy and happiness, not indulging in non-virtuous activities and thoughts.

So as long as the causes and conditions for a long life are not properly planned out like this, then it is impossible to have the desired result. For example when you plant rice but are wishing for wheat at the harvest, you would inevitably be disappointed with the result. So if you wish to have a meaningful and purposeful and long life then you must develop the right motivation (wishing happiness and ultimately enlightenment for all) and the right conduct (avoiding the non-virtuous and strengthening the virtuous).

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