Construction of the new Community Meditation Centre is now completed and we have started landscape gardening of the area at the front of the temple. The new garden will be ready in time for the Official Opening of the Temple, during the Tibetan New Year Festival. The hall accommodates 300 people, with a separate function area at the back of the build having seating room for 200.
We commissioned a statue to be specially constructed in Nepal. The Nepalese statue maker visited in June 2000 to complete the assembly of the statue.
Community Meditation Centre
and
Shakyamuni Buddha Statue
The community meditation Centre was completed in time for the opening ceremony at the Tibetan New Year weekend in Feb. 2001. The last things to be finished were the gold painting of the roof and porch, the Dharmachakra, deer, victory banners, spires and lotus petals, and the decorative painting of the front door surrounds. Altogether over $2.5 million will have been invested in the building, paths and gardens. The grass has now been sown for the surrounding lawns and most of the garden planting has also been done.
We are most grateful to the architect and project manager, Asoka Rajapakse; to the builders, Stosius constructions - in particular Peter Stosius, Stuart Jardine and Richard Anderson; to the many donors and benefactors; to our lender the National, and to all those who have volunteered their help in so many ways. In particular the architect and builder have been magnificent in their efforts to produce a wonderful result.
All who have seen the temple will agree that it retains the external appearance of a traditional Tibetan temple. Its hand sculpted decorations and symbols, decorative mouldings in traditional monastery colours, altar and offering lights, and display of auspicious symbols replicate those found in a traditional Tibetan temple. The beautiful polished marble floor, entry foyer and entertaining area with a courtyard at the rear are modern western enhancements to meet the needs of a functional Dharma Centre.
The symbolic features of the temple
Over the front entrance to the temple is the symbol traditionally seen on all Tibetan monasteries. It is a Dharmachakra flanked by two deer. The deer are a peaceful animal considered to represent compassion and peacefulness. One is male and the other female, indicating harmony, happiness and fidelity. The particular deer on our temple have a single horn and are known as the Tibetan unicorn. It is a magical deer which only manifests in the presence of great teachers. The deer gaze up at the Dharmachakra symbolising the aspiration for the Dharma. The Dharmachakra, or the wheel of Dharma, represents the three turnings of the wheel of the Dharma by Shakyamuni Buddha. Its three major parts – hub, rim and spokes – represent the three higher trainings, the path to liberation from samsara. The hub is for higher training in ethics, the rim for higher training in concentration and the spokes for higher training in analytical wisdom. The eight spokes point in the eight directions and represent the Buddha’s noble eightfold path: right understanding, right thought, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness and right concentration. The Dharma wheel destroys all obscurations: the obscurations to liberation and the obscurations to omniscience.
Around the parapet of the building are golden disc-like ornaments each of which is a representation of one of the Eight Symbols of Good Fortune and the Five Qualities of Enjoyment. These again are seen on all traditional Tibetan meditation halls.
The Eight Symbols of Good Fortune:
The Symbols of the Five Qualities of Enjoyment
There are two additional symbols:
The Temple offering lights.
In the main hall seventy-five candle-like offering lights span the altar beneath the statue so that people can accumulate merit by sponsoring the lights. Making such light offerings is the cause of achieving the divine eye, one of the six clairvoyances. The six clairvoyances are explained in Nagarjuna’s Precious Garland of Advice to a King as: (1) the divine eye, (2) the divine ear, (3) knowledge of others’ minds, (4) magical emanations, (5) memory of former lives, and (6) knowledge of the extinction of contaminations.
The definition of the clairvoyant divine eye is a clairvoyance directly perceiving the subtle and gross forms of various realms and which arises depending on a divine eye as its dominant condition. Nagarjuna outlined the individual projecting causes for the attainment of the clairvoyant divine eye in his Precious Garland of Advice to a King:
By offering a chain of lamps at reliquaries,
And lamps in dark places,
And oil (electricity) for lamps as well,
You will attain the divine eye.
(A full explanation of the various clairvoyances and the means to attain them is contained in Geshe-la’s Fundamental Potential for Enlightenment.)
The holy Buddha statue
Offering to holy Buddha statues is considered equivalent to offering to the Buddha himself and its blessing like that of the Buddha. So the most important part of the temple is the huge golden Buddha statue. It was constructed in Nepal by one of the world’s most skilled craftsmen of Buddhist iconography, Shakya Devaraj. Over two days, with the participation the teachers and directors of the Tibetan Buddhist Society throughout Australia, the statue and statue substances were blessed by an assembly of monks and students. The statue was then pieced together, the script of over six million mantras rolled and positioned in the prescribed places within the statue, and the holy relics from His Holiness the Dalai Lama placed at the heart and crown. Geshe Acharya Thubten Loden and the assembled monks then performed a consecration. All this to help create a tangible presence of the Buddha embodied in the beautiful statue.
The statue is itself 11 feet tall, and positioned on the altar and lion throne stands 18 feet high. It is made of copper and painted with gold. The hair treasure is a blue topaz. The statue, gold paint, blue topaz, mantras and shipping together cost $60,000.
The Buddha statue is filled with relics, mantras and a variety of precious substances. The majority of these were given to Geshe-la by His Holiness the Dalai Lama and include a small Thirteen Deity Yamantaka statue, five Shakyamuni Buddha relic pills, hair relics from the progression of reincarnations of the Dalai Lamas, and a tsa tsa collecting all blessings.
The blessing mantras positioned inside the statue include:
• Shakyamuni Buddha mantra—500,000
• Highest yoga tantra deities’ mantras—more than 500,000
• Dharma protector mantras—400,000
• Pervasive good fortune mantra—300,000
• Auspiciousness mantra—300,000
• Dispelling hindrances mantra—500,000
• Aspiration and request mantras—300,000
• Essence of dependent arising mantra—600,000
• Lotus mantras, being male and female wealth deity mantras—400,000
• Hip mantras, being Kriya tantra, Charya tantra and Yoga tantra mantras—- 900,000
• Lower body mantras—500,000
• Head and Heart mantras—500,000
• Throat mantra
• Ushnisha mantras - that is, the guru mantras of Lama Tsong Khapa, His Holiness the Dalai Lama and His Holiness Trijang Rinpoche
• Verses of auspiciousnes
The precious substances packed inside the statue include:
• A sandalwood central channel, six and a half feet long, wrapped in cloth
• Five medicinal substances such as white and red sandalwood and saffron
• The five grains i.e. rice, barley, peas, wheat and mustard seeds
• The five nectars i.e. yoghurt, milk, butter, honey and sugar
• The five cloths totalling 35 metres i.e. yellow cloth, red cloth, green cloth, blue cloth and white cloth
• Pine leaves, spices, gold, lapis lazuli, necklace, earrings, rings
People are welcome to visit the temple at specified times throughout the week, and all our Dharma sessions are now held in the Community Meditation Centre. If you would like to make light offerings and dedicate the merit to particular causes – for the sick, the dying, those who have passed away, for the removal of obstacles and hindrances, for success in activities and so forth – please enquire at the centre.
We hope that many beings will gain great benefit from the new Community Meditation Centre, that the Dharma will spread and develop, that all communities and families will have peace, harmony and joy, and that all beings will quickly be enlightened.
