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Young monks of Idgaa Choizinling, Mongolia.
The Supporting Ordained Sangha Fund offers sponsorship of daily lunch for the monks studying at Idgaa Choizinling Dratsang in Mongolia.
Idgaa Choizinling was established in 2003 through FPMT Mongolia due to the kindness of many benefactors. Idgaa is strongly connected to Sera Je Monastery in India and serves as a focal point of Buddhist learning in Mongolia. Since the monastery’s inception, FPMT has been offering food to the monks studying there. The cost of this offering for 2019 was US$9,000.
Of the total 60 monks, five have taken gelong vows, eleven have taken getsul vows, two have taken rabjung vows, and another 42 young monks are waiting for rabjung vows. More than 20 new students joined the monastery this year.
Last year the Supporting Ordained Sangha Fund also offered a US$470,000 grant for a much needed expansion of this monastery.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche has explained:
Giving to the Sangha is an incredible thing. One extremely poor person gave medicine and drink to four monks; they were not arhats, just ordinary monks. In the next life, that person was born as a very powerful and wealthy person. The karmic cause was very simple—just giving medicine and drink to four monks—but because karma expands, the result will be experienced over many lifetimes. If you offer to the powerful object of the Sangha with the motivation of bodhichitta, the result is even more powerful. You receive limitless skies of merit because you are thinking of benefiting numberless sentient beings—numberless hell beings, numberless hungry ghosts, numberless animals, numberless human beings, numberless sura beings and asura beings, and numberless intermediate state beings—and bringing them to enlightenment. You can imagine the merit you gain if you offer to the Sangha with the motivation of bodhichitta.
Monks of Idgaa Choizinling studying.
The Supporting Ordained Sangha Fund was established in the tradition of the extremely successful Sera Je Food Fund, which offered three nutritious meals daily to all the monks of Sera Je Monastery for over twenty-six years. Over this time, the food fund established an interest-bearing endowment that will continue to cover the cost of food for this program indefinitely. This fund is now broader in scope and offers support to monasteries, nunneries, and individual monks and nuns around the world including food, accommodation, health care, education and practice.
Supporting monks and nuns is one of the highest priorities for the FPMT organization, because the preservation of the Buddhadharma is dependent on the existence of Sangha.
Please rejoice in this offering of daily food to these earnest monks who study and practice so sincerely to keep Buddhism alive in Mongolia.
The Supporting Ordained Sangha Fund supports ordained monks and nuns as well as monasteries and nunneries by providing sponsorship for food, accommodations, educational needs, and health care for Sangha.