receive our newsletters
join Friends of FPMT
Lama Zopa Rinpoche performing a puja at Kopan Monastery, Nepal, April 2020. Photo by Ven. Lobsang Sherab.
An auspicious merit multiplying day, the full moon of the month of Saka Dawa, is coming up on June 5.
The fifteenth day of Saka Dawa is one of the four great holy days of the Tibetan calendar, commemorating Shakyamuni Buddha’s enlightenment and parinirvana. Any actions done on this day, both auspicious and harmful, are magnified in their power. Karmic results are multiplied by one hundred million, as cited by Lama Zopa Rinpoche in the vinaya text Treasure of Quotations and Logic. This year’s fifteenth day of Saka Dawa also falls on a lunar eclipse, multiplying karmic results by a further seven hundred thousand while the eclipse lasts.
In November 2019, Rinpoche wrote out this specific advice for merit multiplying days and eclipses:
What are the merit multiplying days? They are the fifteen days of Losar (Chotrul Duchen), Saka Dawa, Chokhor Duchen, and Lhabab Duchen. Also, there are solar eclipses. Once the day starts, then the merit is multiplied by one hundred million times.
So what can you do on these days?
-
- You can rejoice in your, other sentient beings’, and the buddhas’ three times’ merits.
- You can read the Vajra Cutter Sutra, Chanting the Names of Manjushri, and King of Prayers.
- You can meditate on emptiness, and especially meditate on bodhichitta, with whichever technique.
- You can do Lama Chopa. At either the beginning of Lama Chopa or during the lamrim section, you can meditate on emptiness.
- Whatever activity they are doing at your local FPMT center, you can join them.
- Of course, you can do self-initiation—that is the best one.
- You can do prostrations by reciting the Thirty-Five Buddha prayer.
- You can make more offerings or help sentient beings more. Liberate animals or, with bodhichitta, practice charity to people or animals—you can do whatever you can.
- Recite OṂ MAṆI PADME HŪṂ with bodhichitta.
- Of course, don’t forget that the best practice is bodhichitta, tonglen.
Keep this advice, especially in order to educate and help others, the numberless sentient beings.
It is so important also to understand that if one collects non-virtue on merit multiplying days, then that will also increase by that many number of times. One has to be careful to not increase non-virtuous actions during the merit multiplying days, as well as during solar eclipses. (When there is a lunar eclipse, the merit is only increased by seven hundred thousand times!)
The longest period of time when merit is multiplied so much is during the Fifteen Days of Miracles (i.e., the fifteen days of Losar). To know this is unbelievable. During all those days one can create so much merit!
Please help by letting sentient beings know, so that they can achieve full enlightenment soon.
I received this information that the merit is multiplied one hundred million times from His Holiness Chobgye Trichen Rinpoche. It comes from Dulwa Lung (‘dul ba lung). Often in Tibetan calendars it says that the merit is only increased one hundred thousand times, but that is not right. It is one hundred million times.
Written by Lama Zopa Rinpoche, November 2019, United States. Edited by Michael D. Jolliffe for publication on FPMT.org.
Fruit offering, Madrid, Spain, April 2019. Photo by Alexis Roitman.
According to Ven. Choden Rinpoche, one of Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s teachers, observation of auspicious days should be according to the date in India, not the date in one’s home country. Therefore, when Lama Zopa Rinpoche is not in India, Rinpoche celebrates auspicious dates according to the time in India.
Additional advice for practices to do on merit multiplying days can be found here, including advice to recite the Sutra Remembering the Three Jewels.
If you choose to recite the Sutra of Golden Light on this or any other day, don’t forget to report your recitations, which can be done on the Sutra of Golden Light reporting page.
The eight Mahayana precepts are a set of special and powerful vows taken for twenty-four hours. You can take the eight Mahayana precepts from a specially created video of Lama Zopa Rinpoche offering the precepts. “Taking the eight Mahayana precepts is a way to make life meaningful, to take its essence all day and night, by taking vows,” Lama Zopa Rinpoche has taught. “It is so simple. It is just for one day. Just for one day. It makes it so easy.”
Special thanks to the Liberation Prison Project for preparing a Tibetan calendar with information on holy days and other important dates for avoiding or engaging in various activities.
Through comprehensive study programs, practice materials, and training seminars, FPMT Education nourishes the development of compassion, wisdom, kindness, and true happiness in individuals of all ages.