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Prostrations at Rinchen Jangsem Ling Retreat Centre, Triang, Malaysia, August 2019. Photo courtesy of Rinchen Jangsem Ling Retreat Centre.
On August 25, 2019, a large prostration event took place at Rinchen Jangsem Ling Retreat Centre, the FPMT center in Triang, Malaysia. FPMT Southeast Asia regional coordinator, Selina Foong, shares the story. This is a short excerpt from Selina’s published online story, Prostrating Up a Hill at Rinchen Jangsem Ling Retreat Centre in Malaysia.
I’ve made countless trips to beautiful Rinchen Jangsem Ling over the years. On previous trips the highlight was the arrival, not the journey. We’d be in our car chatting away, typically heading to an executive committee meeting or a retreat. The scenery would zip by, familiar but fleeting. A recent trip, however, could not have been any more different!
A few months earlier I had been pleasantly shocked to learn that a tour group from out of town had visited Rinchen Jangsem Ling and decided to organize an impromptu prostration event. (Often large groups of friends and acquaintances will visit Rinchen Jangsem Ling in large tour buses.) For every three steps they took they would prostrate once. And not just over a short distance, but all the way from the bottom of the hill up to the Rinchen Jangsem Ling gompa!
Prostrations at Rinchen Jangsem Ling Retreat Centre, Triang, Malaysia, August 2019. Photo courtesy of Rinchen Jangsem Ling Retreat Centre.
“Wow!” I marveled. That’s more than 1.2 kilometers (three quarters of a mile) on a variety of purification-inducing surfaces including red dirt, sharp loose gravel, and knee-punishing concrete! Throw in regular whiffs (not to mention actual patches) of cow dung. Add in the relentless tropical heat and high humidity. And top it off with the fact that many of these visitors were new to Rinchen Jangsem Ling and had not done even one prostration before, let alone 1.2 kilometers worth!
Incredibly, this impromptu prostration event turned out to be a huge hit. So much so that there were immediate calls for a repeat event. “Yes!” I thought. ”Here comes my own chance to burn off eons and eons of negative karma!” After all, Lama Zopa Rinpoche has taught us time and again about the effectiveness of doing prostrations with body, speech, and mind. And the more atoms of our bodies that are in contact with the ground when we prostrate, the better. What’s more, the higher the location of our prostrations, the better that would be too. (All the more atoms below us!)
Keen to take Rinpoche’s advice to heart, I had to nonetheless concede that my chances of prostrating all the way up to Mount Everest were rather slim. I could indeed, however, try to prostrate all the way up to Rinchen Jangsem Ling! And that was how I found myself at the base of the Rinchen Jangsem Ling hill one Sunday morning, standing in pitch darkness among the trees with Oi Loon Lee and several hundred others. Already sweating and tingling with anticipation, we were at the back of the huge crowd but could easily hear Rinchen Jangsem Ling’s center director, Ven. Sonam Yeshe, who was at the front leading the motivation and prayers on a loudspeaker. It all felt quite surreal. Then very slowly everyone started moving forward and the prostrating began. …
Read Selina’s full online story, “Prostrating Up a Hill at Rinchen Jangsem Ling Retreat Centre in Malaysia,” and view more photos online:
https://fpmt.org/mandala/in-depth-stories/prostrating-up-a-hill-at-rinchen-jangsem-ling-retreat-centre-in-malaysia/
For more information about Rinchen Jangsem Ling Center, visit their website:
http://www.jangsemling.com/
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