Synchronicity – Path of Liberation 1&2

June 16: Angel card for the day was “Freedom”. Starting my journey of the path of liberation with Tergar that night. 

June 17: 

So many students, so crowded, so packed. Just so happened the seat on my right was vacant that I could get more space throughout the course. 

Thinking whether to take refuge. Arrived more than half an hour early in the morning and hanging around the venue, and registered to take refuge. 

Though being requested to go back to the venue at 5.15pm for the mandatory White Tara empowerment but arrived early at around 5pm, the hall was already full of students queuing up and I got to queue outside. Very long queue already. Not very organised seating arrangement, that some queue behind me got admitted to the hall and seated first. I breathed and told myself to have faith that everything happens for the best. I got seated at the first row after the VIP area right in the middle facing teacher even with space but not another row of chairs and people in front of me! 

My questions lingering for quite some while got answered during the empowerment. We take refuge not for ourselves, but wanting to benefit all beings to have happiness and be free from sufferings. What I can do to serve and to contribute, are just the four activities 息增懷誅. So touching.

Took official and proper refuge. Apart from the vow, chanting and ritual, Rinpoche cut a bit of my hair, and I got the refuge certification with a Tibetan dharma name for me.   

June 18: A whole day of heavy rain. Rainstorm signal red, black, red, black, but the whole day’s class went as usual and was total not affected.

June 19: Still not taught nine-fold breath and shaking Ha which are mentioned in the notes so I submitted a question on how to do these. Seems no one was aware that these were not taught, so later there was an announcement that they would be taught in the group practice session the next morning.  

June 20: 

Last day of the course. During the morning group practice session teaching taught nine-fold breath and shaking Ha, lama asked who did these the first time and most students raised their hands! Probably not only this time, but previous courses also missed these teachings!

IG fed me some posts of someone attended this course and I checked his profile. He is a young lama under Rinpoche. I messaged him on IG asking about the dharma name I got as I can’t read Tibetan. He kindly replied that night with a voice message demonstrating the pronunciation. Here’s his reply message:

Wow you got this name, this name I wrote and  སངས་རྒྱས (Sangye): The Tibetan word for “Buddha”. It literally translates to “purified and fully expanded” (referring to the clearing of all mental obscurations and the full blossoming of all enlightened qualities). རྒྱལ་མོ (Gyalmo): Meaning “Queen” or “Victorious Lady.” If we translate directly this word then it will be Buddha Queen