A DAY IN THE LIFE OF AN FPMT LAMA

Geshe Dawa is the resident geshe of Amitabha Buddhist Centre, Singapore. Geshe-la is from Tehor House at Sera Je Monastery in south India. He received the Lharampa Geshe degree in 1975. He arrived in Singapore on November 6 last year. He talked to his translator,Kopan monk Thubten Damchö, about his life at Amitabha.

It seems like there are a lot of things to do and yet nothing to do! I wake up before 6:30 am and take a bath before making water bowl offerings. This takes about half an hour. After that I do my prayers and commitments, which take about an hour. At 8:00 am, I take breakfast of tea and toast, with peanut butter and jam. After breakfast, I make Black Tea Offering to the Four Protectors and to the special deity of Sera Je Monastery, Hayagriva. This is done for the center, for people who have problems of sickness, problems in their business and so forth, and also for myself.

After making the Black Tea Offering, sometimes people request me to go to the hospital to do prayers for their friends or relatives who are sick or dying, so I exhort deities to bless them or help them. Sometimes when people die, they request me to do prayers, so I read the Great Prayers and sometimes perform Jang Chog purification ceremony. Sometimes when people are inflicted by spirit harms they request prayers to be done, and sometimes they ask for house blessings. I don’t have any power to bless but I will just make a bath offering to the objects of refuge and with that water “wash” the house to remove obstacles.  If I don’t have to go out, sometimes I fill statues or stupas with mantras for people. I try to help as much as I can, according to my ability and knowledge.

At the center, I give teachings on Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of life on Fridays. I have finished teaching the Three Principal Aspects of the Path, and now I’m teaching Mind and Awareness (Lorig) on Saturdays, and on alternate Wednesdays I give a commentary on The Generation and Completion Stages of Cittamani Tara. Sometimes I am requested to give other teachings, for example the benefits of Nyung-nä, The twelve links of dependent arising, ten non-virtuous actions, the benefits of mani, benefits of stupa, meditation and recitation of Vajrasattva, and the teachings on Praises to the Twenty-One Taras. On the fifteenth of the fourth month, Saka Dawa – which this year is June 1 – I give the Eight Mahayana Precepts and explain why that day is very special.

Sunday is consultation day. After lunch I leave my residence at 1:30 pm and reach the center at 2:00 pm, and until 5:00 pm I meet people who come with various problems and sometimes Dharma questions. For some of them, I have to do observations, and for some I do prayers (like exhorting deities to remove obstacles). Sometimes people bring animals to liberate and ask me to do prayers and blessings.

On every tenth and twenty-fifth of the Tibetan month, we make tsog offering to spiritual masters (Guru Puja). On every Sunday evening, members do Cittamani Tara Puja at the center led by the resident teachers, the Western Sangha, or by senior students, and if I am not tired and not sick, then I try to attend when requested.

Teachings and pujas generally last from 7:30 pm til 9:00 pm. After the teachings, Damchö and I come back and have a dinner of tukpa, and then I finish the remaining prayers and commitments. By the time I go to bed, it will be 12:00 am or sometimes even one o’clock in the morning.

People are quite busy so they can’t attend all the teachings. But on Friday and Saturday teachings, quite a few people come. From my side although I don’t have much experience, I try to read commentaries from many books and explain in the best way that I cannot give initiations or profound teachings, but try to teach like in the monastery, with reasons, explanations and so forth, and also with a good motivation.

What I think about Singaporeans, especially people at Amitabha: they are generally very good; their actions of body, speech and mind are different from others. I’m very happy to see this, so thank you very much. I don’t know how they must see me from their side! I have been here for six months now, they must have seen something about me. Anyway from my side I don’t see anything bad, only the good.

So like that, these are the activities in Geshe Dawa’s day-to-day life at Amitabha Buddhist Centre.