Today is the Lantern Festival. It also falls in the Month of Miracles in the Tibetan calendar. Many Tibetan practitioners are performing virtuous deeds this month, such as nyungne fasting, circumambulation, prostration, releasing live beings, and so on. In Han Chinese, on the other hand, people are enjoying themselves setting off firecrackers, lighting lanterns and performing lion dances in festive ways.
However, some fools, in order to make their reunions with friends and relatives “more cheerful”, choose to entertain at the expense of other beings’ lives. Behind the facade of joyful celebration, many beings today are executed mercilessly. The cruel punishment inflicted upon them––shearing with knives, frying in oil, or cooking in boiling water––is the playing out of bloody purgatory right here in the human realm.
Like humans, animals feel pain when suffering;
Unlike humans, they can only weep silent tears.
“畜生哀痛尽如人，只差有泪不能哭。”让我们为那些惨遭不幸的众生，也为那些造作恶业的众生忏悔吧！
Let us, then, do the purification practice for the woeful slaughtered beings as well as for the evil perpetrators!
In Collection of Good Deeds, Chagme Rinpoche imparts a simple pith instruction: “Visualize Vajrasattva at the crown of your head, and from him emanating numerous Vajrasattvas, each sitting on the top of other beings, either alive or dead. Recite the Hundred Syllable Mantra as many times as you can and visualize that the nectar, flowing down from Vajrasattva’s body, cleanses the obscuration of yourself and all others. Recite the mantra another 108 times, and then visualize that Vajrasattva dissolves into light and melts into yourself and all beings. Recognize emptiness while seeing that neither the support for purification nor the one who does the purification has any real existence. Remain unmoved in the state of emptiness momentarily. This is the way for confession in the context of both absolute and relative truths. By this practice, even incalculable downfalls in previous lives can be purified.”
This practice suits well for today’s occasion, however, it does not stop here. In everyday life, we should use it to purify the non-virtues of our family members and others. It is not only necessary, but also very convenient.
