The Benefits of Seeing the Relics

Viewing holy relics inspires us to develop our own hearts and minds, to develop loving-kindness and compassion and to understand spiritual teachings.

When the Buddha lived in India in approximately 563 BCE the people of that time had the opportunity to actually see and hear him, to be blessed by him in his human form. In approximately 483 BCE the Buddha left the earth by passing into nirvana (the enlightened state) during the body's death. At that time he compassionately left relics so that today we still have the opportunity to receive the blessings of the Buddha, directly.

Spiritual masters throughout history have blessed the world with their relics in this way and this phenomenon is still happening today. In 2001, Geshe Lama Konchog, a revered Tibetan scholar and meditator, passed away at Kopan Monastery in Nepal. After his body was cremated those attending the funeral rites were astonished to find hundreds and hundreds of crystal-like relics among the ashes.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche

The Buddha emanated many kinds of relics out of compassion for us, in order to help us sentient beings generate faith in our mindstreams as a cause to receive blessings, purify our negativities, and accumulate merit.

Giving people the opportunity to come view the relics of the Buddhas and other masters, is helping to fulfill the intentions of those holy beings who manifested the relics.

When you see holy beings' relics, think in the following way: At this time, these holy beings are benefiting us by emanating relics that enable us to accumulate merit and purify negativities, thereby leading us to liberation and enlightenment.'

We should pray by thinking, May we too achieve the realisations as you holy beings have done. May we be able to benefit sentient beings as extensively as you holy beings have benefited them.'

We should also rejoice at the virtue of all the Buddhas and bodhisattvas at all the qualities of their holy body, speech, and mind as well as at all their great activities for the teachings and for sentient beings.

This is the reason why relics are considered very holy and precious. Relics are manifested and left behind due to the kindness of holy beings in order for us sentient beings to collect merit and purify obscurations.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche, the spiritual director of Maitreya Project and the Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition (FPMT), is the reincarnation of the Sherpa Nyingma yogi Kunsang Yeshe, the Lawudo Lama. Rinpoche was born in 1946 in Thami, not far from the cave, Lawudo, in the Mount Everest region of Nepal, where his predecessor meditated for the last twenty years of his life.

After the Communist occupation of Tibet, Rinpoche escaped in 1959 and continued his studies in Sera Je monastery in Buxa Duar, in northern India, where he met his main teacher, Lama Thubten Yeshe, with whom he later founded the Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition (FPMT). The FPMT is a worldwide organisation of more than 151 centres dedicated to the transmission of Buddhist values through teaching, meditation and community service.

Along with Lama Zopa Rinpoche's many other charitable activities, he began and continues to guide the Maitreya Project.

Venerable Ribur Rinpoche

When I was in Tibet there were lots of relics before the Chinese Communists came. When they came the relics were all taken away. Even to be able to access the containers in which the relics used to be kept you would have had to go though an incredible ordeal of bureaucracy and difficulty.

There is a place near Bombay where they have the relics of Sariputra and Maudgalyayana, the two principal arhat disciples of Buddha Shakyamuni. These relics are preserved really tightly. You cannot just go and have the access that you have here today [at the Heart Shrine Relic Tour]. You have to file an application to the Central Indian Government and then it takes time. If your application is accepted an official comes with the seal of the government to open the reliquarium. It takes a great deal of effort to have access to that.

In Sarnath, India, near Benares, there is a temple with the relics of the Buddha. And that also is not easy. We had to request the abbot who sent two monks. We had to make a huge offering to the temple just to be able to get in line. It was something quite short, done quite fast, to be able to access the Buddha's relics. So that wasn't that easy.

Normally, it is not like today [at the Heart Shrine Relic Tour], where the relics are so easily accessible, where you can see so many relics and receive their blessing for as long as you want, at leisure. This is exclusively because of the kindness of Lama Zopa Rinpoche and the Maitreya Project. Lama Zopa Rinpoche is exceptional in his activities in that he was able to collect such a great number of different relics from all over the world. And they are here.

I can assure you that the relics of Je Tsong Khapa and Lama Pabongka Dorje Chang are unmistakably the actual relics of these two great beings. I can assure you that the relic of the holy body of Je Tsongkhapa was being preserved since his passing away until the beginning of the 1960s in the Great Ganden Reliquary at Ganden Monastery. Then later on, some of the people who were forcibly involved in the destruction of that stupa, were able to [secretly] collect and keep aside the entire collection of relics and the holy body and the bones and so forth of Je Rinpoche that later on we were able to recover. The relics of Je Rinpoche that I offered to Lama Zopa Rinpoche are exactly the same relics that came from that particular reliquary.

There are also so many other very powerful relics in the Heart Shrine Relic Tour. Just seeing the relics of the Buddha purifies an incredible amount of negative karma [actions and habits] and that goes also for the other relics as well. They are so unbelievably difficult to find, to come into possession of this is just something almost unthinkable.

Ribur Rinpoche (1923 - 2006) was born in Tibet and was recognised by the Thirteenth Dalai Lama as the reincarnation of the head lama of Ribur Monastery. Rinpoche studied at Sera Me monastery in Tibet where he received his geshe degree in 1948.

He was confined for 18 years in Lhasa, following Communist China's occupation of Tibet. At the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976, Rinpoche spent more than ten years in Chinese labour camps and was given a job with the Religious Affairs Office in Tibet. On one of his trips to China, he worked with the Panchen Lama and recovered holy objects – including the famous Shakyamuni Buddha statue in the Ramoche Temple – that had been dismantled and shipped to China. He also re-established the destroyed stupa of Lama Tsongkhapa, which contained some of Lama Tsongkhapa's bodily relics.

Since his exile to India in 1985, Ribur Rinpoche wrote numerous biographies of great lamas such as the Thirteenth Dalai Lama and an extensive history of Tibet, which includes his autobiography.

Ribur Rinpoche spent many years living in USA where he gave teachings and led retreats, before returning to India, where he passed away.

Venerable Kirti Tsenshab Rinpoche

The benefits of seeing relics are great. They are established by enlightened beings with great compassion.

It is said that the body of the Buddha is vast like the ocean but ordinary beings cannot perceive it. For their sake, the Buddhas manifest relics as a means for passing on the blessings of their body, speech and mind.

The Buddha has said that there are four special places, "the place of my birth, the place of my enlightenment, the place where I gave teachings and the place where I will pass away. Visiting any of these places is equivalent of meeting me in person". The same is true for relics.

The Maitreya statue on its own is a very powerful object. By enshrining the relics at its heart, its power and blessing multiplies. It is like increasing the amount and intensity of sunshine in one place.

Kirti Tsenshab Rinpoche (1926 - 2006) was born in eastern Tibet. He was one of the holders of the Kalachakra lineage and one of the teachers of His Holiness the Dalai Lama and of Lama Zopa Rinpoche.

After escaping from Tbet in 1959, Kirti Tsenshab Rinpoche taught Tibetan orphans at the Tibetan Children's Village, Dharamsala, India. Beginning at the age of 45 he completed a 15 year meditation retreat in a tiny stone hermitage in India.

Rinpoche gave teachings around the world in many countries included: Australia, Germany, Holland, Hong Kong, Italy, New Zealand, Singapore, Taiwan, and the United States.