“Don the Dharma Armour. Win Battles Against Afflictions” Dharma Enrichment Workshop

In today’s (31 Oct 2020) DEW, 127 participants learned to “Don the Dharma Armour. Win Battles Against Afflictions”. Venerable Bensi started the workshop by highlighting Teacher Zhen-Ru’s discourse about generating the Mahayana Aspiration to achieve Supreme Enlightenment for benefiting all sentient beings – such an aspiration would increase our merits from attending the DEW multi-folds!

After everyone did the Mandala Offering, Lecturer Jennifer facilitated participants in learning Teacher’s Global Lamrim discourse 145. Teacher taught that we must not accumulate afflictive emotions as this leads to severe suffering. She taught us to examine our responses to unpleasant events that happen every day – we tend to just tuck them away and let them grow in us or just cover them up, pretending they are not there. In reality, danger still looms even though one has covered up the poisonous snake in the house! Hence, we must learn to properly handle our afflictive emotions. Teacher went on to give guidance on how we can eliminate or weaken the afflictive emotions, such as stopping the flow of wrong/unwholesome thoughts.

Venerable Bensi then showed us how the Four Powers could be found in the 35 Buddhas Repentance Prayer and addressed student’s questions on the repentance prayer. With guidance from Venerable still fresh in mind, participants went on to do the 35 Buddhas Repentance Prayer !

In Part 2 of the DEW on 8 Nov 2020 (Sunday), we all can look forward to learning more about donning the Dharma Armour to win battles against afflictions! Yeh!!