Today is Lhabab Düchen, a “Ten Million Multiplier”

The picture above is a painted detail from an 8th-12th Century palm leaf manuscript of the “Perfection of Wisdom Sutra in 8,000 Lines”, produced by the Nalanda Buddhist University. It survived the sacking and razing to the ground of Nalanda by Muslims, was preserved in Tibet for hundreds of years and now forms part of the collection of the Asia Society Museum. It depicts Buddha Shakyamuni having descended to earth from the the desire god realm known as The Heaven of Thirty-Three (Skt. Trayatrimsha), one of the eight great deeds of the Buddha’s life story.

Today, Thursday 17 November 2011, is Lhabab Düchen, one of the four special days in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. It falls on the 22nd day of the ninth lunar month of the Tibetan calendar, and marks the anniversary of the event pictured above. The Buddha’s mother, Queen Mayadevi, had died six days after his birth. When Buddha became enlightened, he saw that his mother had been reborn in the Heaven of Thirty-Three as a result of her pride.

At the age of 41, Buddha manifested in this god realm in order to give teachings to benefit the gods there and to repay the kindness of his mother by liberating her from cyclic existence through spending the three summer months of that year teaching her the Dharma. He was then exhorted to return by Maudgalyayana, his close Arhat student, and after a long debate returned.

It is said that the gods created a stairway made of beryl, gold, and silver which the Buddha descended. He arrived in the town of Kashi (modern-day Varanasi). This is considered to be one of the eight great deeds of the Buddha, marked by one of the eight kinds of stupas entitled “Stupa of Descent from the God Realm” (Tib. Lhabab Chorten). Commemorating this occasion, this style of stupa, decorated with “stairways” in each of the four directions, was first erected at Kashi. In March 2006 the 17th Karmapa Trinley Thaye Dorje visited Mexico and inaugurated a stupa of this type in Valle de Bravo outside Mexico City.

“Düchen” means “great occasion” and like Saga Dawa Duchen, this is a “ten million multiplier” day, multiplying the effects of all positive and negative actions 10 million times! We encourage those of you who support the development of Buddhism in the UK to especially make wishes at this time for the success of the project to find a new London Buddhist Centre!

Tags: Lhabab Duchen, Ten Million Multiplier

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 17th, 2011 at 8:54 am and is filed under Diamond Way Buddhism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.