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Qing Ming Remembrance Festival

The Great Festival to Liberate All Beings of Water and Land

Qing Ming Remembrance Festival will be from 26 March to 8 April 2012 and during this period, our Monastery will conduct daily chanting of “The Original Vows of Ksitigarbha Bodhisattva”. This sutra is fundamentally a teaching on “karmic retribution” and it describes the consequences one creates for oneself by committing undesirable actions. This is especially beneficial for future beings in this dharma ending age, to help them to perform more good deeds and avoid being reborn in the lower realm. The daily prayer service will be led by a venerable.

Buddhists believe in rebirth and the need to continue to remain your filial to your deceased relatives regardless of how long they have passed away through the transference of merits. This Festival is an excellent occasion for you to express your filial piety. This transference of merits can also be dedicated to your past and present life “Karmic Creditors”. In the Buddhist sutra, you and your family will also be blessed for participating in this good deed.

This year, in conjunction with the 2556th Vesak Day celebration, from 29 April to 6 May 2012, we will be having Great Festival to Liberate All Beings of Water and Land. This will be our final of the three consecutive years’ event and we invite you to join us.

This Festival essentially focuses on compassion and repentance. During the Festival, the beings from the higher realms are invited to help the beings in the lower realms release from their sufferings. The beings in the lower realms would be freed from their pain and anguish while the gods and sages would fulfil their compassionate vows of rescuing others.

A total of seven shrines are erected for the Festival. The first hall is the Inner Shrine while the other six halls constitute the Outer Shrine. Though each hall performs its own ceremony and prayers and serves a unique purpose, the main focus is on the Inner Shrine, while the Outer Shrines serve as halls where the merits from the chanting of the various sutras are transferred to the Inner Shrine.

The Inner Shrine is where beings from the lower realms are liberated. Offerings of food, tea and incense, chanting and reciting of mantras and sutras, accepting and understanding precepts and bowing in repentance on behalf of the lower realm beings are the core procedures in the ceremony.

As this is a rare meritorious event, we will continue to dedicate merits to your beloved ancestors after the Qing Ming Festival until the end of the Great Festival at our Pureland Shrine.

If you like to participate in the other Shrines, especially the Inner Shrine, please complete the enclosed registration forms or contact Ms Alice Tan or Ms Seow Lim on telephone 6253 3532.

May the Merits of the Triple Gems be Always with you!

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