The two Lama Tsongkhapa Disciple statues arrived at Tushita in May 2012. Fundraising began at the beginning of 2009 and took 2½ years to complete (one of them is below left during the construction phase). The project was made possible thanks to 121 kind sponsors who supported the project. Since June 2011 we had been waiting with bated breath for the arrival of these most precious holy objects.
Each part was carefully unpacked and checked (pictured above left), as the statues had travelled all the way overland from Kathmandu, Nepal to Tushita. In September 2012, as the main Gompa closed its doors to the public for the start of the Gompa Painting Project, a team of local builders set about extending the main altar where the new disciple statues would be placed (pictured above centre).
We decided to wait until the most auspicious day for the statue filling, that day being Lama Tsongkhapa Day, December 8th 2012. The preparation, filling and blessing was done by monks from the Gyudmed Tantric College (pictured above right).
The statues had been cleaned and prepared ready for the auspicious day. Rolls of microfilm of both the Four Dharmakaya relic mantra, and the Stainless Pinnacle mantra had been sent from the USA.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche emphasizes the importance of both of these in the filling of statues: “If you ever put 100,000 of the mantra on microfilm or on paper in a statue or stupa, then it’s (the) most unbelievably powerful “boom”, internal and external boom, then internally it becomes Dharma for the mind, so it becomes very very powerful, so it can even be put in small statues or stupas, the technology helps to collect extensive merits.” (Quote from Rinpoche for labelling a box containing microfilm of the Four Dharmakaya relic mantra in July 2010).
As well as the microfilm rolls and the texts, the statues were filled with other precious objects such as, two blessed pills given to us by His Holiness Dalai Lama’s palace, precious pills from the Men-Tse-Khang (Tibetan Medical Institute) and mani pills from His Holiness office; along with blessed earth from pilgrimage sites in India and Nepal.
The Gyudmed monks performed a blessing ceremony for the statues and they helped us arrange for special robes to be made for the statues. On one visit to Tushita, Kyabje Lama Zopa Rinpoche had left a very special gold cloth which contains gold thread from the Jokhang Temple, Tibet, to be used for the Gompa. A piece of this cloth has been sown into the existing robes of our main Lama Tsongkhapa statue, as well as the new ones made for the disciples.
Following Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s advice, we invited Khadro-la to inaugurate the statues together with our statues of Lama Atisha and Guru Rinpoche.
To our immense pleasure on the twenty-fifth of February 2015 Khadro-la very kindly accepted our invitation and came during Losar celebrations (Tibetan New Year). Imagine our surprise and tremendous delight when she arrived bringing Dagri Rinpoche along with her! Having these two amazing lamas conducting the ceremony was a great honor and treat for all of us at Tushita.
Statue Consecration