Heart Shrine Relics Tour

Last night we went to the opening ceremony of the Heart Shrine Relics Tour visit to Jacksonville. What an incredible gift to have here in our city!

The shrine has been set up at the Cambodian Buddhist Center of Jacksonville. The building is beautiful. There were 5 Cambodian monks in attendance and they did an opening ceremony in Cambodian. Our KTC chanted the Tashi prayer in Tibetan and then the women who bring the shrine to cities all over the world did an opening ceremony in English. It was very moving - all of it. There were well over 100 people in attendance, many of whom were Asian.

The shrine itself is beautifully set up. Everything is done with the highest respect and homage to the relics. There are relics from the historical Buddha, Shakyamuni. Twenty-five hundred years old, preserved and revered all that time. The majority of the relics are from Tibetan Buddhist lineage Masters of the past including Marpa and Milarepa, Yeshe Tsogyal, the First Karmapa, and many others. The relics that moved me the most were from H.H. Karmapa XVI. I'm not sure why, except that he was the first Karmapa to come to America, and without his efforts here, I would not have become Buddhist, nor would I have met my teacher, Bardor Tulku Rinpoche.

We are going to see the shrine again today and we will probably go at least one other time while it is here. This is a once in a lifetime event as the relics will be enshrined in India at some point.

I'm enjoying my Saturday morning. I slept until 7:15, when F's clock radio went off. She has the radio tuned to a CW station and the radio came on blasting a song about Osama bin Laden, or all things. I don't get CW music at all.