80,000,000 lives

The past Sunday morning my niece wanted to follow me for animal liberation. I was more than happy to oblige. We went downstairs to welcome Lama Zopa Rinpoche. When he arrived, he blessed each and every one of us. He saw a frail sickly old lady in a wheelchair, went towards her, held her head towards him, and whispered many many prayers into her ears. Another boy held a small bird in his hands, for Rinpoche's blessings.

Some crates of live crabs and shellfish were laid out in the hall in front of the altar. And many more were in the truck downstairs having been circumambulated round the building (round the holy objects) a few rounds earlier. Zopa Rinpoche saw the crabs and patiently uttered prayers crate by crate, with tears in his eyes. Afterwards, he chanted many many mantras and prayers into the pails of water and blew into them after each prayer, pail by pail. These pails of blessed holy water will be sprinkled on all the animals before they were liberated, before being released back into the sea afterwards. This action is to ensure they will be reborn as human beings in their next lives, instead of the 3 lower realms, and hence be able to learn the Dharma, and thus be able to be enlightened.

In addition it was a rare opportunity where Zopa Rinpoche gave many oral transmission of the prayers and mantras to everyone present. Imagine the unbelievable amount of negative karma that has been purified for each of us.

We released 85,000 lives that day. In total, Fred from ABC said the center has already released about 80 million lives to date, always dedicating the merit to our gurus, His Holiness Dalai Lama, and Lama Zopa Rinpoche. Like Rinpoche said, it is a "world's history".... yes, 80 million lives liberated, we should be feel very happy indeed.