2023 World Peace Ceremony
The annual World Peace Ceremony, also known as the Nyingma Monlam Chenmo, was held from January 22-31, 2023. Thanks to the generosity of donors, Tibetan Aid Project was able to send six shipping containers filled with texts. During these ten days, over 83,000 texts were given away.
Over 12,000 participants came together for this gathering—about 8,000 monks and nuns and 4,000 lay pilgrims from all across the Himalayan regions, including Nepal, Ladakh, Bhutan, Sikkim, and also from Tibetan settlements and monasteries in different states of India.
After the challenges and losses of the last two years, the atmosphere was charged with appreciation and joy for this precious opportunity to come together in community and engage deeply in practice.
Every day during the ceremony, millions of prayers were offered by an assembly of thousands. Prayers were offered for universal awakening, that the world be free from nuclear conflict and violence, for the health and flourishing of all countries and our living planet as a whole, and that all realms, including the animal realm, be free from suffering.
How are texts chosen?
Tarthang Tulku Rinpoche selects the texts for distribution from among the any precious manuscripts and texts in his libraries collected over fifty years; this treasury of books is Yeshe De’s major resource for preparing the books offered in Bodh Gaya. Rinpoche takes into account the most pressing religious and educational needs of monasteries and shedras in exile and Tibet.
When the Sangha receives this work, not only is it a testament to the scope of this knowledge tradition and restoring part of their heritage, but it also invites a conversation with these great masters across time, for these works represent understanding that speaks still to the human condition.
What is the impact of the distribution?
Anyone who supports the text project is helping solve the problem of how this wisdom tradition could just fade away given all the challenges it faces. It will not survive on its own without a profound effort. The living tradition continues, but its vitality and diversity is dependent on this vast text tradition.
You could imagine that if somehow our own intellectual tradition and culture underwent tremendous destruction, perhaps different universities afterwards might rely on certain key texts, but lacking access to the whole library, suffer from atomization. We are fighting the demise of a wisdom tradition, through protecting the integrity of the whole text tradition, and by ensuring that the words are preserved and shared, widely, without sectarian bias. Then it’s up to the Sangha to study, practice, and embody these teachings.
We are all stakeholders in this – we can’t do it alone. This is heavy lifting, to try to save a tradition. There are those who are physically printing the books, binding them, trucking them to the shipping docks, those who are doing the fundraising, organizing, buying the necessary supplies, keeping the accounts; those who are typesetting, editing; those who distribute the books. It’s a tremendous orchestration of effort, this huge output of production is the culmination of a year-long preparation which involves so much work, heart, and sheer grit. Remember we have been doing this for 34 years now, it’s an immense commitment.
It’s so easy to destroy something; an extraordinarily rich culture of 1,400 years was almost wiped out when all of Tibet’s libraries and monasteries were destroyed in a short period of time. It takes much greater effort to build something back up and restore it.
The knowledge within these books is transformative; it upholds the wellbeing of the human spirit. Each book is a love letter to the future, an expression of caring, a message that we don’t have to suffer, that there are so many methods for waking up, and that being fully awake in the world is possible right now. With every book we put into the hands of practitioners, this is the living tradition we’re upholding.
Thank you again from all of us at TAP for your contributions and support. May our efforts together be far-reaching, protecting and supporting this wisdom transmission, for the benefit of as many beings as possible, for generations to come.