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02.02.2011 Dear Friends in Dharma, There is a thaw in Darnków now, but the snow doesn't disappear. The Christmas Retreat finished some time ago. Despite tough weather conditions, some people dared to come to the centre in winter. However, we didn't make tsatsa. There was only a practice of Big Rigdzin and playing in the snow in the afternoon, and we had great time. On New Year's Eve there was a little party to welcome the New Year together. Now we are waiting for the winter holidays in February, when the next retreat is planned. This time with doing tsatsa for sure. There will be Maciek Szczypka, who has extensive experience in working with clay, he knows how to make tsatsa and can teach everyone how to do it. So we invite you to Darnków from 15 to 27 February. That's all when it comes to the latest news, now I will present the summary of last year's works on the construction of stupa. As you all probably know, we started building the stupa during the summer course. Firstly, we prepared the ground for the building - it was necessary to bulldoze the ground where the stupa is going to be built. We also had to make a road, so the trucks and concrete mixers could reach the construction site. In June, Lama Thinley came to Darnków. His task was to prepare clay tsatsa. Several people helped him, and much more joined making zung - the scrolls of mantras to fill the stupa - the activity was supervised by him. Thanks to your help, we prepared the rolls of zung made of 10,000 sheets with twenty types of mantras. During the summer course, Tulku Pema Rigzin Rinpoche, who agreed to supervise the construction of our stupa came to Darnków In July. Rinpoche prepared the elements of stupa filling out of items brought by all the sangha. Among other things, he filled the vases which will be placed in the stupa during the next stages of stupa construction. During many meetings, answering hundreds of questions, Rinpoche explained how to built the next levels of stupa, where and how we should place the elements of the filling and what else we should prepare. Throughout the course, the stupa foundations were formed. During special ceremony in which His Holiness Taklung Tsetrul Rinpoche participated and gave his blessing, Tulku Rigdzin Pema Rinpoche placed the first elements of stupa filling in its foundations - a naga vase, weapons and tools. In September, the drainage around the foundations was done, and we finished foundation walls to the zero level. We planned to built external walls to the level of the first stair, even the boarding formwork was prepared, but due to the snowfall, it was not possible to pour the building material in it. In spring, as soon as the weather allows, we will continue building, so that the first level of stupa with meditation space will be ready until the end of May. Tulku Rigdzin Pema Rinpoche will come again this year and if everything goes according to the plan, in early June he will put prepared vases in the walls and in the ceiling of the stupa's first level. Then, we want to build the walls of the second level - so that we will be able to place tsatsa there as soon as the walls dry out. Of course, Rinpoche will also supervise this stage. Our calculations show that to fill the second level full with tsatsa we will need about 25,000 of them. Because we were afraid that we aren't able to make them all themselves, we decided, of course after consultation with the Rinpoche, to import ready tsatsas from Singapore. These ready tsatsas are made by Buddhist monks, free of any charge, for the stupas around the world. Unfortunately, finally it won’t be possible, Singapore’s monks are not be able to prepare tsatsa for us till summer. In this case we have to manage to made as many tsatsa as we can our self. In this case we decided to invite one more monk, he will come together with lama Thinley and he will focus on tsatsa making only. Rinpoche said that there is no fixed maximum amount of tsatsa - the more the better, it just depends on our capabilities - but till now we have only a small amount of them. So we request all of you, if you just have a time, to come to Darnkow to help with tsatsa making, or in February, or in summer (we plan to start from June – when date will be fixed, we will let you know). In summer, we will have also a lot of work with rolling zung – lama Thinley sent 30,000 sheets of mantras from Nepal. Lama Thinley will come to Darnków in the summer and, like last year, will supervise rolling mantras. All volunteers are welcome to help. Fortunately, we still have some time for the zung rolling, as the mantras will be placed on the third level of the stupa, and its construction is planned for the year 2012. Thanks to your generosity, not just financial, we were able to gather most of the things needed for stupa filling according to the list from Rinpoche: necessary ritual items, precious stones, preciousness, shells, herbs, etc. Some of these things were already used to fill the vases, which will be put into the walls and ceiling of the first level, the rest (also tsatsa and finished rolls of mantras) is gathered in gompa waiting for the next stages of the stupa filling. With all your donations so far, for which we are very, very grateful, we still have some money to start construction works in the spring. However, if we want to go according to the plan, and build two levels of the stupa this year, we will need more funds. According to the preliminary estimations (we are still waiting for the final construction project which is still in the process of corrections, we will know a detailed cost calculation after the construction project is finished), we will need about 150 000 PLN for that. We firmly believe that collecting such sum of money is a very realistic target. That is why we have a big request to all of you to donate for the further stupa construction. Donations, entitled "donation for the stupa" can be paid into the account of the Association Związek Buddyjski Khordong (As always if you prefer you can also send your money to the account for Drophan Ling at the German association: Khordong e.V., IBAN: DE56100700240324755801, BIC / SWIFT-Code DEUTDEDBBER) Many thanks for all your donations. Greetings from Darnków, PS. If you have any questions or suggestions, or you are interested in more detailed information, please write to us. ***2/11ar |