Walking into 2025, Zhai Ming Branch Monastery Held the End-of-Year Praying for Blessings Dharma Service

On December 31^st, 2024, Dharma Drum Mountain (DDM) Zhai Ming Branch Monastery in Taoyuan held a year-end prayer for blessings ceremony in its Grand Buddha Hall at 7:00 p.m. with more than 300 people in attendance. During the service, the DDM Sangha led the participants in sitting meditation, chanting sutras, and making vows and prostrations to send blessings to the world.

Zhai Ming Branch Monastery has been amassing yearly respective recitations of the Lotus Sutra for three consecutive years. This year, with 1,133 participants, the event achieved a total of 2,323 respective recitations of the Lotus Sutra, surpassing the goal of 2,025 recitations before the end of the year 2024. It also indicated the diligence and great aspirations of the monastics and lay practitioners in practicing Buddhist teachings. Under the guidance of the Sangha, all the participants made a grand year-end-concluding merit dedication at the Dharma service, wishing peace and happiness to all sentient beings.

Before the general merit dedication, the monastics at Zhai Ming Branch Monastery led everyone to collect their thoughts by practicing sitting meditation. Later, the congregation recited the Lotus Sutra's Universal Gate Chapter on Avalokitesvara Bodhisattva to wash away vexations and reveal the clear innate wisdom. Afterwards, they chanted the Bell Ringing Verse and made 108 prostrations to express gratitude to everyone and everything that happened over the past year. With renewed hopes and a vow to practice the bodhisattva path, everyone rang in the year of 2025.

In addition to expressing her appreciative joy to over a thousand devotees who participated in the collaboration of respective recitations of the Lotus Sutra, Ven. Chang Lin (常林法師), Vice Director of Zhai Ming Branch Monastery, shared the teachings of DDM's founder late Master Sheng Yen: to make a vow means to seize the present moment to give selflessly and to undertake responsibilities with joy. In this time of frequent occurrence of disasters, she encouraged everyone, as Buddhist disciples, to have great aspirations with good intentions.

In the end, Zhai Ming Branch Monastery played the video of DDM's annual theme–"The Power of Great Aspiration" for everyone to relearn the teachings of DDM's founder Master Sheng Yen. In the video, Master Sheng Yen expounded, "To set aspirations is to set the direction for our life. It is the power to move our lives forward and the power that prevents ourselves from regressing. The world needs Buddhadharma, so we must have great aspirations and firmly believe that buddhas and bodhisattvas will be our aid while we fulfill our great aspirations.



Original Chinese text / Siou-jhen Lan (藍秀貞)
Photos / Photography team of Zhai Ming Branch Monastery
Translation / Li Siang-ling
Editing / Keith Brown, YKL