Amitabha Jangchok Puja and the Importance of Choosing a Proper Burial Site
In a couple of weeks, from May 15-17, the annual Amitabha Retreat will take place at Day Den Shing, the Columbarium at Karme Ling Retreat Center in upstate New York. On the third day, Khenpo Karthar Rinpoche will perform the Jangchok, a special ceremony to liberate the consciousnesses of the deceased. It is a very fortunate opportunity for those beings whose ashes will be interred in the Columbarium, but it is not just limited to them. This is an amazing ritual to witness. The Karmapa does a similar puja every year in Bodhgaya at the end of the Akshobyha Retreat, whereby Monlam attendees are invited to submit the names of friends and relatives who have passed away. At a certain point in the puja, the Karmapa burns the lists of names and liberates the beings. Below is a slideshow of the Jangchok at Karme Ling in previous years and below that are Khenpo Karthar Rinpoche’s remarks on the importance of choosing a proper burial site from a tantric point of view.
The Importance of Choosing a Proper Burial Site
As is written in the sutras, the end of birth is death. None of us will escape death. After death, many people have their ashes cast into water, but there is no evident dharmic reason for this, and in fact, according to Tibetan Buddhist tantric teachings, this may not be the best course of action for the descendants of the deceased.
During a question and answer session at the annual 10-day teaching at Karma Triyana Dharmachakra in July of 2007, Khenpo Karthar Rinpoche made several comments regarding the importance of choosing a good burial site. His remarks have been summarized below:
The remnant of a person’s being that tends to stay with the person’s remains for a long time after death is not the person’s consciousness. The person’s consciousness moves on because after a certain period of time it takes rebirth. What remains with the body of the deceased is something else. And this something else is not talked about much, if at all, in the sutras, but is talked about frequently in the tantras. And it is called the person’s “la.” In English, the best word for this is their “spirit” if you understand that spirit does not mean the person’s mind, consciousness, or soul or anything like that.
Now, what is this spirit or la if it isn’t the deceased person’s mind, or their consciousness? One way you can think of it is the god or gods that inhabit the person’s body, that are inherited from both parental lines. In any case, it is this ancestral spirit that inhabits the place of burial or interment of the remains, and it is because of the effect of the place of burial on this spirit, that there is significance in the burial site. And we use the word “burial” but understand that it could also be the place where one’s ashes are kept after death.
If the body is interred in a good place, a sound environment with excellent feng shui, then this strengthens or nourishes this spirit. If the spirit is nourished, the descendants of that person will benefit because the spirit remains there perennially. If the body is buried in an inappropriate place or environment, (a place with bad feng shui) the spirit doesn’t die, but it becomes enervated or weak–it is not nourished. And if the spirit of the person becomes weak, this harms the person’s descendants; they may experience various sorts of mishaps, illnesses, impoverishment and so on. This is one of the reasons, the primary reason, for the importance of appropriate burial sites.
Now because of this, it is often said that when a family goes to a lama for divination, to find out why they have such bad luck, generation after generation, often the diagnosis will be the impairment or damage to the spirit of an ancestor, caused by the improper burial of that ancestor’s remains. So while Rinpoche says he doesn’t know exactly what this spirit is, he’s seen sufficient evidence to be assured of its existence and of the importance in choosing the best possible burial place according to feng shui, or geomancy.
Furthermore, it has been taught that there is a great danger of the untimely death of young people if geomancy is ignored. Rinpoche said, “I have seen and experienced this myself. If geomancy is ignored, great obstacles such as misery for the dead and illness for the living can occur. If geomancy is observed, both the dead and the living will be happy. This has been taught by the Buddha, Guru Rinpoche, and others.”
tormafilm.com 
Thank you : )
thank you too for the mail and the possibility ti pry for twoo persons dead recently.
odile poisson 76 yers old france
ange, a yong man 28 years old
thankyou again
tashy deleg
annie
A really good website. Lots of great photos and interesting information.
Thank you!