2008 CHINESE NEW YEAR & LOSAR GREAT PRAYER FESTIVAL @ LDC, a most meaningful way to start the celebration of the Chinese New Year. Daily Prayers stretching the duration of the period to enhance wealth, improve health and remove obstacles, will bring you prosperity and a happy new year.

A real TREAT will be the Chenrezig / Kuan Yin Sand Mandala to be constructed by the nuns from Kachoe Ghakyil Ling Nunnery (Kopan Nunnery) Kathmundu, Nepal. It is established that just by seeing the Sand Mandala will bring you great purification of negative karma and actualise the realisation of the path to enlightenment. Mandala is Sanskrit for circle, polygon, community, connection.
The Mandala is a symbol of man or woman in the world, a support for the meditating person.
The mandala is often illustrated as a palace with four gates, facing the four corners of the Earth.
The Mandala shown here is connected with the Buddha Vajrasattva, who symbolises the original crystalline purity.
In the centre is a lotus blossom with eight petals, resting on a bed of jewels.
In the next place are the walls of the palace with gates towards the four corners of the earth.
The gates are guarded by four angry doorkeepers.
Before the meditating person arrives at the gates, she must, however, pass the four outer circles: the purifying fire of wisdom, the vajra circle, the circle with the eight tombs, the lotus circle.

The word "mandala" is from the classical Indian language of Sanskrit. Loosely translated to mean "circle," a mandala is far more than a simple shape. It represents wholeness, and can be seen as a model for the organizational structure of life itself--a cosmic diagram that reminds us of our relation to the infinite, the world that extends both beyond and within our bodies and minds.

Describing both material and non-material realities, the mandala appears in all aspects of life: the celestial circles we call earth, sun, and moon, as well as conceptual circles of friends, family, and community.

"The integrated view of the world represented by the mandala, while long embraced by some Eastern religions, has now begun to emerge in Western religious and secular cultures. Awareness of the mandala may have the potential of changing how we see ourselves, our planet, and perhaps even our own life purpose."
(From Mandala: Journey to the Center, by Bailey Cunningham)