Rainbows and Healings
"To have the relics in a place like this, this is very unique; it's a spiritual centre amidst great darkness and amidst great strife and amidst great poverty. To bring light here and then to have people know and feel and be immersed in that sense of peace within their own soul, has to change the world. It just has to.”
— visitor to the Relic Tour event in South Central Los Angeles, 2005
Over the past years, we have had a lot of feedback from visitors sharing their personal experiences of the healing energy of the Heart Shrine relics. The Relic Tour Managers and Custodians have also witnessed some pretty surprising events!
Andy Melnic, one of our Relic Tour Managers on the European Relic Tour was amazed when rainbows appeared at Relic Tour events in Florence, Sicily, Marseille, Brussels, Hannover and Dublin – six events in a row!
Victoria Ewart, Relic Tour Director, reported that while the relics were on display in Johannesburg, South Africa some of the children described the colours they saw emanating from the different relics on display.
In Korea, visitors were initially skeptical about sacred relics collected by a Tibetan Buddhist master who was unknown to them. Later, local visitors and volunteers pulled the Relic Custodians over to the display cases pointing excitedly. The relics of Arya Nagarjuna appeared to be 'lit up'. The phenomena continued during the final 10 days of this 21-day Relic Tour event with different relics “illuminating” on different days. Some wondered if it could be a trick of the light, but photographs were taken from different angles with the same relic brightly glowing (see images below).
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The relics were displayed in South Central Los Angeles, a place known for violence and difficulties. One local visitor describes her healing experience –
“Sri Natha Devi took the relics and was putting them on our bodies and asking for great healing. And I felt something, an energy go through my body. I had back problems all of my life and all of a sudden I just felt this total release that was within the mid-back area. Yes, it's still gone. And it was a profound healing."
Bob Swartz, a visitor at one of the Relic Tour events in San Francisco described his healing experience –
“I feel as if being in the presence of the relics, without any effort on my part, a change occurs. And that change is much like as if my molecules were being rearranged into a more wholesome order.”
Jordan Rothstein, at the same event commented –
“...the blessing energy coming off of them [the relics] is so strong; it seems to have resulted in a lot of emotional and even physical purification, and afterwards you feel all lighter.”
Increasingly the Relic Tour is being invited to display the relics inside prisons. Already the relics have been displayed in prisons in Missouri, Florida and The Netherlands. The prisoners felt very moved to have been included and all requested blessings from the stupa containing the relics of Shakyamuni Buddha. Darcy Jones, one of Maitreya Project's Relic Custodians, led prisoners in a meditation on generating loving-kindness.
Relic Custodians have witnessed the relics multiplying spontaneously. And, there are before and after photographs of the relics of Kasyapa Buddha, Shakyamuni Buddha and Ananda changing colour, increasing in size and multiplying in number (see before and after images below of Ananda's relics).
Lama Zopa Rinpoche attributes this phenomenon to the 'good karma of the Relic Tour' explaining that because visitors have faith, pay respect, and offer prayers, they create the conditions for more relics to appear.
Former Relic Custodian, Venerable Chodron, said –
“Lama Zopa has made all this possible. That's something that stays with me all the time – his kindness. And the kindness of all the masters because really they say that the masters leave relics in order to benefit others. So this is their kindness that's here in this room.
The people experience, I think, that kind of unconditional feeling that all people want, and this is what Maitreya is all about, loving-kindness. And the reason for the Maitreya statue is so that loving-kindness will arise in the hearts of all beings. So it will be a symbol of loving-kindness.”
A regular feature at Relic Tour events are blessing ceremonies for pets. Visitors are encouraged to bring their pets at scheduled times so that animals can also receive the blessings of the relics.
All these
experiences show the ultimate goal of the Maitreya Project
to inspire loving-kindness. Wherever we go with the Relic Tour we are
constantly overwhelmed by people's kindness.
If you would like to invite the relics to bless your community, please email relictour@maitreyaproject.org
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