Experiencing Loving-kindness
We receive a lot of feedback from visitors sharing their personal experiences with the healing energy of the relics. The Relic Custodians have also witnessed some pretty surprising events!
In California, USA, Carmen Straight, one of our Relic Custodians, watched a five year old girl walking around the relic altar display, peering curiously at the relics. When Carmen asked her what she was doing, she replied,
"There are so many beautiful colours shining out from the relics and I am trying to remember them all.”
Andy Melnic, one of the Relic Custodians on the 2007 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!
In South Korea visitors and volunteers pulled the Relic Custodians over to the display cases, pointing excitedly. The relics of Arya Nagarjuna appeared to be 'lit up'. This phenomenon continued during the rest of the Relic Tour event with different relics appearing to “illuminate” on different days. To check if it might be a trick of the light, photographs were taken from different angles and the relics were moved to different positions on the altar, but the appearance of the relics stayed the same (see images below).
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Relic Custodians have also witnessed the relics of Kasyapa Buddha, Shakyamuni Buddha and Venerable Ananda changing colour, increasing in size and multiplying spontaneously.
This photograph shows the relics of Venerable Ananda. In 2003 the relics changed colour and the much larger relic appeared among them.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche, Spiritual Director of Maitreya Project, attributes these phenomena to the 'good karma of the Relic Tour'. He said that visitors come to the Tour with a mind of faith and devotion, they make offerings and say prayers, therefore they create the cause for more relics to appear.
When the relics were displayed in a small spiritual centre in South Central Los Angeles, a place known for violence and difficulties, there was an outpouring of interest and devotion.
"To have the relics in a place like 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 show in South Central Los Angeles, 2005
One visitor to the South Central Los Angeles event described her healing experience:
“Sri Natha Devi took the relics and was putting them on our bodies and asking for great healing.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 a San Francisco Relic Tour event 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. Part of the visits include leading the prisoners in a meditation on generating loving-kindness. Prisoners have said they felt very moved to have been included and all have requested blessings from the stupa containing the relics of Shakyamuni Buddha.
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 of these experiences remind us that the ultimate goal of the Maitreya Project is to inspire loving-kindness. Wherever we go with the Relic Tour we are constantly overwhelmed by the devotion, kindness and joy of the people we meet.
If you would like to invite the holy relics to bless your community, please email relictour@maitreyaproject.org
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