06/01/2026
✦ Sacred Dawa at Drepung Loseling Institute of Texas ✦
A Day of Luminous Offering & Holy Accumulation
Dawn: Taking Refuge in the Triple Gem
Before the Houston sky has shed its darkness, the doors of Drepung Loseling Institute of Texas open wide to the holiest of days. Saka Dawa — the sacred month in which the Buddha was born, attained Enlightenment, and passed into Parinirvana — reaches its luminous zenith, and the community gathers as one body, one aspiration, one heart.
The morning begins in stillness. Incense rises in soft spirals, its fragrance mingling with the quiet breathing of practitioners seated in rows, hands folded, minds turning inward. The voice of the lama lifts into the air — the ancient syllables of the Refuge Prayer — and in that moment, the entire assembly crosses a threshold together:
Sangyä chö dang tsogkyi chog nam la…
We take refuge in the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha. Not as a formality, but as the deepest act of trust — placing our hearts, our future lives, our very liberation into the hands of the Three Jewels. In a world of constant distraction and impermanence, this taking of refuge is itself a profound homecoming.
The Offering Prayer follows — verses carried across centuries, across oceans, arriving now in the heart of Texas — and through these words, the merit of a thousand lifetimes is invoked. Flowers, incense, light, fragrant water, and the boundless offerings of the mind are arrayed before the altar. The merit of this single day, the tradition teaches, is multiplied ten million times.
Mid-Morning: The Water Bathing of the Buddha (Trulso)
Then comes the most tender rite of the morning.
A sacred image of the Buddha — serene, jeweled, radiant — is placed upon the ceremonial bathing throne. This is the Trulso, the Water Bathing of the Buddha, an ancient practice of immeasurable significance. One by one, with reverence and joy, devotees approach. The warm, purified water, blessed with prayers and saffron, is poured gently over the form of the Awakened One.
This is not merely a symbolic gesture. In the teaching of the Buddha, he himself declared: “I cannot wash away the karma of beings with water. I cannot remove the suffering of beings with my hands. I cannot transfer my realization to others. I liberate beings by showing them the truth.” And yet, in this sacred act of bathing, something profound is transmitted. As we cleanse the outer form of the Enlightened One, we invoke the blessings of his body, speech, and mind to enter our own stream of being — dissolving negativities accumulated over countless lifetimes, refreshing the weary heart, awakening something luminous within.
The blessed water that flows from the bathing is gathered and touched to the crown of each devotee — a special blessing that falls like grace upon the head and seeps into the bones. Children come forward with wide eyes. Elders shuffle forward with trembling gratitude. The young and the old, the long-practiced and the newly arrived — all receive this blessing equally, without distinction, without hierarchy.
This is the teaching made tangible: the compassion of the Buddha holds all beings, without exception.
Evening: A Thousand Lights — Kindling the Wisdom Mind
As the afternoon deepens and the Texas sky begins its slow transformation into rose and amber, the heart of the celebration turns toward light.
Hundreds — thousands — of butter lamps and candles are arranged in rows, in circles, in great fields of trembling gold. The altar blazes. The shrine room glows. Each small flame is an aspiration: May the darkness of ignorance be dispelled. May the light of wisdom arise in my mind and in the minds of all sentient beings without exception.
The offering of lights — me chöd — is among the most meritorious of all Dharma practices. The great masters have said that offering even a single lamp before the Buddha generates the merit to attain the wisdom that perceives emptiness directly. To offer thousands of lights, on this most sacred of days, is to set in motion causes whose effects will ripple across lifetimes — kindling, in the deepest chambers of the mind, the flame of Bodhicitta and the clear light of Prajna.
The practitioners chant the light-offering prayers together, their voices woven into a single golden cord that rises with the smoke and flame toward the heavens. Faces are illuminated in warm, flickering light — the same light that reveals, the same light that heals, the same light that the great contemplatives have always sought within the nature of mind itself.
To sit in that room, surrounded by a thousand candles and a hundred sincere hearts, is to understand — however briefly, however dimly — why the awakened teachers have given their entire lives to this path.
Night: Lama Chöpa Tsok — The Great Feast of Merits
The day reaches its sacred culmination in the Lama Chöpa Tsok offering.
Guru Yoga — the practice of uniting one’s mind with the wisdom mind of the Lama — is considered the very heart of the Gelug tradition. The Lama Chöpa, the Guru Puja composed by the great Panchen Lama Losang Chökyi Gyaltsen, is the crown jewel of this practice. And on Saka Dawa — when every act of virtue is multiplied beyond measure — the Tsok offering becomes a thunderstorm of accumulated merit.
The offerings are arrayed: the Tsok feast of food and drink, symbolizing the offering of all enjoyments, all pleasures, all experience — every atom of this life offered without grasping to the Guru, the Yidam, the Dakini, and the Dharma Protectors. The verses pour forth in waves of devotion, requesting the Lama to remain, to turn the wheel of Dharma, to illuminate the path for all beings still wandering in the darkness of samsara.
The confessions are made. The requests are offered. The dedication is proclaimed.
And in the silence that follows the final verse — in the stillness between one breath and the next — something immeasurable has been accomplished. A treasury of merit has been opened. A seed has been planted in the field of the mind. The blessings of Je Tsongkhapa, the Refuge Field, the lineage of realized masters stretching back to the Buddha himself — all of it converges in this single day, this single room, this single community in Houston, Texas.
Closing Dedication
By this virtue, may all beings swiftly attain the state of omniscience.
May not even the name of suffering exist anywhere.
May all beings experience happiness, and may the causes of happiness flourish.
Saka Dawa at Drepung Loseling Institute of Texas is not merely an event. It is a remembrance of what is most essential in this human life — and a bold aspiration for what is possible in the lives to come.
May all be auspicious.
