At Lunar New Year, we conduct the Wealth Treasure Puja especially for our family of members, students, benefactors, volunteers and friends to receive auspicious and abundant blessings for the coming year and beyond.

We offer prayers to the Three Jewels and the wealth deities White Dzambhala and 12-Armed Red Ganapati to invoke their blessings for the New Year to be fruitful in all aspects of life, including the swift accumulation of merit for Dharma practice.

During the half-day session, the following practices are performed to garner the favourable conditions of wealth and power, for the benefit of sentient beings and the flourishing of the Buddhadharma:

• Yamantaka self-generation practice
• White Dzambhala wealth gathering puja
• 12-Armed Red Ganapati puja

About the Practice

White Dzambhala and 12-Armed Red Ganapati are manifestations of Chenresig [Avalokiteshvara or Guan Yin] who has immeasurable compassion for all sentient beings.

The lineage of “White Dzambhala Who Rides on a Dragon with Four Dakinis” comes from the great Indian master, Atisha. A text composed by Lama Atisha documents his personal account of how White Dzambhala was born from a teardrop that fell from the right eye of Chenresig to help him save an impoverished man from starving to death. Lama Atisha described how, from the mouth of White Dzambhala came a rain of pearls, a miraculous shower that eliminated the suffering of poverty of the dying man as well as of all sentient beings.

Ganapati, who the Hindus call Ganesha, is also regarded as a wealth deity in our Buddhist tradition. 12-Armed Red Ganapati holds special significance in the Sakya lineage and belongs to a set of practices known as “The 13 Golden Dharmas of Sakya”. This form of Ganapati acts to increase wealth and power for the benefit of sentient beings and the Buddha’s teachings.

Through the aspect of these wealth deities, Chenresig enacts the welfare of all sentient beings by bestowing prosperity and abundance. While our own practice of generosity, such as making offerings to the Three Jewels, is the actual cause of wealth, the pujas serve as the ripening condition to obtain these desired results.