Honoring Saga Dawa Through A Heartfelt Dana Offering to the Monasteries
This year, 2083, was no ordinary Saga Dawa for us at EvamRatna. It was about spiritually connecting with our Dharma friends, about remembering the deeper meaning of our work, and about offering something back with sincerity. As a quiet promise we made before the start of the month: Saga Dawa wouldn't be another season of sales. We wished this holy time to be a moment of gratitude, a moment of reflection, and a moment of shared merit. This was a commitment we made for all of those who have supported us, trusted us, and walked with us on this journey. It was also created for the sacred sites in the Kathmandu Valley, where the Dharma is still practiced, preserved, and continues to be cherished with devotion.
An Invitation Offered, A Merit Shared
We started with a 20% discount at our store on the first day of Saga Dawa 2083, as an invitation. An invitation for our community to bring sacred objects into their practice during the most meritorious month of the year, where each act of generosity and each object of devotion has double the weight.
With this intention, we committed to offering 5% of all sales made during Saga Dawa as a dana offering. In simple words, a portion of every purchase during this sacred month was set aside for donation and dedicated to active Dharma institutions in the Kathmandu Valley.
What began as a quiet internal promise became something larger than we anticipated. Because of everyone who showed up, who purchased, who shared, who sent words of encouragement, the offering became real.
Here are the details of our experience with it.
108 Butter Lamps on Saga Dawa Düchen
On the morning of Saga Dawa Düchen, we lit 108 butter lamps. The number one hundred eight, so significant in the Buddhist and Hindu faiths, is very special.
Each lamp was lit with a name in mind. For the Dharma friends who have supported this work, for world peace, the ones who trusted us with objects meant for their altars, their practice rooms, and their most sincere intentions. For the craftsmen of the Kathmandu Valley, whose hands shaped every piece, the metalworkers working in small workshops in Patan and Boudha, whose names most people will never know. For the families behind all of them, the ones they love quietly, the near and dear ones who may never know a butter lamp was lit in their name this day.
There was a simple dedication: Health, Long Life, Compassion, Wisdom. For everyone in our community, without exception, across whatever distance separates us. We did not announce it that day. We simply lit the lamps, made the dedication, and let the light carry it. 108 flames for 108 intentions. For the people who have trusted this work and for everyone they hold dear.
The Offering: Three Dharma Institutions
Alongside the butter lamp dedication, we made financial offerings to three active Dharma institutions in the Kathmandu Valley. Each was selected carefully, for each is a reflection of some aspect of the way the teachings are kept and carried on here, right now, in the living present.
With gratitude and sincerity, this year's offering was dedicated to three living Dharma institutions:
- Vajrayogini Nunnery Meditation Center
- Tharlam Monastery
- Nagi Gompa
Vajrayogini Nunnery Meditation Center, Tinchule, Boudha
Located just minutes from the great stupa at Boudhanath, the Vajrayogini Meditation Centre is home to approximately 90 nuns, young and senior, under the Sakya lineage. The centre was offered to His Holiness Sakya Trichen in 2011 by His Eminence Tashi Chophel Rinpoche, who then entered long-term retreat in Tibet, entrusting the nunnery to the lineage's care. It is a retreat and meditation center devoted to the fierce and luminous practice of Vajrayogini, one of the most important yidams in the Kagyu and Nyingma traditions. To support a place where this level of practice is sustained, day after day, is to participate in something that extends far beyond ordinary time. The ripple of what is practiced here reaches further than any of us can trace.
To support a place where this level of practice is sustained, day after day, is to participate in something that extends far beyond ordinary time. This practice has an effect that extends beyond us all.
The earthquake of 2015 damaged the premises significantly. For years, the nuns continued their study and practice even as repairs were underway around them. Those repairs are now complete, and the nunnery is rebuilding again, this time fundraising for new classrooms and hostels for the nuns who call it home. Supporting them at this time was our honour. It was a support for a future that is still becoming visible, a future where education and practice meet under one roof, and where a living tradition is carried forward by those who step into it, day after day.
Tharlam Monastery, Boudhanath
Tharlam Monastery has almost six hundred years of history within its walls, but not all of it in Nepal. Tharlam Monastery is located at Boudhanath, where you can see the great stupa, which has been the spiritual center of Tibetan Buddhism in Nepal for centuries. In 1981, His Eminence Dezhung Jampa Kunga Tenpai Nyima Rinpoche re-established Tharlam in Nepal, fulfilling His own teacher's wish of Gaton Dorjechang to provide spiritual and material support for Tharlam. The central image of the monastery is now a magnificent three-story statue of Buddha Shakyamuni in copper and gold, which was constructed under the guidance of the abbot, Khenpo Jamyang Sherab, a direct disciple of Dezhung Rinpoche. It is an active practice and transmission site, a living monastery that has a thread of lineage and transmits it.
To offer to Tharlam is to offer to continuity itself. In this way, the offering is not only for the here and now, but for the beyond, for lessons, practices, and lives developed within these spaces.
Nagi Gompa, Shivapuri Nunnery
Nagi Gompa, a nunnery, is high on the forested south side of Shivapuri Mountain, away from the noise and altitude of the Kathmandu Valley, and has a sense of durability to it that spans the length of serious practice over many years.
This was a small community area that was initially under Karsha Rinpoche. At the end of Karsha Rinpoche's life, he gave Nagi to His Holiness the 16th Gyalwa Karmapa and requested His assistance in proper guidance. In 1962, the 16th Karmapa consecrated Nagi Gompa and appointed the great Dzogchen master, Kyabje Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche, as its new abbot, expanding it into a center dedicated specifically to the practice and flourishing of women in the Dharma.
Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche (1920-1996) lived at Nagi Gompa for over three decades, during which time he did more than two decades of retreat, including four traditional three-year retreats. It is his own work that the three large statues of Buddha Shakyamuni, Guru Rinpoche, and the Third Karmapa, Rangjung Dorje, are present in the main temple to this day. He realised the potential equality of men and women in their ability to become awakened and wanted to give Nagi Gompa an opportunity for women to be given a full range of liturgical training, philosophical education, and meditative instruction that they had not been able to receive for generations.
Today, Nagi Gompa is home to over 100 nuns. More than 40 have completed at least one traditional three-year retreat; some have completed multiple. Chöd, the great Vajrayana practice of cutting off ego-clinging, is well known to the nuns of Nagi Goma, and they have chöded around the world. The nunnery, located just below the cliff of Tara Bir, sacred to the female Buddha of compassion, has a rhythm of its own, with daily Tara puja, classes with the resident Khenpo, and continuous retreats. In 1996, Tulku Urgyen became parinirvana at Nagi Gompa. There, his shadow still lingers – in statues he fashioned with his own hands, in the practice that is followed by his descendants, in the nuns who were instructed by his sons and who keep the light alive. To offer to Nagi Gompa is to offer to the women who selected the hermitage, the women who deserve conditions worthy of their commitment, and who live within the hermitage.
Why We Are Sharing This?
We have thought carefully about whether to write this at all. In the Dharma, there is wisdom about the silent gift, the offering made without announcement, so that the merit is not dissolved in the seeking of recognition. But this is not an announcement seeking praise. It is a record shared with transparency, because the people who made it possible deserve to know it happened.
All those who have been a part of EvamRatna's journey during this Saga Dawa became part of this offering. One who introduced a sacred thing into their practice. The one who shared our work with someone they trust. The one who sent a quiet word of encouragement across any distance. Each of you became part of what was offered.
This is a giving that is meritorious for all of you. Perhaps more to you than to us.
With Gratitude
Our Saga Dawa 2083 offering is complete.
One hundred and eight lamps for the Dharma community. Three institutions, one a fierce retreat center, one rebuilt and holding lineage at the stupa, one carved out of the hillside for women who deserved better conditions for practice. All of it came together within one sacred month that asked for awareness, restraint, and generosity in equal measure. A month that quietly gathered every intention and returned it to practice.
- To the craftsmen whose hands made the objects we carry: thank you. This work begins with you.
- To the practitioners who received those objects and brought them into use: thank you. This offering is made possible through you.
- To the monasteries and nunneries that hold what cannot be allowed to disappear: thank you. This offering was made possible because of what you protect.
- To every Dharma friend who simply showed up this Saga Daw, who did something good with the time, lit a lamp, said a prayer, practiced a little more carefully, you are part of this offering.
May whatever merit arose from this month benefit all beings without exception. May it reach those in difficulty. May it support those in practice. May it bring ease to those who are suffering. Quietly supporting what continues, and gently strengthening the path for those who walk it now and those who will come after. Tashi Delek.
