One cannot deny the importance of visiting Buddh Vihar everyday and if it is not possible to visit every day then at least on every Sunday one must visit the Buddh Vihara.
Using technology, Mr. Vijay Kumar and Mr. Mahesh Wasnik, both from USA have decided to have weekly virtual Buddh Vihara Session to be held live all over the world. The first session of such virtual prayer meeting was held on 25th August, 2013 at 10.00 AM EST. For Indian Buddhist, it was held at 7.30 PM Sunday evening. The very first virtual Sunday Prayer meeting was attended directly by 22 people from India, USA, UK and various other countries.
The Objective of Virtual Buddh Vihar
- We and our children need the way to live life happily with good wisdom and compassion.
- We and our children need to remember Buddha and his Dhamma.
- We need to take out time to meditate and purify our mind and to read Dhamma Books.
- We need to save time in busy world to devote some time for Buddha and his Dhamma.
- We need to spread teaching of the Buddha to bring peace in the world.
- We have to become positive thinkers with the help of Buddha’s philosophy as stated concisely, ignorance is the cause of self-cherishing; self-cherishing is the cause of negative emotions; negative emotions are the cause of negative actions; and negative actions are the cause of our suffering and non unity.
- Indian Buddhist NRIs are scattered through the world and since they do not have big number to have and maintain separate Buddha Vihara at their place so Virtual Buddh Vihara would be helpful.
- Technology is there so let us try to bring Buddha and his Dhamma to us through Virtual Buddha Vihara.
The virtual meeting was started with Trisaran and Panchsheel (Triple Gem and Five Precepts) by Bhante from Australia at Buddh Vihar in USA. The prayer was followed by Dhamma Desana (Discourse) from Ven. Bhante. It was a short Dhamma Desana as the Bhante had to leave to attend some other functions.
After the Dhamma Desana, the floor was open to the forum members from all over the world. Mr. Herry C Lau, a Doctoral student from one of the prominent university from USA spoke on “Non-profit Organisation: Issues and challenges”. It was a very educating talk on how the non-profit organisation works and how one can manage such organisation. After this important session, Mr. Shrikant Borkar, a research scholar from UK made a presentation about his on-going research and also expressed the difficulties he is facing in paying his tuition fee to the university as his financial aid has come to an end. He said that he is short of 13000 pound in paying his fees. He also appealed to all that if anybody extend him support at this stage he will be in position to complete his research. He also stated that he is looking for aid in the form of personal loan and he will return Money once he completes his studies and start earning. One of the participants assured Mr. Borkar that he will contribute 1000 Pounds. Many of participants indicated that they will contribute and help Mr. Borkar (Mr. Borkar’s email id is shri24@gmail.com).
Mr. Vijay Surwade, the author who published the pictorial biography of Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar, joined the presentation and he spoke about his collection of photos / original letters and various other material of Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar he has collected over last three decades. He is also in the process of publishing many unpublished photos and letters of Dr Ambedkar.
No doubt it is one of the novel ideas and a very educating event. We recommend that everybody should join this prayer meeting on every Sunday as per their respective time. The detailed process for joining the on-line prayer is as follows:-
When: Occurs every Sunday effective from 25th August 2013 Time 7:30 PM to 9:00 PM (GMT + 05:30), India
Where: https://h3.webex.com/h3
For further detailed information and obtaining password for the meeting you may write to:
Mahesh Wasnik: mmwasnik@yahoo.com and Vijay Kumar: vij@h3-technologies.com
Published in Issue III, September 2013