Benefitting our living and departed ones

Today I really feel like Dzambala, the Tibetan protector that grants wealth or Chai Sin, the Chinese God of Properity ... well, at least to my mother... hahahaha! She has always been lucky with my numbers. Every year she would strike my numbers at least once a year, if I am not mistaken. Today my numbers came out first price in the Pan Malaysian pool 4 digit game and she won a little bit of money. So, I feel like I am Dzambala to her. And I am happy to be able to do that as I know she loves me very much. Actually that is the duty of true bodhisattvas - making people happy and granting wishes to others. Yes, you start by helping or making one person happy, and then two persons, and then three, and it increases until you are able to help all sentient beings.

Actually I think she won the numbers because my wife and I had donated to the Zhu Lin Si temple to do the Avatamsaka Sutra Chanting and Yen Kou Prayers. They do this to transfer the merits to our departed ones. On the last day, when they burnt the "papers" on which they wrote our dedications, I visualised the smoke that comes out of the burnt pile as offerings and that my "ancestors" have actually received them. I then think strongly that they actually felt happy and are "liberated" from their whatever miserable conditions they may be in. It doesnot matter if they had been reborn as Gods in heaven; it's still samsara! I remember that one Buddhist Master once said that when people transfer merits during these kind of religious prayers, if the descendent is sincere, the ancestor will actually benefit from it wherever he/she may be reborn. If reborned as a human, he/she will suddenly get a boon (such as strike numbers).

The next day, actually yesterday, I got a call from my in-laws telling me my numbers came out first price. As I don't buy numbers, I didnot win anything at all. But my mother did. Well, it could possibly be that her previous lives' descendent had transfered merits to her. And it's not necessarily me. You get what I mean? But it could also possibly due to the act of doing the transference of merits, that my parents in this life get the benefit too as she is the living one representing my non-living ancestors. Does my words make any sense? Ignore me if it doesnot. Hahaha... !

But does it have anything to do with the transference of merits from the prayers to my ancestors and the power of puja? Who knows?! Whatever it is, I am happy to be able to repay her kindness in this way, even though it is as yet inadequate for her immeasureable kindness to me. So, do you now believe in transference of merits? You better!

:) Cheers!