Meeting with the Most Venerable Tep Vong, Supreme Patriarch of the Mahanikaya Sect of Cambodia1

During a visit to Cambodia, Sri Chinmoy and his students met privately with the Most Venerable Tep Vong, who offered Sri Chinmoy the “Light of Lord Buddha Award.”

Most Venerable Tep Vong: I would like to pay my respects to you and to all the monks, and to welcome all of your delegation. Today, it is a great honour for me to meet you and your delegation here. I am delighted, and I would like to wholeheartedly welcome your visit to my country. I am praying to the Lord Buddha that he offer his divine blessings upon all of us, and I wish you and all the delegation a long-lasting, peaceful and prosperous life.

Sri Chinmoy: I am praying to the Absolute Lord Buddha to shower his divine and supreme blessings upon us. I am also offering my heart’s prayerful gratitude to my Most Venerable Tep Vong for granting me the golden opportunity to be in his blessingful presence. O Most Venerable Monk, your simplicity-life, your clarity-mind and your purity-heart have touched the very breath of my aspiring heart and my dedicated world-service.

There are two worlds: the outer and the inner. The outer world of sufferings we try to transform. When we came here a few minutes ago, I felt that your inner world of illumination is most sincerely and most self-givingly trying to transform the outer world of ceaseless sufferings. For that, my heart is all gratitude to you, and my life has tremendous appreciation and admiration for your noble task.

Once more I am praying to the Absolute Lord Buddha to inundate you and all those who are here with his infinite compassion and infinite blessings. The Lord Buddha is not only the Light of Asia, but also the Light of the entire Universe. The infinite sufferings of this world touched him at every moment, and his infinite Compassion-Light embraces the world’s boundless sufferings.

Most Venerable Tep Vong: I would like to thank you for visiting my country and for coming to see me today. I am very delighted with that and, at the same time, I would like to wish you success, longevity and the realisation of your aspiration to bring peace to all human beings in the world. I also wish you good health and would like you to do dhamma and exercise meditation in quest of knowledge [preah kamathann] in order to have a long life and to bring peace to the world forever.

The Most Venerable Tep Vong presented Sri Chinmoy with the “Light of Lord Buddha Award," which reads as follows:

LIGHT OF LORD BUDDHA AWARD

Sri Chinmoy has been recognized by Patriarchs and leaders of Buddhism throughout the world for his stress on the basic characteristics of Buddhism-compassion, love, renunciation and peace.

He has led the world to praise and appreciate Lord Buddha through his pilgrimages to Buddhist shrines and through his plays, stories, poetry and music offered in devotion to Lord Buddha.

“Lord Buddha, to the human in you we bow.

To the divine in you we bow.

To the ever-transcending Reality in you,

We bow and bow and bow.”

— Sri Chinmoy

“Lord Buddha, we do practise the theories of you forever.”

— Most Venerable Tep Vong

Now, as he visits Cambodia to pay his respects to the soul of Cambodia in the Heart of Lord Buddha, this award is presented to Sri Chinmoy to honour and appreciate his lifelong mission to bring peace and enlightenment to humanity.

Udnalorm Pagoda, Phnom Penh, 24 December 2001, Supreme Patriarch of Mahanikaya Sect of Cambodia Most Venerable Tep Vong

Sri Chinmoy: I am accepting this blessingful message from you and I am placing it inside the very depths of my heart’s gratitude to you, our Venerable Highest Monk. To you I am offering my heart’s boundless gratitude and gratitude, and I shall treasure your blessingful message in the very depths of my heart, with my heart’s most humble admiration. [Inviting the singers to come forward] We are praying to the Lord Buddha according to our Indian traditional way. We are taking shelter in him. This is the Lord Buddha’s most powerful message in Sanskrit: “Buddham saranam gacchami. Dhammam saranam gacchami. Sangham saranam gacchami.” I have set it to music. Then my students will sing one Bengali song in which we are all bowing and bowing to the Lord Buddha.

The Most Venerable Tep Vong stood facing the singers with folded hands as Sri Chinmoy and his students sang “Buddham saranam gacchami” and “Namo namo namo Buddha deber.”

[Sri Chinmoy then requested his students to pay their respects to the Most Venerable Tep Vong, and they came forward one by one and bowed to him. Then all proceeded to the courtyard, where Sri Chinmoy lifted the Most Venerable Tep Vong on a ceremonial platform, and presented him with the “Lifting Up the World with a Oneness-Heart” Award.]

Most Venerable Tep Vong: I wish to offer you my gratitude.

Sri Chinmoy: It is I who wish to offer my infinite gratitude to you for allowing me to be in your blessingful presence.

Most Venerable Tep Vong: I wish you all to have the blessings of the Lord Buddha, and a long life forever, with good health, good strength and good happiness.

Sri Chinmoy [offering the Peace Torch to the Supreme Patriarch]: The Peace Torch has gone all over the world. We are praying to the Lord Buddha to bless us with his infinite peace.

[The Most Venerable Tep Vong held the torch, and then passed it among the monks.]


OOP 1. 26 December 2001, Udnalorm Pagoda, Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

From:Sri Chinmoy,Only one power, Agni Press, 2015
Sourced from https://srichinmoylibrary.com/oop