Karuna Hospice Services

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A place of memorial and contemplation through holy objects based at Chenrezig Institute Buddhist centre

Garden of Enlightenment 33 Johnson’s Rd Eudlo QLD 4554
Mail address: 257 Old Palmwoods Rd, Palmwoods QLD 4555 ph. 54450425 email:Foulkes@powerup.com.au

NEWS & VIEWS FROM THE STUPA SITE

Over the last year, we spent several months making the mould of the “vase” for six of the seven smaller stupas on the roof. Once this was completed and decorated we made a mould so that we can continue to reproduce these complex sections. We are now waiting on further advice on different blends of concrete products which will enable us to make light-weight but very strong casts from the mould. We have also been busy with completing orders for stupas for the project and for private use.

Earlier in the year we helped with building a stupa for Karuna hospice in Brisbane. This took up quite a lot of time but it was really good to help out and a great learning curve! We now have a much better understanding about the best and most economical way of getting some of the component parts made for our own stupas and will most probably get the metal work done in Nepal by local artists: the savings on labour and materials easily justifying the cost of freight.

The Brisbane stupa was completed in time to be consecrated by Lama Zopa Rinpoche during his brief visit and what his words with regards to the benefits of stupas, particularly in relation to people with serious health problems, was very inspiring. There is now a plan to build another stupa in a public area of Brisbane.

Over this winter we have put up a “homemade’ scaffold on the big stupa and have almost finished the brickwork on the vase. Once this is rendered most of the difficult and messy work on the roof area will be behind us and we can concentrate on decoration and filling the stupas. There is little chance this will happen before next winter, however much of the work involving making moulds for the decorations as well as preparing ingredients can be done at home. Adrienne Strong, our main artist, is already hard at work and David, our mould maker, is preparing 15 moulds to go to America as well as looking after our own needs. Several patient volunteers have been rolling hundreds of thousands of mantras to go inside the stupas.

Landscaping has been progressing well. We now have a beautiful water feature made from a large cast-iron pot; water flows from this down through three ponds and is then pumped back up to the water feature. The area around the fish ponds has been finished with polished sandstone pebbles. Most of the terracing on the high side of the veranda area has been completed using dry-stone walls and cement blocks. This area can now be backfilled and landscaped. Now that we have put signs up directing people to the gardens we are receiving many visitors so by the end of the year we aim to have the whole site completely safe for visitors.

FINANCES
The financial situation has been hovering around $12,000 for most of the past eight months which is quite good considering that we have had some fairly large costs with Mantra printing and materials required for making new moulds. There is approximately $20,000 in outstanding pledges from people who have booked sites or ordered stupas. All of this is good news as the work to be done in Nepal is quite extensive and may cost more than $10,000. We still have to also build a caretakers cottage and amenities block.

TILE SPONSORSHIP
We now have two options for sponsoring tiles on the walls of the main building. Gold-sprayed tiles are $20 with the sponsors name written on the back and in the main entrance room we will have the same tiles 24 carat gold leafed with the sponsors name on the front. These will be $100 each. Half of any money raised from tile sponsorship goes towards the Maitreya statue in India.

PRAYER WHEELS
So far we have completes three prayer wheels, two of which have been sold for peoples private homes. Eventually we will have 108 around the outer walls of the main building. These will be sponsored over time. Each prayer wheel holds about 6.5 million mantras.

AND FINALLY . . .
If you are receiving this newsletter by post and you have an e-mail address please contact us (don’t forget) so we can put you on that list. This saves us time and money and gives you nice coloured pictures. Big big thanks goes to all volunteers at the Gardens who are making this project possible and continuing to offer their time and effort to help bring Rinpoche’s vision into fruition. A very special thanks to Murray and Ant (see pics) for not only having worked tirelessly at the sight all year, but also for being able to make any sense of the coordinator’s instructions. If you would like to help (and maybe even appear in the next Gardens newsletter) please don’t hesitate to contact us.

Wishing you all a very healthy and happy 2007!