WORLD DHAMMAKAYA CENTRE : หน้า 23/91

WORLD DHAMMAKAYA CENTRE O n its present 800 acres site, WDC will comprise the Great Sapha Dhammakaya Assembly Hall (the largest spiritual assembly hall in the world), the Phramonkollthepmuni Vihara, and the Maha Dhammakaya Cetiya: the peace-dome stupa for the third millennium. The Phramonkollthepmuni Vihara Luang Phaw Wat Paknam Bhasicharoen (Phramonkollthepmuni) is nationally respected in Thailand as a great meditation master who has studied and practiced according the principles of the Lord Buddha until being able to verify for himself the core of reality and purity. He was able to teach others until they too were able to verify the Teachings of the Lord Buddha in his footsteps, until they were free of any remaining doubts. Luang Por Wat Paknam sacrificed all worldly interests and overcame all obstacles in order to pass down to day's generation the Dhammakaya tradition of practice, that the people of the world might attain inner peace for themselves. The discovery and teaching that Luang Por Wat Paknam pioneered is of incomparable importance because it is a practical means by which the people of the world may co-operate for peace on Earth. On Magha Puja Day 1994 students of the Dhammakaya Tradition cast a statue of the founder in solid gold as a token of their gratitude for his legacy and the Phramonkollthepmuni Vihara has been designed as the permanent home for this treasure. Besides allowing access to the general public the Vihara will incorporate a museum of the history of Vija Dhammakaya and a venue for related media presentations. The Great Sapha Dhammakaya Hall Right from the start in the building of Wat Phra Dhammakaya, the pioneers intended to create a haven for Dhamma practice, as a refuge of peace to a tormented world. The exemplary practice of that small group of devotees in the early days inspired the faith of an increasingly large number of people, and in a short time the congregation grew from a hundred people to a thousand necessitating the construction of a large meditation hall to accommodate the crowd. In those days the meeting hall was Jatumaharajika Pavillion, large enough to accommodate 600 people and considered large for its size in those days. The congregation continued to increase so that the congregation overflowed from the new hall, some to sit outside in tents, others to meditate under the surrounding trees. From a congregation of a thousand, within the short space of less than ten years, the number had grown to ten-thousand and in the year of 1985, the first Sapha Dhammakaya Hall, a temporary structure, roofed with thatch, was built in an attempt to keep up with the growth of the congregation, miraculously swelling in numbers from ten thousand to a hundred thousand in the space of a decade. As the congregation by the hundreds of thousands flock to learn meditation at Wat Phra Dhammakaya, the facilities to accommodate such large numbers had become overcrowded. Even with the building of temporary structures for the conducting of open-air ceremonies, wind, rain and strong sunlight fail to add convenience to lives of the numerous temple goers. Thus was born the idea to build the Great Sapha Dhammakaya Hall offering facilities unique that allow people of the world to meditate together, by the hundreds of thousands in surroundings that are cool peaceful and amenable to attaining the Dhammakaya - the body of enlightenment. The building is now a major educational resource for society, as a site for morality training courses for schoolchildren, students and the general public such as the Summer Dhammayadaya Training and mass ordination programme. Sapha Dhammakaya Hall is the site of training courses in morality for both for civil service and for the private sector -- positively contributing to society both knowledge and virtue for the benefit of the nation and the world.