I was first introduced to Dorje Shugden by a close friend, who told me to read an article about him in this website.  Since then I have been following this website but not so consistently.

A few months later, I was once again introduced to Dorje Shugden by another dear friend, who asked me to learn more about this Protector, the Gelugpa lineage and if possible, to also do his prayers.

I followed her advice to understand and learn more about Dorje Shugden, I started incorporating his prayers into my own and have been doing this for quite a while now. Interestingly, I started noticing some changes in my family environment.

• My husband who works on his own has been given jobs consistently from the time I started with the Dorje Shugden prayers.
• My son landed his first job  in a big company just a week after completion of his 3-year degree. All his friends are still job-seeking with no success.

Ever since I started my Protector practice, my whole family has benefited from his blessings and protection from harm one way or another.

I sincerely wish and hope that the ban on Dorje Shugden be lifted as soon as possible so that more people will be able to benefit from his practice as I and my family have.

~ Jillian Lepore ~

For instance, after my daughter graduated from university, she could not find a suitable job. She was given Dorje Shugden’s practice by my Lama and within a couple of weeks of offering serkyem and praying to Dorje Shugden, she was offered a job she liked. She has been in this job for a year now and recently, was even promoted and given a raise.

Many years ago, my older son was attacked by a group of gangsters. They came to the house to demand that he join the group. When my son refused, the gang came to smash our main entrance which was made of glass and we had to make a police report. However, the fear of them returning to attack my son was always there, so I requested advice from my Lama. My son was given a specific number of serkyem offerings to do. After he finished what he had been told to do, the gang stopped disturbing him immediately.

On another occasion, during a pilgrimage to Tibet, I made an excursion to a very remote part of the country where I had to ascend a mountain on a horse. I was riding along a narrow path along the edge of a cliff when suddenly the horse had to negotiate a narrow bend to go around the mountain. I suddenly realised that the horse I was riding on had swung out and I found myself looking down into a deep gorge! All I could do was cling to that horse for my dear life, thinking of Dorje Shugden and my Lama as one, and praying strongly that I would not end up in that gorge! If Dorje Shugden hadn’t saved me, I would not even be able to type out this story for you!

I am always extremely grateful to the Protector for his swift, powerful and unwavering protection and blessings.

~ Isla ~

Without me even knowing, Dorje Shugden has always watched over me and my family. Since 1996, my mum has been a Dorje Shugden practitioner and even though we had a 3-feet statue in the house, I never knew who it was as my siblings and I were told it was Manjushri!

It was when I was 17 that I had done my first Dorje Shugden retreat and during that period I was in the middle of doing my A-levels at a local college. Studying at that local college was a decision made based on the result of a Dorje Shugden divination. After graduating from an international school, I was given the choice of studying in the school’s 6th form, in a boarding school in England or at a local college. Obviously wanting to remain in the same school (with the same friends) or to jet-set over to England were very favourable choices for me, but at that time my family was not in a good financial situation, and choosing those options would’ve put a heavier strain on my parents.

The divination came out stating that I should pursue my pre-university course in a local college, and so following the words I left the bubble of an international school to a college where half of the student population was on government scholarships. Prior to entering the college, I never had any friends who were from local schools and those that I mixed around with were from the same social circle and social class, where our school fees per month were double the minimum wage.

I entered the college 2 weeks late, as I tried dragging my holiday on for as long as possible, and I walked into a class full of studious faces staring at me as if I had a booger on my face. I was asked to introduce myself in front of everyone and so I shyly muttered, ‘Hi, my name is Lily and I just graduated from the International School of Manila’. I realized that as I spoke, everyone was looking at each other, whispering and looking a little amused.

During lunch, I talked to some of my classmates and they kept asking questions regarding my life as if I was from a different country. After what seemed like an interview, one of the guys asked me politely how much my school fees were and after I told him he replied, ‘My parents don’t even make that much in a year’. His reaction hit me really hard as I realized that every single one of my classmates was not from the city and had worked really hard to get the scholarship to study where I thought was ‘such a piece of crap’.

I spent the next 2 years surrounded by down-to-earth, innocent (in a sense that they haven’t been corrupted by social politics) and really kind people. Those two years took me out of a silver-spoon-fed bubble and showed me people of my generation who reminded me of where my parents came from. Through a paralleled comparison, it reminded me of how hard my dad had to study to be able to provide what he can today.

With all outward things stable (finances, family etc.), I believe that our personal attitude and personality might be an obstacle that would probably be the hardest to overcome. We pray that we might get this car, get this job or get this grade, but never pray that we will be nicer, less angry or less miserly.

Like I wrote above, I feel that my life has been pretty smooth. However, I strongly feel that Dorje Shugden has shaped my personality to what it is today, and had I gone down a different path, I would most probably be someone quite spoilt, arrogant and obnoxious. I might not even be attracted to the Dharma or volunteer in charitable work like I do now.

It might be that some readers of this testimonial will find it silly that such a subtle impact is the one that I’m writing about, but if that divination has influenced me to becoming who I am today, i.e. being open and attracted to Dorje Shugden’s practice and actively promoting it, then I feel that it is worth mentioning.

~ Anita ~