Dharma Drum Mountain's 2023 New Year Spring Couplets Available for Free Distribution

Among the many customs typical of the Chinese Lunar New Year, pasting spring couplets is one of the most important symbols to say goodbye to one year and welcome the coming of a new one. On the day before New Year's Eve, people usually paste the red spring couplets with auspicious words and phrases on their front door, windows, rice storage containers, and other suitable places at home, as a sign of welcoming the arrival of the New Year. In addition, the couples serve as a symbol of auspiciousness and good fortune.

Every year since 1989, DDM has been printing spring couplets with calligraphies personally hand-written by DDM founder Venerable Master Sheng Yen, and giving them out to the public as a New Year's blessing. As is customary, this year DDM also has prepared spring couplets, using the words, "Blessings and Wisdom – The Way to Freedom: By cultivating blessings and wisdom, everyone can be healthy and at peace. By practicing the six perfections and myriad deeds, everyone can have freedom of body and mind". Starting from December 7, these are available for free distribution at all of DDM's temples and centers around the world. DDM hopes that through the blessings of these couplets, everyone can welcome a new year filled with joy and good fortune.

DDM has chosen "Blessings and Wisdom - The Way to Freedom" as the annual theme for the 2023 New Year spring couplets. DDM Abbott President, Venerable Guo Huei, remarked that to let go of our "self" is to cultivate wisdom, and to extend loving care to others is to cultivate merits. Buddhadharma encourages everyone to cultivate merits and wisdom. In doing so, greed and desire can be transformed into joy and giving; aversion and hatred into loving kindness and compassion; and ignorance into wisdom. In our daily lives, treating people and situations based on the principle of cultivating merits and wisdom will definitely help us continuously maintain peace and good health, with freedom of body and mind wherever we go.


Text: Yao-chung Chang (張曜鐘) 
Photos: Lee Fan (李東陽) 
Translation: Cheng-yu Chang (張振郁)
Editing: Keith Brown, YKL