On a freezing Tuesday this week, dozens of special guests from China’s cultural, political and business elites gathered within the blood-red walls of the Forbidden City. They were there for the opening of the newly restored Hall of Rectitude, the center of Tibetan Buddhism during China’s last imperial dynasty, the Qing.

After a fire in 1923, the hall and about a half-dozen surrounding buildings that comprise the Buddhist architectural complex lay in ruin for nearly a century in the northwestern corner of the 8,000-room former imperial palace.

After six years of restoration funded by the Hong Kong-based China Heritage Fund, the Zhong Zheng Dian …

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Susan Stabile, OUP Blog: Becoming a Tibetan Buddhist nun is not a typical life choice for a child of an Italian Catholic police officer from Brooklyn, New York. Nevertheless, in February of 1988 I knelt in front of the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala, India, as he cut a few locks of my hair (the rest had already been shaved), symbolizing my renunciation of lay life.

I lived in the vows of a Buddhist nun for a year, in the course of spending two years living in Buddhist monasteries in Nepal and India. Including my years of lay practice, I spent twenty years of my …

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University of St. Thomas law professor Susan Stabile will present the lecture “Adapting Buddhist Meditation Practices to Christian Spirituality” at 8 p.m. Monday, Nov. 12, in Quad 264 at Saint John’s University, Collegeville, Minnesota.

The lecture is sponsored by the Jay Phillips Center for Interfaith Learning and is free and open to the public.

Drawing from her book “Growing in Love and Wisdom: Tibetan Buddhist Sources for Christian Meditation,” published this month by Oxford University Press, Stabile will explore common values that …

The name “Karmapa” means “the one who carries out Buddha-activity,” and for seventeen lifetimes, a karmapa has embodied the teachings of Buddha in tibet. The 17th Gyalwang Karmapa, Ogyen Trinley Dorje, was born a nomad in Tibet in 1985 and recognized by the Dalai Lama in 1992 as the 17th Karmapa. The young boy was brought to the Tsurphu monastery to live and study for his life as a spiritual teacher and activist.

At age 14, he made a daring flight from Tibet, and now works from a temporary camp in Dharamsala, near his friend the Dalai Lama. (After the Dalai Lama, he’s seen as Tibetan Buddhism’s second-highest-ranking spiritual leader, though the two …

Via NPR.

Michel Martin: if you wanted to predict just who the Dalai Lama might select to lead one of the faith’s most important monasteries, you probably wouldn’t think about a boarding school educated, globe-trotting New York photographer whose grandmother was one of the most celebrated fashionistas of her time, but that’s just who the Dalai Lama did select, saying his, quote, “special duty is to bridge Tibetan tradition and the Western world,” unquote.

Nicholas Vreeland is the new abbot of the Rato Monastery in India and he joins us from there now. Welcome. Thank you so much for joining us.

NICHOLAS VREELAND: Thank you. It’s an honor to be here.

MARTIN: Now, in …

Lachlan Thompson, Daily Examiner: It was a weekend to reflect and seek inner peace for the parents and children involved in a two-day workshop with the Gyuto Tibetan Buddhist monks in Yamba at the weekend.

“It was fabulous, especially the final evening where the monks performed their famous chanting,” said event organiser Amanda Brightwell.

The monks closed the two-day workshop with their famous Mantra Magic Chant where they use ancient Tibetan mantras to harmonise and create a soothing, meditation tone.

Other events at the workshop included classes on meditation and dealing with depression as well as symbolic craft activities for children. The monks …

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An astonishing series of photographs of a Tibetan “sky burial,” where a corpse is cut up and fed to vultures, with the remains being pounded into dust, has been viewed almost three quarters of a million times in 24 hours.

The images (view here) are very graphic, but as Justin Whitaker says, “As a poignant reminder of the impermanence of this body, they’re worth viewing.”

According to Wikipedia, in Tibet the practice is known as jhator, which means “giving alms to the birds.”

Sky burial is traditional in Tibet, where the ground is too rock for interment to be practical, and where a lack of wood similarly makes cremation unfeasible …

Stephen Pedersen, Chronicle Herald: What is uncommon about Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche, the king who is the subject of Johanna J. Lunn’s 72-minute documentary, An Uncommon King, is that he is a chogyal, an earth protector, a king of the dharma, a lineage holder, protector of the Shambhala teachings, which focus on secular meditation fostering enlightened society.

Those teachings and that story are part of Nova Scotia history, ever since the Sakyong’s father, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, moved his international headquarters from Colorado to Halifax.

It took Lunn three years to tell the story.

“About five years ago,” Lunn said in a recent interview, “a …

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Monks at Musikfest [Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania] will set the tone for a peaceful yet energetic festival this year.

The Tibetan monks of the Drepung Loseling Monastery will perform for several days, starting with a mandala sand painting ceremony noon Thursday at Handwerkplatz and ending with the closing ceremony 6:30 p.m. Aug. 6 when the monks will hand out half of the sacred sand to audience members and then pour the other half into a nearby body of water to spread its healing properties throughout the world.

The monks will make a mandala design out of millions of grains of colored sand during the mandala sand …

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Lornet Turnbull: Born into Tibetan royalty, a Seattle-area boy who left here at age 5 to study at a Buddhist monastery in Katmandu has returned for his first visit in seven years.

For the past seven years, at a Buddhist monastery in Nepal’s Katmandu, a Seattle-area boy has been living a most unusual life.

Up by 5 a.m., Asanga Sakya performs a ritual of morning prayers in his private quarters. His study of Buddhist scriptures follows breakfast prepared by loyal monks.

Soon, a Chinese language instructor arrives, and after lunch Asanga practices his Tibetan writing. In the afternoon, it’s English classes and then dinner, followed …

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