On 4 April 2011, Dr. Trungram Gyaltrul Rinpoche will preside over the opening of the Lumbini Udyana Mahachaitya, World Centre for Peace and Unity, the latest and largest Buddhist temple and meditation hall complex to be built at the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) World Heritage Site in Lumbini, Nepal. (Lumbini is the birthplace of the Buddha in Nepal; Udyana is a Sanskrit word that means garden or orchard; and Mahachaitya is the Sanskrit word for Great Stupa.)
Mahachaitya is the latest addition to a master-planned monastic community that envisions more than 40 Buddhist temples in different national styles to be built near where Prince Siddhartha Guatama, the Buddha, was born in the year 583 before the common era (BCE). As a young man, Siddhartha renounced the comfort of royal riches and adopted an ascetic lifestyle to find a solution to end human suffering, a quest that led to his enlightenment as the Buddha 2500 years ago. His philosophical breakthrough of the “middle-way” and its tenets of non-attachment revolutionised Eastern thought.
While most other Lumbini structures are being built by governments, Rinpoche decided…