Tibetan Culture Week planned before Dalai Lama visit

Wildmind Meditation News

Oxford Press: Miami University is holding a Tibetan Culture Week March 22-26 in preparation of the Dalai Lama’s visit in October.

The week will offer a series of lectures, meditation sessions and a prayer flag ceremony that are free and open to the public.

Tibetan monk Geshe Kalsang Damdul, assistant director of the Institute of Buddhist Dialectics under the direct administration of the Dalai Lama, will lead the events.

The programs come ahead of the Dalai Lama’s visit to Miami University on Oct. 20-22 to recognize a program that takes students to Dharamsala, India for an entire semester.

“The success of the program is what promoted the Dalai Lama to accept the university’s invitation,” …

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Ashland, Oregon, Buddhist center nears completion

Wildmind Meditation News

Mail Tribune: With about $200,000 in donated labor from volunteers, a three-story, $1.6 million Buddhist meditation center is nearing completion in Ashland and will open for classes the first week of June.

The 5,800-square-foot home of Kagya Sukha Choling is a blend of traditional Tibetan and contemporary “green-sustainable” architecture — and is being lauded as an “eternal” structure that will offer spiritual and economic benefits.

“It’s a beautiful thing, long-lasting, environmentally friendly and embodying ethics and values we so much need today,” said Kagya Sukha Choling board member Anne Stine. “It’s a gift to the Rogue Valley community, a beacon for Ashland in terms of resources, classes and visitors — and good for the …

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In the Arizona desert, Buddhists will embark on a three-year silent retreat

Wildmind Meditation News

LA Times: Deep in a remote desert valley, where rattlesnakes lurk in the scrub, Stéphane Dreyfus and several dozen other Buddhists are preparing to undergo a mind-altering journey:

Three years, three months and three days of silence.

There will be no word from the outside world in the Great Retreat, only the deafening quiet of rock and cactus, with seemingly endless time to ponder the emptiness of life.

Dreyfus and his fellow adherents hope to find enlightenment in the silence, a gift they plan to share when they emerge from their long seclusion.

They know that outsiders might dismiss them as eccentrics on a strange utopian trip, but their resumes suggest otherwise. Among them are …

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Movie Review: ‘Unmistaken Child’

Wildmind Meditation News

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: For Tenzin Zopa, a young Nepalese monk, finding the reincarnation of his dead Tibetan master, Geshe Lama Konchog, is more important to him than his own life.

Since he was 6, Tenzin Zopa dreamed of becoming a disciple of Lama Konchog. While his parents hoped that he would marry and work someday, Tenzin envisioned a life of meditation.

As a young boy, he asked Lama Konchog to take him in, abandoned the material world and learned the rules of the monastic life from one of the most revered monks of Tibet. Twenty-one years later, the death of Lama Konchog left a glaring void in Tenzin’s heart.

In Nati Baratz’s captivating documentary “Unmistaken …

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Adorning your sacred space

Lama Willa Miller

Lama Willa MillerIn this extract from her forthcoming book, Everyday Dharma: Seven Weeks to Finding the Buddha in You , Lama Willa Miller shows how the symbolism of a shrine can help connect you with your own deepest values and spiritual potential.

A shrine is a repository for objects of inspiration. It is a material expression of your spiritual quest. It is a physical space housing symbols that remind you of your commitment to humanity, your community, or the earth, in whatever form that takes for you. These symbols can range from very personal to universal. Symbols are powerful. They speak to us in a language beyond words, and they evoke with imagery. Shrine symbols are selected …

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“The Tibetan Art of Parenting” by Brown, Farwell, and Nyerongsha

Dharmavasita

the tibetan art of parentingA new book aims to describe the art of child-rearing in Tibetan culture, in order to help Tibetans hold onto their traditions and as a teaching for the wider world.

A pilgrimage earlier this year took me to Northern India and Sikkhim where I visited Tibetan Buddhist temples and monasteries and witnessed a little of the spiritual practice which is so integral to the ordinary everyday life of the people there, amongst them many Tibetan refugees. Saddened to leave India I was interested on returning to my life and my family to pick up this book and find myself once more amongst Tibetans and to be offered another perspective on their lives and practice.

The …

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