SPIRITUAL: Special Class

On this holy Buddha day, we mark the creation of the Sangha, the community of practitioners who study the Buddha Dharma in our quest to become enlightened and liberate all beings from samsara.

This year we have a special treat:  Venerable Tenzin Legtsok, a Western monk who is studying toward his Geshe degree at Sera Jey monastery, will talk about life at Sera Jey, his experiences as a Westerner, and the overall community of FPMT ordained sangha. 

Ven. Legtsok is also special to Kadampa Center, because he is the son of our member, Carol Vogel, and brother of Elyse Beffa.

Come hear all about monastery life through the eyes of a Western monk!

Every Drop Counts!  Be a wish-fulfilling jewel and offer a pint of blood, a gift of life to others! Join our second annual blood drive on Compassion Day, His Holiness' birthday.

To celebrate His Holiness’ birthday, Kadampa Center will hold a blood drive on Friday, July 6, from 10 am to 2:30 p.m.

We will send His Holiness a card signed by all our donors and support volunteers, so the more bountiful the number of donations, the better!

Your offering of blood can be the difference between life and death for another, benefitting not only the recipients but everyone in their lives.  Many of us have personal experience with blood transfusions, either for ourselves or for someone we love – our brother,  our mother, our BFF.

We’re working with the pros in blood drives, the American Red Cross, and we have a big goal – 50 pints!  Last year, our members and friends donated 28 units of blood and 11 units of "power red" blood, and more than 50 people participated, as donors or support volunteers. Please invite your family, friends, neighbors and co-workers to join in our blood drive and keep hearts beating throughout our community.

Here’s what you need to know to help create our gift of compassion to others, to offer to His Holiness:

Sign up online! Click here to register.  When you get to the link, click on the red circle with the white arrow, then choose your time and type of donation.

If you can’t donate blood for any reason but want to help create this gift to His Holiness,  you can volunteer here.

Read here about how one precious life was saved by other's kindness. You can make the same difference for someone!

And don’t forget to dedicate your merit, for the benefit of all sentient beings, and for the long, happy, healthy life of His Holiness the Dalai Lama!

Compassion Cultivation Training with Robin Hart will not meet today, Sunday, April 22.

The class will return April 29.

Thank you!

"It is our custom to say that someone is "lucky" or "unlucky" if they meet with fortunate or unfortunate circumstances, respectively.  It is however, too simplistic to think in terms of random "luck."  Even from a scientific point of view, this is not a sufficient explanation.  Should something unfortunate happen, we immediately think, "Oh, how unlucky!"  And yet this is not sufficient to explain what happened- there must be a cause.  We seem to call "luck" that factor which overrides external conditions to bring about a positive situation.  But that too is a cause; it is an inner cause, which we call "merit."-- His Holiness the Dalai Lama, from "Answers:  Discussions with Western Buddhists", published by Snow Lion Publications.

Creating merit is an essential part of Buddhist practice.  When we build up our stores of merit, it removes obstacles in our spiritual lives. This makes it easier to understand the teachings and apply the Dharma in our everyday lives. Making merit is also great purification!

On Thursday practice nights, we will do group practices of doing prostrations and offering mandalas.  In these sessions, Geshe Sangpo will briefly explain the purpose and benefits of the practices and teach us how to do them, and then we will all do the practice together.  This is of benefit to everyone who participates, and because we are doing practice as a group in our gompa, it will benefit Kadampa Center as well.

Prostration nights will be easy-going; we will do seven prostrations, then recite purification practices "Prostrations to the 35 Confession Buddhas" and the Vajrasattva mantra, then repeat. Those who wish may continue prostrating!

The sessions will take place every two weeks beginning  with prostrations on Thursday, April 12, and will run from 7 to 8pm.  The next session in the schedule will be mandala offerings on Thursday, April 26, and so on every two weeks.

On this night, we will do mandala offerings.

No need to have a mandala set on mandala offering nights, but if you have a set, please bring it!  Geshe Sangpo will teach the hand mudra for mandala offerings for those who don't have a set.

While Geshe Gelek is away, students will meditate on various short lamrim texts, such as Foundation of All Good Qualities, the Three Principal Aspects of the Path, and so on.

Led by sangha or senior students.

Registration closed

Living an unassuming life right here in Raleigh is a rare treasure, a master of Buddhist art in the Tibetan tradition. Jampal Hyolmo (Jhaula Lama) began his training at the age of 14, studying with teachers who are very highly regarded artists in their own right, and he now has students of his own in Nepal. Jampal is one of only four or five artists in the world who are trained and skilled in two highly technical sacred arts: building stupas (sacred structures) and painting thangkas (sacred art).  He is in a rare class of artists who can design, build and decorate a stupa by himself. He has created stupas for monasteries in India and Nepal, and for several Buddhist centers across the United States, including our own stupa at Kadampa Center. In addition, he has painted countless thangkas (sacred pictures), and he designed and painted the Tara altar at Kadampa Center and also a private altar for our resident teacher. Kadampa Center is happy to offer the unique opportunity to study with Jampal without having to travel around the world to find a qualified teacher, and to learn the techniques and procedures for drawing an image of Shakyamuni Buddha in the Tibetan tradition. In this four-week, eight-hour course, he will take students through the exacting process of creating this classic, sacred image, bringing to the course both mastery of execution and reverence for the subject matter.

Space for the class is limited. Registration is required. All materials are covered by the registration fee.

Humans have a natural capacity for compassion. However, everyday stress, social pressures and everyday experiences can make it difficult to fully express this capacity. The process of cultivating compassion involves training our own minds, developing specific skills in how we relate to others, and ourselves, and intentionally choosing compassionate thoughts and actions. The training process includes: Daily meditation practices to develop loving kindness, empathy and compassion A two-hour weekly class that includes lecture, discussion, and in-class partner and small-group listening and communication exercises Real-world “homework” assignments to practice compassionate thoughts and actions. In this program, you will learn to: Cultivate/enhance a daily meditation practice Increase kindness and compassion Calm the mind and direct thoughts more positively Sharpen the ability to focus and pay attention

Cultivating compassion goes beyond feeling more empathy and concern for others. It develops the strength to be with suffering, the courage to take compassionate action, and the resilience to prevent compassion fatigue. Compassion Cultivation can:
•    Improve personal relationships
•    Support health, happiness and well-being
•    Increase self-compassion and self-care
•    Reduce stress, anxiety and depression
•    Enhance connection with others
CCT is designed to support anyone who wants to cultivate compassion for themselves and others. This includes parents, caregivers, educators, healthcare professionals, therapists, executives, public servants and people in a wide range of professions and life contexts. No previous meditation experience is required.

Registration is limited; pre-registration is required. You may register here.

This course is offered within Kadampa Center's tradition of relying completely on the heartfelt generosity of the students to cover our costs and to thank the course leader for her expertise. Other venues charge as much as $100 to attend. We happily accept all donations! You can offer donations at class time, or click here:

Course Donation

Compassion Cultivation Training (CCT) is an eight-week program designed to develop the qualities of compassion, empathy, and kindness for oneself and for others. CCT integrates traditional contemplative practices with contemporary psychology and scientific research on compassion. The program was developed at Stanford University by a team of contemplative scholars, clinical psychologists, and researchers, including Dr. Thubten Jinpa, a former Buddhist monk who frequently acts as English translator for His Holiness the Dalai Lama. This is an independent course that was not developed by FPMT.

About the course leader: 

Robin Hart has facilitated meditation instruction and practice since 2002. Robin became a CCT certified instructor in 2013 and moved from Southern California to the Triangle region in 2014.

Join us for a day of meditation. This is the first in a series of one-day retreats that will be offered this year, each focusing on a particular aspect of the lam rim.

About lam rim: The presentation of Buddha’s 84,000 teachings into a step-by-step method is known as “lam-rim” in Tibetan and can be translated as “graduated path.” Indian and Tibetan masters have offered short texts, prayers, commentaries and extensive texts with instruction, all based on this approach.

About this day: We will focus on meditations to develop renunciation, the aspiration wishing to attain freedom from the bonds of karma and affliction. Specific meditations will be on a review of the lam rim, types of suffering, and mental afflictions. Meditations on the types of suffering help us recognize the nature of our current samsaric existence and thereby help us develop the wish to be free of suffering and its causes. Meditations on our afflictions/delusions help us to recognize our own delusions and to develop the ability to overcome them.

To enable participants to keep focus and concentration, the retreat will be silent other than guided meditations and essential communication. To maintain a stable and peaceful retreat environment, participants should commit to attending the entire day.

All students at any level are welcome. Some will be doing this practice in the context of Discovering Buddhism (DB).

Note about DB: If you are working on the requirements for completing the DB Practice Retreats, the Renunciation meditations are required for Day 1 of the Presenting the Path module and Days 1 and 2 of the Samsara and Nirvana module. Please be aware that these mediations will be guided by a fellow student and not an FPMT teacher, so for DB purposes, your approach is similar to if you were preparing for and practicing independently. However, we offer this opportunity in the center’s spiritual setting with other students with the hope that you find the environment beneficial and to cultivate a supportive environment in which we all practice.

Schedule

Please bring food for your day such as snacks and lunch.

8:30 - Center open, check in, make offerings (bookstore open)

9:00 - 9:15 - General information

9:15 - 10:15 - Session 1

10:15 - 10:35 - Break (Silent)

10:35 - 11:35 - Session 2

11:35 - 12:15 - Lunch Break (Silent)

12:15 - 1:15 - Session 3

1:15 - 1:35 - Break (Silent)

1:35 - 2:35 - Session 4

2:35 - 3:00 - Discussion

Clean up, take down offerings (bookstore open)

To REGISTER, enter or select your name and click the blue Next button. Then, answer a few questions and click the blue Next button. Finally, click the Register button. 

We offer this opportunity on a donation basis so that money is never an obstacle to practicing the Dharma. If you are able, please indicate your donation by clicking on one of the following buttons where you will be led to our secure online system. Thank you!!

Set my own amount

$50 - With Love

$75 - With Compassion

$108 - With Joy