Gompa

The Golden Light Sutra is one of the practices that was requested to benefit our spiritual director, Lama Zopa Rinpoche. If you cannot attend, reading it at home is also encouraged. The text is available online for free download at http://www.fpmt.org/education/teachings/sutras/golden-light-sutra/download.html. We will be reporting practices done for Rinpoche to FPMT every month, so please email program@kadampa-center.org when you complete recitations.

Meditation 101 is an introductory course on Buddhist meditation techniques for complete beginners. It teaches basic Buddhist meditations that can be used by anyone to create more peace and happiness in daily life. Jill Marie will be leading this session. In keeping with our tradition, the class is offered on a donation basis. No pre-registration is needed - drop-ins are welcome anytime during the course. This session will be led by Jill Marie.

The basic Buddhist meditation techniques covered include:

• What is meditation?
• Breathing meditations
• Mindfulness meditations
• Visualization meditations

This class will be rescheduled - Geshe Gelek is ill and not able to lead class this evening.

This is the final class in a series Geshe Gelek has been teaching on the Bodhisattva and Tantric vows. In this class, he will cover what to do if you have broken the vows, and how to purify that karma. 

In order to ensure students have the proper background and experience for the material, the class is restricted to students who have actually taken the vows. The second hour of the class will be only for those with Highest Yoga Tantra vows (so students who have not taken a Highest Yoga Tantra initiation will leave after the first hour).

Please join us to say prayers of healing to support member Kim Lillig, who is sponsoring this puja for her late ex-husband, Bill Johnson. This is the 49th day after his passing, which is a very beneficial time to pray for him - according to Buddhism, it's the final day he may still be in the bardo about to take a rebirth.

Guru Puja is a practice consisting of making offerings to and requesting inspiration from the Spiritual Master. Spiritual vows and commitments which might have degenerated are also restored through the practice of tsog offering (feast offering). In this practice, we unite our minds with the holy mind of the Spiritual Master, who is considered the root and life-force of the spiritual path in order to receive blessings and generate realizations on the path to enlightenment.

We need merit, or positive energy, for our enlightened potential to grow and become perfect and one of the best ways to do that is to make beautiful offering and prayers to the Three Jewels and to our Spiritual Teachers. This is what happens in the Guru Puja. A special type of offering called tsog is made. Here we offer platefuls of fruits and biscuits, which are distributed afterwards to the participants. The tsog can be eaten by oneself or shared with friends who have faith in the Three Jewels, but should not be given to animals or thrown in a dirty place.

Written by Ven. Sangye Khadro

Check out the rest of Ven. Thubten Chodron's scheduled events at Kadampa Center.

Many people want to know what it's like for Westerners to be ordained, how sangha support themselves, what living in a nunnery is like, and the role of women monastics in Tibetan Buddhism. Special guest teacher Venerable Thubten Chodron is highly qualified to talk about this topic. She ordained as a nun in the Tibetan tradition in 1977 and received the full ordination of a bhikshuni in Taiwan in 1986. A highly respected teacher and author, she has been the resident teacher at Amitabha Buddhist Center in Singapore, and was resident teacher and spiritual adviser for Dharma Friendship Foundation in Seattle for ten years. She is currently the Abbess of Sravasti Abbey, a Buddhist monastery in Newport, Washington, which she founded in 2003. In addition to her teaching, we'll also watch two short videos about Sravasti Abbey and monastic life there as an introduction to the topic.

Check out the rest of Ven. Thubten Chodron's scheduled events at Kadampa Center.

In this Discovering Buddhism module, investigate the role of the teacher on the spiritual path: the need for a teacher, the qualities of teacher and student, and how to relate to a teacher for greatest benefit. This session will be led by special guest teacher Ven. Thubten Chodron.

Geshe Gelek has been challenging us to answer the question "What is happiness, and is desire suffering?" Special guest teacher Venerable Thubten Chodron addresses this question from her perspective, continuing this examination of how can we live our daily lives and be truly happy.

If you are new to the center and unsure when to visit for the first time, Sunday is a great time to start. The prayers and teachings are in English.

There is no children's program at the 9:00am program, but the nursery is available for parents who would like space for young children. The teachings will be broadcast into the nursery so parents can still hear the teachings while supervising their children.

For the 10:45am program, the same topic will be taught again; our full range of children's programs will be available during this session. Children are invited to sit on the blue cushions at the front of the gompa, and then are dismissed to their classes after opening prayers.

Additional programming is available after most Sunday sessions

• 2nd Sunday of the month: Newcomer's Orientation session and Delve into Daily Dharma Discussion
• 3rd Sunday of the month: Member's Orientation session
• 4th Sunday of the month: Potluck Social - bring a dish to share if you can; everyone is invited to stay

Check out the rest of Ven. Thubten Chodron's scheduled events at Kadampa Center.

Geshe Gelek has been challenging us to answer the question "What is happiness, and is desire suffering?" Special guest teacher Venerable Thubten Chodron addresses this question from her perspective, continuing this examination of how can we live our daily lives and be truly happy.

If you are new to the center and unsure when to visit for the first time, Sunday is a great time to start. The prayers and teachings are in English.

There is no children's program at the 9:00am program, but the nursery is available for parents who would like space for young children. The teachings will be broadcast into the nursery so parents can still hear the teachings while supervising their children.

For the 10:45am program, the same topic will be taught again; our full range of children's programs will be available during this session. Children are invited to sit on the blue cushions at the front of the gompa, and then are dismissed to their classes after opening prayers.

Additional programming is available after most Sunday sessions

• 2nd Sunday of the month: Newcomer's Orientation session and Delve into Daily Dharma Discussion
• 3rd Sunday of the month: Member's Orientation session
• 4th Sunday of the month: Potluck Social - bring a dish to share if you can; everyone is invited to stay

Check out the rest of Ven. Thubten Chodron's scheduled events at Kadampa Center.