Gompa

Saka Dawa is the month when we honor Shakyamuni Buddha's birth, enlightenment and parinirvana (passing from this life). In 2022, Saka Dawa begins May 31 and ends June 29. Saka Dawa Düchen (June 14), is the full-moon day of the month.  This day, and the entire month, are especially auspicious for spiritual practice  — the karmic effects of all actions are multiplied one hundred thousand times.

Geshe Gelek advises us to create merit by going around the stupa (or the entire Gompa), reciting mantras and sutras, liberating animals, saying prayers and doing charitable works.

Here is our schedule of Saka Dawa practices.

•  5:30 am:  Geshe Gelek will offer the Eight Mahayana Precepts. In-person only at the Center.
•  6:00 am:  Light breakfast
• 12:00 pm:  A group reading of the Prostrations to the Thirty-Five Confession Buddhas, and of the Vajra Cutter Sutra. Online only via YouTube and Zoom (registration required for Zoom).

     If you wish to take the Precepts online with a teacher, Lama Zopa Rinpoche has kindly made this option available here: 

• Eight Mahayana Precepts online with Lama Zopa Rinpoche

Geshe Gelek offers his kind and compassionate wisdom through teachings every Sunday 

Geshe-la tailors these Sunday teachings to help us meet the challenges of daily life with happy, peaceful minds.

We now have multiple options for attending in person or tuning in online to hear Geshe-la's encouraging wisdom:

* At home: We offer the teachings via both Zoom and YouTube streaming. 

    Watch the teaching on YouTube online streaming.

    To attend by Zoom, please register in advance.

* In the gompa: Gather with other students in the gompa to hear Geshe-la teach in person. Please observe the following COVID protocols if you attend in person.

Please note: Geshe-la has a very open-ended teaching style. Occasionally his teachings will run past the posted 11:30 end time. Students who wish to may leave for other commitments.

• Gompa seating will be limited to allow for social distancing and maximum air filtration (please do not rearrange seating).
• Anyone wishing to attend Sunday Dharma inside the gompa must have an up-to-date COVID-19 vaccine. Up-to-date means a person has received all recommended doses in their primary series COVID-19 vaccine, and a booster dose when eligible. No other conditions (such as being infected with COVID-19 in the past) qualify you to be in the gompa. 
• There will be additional seating in the lobby for those who prefer that seating or who are not up-to-date on the vaccine. 
• Please maintain at least a 6-foot distance from Geshe-la, whether he is seated or entering/leaving the building. We will not have a khata line or opportunities to bring offerings to Geshe-la at the end of teachings. Of course, any student who wishes to make an offering may leave an envelope or card of appreciation on his table before he arrives. This is to protect our precious teacher.
• Masks must be worn at all times while inside the building.  Masks are optional for our teachers so they can be clearly understood.
• Please use hand sanitizer upon entering the Center.
• Continue to use good hand hygiene practices while onsite e.g. washing hands immediately after using the restroom or blowing your nose, keeping your hands to yourself, avoid touching your face, cover coughs and sneezes with your elbow.
• Please stay home if you, or someone you have been around, don’t feel well.

* En español. Ofrecemos esta enseñanza a través de Zoom con traducción simultánea al español.

Traducción disponible solo en Zoom

Únase a nuestra comunidad para recibir enseñanzas en línea diseñadas para ayudarnos a enfrentar los desafíos de la vida diaria con mentes felices y tranquilas.

Para asistir por Zoom, apriete el enlace para registrarse con anticipación.

Después de registrarse, recibirá un correo electrónico de confirmación con información sobre cómo unirse a la reunión.

Buddhist Mind Science: Activating Your Potential

Module 1 - Cultivating Lasting Happiness: What Buddhism and Science Have to Say About It

This course focuses on an exploration of what leads to dissatisfaction and suffering, and what contributes to happiness for oneself and others. Participants will be introduced to the fundamentals of meditation and mind training, especially in the areas of establishing a meaningful direction in life, balancing the mind with equanimity and a caring attitude, and nurturing warmheartedness and wisdom drawn from the Buddhist tradition. This is complemented by references to current scientific understanding on our nervous system, values, subjective well-being, neuroplasticity and altruism.

This four-part course takes place online only (via Zoom) from 10am to noon on Saturdays: May 14, 21, June 4, 11, 2022.

Sorry, registration is closed for this course. 

Syllabus for Buddhist Mind Science, Module 1

This short course is a part of a new FPMT pilot series, "Buddhist Mind Science: Activating Your Potential", that focuses on meditation and the mind to provide insight and practical techniques on meditation, the mechanisms of suffering and happiness, finding mental balance, and how to discover and develop our potential for compassion and wisdom. The presentation is in harmony with a comparative modern scientific perspective.

We depend on your support

In keeping with our tradition, Kadampa Center does not charge a fee to attend any Dharma teachings, so that financial resources will never be an obstacle to hearing the Dharma. We rely on the generosity of students to be able to offer these courses, inclulding making an offering to the teachers who will lead each module. 

Your support for the course opens access to the Dharma for others, and enables Kadampa Center to make a generous offering to each module's teacher.

Support Buddhist Mind Science

Instructors for this module: 

This program is offered jointly by:

• Guhyasamaja Center, Centreville, VA
• Kadampa Center, Raleigh, NC
• Lama Yeshe Ling, Burlington, Ontario
• Shantideva Center, Brooklyn, NY
• Thubten Kunga Ling, Deerfield Beach, FL
• Tushita Meditation Center Spain

We all need purification and merit, and circumambulating sacred objects is a simple and powerful way to do this.  Kadampa Center is blessed to have not only a stupa, but a gompa filled with statues, thangkas and holy texts, as well as a garden Buddha statue – all powerful objects for circumambulation!

Venerable Lhamo will lead us in prayer followed by seven circumambulations of these sacred items on our grounds – stupa, gompa and garden Buddha. Then we will gather again for dedication.

We invite everyone to stay and socialize afterward. Kadampa Center will provide beverages, and participants are welcome to bring a bag lunch to enjoy after the practice.

Volunteer!  If you can, please come 30 minutes early to help set up, and stay a few minutes after to help clean up.  Thank you!

Medicine Buddha, Green Tara, Vajrasattva, Refuge, and more!  Join these very special, auspicious opportunities as Geshe Gelek leads and instructs us in meditation and prayer of several foundational practices in Tibetan Buddhism. Geshe Gelek chooses the practice each Sunday and some weeks may be skipped.

How to attend online:

Students who are already present in the gompa, on Zoom or on YouTube for the Sunday Morning Teachings can simply stay for the practice session.

Students who wish to attend the practice but aren't present for the teachings can use their Zoom link for Sunday Dharma, or go to our YouTube channel.

Register here for Sunday Dharma and meditation practices in Zoom.

If you attend in the gompa, please observe our COVID protocols:

• Gompa seating will be limited to allow for social distancing and maximum air filtration (please do not rearrange seating).
• Anyone wishing to attend Sunday Dharma inside the gompa must have an up-to-date COVID-19 vaccine. Up-to-date means a person has received all recommended doses in their primary series COVID-19 vaccine, and a booster dose when eligible. No other conditions (such as being infected with COVID-19 in the past) qualify you to be in the gompa. 
• There will be overflow seating in the lobby. 
• Please maintain at least a 6-foot distance from Geshe-la, whether he is seated or entering/leaving the building. We will not have a khata line or opportunities to bring offerings to Geshe-la at the end of teachings. Of course, any student who wishes to make an offering may leave an envelope or card of appreciation on his table before he arrives. This is to protect our precious teacher.
• Masks must be worn at all times while inside the building.  Masks are optional for our teachers so they can be clearly understood.
• Please use hand sanitizer upon entering the Center.
• Continue to use good hand hygiene practices while onsite e.g. washing hands immediately after using the restroom or blowing your nose, keeping your hands to yourself, avoid touching your face, cover coughs and sneezes with your elbow.
• Please stay home if you, or someone you have been around, don’t feel well.

We will keep a count of our recitations and send our numbers to FPMT on March 19, so they can be offered to Lama Zopa Rinpoche on our behalf. 

Enter your mantra count here. 

Here are links to information about the mantras:

       OM MANI PADME HUM is the Mani mantra of Chenrezig (find out more about the practice and its benefits here).

    White Tara Mantra:  OM TARE TUTTARE TURE MAMA AYUR PUNYE JÑANA PUSHTIM KURU [YE] SVAHA 

       Find out more about the White Tara mantra here 

And don't forget that throughout the year, we offer Green Tara mantras for the long lives of Geshe Gelek and Geshe Sangpo.

You may enter your Green Tara mantras for our Geshes here.

Exploring Buddhism: Exploring the Path

To proceed on the stages of the path to enlightenment it is important to have a good understanding of this entire spiritual journey. This module of Exploring Buddhism will provide a concise overview of the whole path to enlightenment as it is traditionally presented in texts belonging to the stages of the path genre, and impart the importance of and method for meditating on the complete teachings of Buddha in this practice-oriented way.

Previous study of at least some modules of Discovering Buddhism, either in a center or online, is highly recommended before enrolling in this program.

New students are welcome.  You do not have to have attended previous Exploring Buddhism modules.

This pilot course will take place online only (via Zoom) on Thursday evenings from 7 to 9 pm.

Sorry, registration for Exploring the Path is closed

Exploring Buddhism is a new program  currently being developed by FPMT to serve as a bridge between Discovering Buddhism and The Basic Program. It is designed to help students of Buddhism delve more deeply into a broad array of topics that form a solid foundation for furthering one’s study and practice.  The program will initially be run as a pilot program in FPMT centers to further test and refine the curriculum.

We depend on your support

In keeping with our tradition, Kadampa Center does not charge a fee to attend any Dharma teachings, so that financial resources will never be an obstacle to hearing the Dharma. We rely on the generosity of students to be able to offer these courses, inclulding making an offering to the teachers who will lead each module. 

Your support for the course opens access to the Dharma for others, and enables Kadampa Center to make a generous offering to each module's teacher.

Support Exploring Buddhism

Instructor for this module: Gen Don Handrick

Gen Don Handrick is a touring teacher for the Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition (FPMT), sharing the Dharma with centers and study groups in North America and other parts of the world, both in-person and online. Don's study of Buddhism began in 1993 after reading The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying by Sogyal Rinpoche. Over the next two years he practiced with Sogyal Rinpoche's organization, until he began attending classes in 1996 with Venerable Robina Courtin at Tse Chen Ling in San Francisco. Don left the Bay Area in 1998 to attend the FPMT's Masters Program of Buddhist Studies in Sutra and Tantra, a seven-year residential study program conducted at Lama Tzong Khapa Institute in Tuscany, Italy, and taught by the scholar and kind Spiritual Friend, Geshe Jampa Gyatso. He successfully completed all five subjects of this program in 2004, receiving an FPMT final certificate with high honors. Students appreciate his humble, compassionate demeanor and his capacity to explain profound ideas with precision, contemporary examples and humor.

This program is offered jointly by:

• Guhyasamaja Center, Centreville, VA
• Kadampa Center, Raleigh, NC
• Lama Yeshe Ling, Burlington, Ontario
• Shantideva Center, Brooklyn, NY
• Thubten Kunga Ling, Deerfield Beach, FL

Celebrate with our own Geshe Palden Sangpo on the launch of his new book, Opening the Door to Happiness: A Commentary on the Thirty-Seven Practices of a Bodhisattva.  More than a year in the making, this insightful book explores the profound practice of training in the altruistic attitude.

Geshe Sangpo's intention for writing this book is to benefit all who read it. He freely offers this book as a teaching and will make no monetary gain from its release. Through the generosity of many kind benefactors, copies of Opening the Door to Happiness: A Commentary on the Thirty-Seven Practices of a Bodhisattva will be freely given away at the center while supplies last.  

Please join us Saturday, February 26, for these very special events

Sorry, registration to attend the ceremony in person is full. All are welcome to attend online, and to come afterward to receive a free copy of the book for Geshe Sangpo to sign. We expect the book signing to begin at approximately 11:30 am. 

Book Launch Ceremony begins at 11 am

Register Here for Zoom Attendance

YouTube: Watch the Livestream Here

Book Signing begins approximately 11:30 am

After the presentation, Geshe Sangpo will be available to sign books. All are welcome to come to the book signing. We ask that you observe social distancing and wear a mask when approaching the book signing table. 

If you are unable to attend the book launch, we will have copies of the book at the Center for people to pick up while supplies last. The Center is open on Sunday mornings from 10 am until noon, before and after the Sunday teachings.