Gompa

Investigate what "samsara" is and how we are stuck in it. Find out what "nirvana" is and how to achieve it. Learn how to be free from suffering and empower yourself with practical tools to deal with and eliminate disturbing emotions forever. This course is offered online via YouTube streaming or Zoom. Registration is required for Zoom participants. Click here to register. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

Samsara and Nirvana is part of a two-year series of classes called Discovering Buddhism. In this course we explore 13 essential topics in Buddhism, from Meditation to Karma to Death and Rebirth, with much, much more! This is an excellent course of study for those who have the very basics and wish to start going a little deeper into Buddhist philosophy.

DB was developed by our affiliate organization, the Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition, and is taught at Kadampa Center by senior lay students with many years of study and practice. Students who take the course together tend to develop great friendships with their Dharma buddies!

In keeping with our long-standing tradition, Kadampa Center does not charge a fee for any Dharma course. These teachings are too precious to allow money to be an obstacle for anyone to hear them!  We do, of course, have expenses to offer the course, so we happily welcome any heart-felt donations.  No pre-registration is required.

Led by Stephanie Smith

Learn the disadvantages of self-cherishing and the advantages of cherishing others. Learn to employ the special techniques of mind training (lojong) to transform problems into happiness. This course is offered online via YouTube streaming or Zoom. Registration is required for Zoom participants. Click here to register. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

Transforming Problems is part of a two-year series of classes called Discovering Buddhism. In this course we explore 13 essential topics in Buddhism, from Meditation to Karma to Death and Rebirth, with much, much more! This is an excellent course of study for those who have the very basics and wish to start going a little deeper into Buddhist philosophy.

DB was developed by our affiliate organization, the Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition, and is taught at Kadampa Center by senior lay students with many years of study and practice. Students who take the course together tend to develop great friendships with their Dharma buddies!

In keeping with our long-standing tradition, Kadampa Center does not charge a fee for any Dharma course. These teachings are too precious to allow money to be an obstacle for anyone to hear them!  We do, of course, have expenses to offer the course, so we happily welcome any heart-felt donations.  No pre-registration is required to stream on YouTube.

Led by Robbie Watkins

During the month of March, we will offer some exciting special programs on Sunday mornings, during the 10:30-noon period. Here's what to look forward to:

March 1 – We return to Lama Yeshe's wise and witty teachings on the Three Principal Aspects of the Path, part 2, in a video presentation.

March 8 – Women in Buddhism, Past and Present.  A brief look at some inspiring women practitioners of the Dharma,  with meditations.  
Led by Donna Seese

March 15 – Bodhicitta Mindfulness – how to bring more mindfulness into everyday life.  Led by Sandy Carlson

March 22 – Cultivating Patience for Ourselves and Others 
Led by Erin Sloan

March 29 – Practicing Non-violent Communication. 
Led by Barb Baranski

Lama Tsongkhapa's Lamrim presents the entire path to enlightenment in a step-by-step fashion. Geshe Gelek advises that beyond study, we need meditation and thoughtful engagement in the text in order to have realizations.  Hearing the teachings is just the first step. In addition, we need merit-making practices to open the doors to deeper understanding. These include the great preliminary practices of prostrations to the 35 Confession Buddhas, Vajrasattva practice, making mandala offerings, and reciting the refuge and bodhicitta prayer.

In these practice sessions, we will combinethese preliminary practices, with additional prayer and meditation on selected lamrim texts.

The evening will include:

Lama Tsongkhapa Guru Yoga and meditation

Purification practice (on alternating weeks, we will do prostrations to the 35 Confession Buddhas and Vajrasattva practice)

Mandala offerings

Analytical meditation on selected lamrim texts

as well as other prayers

Led by Venerable Lhamo

Jim Davis, a long-time leader and participant in our Sunday morning Meditation Circle, passed away February 13. The interfaith memorial service will be co-led by Venerable Ngawang Khando and The Rev. Dr. Jonathan Jeffries of Horne Memorial United Methodist Church in Clayton.

The service will include a presentation of full military honors.

Lhabab Düchen is one of the four major Buddhist holy days of the year. On this day, we celebrate the Buddha’s return to beings in our realm after a three-month separation. During that separation, he had gone to the God Realm of Thirty-Three, a higher realm where his mother was reborn after giving him birth, in order to repay her kindness by giving teachings to liberate her from samsara. His teachings in the God Realm of the Thirty-Three also benefited the Arya Beings who lived there.

As a Buddha holy day, this is an auspicious day for practice, when the karmic effects of actions are multiplied one hundred million times, according to our Spiritual Director, Lama Zopa Rinpoche, citing the Vinaya text The Treasure of Quotations and Logic.

Lhabab Düchen occurs on the 22nd day of the ninth month on the Tibetan lunar calendar.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche, encourages students to take the Eight Mahayana Precepts on holy days. For more about the practice of precepts, please read The Direct and Unmistaken Method by Lama Zopa Rinpoche. Rinpoche advises many other practices on holy days as well.

We will celebrate with a Shakyamuni Buddha Puja at 1 pm on Zoom.

Registration is required to participate. Please register here.

Students who have previously taken the Eight Mahayana Precepts from a qualified master are encouraged to take them at home before their altar.

Create merit by sponsoring a Holy Day event!  Sponsoring spiritual events is beneficial on many levels. It benefits the Center by providing the resources to offer the event; it benefits the students who attend the event, and it benefits the donor by deepening the practice of generosity and creating the causes to meet the Dharma again in the future.

Sponsorship of a Holy Day puja is $125, and of general Holy Day events and activities, it's $108.

Supporting the Holy Day event is a two-step process

Step One  is dedicating your generosity (click here).

Step Two  is making the donation or sponsorship (use the button below on this page)

Dedications may be very simple - "For my mother, Rosemary" - or they might encompass more extensive spiritual wishes, such as "May these teachings be the cause to liberate all sentient beings," or wishes for the teacher's long life, to benefit a person who is ill - any heart-felt positive intention!  You also can dedicate for more than one intention.

Sponsor Holy Day Activities $108

Sponsor Holy Day Puja ~ $125

Seven weeks after attaining enlightenment at Bodhgaya, Shakyamuni Buddha gave his first teaching at the Deer Park in Sarnath. We celebrate this day as Chokhor Düchen.

At this teaching, the Buddha expressed his profound realization of the nature of existence in the Four Noble Truths:

    The Truth of  the Nature of Suffering
    The Truth of the Origins or Causes of Suffering
    The Truth of the Cessation of, or Liberation from, Suffering
    The Truth of the Eight Fold Path as the means to attain ultimate happiness and freedom from suffering.

This teaching, referred to as the First Turning of the Wheel of Dharma, led to the formation of the Sangha, the community of disciples committed to following the Buddha's example of living simply, following the Path, and teaching the Dharma. Accordingly, every year at this time, the FPMT encourages its Centers to celebrate the presence of the sangha community. Our website includes a Sangha Support and Offerings page with valuable information, including a previous year's talk and Q&A about sangha with our director, Robbie Watkins.

Kadampa Center will offer a reading of the Vajra Cutter sutra, as well as other prayers, online at 12pm.

You can sponsor Holy Day events - amazing merit!  Click here to sponsor Chokhor Düchen

"This practice of Guru Puja is very profound, with many extra benefits, and is very quick to bring enlightenment. The lam-rim prayer, the prayer of the steps of the path to enlightenment, in Guru Puja has lam-rim and also lo-jong, or thought transformation. Generally, the whole of the lam-rim, from guru devotion up to enlightenment, is thought transformation. If your mind is not transformed into the path, how can you have realizations of the path? There’s no way, without transforming your mind."

As part of the puja, we perform a special practice called tsog which has extensive offerings. According to the Liberation Prison Project Tibetan calendar, on the 10th and 25th of every Tibetan (lunar) month, Lama Zopa Rinpoche says, “Those who have received an initiation into Highest Yoga Tantra have a commitment to perform tsog” on these days. Kadampa Center holds pujas with tsog on these dates (when they don't conflict with other programs).

Anyone is welcome to attend pujas, even if you are unfamiliar with the practice. This puja is partly recited in English and partly chanted in Tibetan. (It is possible to read the English translations of the whole puja, and there is optional sheet music available to help learn the Tibetan tunes.) Traditionally the offerings for the sangha and puja are sponsored by Dharma students, especially if they want to dedicate the puja to their spiritual teachers or loved ones in need of support and prayers.

Sponsoring a puja is a great way to create merit, and it's especially auspicious to do so on a holy day for a puja dedicated to one of our teachers. Sponsorship of this puja is $75, and sponsors can include a dedication that we will read at the puja so everyone can join in the sponsor's intentions. 

Sponsor Here

Spend the lunch hour on this merit-multiplying holy day by joining our communithy in a group reading of the Golden Light Sutra. Lama Zopa Rinpoche, our Spiritual Director, has advised us at Kadampa Center to recite this sutra to create the causes for hosting this year's Light of the Path Retreat.

We will read the sutra monastery-style:  All the pages will be divided among those who attend, and then we will all read aloud at the same time until all are finished. The idea is that, even if we are not consciously comprehending the words, the entire sutra is entering our mindstream because we can hear one another speak. It's a joyful cacophony!

Learn more here about the Golden Light Sutra.

Sponsoring the sutra readings is a great way to create merit, and it's especially auspicious to do so during the Days of Miracles, when our merit is multiplied exponentially.

Sponsorship is a two-step process

Step One  is dedicating your sponsorship (click here).

Step Two  is making the donation (use the buttons below on this page),

Sponsors may wish to dedicate very simply - "For my mother, Rosemary" - or they might make more extensive spiritual wishes, such as ""May these teachings be the cause to liberate all sentient beings," or wishes for the teacher's long life, to benefit a person who is ill - any heart-felt positive intention!  You also can dedicate for more than one intention.

Use our secure online community to donate by clicking your choice below. 

To try our new Text Giving, send KC108 to 73256 and select your level from the drop down menu.

Don't forget to dedicate your sponsorship!

Sponsor a Sutra Reading ~ $75