Annual Course with Geshe Lhakdor: Awaken your Profound Nature by Understanding your Mind and Emotions

April 22 – 28, 2025

Special 7-day residential course with Geshe Lhakdor! Appropriate for beginners and advanced students.

Geshe Lhakdor is renowned for his inspiring, down to earth and humorous teaching style, making the ancient Buddhist philosophy and science of mind applicable to a 21st century audience.

The topic of this course will be the Cycle of Existence – negative emotions, karma and the twelve links of dependent origination.

As Geshe la often mentions, “the real troublemakers in our lives are the countless negative emotions in us. Not only do they hinder us in achieving the lasting happiness of liberation and enlightenment, they also don’t allow us to have peace and happiness in this life. The reason to do dharma practice is to fight with these negative emotions.”

This course will explain cyclic existence or samsara – meaning our body and mind circling in the various realms under the influence of afflictions and karma – by using the Wheel of Life, a visual illustration of the twelve links of dependent arising. These instances of samsara represent suffering and the cause of our suffering, where these negative emotions come from, and practice methods which will eventually lead us to liberation from cyclic existence.
Learning about the process of entering samsara offers us a marvellous insight into how to reverse samsara. In this way, the Wheel of Life becomes an incredible tool to awaken our profound nature and end the vicious cycle of suffering and attain the everlasting happiness of liberation and enlightenment.

 

Teacher

Venerable Geshe Lhakdor was born in Yakra, Western Tibet in 1956 and left Tibet in 1962 following the communist Chinese invasion of Tibet in 1959. Geshe received his novice monk ordination in 1964, attended the Central School for Tibetans, in Dalhousie, India from 1972 to 1976 and studied specialized Buddhist Philosophy in the Institute of Buddhist Dialectics in Dharamsala, India until 1986.

From December, 1986 to May, 1989 he served as translator and research assistant in Tibet House, the Cultural Centre of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, in New Delhi. In August 1989, Geshe joined the Office of His Holiness the Dalai Lama where he has served as Religious Assistant and Translator and has accompanied His Holiness the Dalai Lama to over thirty countries in the Americas, Europe, Australia, Africa and Asia.

Beside the Master of Prajnaparamita in 1982, he also received the Master of Madhyamika in 1989 and the Master of Philosophy (MPhil) from the University of Delhi. In 1995 he received the Geshe Degree from Drepung Loseling Monastic University in South India. In 2008, he was also conferred Honorary Professorship by the University of Delhi, Department of Psychology.

Since 2005 he has been the director of the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives in Dharamsala, after serving as His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s official translator for 16 years (still occasionally travels with H.H. as translator).

Geshe Lhakdor has also co-translated and co-produced several books by His Holiness, including The Way to Freedom, The Joy of Living and Dying in Peace, Awakening the Mind and Lightening the Heart, and Stages of Meditation, among others.

Geshe Lhakdor is a trustee of the Foundation for Universal Responsibility, established by His Holiness, Director of the Central Archive of His Holiness, a member of the Advisory Board of the Institute of Tibetan Classics in Montreal, Canada, and Honorary Professor at the University of British Columbia, Canada.

 

Course Details

This very popular course requires a non-refundable/ non-transferable deposit. See our Frequently Asked Questions for more information on this. Please only register if you can make this deposit promptly!

Please visit these links for general information about our residential courses, especially the retreat environment.

 

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