Tushita’s News July 2018

We began our year auspiciously by traveling to New Delhi in early March for teachings with our Spiritual Director Lama Zopa Rinpoche. We presented Rinpoche with a letter detailing our record-breaking year in 2017, dedicated our merit to the fulfillment of all His Dharma wishes, and requested that He please, please, please come to Tushita very soon!

Visit our ANNUAL REPORT for 2017 for more details on our summary of last year including some perky graphs.

Upon returning to Tushita we began a year of record-breaking of another sort: teachings and audiences with His Holiness the Dalai Lama! In late March we received an invitation specifically for the students in our Introduction to Buddhism course to come to His Holiness’ temple for a private teaching. This being a first for Tushita we were overjoyed to facilitate this precious opportunity for our students. This also marked the first time Tushita students as a group were able to have their photo taken with His Holiness. Our fortune then continued with public audiences in April, May and June!

In April, to our greatest delight, His Holiness specifically mentioned Tushita in His public teaching to advise that our students should study Shantideva’s A Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life, especially Chapters 6 & 8. (See the full video of His teaching and jump to minute 20:13 for His advice for Tushita’s students.) In June we requested His Holiness to come to Tushita and we are very hopeful that He will accept our invitation.

See the slideshow below for images of Tushita’s students with His Holiness from each of these fortunate events.

Our Program

In the first half of our year we have already welcomed over 750 students from all over the world for our popular Introduction to Buddhism courses. Almost all of these courses were completely filled with additional students on waiting lists hoping to get a space in the course. In May we had our largest course in which we managed to squeeze in 122 students! Even our February course (the first of the season at the end of our cold winter) had an unusually high turn-out. See all of our Introductory course students with their teachers (Venerables Drolma, Lobsang Namgyel, and Tony Beaumont) and meditation leaders (Renato & Maya) below.

In addition to our program of two 10-day Introduction to Buddhism courses per month, we have held simultaneous intermediate courses and group retreats. Our first special course of the year was our annual Pre-Ordination Course led by Geshe Namdak, which prepared nine practitioners for their new or higher ordination. This course has been a requirement by His Holiness’ office since 2006 for Western sangha to take ordination with HH the Dalai Lama.

We also hosted intermediate courses such as our ever-popular Healing Disturbing Emotions with Venerable Lobsang Namgyel, Insight Into Emptiness with our resident teacher Venerable Drolma, and Peaceful Living, Peaceful Dying with Ven Lobsang Namgyel. Each course had more than 30 participants.

Our course schedule was highlighted by our annual Advanced course led by Geshe Kelsang Wangmo. This year Geshe la taught “Emptiness & Compassion: Nagarjuna’s Mulamadhyamikakarika in the 21st Century”. Her course again attracted many students who were thrilled to take advantage of the rare and precious opportunity to receive teachings from Geshe la.

In addition to courses of further philosophical study we also hosted our annual group retreats.  An auspicious twenty-one people attended our series of 8 Nyung Nay retreats led by Richard Meijers, which is a powerful purification practice not for the faint of heart! In addition, we offered the Medicine Buddha retreat led by Ven Drolma, and the Special Lam-Rim retreat led by Ven Tony Beaumont.

See the slideshow below for each of our intermediate courses and group retreats!

For those unable to participate in our residential program, we have non-residential programs too. Six days a week we offer morning meditations which are ever-popular. One day this May we had a whopping 150 students join our morning meditation session! We have also been happy to offer twice-weekly Dharma movie days and regular pujas.

In the short breaks in between residential courses we were delighted to offer six 2-day short courses on How to Meditate led by Shahar Tene which typically attracted around 100 students. These have been a wonderful addition to our program for students unable to commit to a full 10-day course, as well as a helpful supplement for students before or after their 10-day courses.

Beyond our regular program and these special teachings from His Holiness the Dalai Lama, we had the added fortune of having Yangten Rinpoche join us for three days of teachings in May. Rinpoche taught preliminary teachings on Lama Tsongkhapa’s “Three Principle Aspects of the Path” & “The Foundation of All Good Qualities.” Rinpoche followed this by conveying the Chenrezig Initiation for of our Nyung Nay retreatants and guests for the 4th time. We hope this will continue as a Tushita tradition.

Another tradition in the making is Tushita hosting a group of Dharma practitioners from Vietnam who requested Yangten Rinpoche for teachings for the third year in a row. It is with great pleasure that Tushita hosts these amazing events. This year Rinpoche taught on Lama Tsongkhapa’s “Songs of Experience”.

We are pleased that we won’t have to wait a whole year for another opportunity to host Yangten Rinpoche as our friends, the Vietnamese group, will be returning to Tushita again this September!

Wheel-Turning Days

There are four days that commemorate the deeds of the Buddha which are considered to be merit-multiplying days. On these auspicious days the merit (both positive and negative) of our actions is magnified 100 million times. Thus we make sure to offer a full day of Dharma activities open to everyone, as highly recommended by our Spiritual Director, Lama Zopa Rinpoche!

The Tibetan New Year of Losar began February 16 with the 15 Days of Miracles. In the very early morning of Losar Day the Gyume monks started the traditional performing of different auspicious pujas and sutra readings to remove any obstacles to the upcoming year. The third day we hung prayer flags all around Tushita. We were excited to see that our dear monkey friends didn’t take them down nearly as quickly as we expected. On this and each day afterward we hosted the reading of the Golden Light Sutra open to the community. The final of these 15 days was the Wheel-turning day of Chotrul Duchen (The Day of Miracles) when to our great delight His Holiness started the day by reading from the Jataka Tales. After enjoying this wonderful tradition, we celebrated with a full program of dharma activities highlighted by a teaching with Geshe Namdak.

Then for May 29 we celebrated Saka Dawa (the anniversary of Buddha’s birth, enlightenment and parinirvana). In addition to our morning meditation, the reading of the Golden Light Sutra, the showing of “The Life of Buddha” (an excellent BBC production), and light offering, we hosted a teaching with Venerable Tony Beaumont on “What the Buddha Taught”.

For Choekor Duchen (honoring the first teachings of Shakyamuni Buddha on The Four Noble Truths in Sarnath) on July 16 we again had a full program highlighted by teachings from our resident teacher, Venerable Drolma.

Completing the Half Year

As we completed our first half of the year, we held a special puja as per Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s advice on “How to Do the Great Festival of His Holiness’ Birthday in the Best Possible Way” to celebrate HH the Dalai Lama’s 83rd birthday on July 6th. We all offered khatas and made requests for His Holiness to live long and stay with us always until we reach enlightenment.

Then we celebrated the successful completion of our first half of the year with a lunch honoring our teachers, meditation leaders, staff and volunteers who work so hard and with great joy to bring these amazing events to all our thousands of students and visitors. The impermanence of chocolate cake was enjoyed by all!

Projects

The beginning of the year saw the completion of some exciting new projects.

New Gate

Visitors to Tushita are now welcomed by a beautiful new entry gate, painted with scenes and mantras as directed by Lama Zopa Rinpoche. One pillar is painted front and back with The Four Virtuous Friends, the other with the 8 Auspicious Symbols. The top of the gate is adorned with the mantras of Chenrezig and Tara, and the inner aspect of the gate above visitors is painted with the Namgyalma mantra. It took painter Dorjee 3.5 months to complete the paintings. Now everyone who enters through the gate will receive these blessings.

 New Buildings

We have completed new teachers’ quarters for our precious resident and visiting teachers, which now stands where our old fire puja house once stood. Now teachers will have their own housing in the new building which we hope will provide comfort and support for our teachers for many years to come.

We also expanded Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s quarters to add a second room. To have space for the new room our monkey pool had to first be moved to a new location. Rinpoche had advised us to build the pool in 2010 and since then the monkey pool has been an important feature of Tushita’s everyday life, making not only our numerous playful animal friends, but also our many students watching them very happy. Many times we have wondered who is watching whom.

We took this opportunity to also renovate Rinpoche’s main room, replacing the flooring, ceiling, updating the lighting and giving everything fresh paint. Removing all of Rinpoche’s holy objects for safe-keeping during construction was a careful and joyful task for us volunteers. It was especially satisfying when we put them back in to Rinpoche’s fresh, new room!

Looking ahead…

The second half of 2018 will continue with a schedule filled with Dharma blessings and teachings.

At the end of August we hope to welcome Lama Zopa Rinpoche back to Tushita ahead of the first of His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s two scheduled teaching events! We hope Rinpoche will find his refurbished rooms pleasing and comfortable. We are eager and so happy to have Rinpoche back with us.

On 15 October we are thrilled and honored to host His Eminence the 7th Kyabje Yongzin Ling Rinpoche for the White Tara Long-life Initiation here at Tushita!

We are fortunate to have amazing guest teachers Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo, Venerable Thubten Chodron, Venerable Olivier Rossi, Glen Svensson, and Shahar Tene for further non-residential teaching events.

For those able to participate in our longer, residential courses we are excited to host courses and retreats led by visiting teachers Geshe Lhakdor, Venerable Robina Courtin, Jimi Neal, Glen Svensson, and (for the first time in Tushita’s history) Alan B Wallace! Mr. Wallace’s course is highly anticipated and has already been completely booked out for months now.

Please see our Full 2018 Schedule and join us up on the mountain!

Fundraising

His Holiness, the 14th Dalai Lama says…

Generosity is the most natural outward expression of an inner attitude of compassion and loving-kindness

Tushita Retreat Public Charitable Society is fund-raising for the following items and projects:

• Items for the smooth running of our Center:
  • Inverter for our Spritual Director Lama Zopa Rinpoche and for our Teachers and volunteers
  • Office equipment: Office Chairs (ours are more than 15 years old and badly in need of replacement!)
  • Laptops, Desktops
  • External Speakers for events such as Teachings and Initiations with HE Ling Rinpoche
• Yearly Projects:
  • Repainting of the Stupas
• Projects:
  • Rebuilding the volunteers’ quarters
  • Building director’s quarters
  • Renovating students’ toilets and showers
  • Dharma Wheel and Deer (2 sets)
  • Repainting of Lama Tsonkahapa Statue

If you wish to contribute please get in touch with our director at [email protected] or our center manager at [email protected]