Event : Tibetan New Year Lunch with 14th Sharmapa
Date : 5 March Saturday
Time : 12.30 pm to 2.00 pm
Venue : Karma Kagyud Buddhist Centre
Website : http://www.karma-kagyud.org.sg/
Address : 38 Lorong 22 Geylang Singapore 398695
Map :
http://www.streetdirectory.com/asia_travel/travel/travel_id_4501/travel_site_51853/
Tickets @$30 from KKBC Office
The 14th Shamar Rinpoche was born in 1952 and spent many years studying in India with Buddhist scholars. He began to travel and teach in various Buddhist centers throughout Asia and the west starting in 1980, and in 1982 went to U.C. Berkeley to study English for ten months. In 1996 he started to organize the Bodhi Path Buddhist Centers, a network of centers based on a non-sectarian approach to Buddhism. The curriculum of Bodhi Path centers is grounded in the teachings of the 11th century Indian Buddhist master Atisha, as they were transmitted by Gampopa. Atisha's methods are the most effective for taming the mind and deepening wisdom, and in addition can be taught and employed in a secular way.
Shamar Rinpoche does not encourage most of his students to become monks and nuns, instead emphasizing the ideal of being a lay person who studies and practices Buddhism. This is because becoming a monk or nun requires virtuosic dedication and discipline, and should not be undertaken by those unwilling to follow the full set of guidelines explained in the vinaya (the code of conduct). For monks that mean 253 rules, and for nuns 364. In order to provide a shining example of how the renounced followers of the Buddha are really supposed to live, in 2005 Shamar Rinpoche founded the retreat center of Shar Minub in Kathmandu, Nepal. At Shar Minub, twenty resident monks strictly maintain the full 253 vows of the vinaya. These monks are total renunciants and dedicated meditators. Shar Minub is at the present time the only monastery among the many in the Himalayan regions where the monks are fully committed to the Buddha's vinaya discipline.