with Geshe Tashi Dhondup
Saturday, March 2, 2024 2:30pm – 4:30pm PST (Pacific Standard Time) Guru Puja is a practice consisting of making offerings to and requesting inspiration from the Spiritual Master. Spiritual vows and commitments which might have degenerated are also restored through the practice of tsog offering (feast offering). In this practice, we unite our minds with the holy mind of the Spiritual Master, who is considered the root and life-force of the spiritual path in order to receive blessings and generate realizations on the path to enlightenment. This puja is performed with both Tibetan chanting and English. It is a binding practice of Highest Yoga Tantra.
According to Lama Zopa Rinpoche, “Those who have received an initiation into Highest Yoga Tantra have a commitment to perform tsog” on the 10th and 25th of every Tibetan month. All are welcome to participate. |
Geshe Tashi Dhondup was born into a nomadic family living on the Tibetan plateau in Kham. At age 14, he entered the local monastery, and at age 17 walked to Nepal for further education after a harrowing 29 day journey by night. He studied Buddhist philosophy in Tibet, India and Nepal, and accomplished his Geshe studies at Kopan in 2004. For the next six years, beginning in 2005, Geshe Dhondup was the philosophy teacher at the Kopan Nunnery. Then in 2010, and for the next three years, he became the headmaster of the Kopan school. Starting in 2013, he was both headmaster and philosophy teacher of the Kopan Nunnery for seven years, and in 2021 Geshe Dhondup took on the role of Kopan’s disciplinarian.
Geshe-la speaks Tibetan, Nepalese, Hindu, English, Chinese, and the highly endangered language of Minyak, and is presently the acting resident teacher at Thubten Norbu Ling in Santa Fe, New Mexico, while Geshe Thubten Sherab is traveling. |