Friday 29 February 2008, at 7-30pm at the Friends Meeting House, 12 Jesus Lane
Ato Rinpoche
Motivation in Buddhist Practice
Ato Rinpoche was born in 1933 and recognised at a young age by the 11th Tai Situ as the Eighth Tenzin Tulku of Nezang, a Kagyudpa Monastery in Eastern Tibet. Unusually, Rinpoche studied with teachers of all four Buddhist traditions of Tibet. From 1959 he lived and worked in India for the Government-in-Exile until H.H. Dalai Lama placed him in charge of a monastery housing teachers of all four lineages. In 1967 he married and settled in England, where for twelve years he worked as a nursing assistant in a psychiatric hospital. Nowadays he divides his time between teaching Buddhism and meditation in the West, and re-establishing Nezang Monastery, which was utterly destroyed in the Cultural Revolution. After fifteen years of fund-raising and seasonal building-work, the restoration is almost complete.
Ato Rinpoche
Friday 25 April 2008, at 7-30pm at the Friends Meeting House, 12 Jesus Lane
Tenzin Dechen Rochard
Tenzin Dechen Rochard is English and has been a practising Buddhist since 1984. She was ordained as a nun by His Holiness the Dalai Lama in 1986 and remained within the monastic order for twelve years. She completed several three-month solitary retreats whilst in England during 1987-8. Then she went to India where she completed a traditional 10-year study programme in Buddhist studies at a Tibetan monastery in Dharamsala. Since her return to England as a lay-woman she has translated and edited the Insight volume of Geshe Sopa's oral commentary on Tsongkhapa's "Steps on the Path to Enlightenment" (forthcoming, Wisdom Publications). She is now doing a PhD in Western and Buddhist philosophy at the University of Cambridge. Dechen also teaches meditation, Buddhism, and Tibetan language, in the UK and abroad.
Geshe Sopa
Friday 6 June 2008, at 7-30pm at the Friends Meeting House, 12 Jesus Lane
Bhante Bodhidhamma
Bhikkhu Bodhidhamma is English and has been an ordained Theravada monk for over 20 years. In 1976 Bhante began meditation in the Soto Zen Tradition, After three years, he began to practice in the Theravada tradition. His main teachers have been Sayadaws U Janaka and U Pandita. In 1986, he ordained and subsequently spent eight years as a solitary at Kanduboda, the main Mahasi Centre in Sri Lanka. In the spring of 1998 he returned to Britain and has since been teaching in England and Ireland. Between 2000 and 2005 he was a teacher-in-residence at Gaia House and is now the spiritual director of the Satipanya Buddhist Trust. Satipanya
On Saturday Bhante will lead a one day course of meditation at the Friends Meeting House.
Friday 19 September 2008, at 7-30pm at the Friends Meeting House, 12 Jesus Lane
Stephen Batchelor
Stephen Batchelor is a contemporary Buddhist teacher and writer, best known for his secular or agnostic approach to Buddhism. Stephen considers Buddhism to be a constantly evolving culture of awakening rather than a religious system based on immutable dogmas and beliefs. Through his writings, translations and teaching, Stephen engages in a critical exploration of Buddhism's role in the modern world, which has earned him both condemnation as a heretic and praise as a reformer.
He was ordained as a novice Buddhist monk in 1974. He left India in 1975 in order to study Buddhist philosophy and doctrine under the guidance of Ven. Geshe Rabten, and the following year he received full ordination as a Buddhist monk. In 1981 he travelled to Songgwangsa Monastery in South Korea to train in Zen Buddhism under the guidance of Ven. Kusan Sunim. He disrobed in February 1985 and married Martine Fages before returning to England and joining the Sharpham North Community in Totnes, Devon. During the fifteen years he lived at Sharpham, he became co-ordinator of the Sharpham Trust (1992) and co-founder of the Sharpham College for Buddhist Studies and Contemporary Enquiry (1996). From 1990 he has been a Guiding Teacher at Gaia House meditation centre in Devon. Stephen Batchelor
On Saturday Stephen will lead a one day course of meditation at the Friends Meeting House.
Friday 26 September 2008, at 7-30pm at the Friends Meeting House, 12 Jesus Lane
Karma Phuntsho
(Dr) Lopen Karma Phuntsho was born in Ura village in central Bhutan and went to school in Bhutan. In 1986 he became a monk and after a year in Cheri monastery in Bhutan, he moved to India to continue his studies in Tibetan monasteries. Karma spent a year at Sera monastery and ten years in Ngagyur Nyingma Institute, where he was trained to be a Khenpo. Since 1994, he has taught Buddhism and related subjects in both Tibetan and English and has served as an abbot at Shugseb Nunnery and a lecturer at Ngagyur Nyingma Institute.
In 1997, he went to Balliol College, Oxford to study Sanskrit and Classical Indian Religions and in 2003 received a D.Phil. in Buddhist Studies. His dissertation is now published by RoutledgeCurzon as Mipham's Dialectics and the Debates on Emptiness, To be, Not to be or Neither. He is currently a Research Associate in the Department of Social Anthropology, Cambridge University. He is also the Spalding Fellow in Comparative Religions at Clare Hall. Loden