Refuge Vow Ceremony and Explanation

**Presented via Zoom. Registration required.
“First Saturdays Teachings with Geshe Ngawang Dakpa”

​​Join Land of Medicine Buddha, in collaboration with Tse Chen Ling, as their longtime resident teacher, Geshe Ngawang Dakpa, shares his wisdom and insight on a series of topics beneficial to our minds and our practice. Geshe-la will choose topics as the series progresses, and they’ll be posted here and announced in our eNews and social media. We’re grateful to have a scholar of Geshe Dakpa’s renown offer these teachings to our community! ​Ven. Steve Carlier will provide the English interpretation.

Refuge Vow Ceremony and Explanation

Geshe Dakpa will explain Refuge Vows and give the formal vows in this ceremony. Everyone is welcome to attend. If you are taking Refuge Vows for the first time, please indicate it in your registration; this information must be shared with Geshe-la. For those who already hold Refuge Vows, you may renew them at this ceremony. If you do not wish to take vows at this time, you are still welcome to attend the explanation portion of the class. Thank you!

Register here with Tse Chen Ling, our sister center in San Francisco.

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ABOUT GESHE NGAWANG DAKPA

Geshe Ngawang Dakpa served as a resident teacher at Tse Chen Ling. He was born in Nakchu, northeast of Lhasa, Tibet and became a monk at the age of ten. At the local monastery of Othok he studied both Dharma and secular subjects extensively before entering Sera Je Monastery eleven years later. He fled Tibet in 1959. Upon his arrival in India, Geshe-la not only continued his monastic studies, but also spent three years at the Sanskrit University in Varanasi, earning an MA with honors. Invited by the Queen of Sikkim, he taught at the University of Sikkim for nearly 20 years before returning to Sera monastery in South India and obtaining his Geshe degree. Additionally, Geshe-la taught in Taiwan before arriving in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1999.

ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR – VEN. STEVEN CARLIER

Venerable Steve Carlier resides at Land of Medicine Buddha, teaching the Basic Program. He has been studying Buddhism since 1977 and was ordained as a Buddhist monk by Lama Zopa in 1979, then receiving full ordination from Serkong Tsenshab Rinpoche the following year. He studied for eleven years at Nalanda Monastery in France, and from 1993 to 2004 was one of only a handful of Westerners who have followed the Nalanda (India) tradition of studies at Sera Monastery in India. He has interpreted for several of the great masters of Tibetan Buddhism.