Recent activities of His Holiness Shamar Rimpoche
Year 2004

During the month of June, Shamar Rimpoche is visiting the USA. He has been spending the month primarily at the Bodhi Path Center in Natural Bridge, Virginia. There on June 12 he gave the empowerment of Amitabha Buddha and on the following day he offered teachings on how to do Amitabha practices on both sutra and Vajrayana levels. Rinpoche will give this same initiation and teaching at the BPC in Washington, DC at the end of June.

After that, Rinpoche will fly to California. At the BPC near San Francisco and then at the BPC in San Luis Obispo on Californias rocky central coast, he will offer teachings on lojong, or mind-training practice. At the end of July, Rinpoche will then return to the US East Coast, to give teachings at the BPC on the island of Marthas Vineyard near Boston.

At the beginning of August, Rinpoche will leave the US for Europe. On August 7 and 8 he will be in Vienna, administering the bodhisattva vow and giving teachings on the vow from the tradition of Nagarjuna at the Karma Kagyu center there.

From August 11-19 Rinpoche will give teachings on "Meditation and the path of love and compassion" at the BPC in southern Germany near Zurich. Shamar Rimpoche will give teachings twice daily. On the first weekend (14.+15.) he will give two empowerments: Sat.: Buddha Amitabha and Sun.: Chenresig. On the last day Rinpoche will give the Bodhisattva vow.
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Then, from August 21-22 he will teach at the Karma Kagyu center in Copenhagen on a commentary on Mahamudra by the 17th century master Dhagpo Tashi Namgyal entitled Rays of Moonlight. Click here for report and pictures.

And from August 23-24 in Jutland, teaching + empowerment to Chenrezig, Stupa Consecration/inauguration.
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On August 26-27 Rinpoche will teach at Dhagpo Kagyu Ling in Dordogne, France on the contemplation of body, feeling, mind and phenomena taken from the Pali sutras of the Buddha.
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In September, Rinpoche will leave for India. There, he will stay in Kalimpong, in the West Bengal hills for some time. For six weeks he will conduct a course for HH Karmapa and several other rinpoches and advanced students at the Dri Dewakar Institute. The subject of the course will be advanced Tibetan language grammar as well as poetics from the classical Indian tradition based on a text by Acharya Dandri enumerating the 35 different types of poems and the characteristics of each.

Around the end of November, Rinpoche will depart for Hong Kong. At the Bodhi Path Center there he offer a ten-day program of initiations and teachings. He will give initiations for Vajrapani and Manjushri practices (November 27) and offer teachings on the Mahayanasutralankara (Ornament of Mahayana Sutras) said to have been received from the bodhisattva Maitreya by the great Bengali pandit Asanga.

After returning to South Asia, Rinpoche will officiate at the opening ceremony of a new Karma Kagyu education center in Kathmandu. Located in the city on Kitipur Hill and developed by Shangpa Rinpoche, the new center will offer Buddhist education to monks and laypeople alike. The center will offer a special welcome to Karma Kagyu students from around the world.

Then, on December 10, Shamar Rimpoche will participate in the Kagyu Monlam festival to be held at Bodh Gaya in India.

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Vidyadhara Ceremony of the 17th Karmapa, Trinley Thaye Dorje with Kunzig Shamar Rimpoche