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Kalachakra Temple 2001
This statue of Kalachakra, Wheel of Time, was commissioned by Khyongla Rato Rinpoche with the participation of members and friends of The Tibet Center. It commemorates the bestowal of the Kalachakra initation in New York City in 1991 by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, given at the request of Richard Gere and The Tibet Center. It was sculpted by the master statue maker of the Tibetan Government in Exile, Penpa Dorjee, under the guidnce of His Holiness.
Dalai Lama's visit to NYC 1999
In August of 1999, His Holiness the Dalai Lama was invited by The Tibet Center and The Gere Foundation to give a series of talks in New York City. The talks were to focus on how we can open our hearts and develop true and lasting compassion toward all beings.
The subject of the lectures given at the Beacon Theater centered on the Buddhist methods by which one achieves ultimate enlightenment. He wove together the contents of two texts, the Middle-Length Stages of Meditation by the eight-century Indian master Kamalashila, and the Thirty-Seven Practices of Bodhisattvas by the fourteenth-century Tibetan practitioner Togmay Sangpo.
Kalachakra Initiation 1991
Buddhist Tantra is a method by which a practitioner can attain the ultimate state of enlightenment most rapidly. In order to enter the Tantric path we must have a profound desire to help others, extraordinary compassion wishing to remove their suffering, and vast loving kindness wishing to provide them with all they need and wish for. We must also have some realization of the ultimate truth, the emptiness of inherent existence of ourselves and all phenomena.
One year after Shakyamuni Buddha attained enlightenment, he gave his most important teaching on the ultimate truth. He delivered this sermon on Vulture’s Peak, in what is today the state of Bihar, India. The Buddha simultaneously manifested in Amaravathi, in the state of Andra Pradesh, in order to initiate the kind of Shambhala into the Tantric practice of Kalachakra, Wheel of Time. The Kalachakra Tantra subsequently became the state religious practice of Shambhala.