*Canceled* | Emptiness and Social Action with Khenpo Pema Wangdak
In light of evolving information about COVID-19 and out of an abundance of caution, we are canceling this event.
Based on recommendations from public health officials, all non-essential events of more than 25 people on campus will be canceled or postponed. If we are able to reschedule the event at a later date, we will be in touch.
Thank you for your understanding.
Buddhas are exalted by the power of enthusiasm. The Enlightened One has realized the power of enthusiasm. When the Compassionate One enters the villages and towns, there the power of enthusiasm is proclaimed.
The Thích Nhất Hạnh Program for Engaged Buddhism invites you to join us for our monthly Dharma Talk Series: Emptiness and Social Action. Over the course of nine months, a wide array of Buddhist teachers will take us into the essential teachings of the Buddhadharma and what it looks like to move into action to address the dissatisfaction, distress, and suffering that we meet in relationship with the earth, people, and systems today, in the United States, and around the world.
How does conceptual, inferential, and experiential knowledge into emptiness of an inherent self invite for a response to circumstances that are stressful, painful, and violent? Each evening will be unique, with a combination of a dharma talk, meditation, and a question and answer period exploring these essential and vital questions within Buddhism and our lives’ for this moment in time.
Khenpo Pema Wangdak became a monk at the age of seven and later attended the Central Institute of Higher Tibetan Studies in Benares, receiving his Acharya degree from Sanskrit University in 1980.
In 1982 Lama Pema was sent by His Holiness Sakya Trizin to teach in New York City, becoming the first of the younger generation of Tibetan teachers from the Sakya School to settle in the United States. He founded the Vikramasila Foundation in 1989 to support educational initiatives both in the United States and abroad. The foundation now encompasses the Palden Sakya Centers for Tibetan Buddhist studies and mediation in New York, New Jersey, Vermont, Maine, and Ohio; the Pema Ts’al School in Mundgod, India, for Tibetan lay children; Pema Ts’al Sakya Monastic Institute in Pokara, Nepal; and Pema Ts’al School in New York City, whose curriculum is modeled on that of Sakya College in India. In addition to these institutional projects, Khenpo Pema has a special interest in Tibetan language pedagogy and is the creator of a form of Tibetan Braille known as Bur Yig.
He received the title of Khenpo from His Holiness Sakya Trizin in 2007. In recognition of his humanitarian work around the world, Khenpo Pema was awarded the Ellis Island Medal of Honor in 2009. He is the first Tibetan to be so honored.