Welcome
Welcome to the Land of Compassion Buddha (LCB) Edmonton. We are honoured to share Dharma teachings and other services to support your practice and learning journey. We hope you will enjoy visiting our Centre, meeting our kind teachers, and feeling at home in our community.
Our spiritual director is the Venerable Khensur Rinpoche Lobsang Tsephel, who founded and directs the Land of Compassion Buddha worldwide. We are honoured to offer you teachings from Khensur Rinpoche and knowledgeable Geshes well trained in the Gelupga lineage of Tibetan Buddhism.
Our vision
“Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them humanity cannot survive” – His Holiness the Dalai Lama.
Buddhism is a way to train our own minds to realize true happiness within. We intend to serve you in the best way we can to support you in your learning journey and practice of transforming your own mind, in order to feel more inner peace and happiness and strength, which you may then offer the world.
Shantideva, 8th century Indian Buddhist scholar said: “We are not here to change the world, the world is here to change us”. We see this as saying: if we want to change the world, we must start by changing ourselves within. Therefore, we aim to share programs to help all of us train our minds and cultivate greater lovingkindness, compassion, and wisdom, so we may awaken the Buddha nature that has always been inside each of us.
Indeed, the Buddha says our mind’s natural state is completely pure; the afflictions we have (anger, pride, jealousy, hatred, etc.) are “adventitious”, meaning they can be removed. The analogy is that our mind is like a pure clear sky, and the afflictions are like clouds passing by. We fall under the influence of afflictions in our daily lives, but they are not who we are. Buddhism can help us lessen the influence of those afflictions, apply antidotes to them, and ultimately, remove them, to experience the true happiness that is within each of us.
Therefore, we sincerely wish the Dharma teachings our teachers offer will give you more tools to work with your own mind when dealing with your lives, apply to your own lives to improve your own lives and give you greater happiness, harmony, and all things auspiciousness.
It is said that the Buddha is like the Doctor, the Dharma (teachings) are like the medicine, and the Sangha are like the nurses to help us take the medicine, and the disease is the self-centred mind and associated afflictions. Therefore, we sincerely wish you will find the Dharma teachings from our teachers helpful for you to work with your own mind and experience happiness and its causes and be removed from suffering and its causes.
Our services
We are pleased to offer Dharma teachings on Buddhist philosophy, meditation, empowerments or initiations, pujas, and practice sessions. We welcome friends from all cultures and backgrounds. We are a multicultural centre with teachings in Tibetan and translated into English and Mandarin Chinese.
Please note that Dharma teachings and activities at our center are currently on hold. They will resume when our resident teacher, Geshela, returns to Edmonton.
We thank you for your patience and wish everyone safety and health.
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His Holiness and Khensur Rinpoche has recommended the chanting of Green Tara’s mantra to help the world during this time.
The mantra is: Om Tare Tuttare Ture Svaha
All services (except retreats) are free of charge. Offers to support are welcome.
Description on the Dharma Teachings: Dharma is the teaching of the Buddha. Our Dharma classes teach the fundamental principles and philosophy of Buddhism and hopefully give us wisdom tools to work with our own minds when facing challenges in our lives and thus improve our lives. The discussion group is a wonderful opportunity if you’d like to reflect on our learnings, discuss the application of Buddhism to our daily lives and challenges, and meet other community members.
Our teacher, Geshe Pema, will begin the class by leading us through a light offering and short prayer. This symbolizes our intention to dispel ignorance from our minds and our wish to gain enlightenment to serve all sentient beings. You are welcome to join us in prostrations but no obligation; we wish you to be at ease and only do what you feel comfortable with. Our teacher, Geshe Pema, will lead us through a short opening prayer and practice. This is followed by the teaching session. There is opportunity to ask questions at the end of class.
Our Sister Centre in West Covina: Teachings (and perhaps past empowerments) from Venerable Khensur Rinpoche:
The Tibetan calendar marks days where it’s said our thoughts and actions (good and bad) multiply. Therefore, it is recommended on those days to be extra careful / mindful of our intentions and actions, and to do extra practices that purify negative karma, remove obstacles, and accumulate positive karma.
According to http://www.rabten.eu/downloads/calendarEN.pdf
Can also check against https://fpmt.org/media/resources/dharma-dates/
Recommended practices (from FPMT)
https://fpmt.org/media/resources/dharma-dates/dates-explained/
https://fpmt.org/teachers/zopa/advice/sakadawa/
Recommended practices especially for Losar and the 15 days, culminating on Miracle Day
From FPMT
https://fpmt.org/teachers/zopa/advice/happy-losar/
How To Make The 15 Days Of Miracles Most Beneficial
https://fpmt.org/wp-content/uploads/teachers/zopa/advice/pdf/LZR_Losar_prayer_0207.pdf
The following are the Multiplying times:
http://www.rabten.eu/downloads/calendarEN.pdf
His Holiness The Dalai Lama offers teachings and empowerments from time to time. You can receive them via his livestream channel.
Please visit https://www.dalailama.com/live
Volunteers
We are absolutely wholeheartedly dedicated to serving you the best we can to provide you the valuable teachings of Buddha. Please kindly understand our centre is entirely run by volunteers. Therefore, we ask you to please kindly study our website first to see if it answers your questions before contacting us. We will try to respond to your inquiries as soon as possible. Thank you for your kind understanding and compassion. We look forward to sharing Buddhism with you and welcoming you to our centre. Let us know if you would like to be added to our mailing list for updates and new class schedules.
Contact information: info@compassionbuddha.ca
Please find us on facebook at https://www.facebook.com/Landofcompassionbuddhaedmonton/
Please kindly note our Facebook page exists but we are not updating it right now.
Celebrating His Holiness The Dalai Lama’s birthday with some cake 🙂
