SLCD has hosted many visits from high lamas including His Holiness the Sakya Trizin, His Eminence Choegye Trichen and Her Eminence Jetsun Kushok-la, all who have bestowed empowerments and given teachings. He promotes the Vajrayana Buddhist meditation practices of the Sakya Tradition of Tibetan Buddhism, including Ngondro, White Tara and Medicine Buddha. Rinpoche has been conducting Buddhist philosophy classes for more than fifteen years on a vast range of subjects and has published several books on the subjects of Buddhist philosophy and Tibetan history. In 2001, Rinpoche began training some of his students to facilitate the Calm Abiding Meditation classes throughout Australia and New Zealand, a practise that he continues each year. Since 1996, he has conducted several 8-week meditation courses each year and a 10-day annual residential retreat, which have become some of the most popular events on the Australian Buddhist calendar. Rinpoche continues to promote the practice of Calm Abiding Meditation, acknowledging its benefits as a popular secular mindfulness technique, as well as recognising the importance of its Buddhist origins. In 1996, His Eminence Chogye Trichen came to Australia and launched Rongton Buddhist College at Evatt, ACT. In 1989, Sakya Losal Choe Dzong (SLCD) – the Tibetan Buddhist Society of Canberra – was officially launched and blessed by His Holiness Sakya Trizin in Canberra. Being a qualified Tibetan lama with extensive monastic and retreat training, Rinpoche soon caught the attention of the few Canberrans interested in Tibetan Buddhism. In the late Eighties, Lama Choedak settled in Canberra with a wife and young family, taking up a postgraduate scholarship at the Australian National University. After some time, Rinpoche disrobed, maintaining his commitment to teaching as a lay Buddhist lama. He was encouraged by Lama Yeshe to help bring Buddhism to the West and was a resident monk at a Buddhist centre in New Zealand in the early eighties. He showed a natural flare for the English language and would go on to interpret for some of the highest lamas of Tibetan Buddhism. Lama Choedak encountered many foreigners coming to Lumbini on pilgrimage to the Buddha’s birthplace. He completed twelve years of rigorous monastic training under Choegye Trichen’s guidance, including a traditional three-and-a-half year solitary meditation retreat, which was sponsored by His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Rinpoche proved to be a particularly bright student and was close to His Eminence, acting as his personal attendant for six years. Rinpoche took ordination as a monk while still attending high school and became the first Tibetan refugee to attain a Nepalese secondary education certificate.Īs a novice monk Lama Choedak was accepted by the great Tibetan master His Eminence Choegye Trichen (1920-2007), one of a handful of monks helping to establish His Eminence’s new seat in exile, at the birthplace of the Buddha, in Lumbini, Nepal. His family fled the Chinese Red Army invasion of their homeland to eventually re-establish their lives as refugees in Pokhara, Nepal, where they have remained for the last fifty years. Rinpoche was born in the yak hair tent of a nomad family on the Tibetan plateau in 1954. Lama Choedak Rinpoche is the Spiritual Director of Sakya Losal Choe Dzong, Tibetan Buddhist Society of Canberra.
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