Online Zoom Forum: Chöje Akong Tulku Rinpoche: The Spiritual, Psychotherapeutic, and Humanitarian Vision in his Life and Work, 16 October 2024.
Date: Wednesday 16 October 2024.
Time: 7pm-9pm (UK time).
Event Description:
Format: There will be five talks, each of 12 minutes, followed by 20 minutes of discussion among the speakers and the chair, followed by Q & A.
Chair:
Dr Sara Trevelyan:
Bio: I have visited Samy Ling on many different occasions over the years. I was always grateful for the support and welcome which I received there and have benefited from the introduction to meditation which I received as well as being continually reminded that the path includes compassion for all living beings. It is easy to forget this in our increasingly self-centred consumer based Western culture.
Akong Rinpoche has been an inspiration to thousands in terms of his dedication and commitment to establishing Samye Ling, the first Tibetan Buddhism centre in the West. Akong Rinpoche’s work wasn’t limited to spreading the teachings in the West as he continued to do all that he could to support communities in Tibet, demonstrating everywhere his inexhaustible compassion. He was a man who lived the essence of ‘Love in Action’.
My own spiritual path is more aligned with Findhorn these days, but my relationship with Samye Ling and the inspiration which I have received from Tibetan Buddhism and all the teachers there continues to shine a very special light due to the depths of wisdom contained in this ancient and precious tradition.
Sara is also a therapist, author, and grandmother.
Speakers:
Dharmacharya Ken Holmes:
Title: The Vision of a Servant.
Description: Akong Rinpoche’s own understanding of his life and work, as explained to me during our forty years together.
Bio: Dharmacharya Ken Holmes is an internationally-known Buddhist teacher, scholar and published translator of major ancient Tibetan texts.
He was personal assistant to Chujé Akong Rinpoche from the mid 1970s until the latter’s death in 2013.
Ken was a co-founder of the Scottish Inter-Faith Council and represented Buddhism in the early 2000s in discussions opening the EU to input from civil society.
He has been teaching Buddhism, in theory and practice, for over forty years.
Vin Harris:
Title: Samye in the West.
Description: Samye Ling was the first Tibetan Buddhist Centre to be established in the West.
It is named after Samye Monastery, which was built in the 8th century as the first great seat of Buddhist learning and practice in Tibet.
In this talk about one of the major achievements of Akong Rinpoche’s remarkable life, Vin Harris will share some personal reflections about the spiritual significance and transformative impact of building Samye in Scotland’s green and pleasant land.
Samye Ling is very colourful and awe inspiring, built in the traditional architectural style of Tibet, certainly not the kind of building that one would expect to find in South West Scotland.
For a significant number of the thousands of people who come to visit, whether they spend a few hours, a few days, or perhaps many years, it feels like their spiritual home. It is a place of refuge, a place to learn and find direction, somewhere removed from the stresses and strains of modern life where people can go to find some inner peace before returning refreshed and inspired to make their contribution to the world. At the same time Samye Ling is a spiritual fortress designed to protect and preserve Tibetan culture as well as the authentic spiritual lineage and understanding of Tibetan Buddhism for future generations. This initiative has global significance in an age of rapid change when it would be so easy for the heritage and the great wisdom that it expresses to be lost forever.
As well as being a pivotal event in Tibetan Buddhism’s migration to a new home in the West, the building of Samye Ling is also the story of how a Tibetan Lama, who had learnt first-hand about the pressures of life in the West, was able to show us that there does not need to be any separation between daily life and spiritual practice.
Bio: Vin Harris considers himself very fortunate to have known the late Akong Rinpoche as a friend and teacher for almost 40 years.
Vin is a practicing Tibetan Buddhist with a degree in English and European Literature, a craftsman who helped to build the first Tibetan Buddhist monastery in the West, an altruistic entrepreneur with an MBA, a mindfulness teacher and the founder of a specialist woodworking company.
Inspired from an early age by the freedom and creativity of entrepreneurship, Vin never felt the need to have a “real job”.
In 2013, Vin co-founded the Hart Knowe Trust with the aim of “helping people so that they can help others”.
After Akong Rinpoche’s untimely death in October 2013, the Hart Knowe Trust supported the making of “Akong – a Remarkable Life”’ an award-winning film that has inspired audiences in 25 countries.
Vin was the Executive Producer for the film and is now part of the team working on a follow up film “More Than One Life – a journey into the heart and science of re-incarnation”.
Dr Brion Sweeney:
Title: The tradition of Traditional Tibetan Medicine and Along Rinpoche’s interpretation of that expressed within Tara Rokpa Therapy.
Description: Brion will explore this topic of the inspiration of Sowa Rigpa and How it connects with Tara Rokpa Therapy.
Bio: Dr Brion Sweeney is a retired consultant psychiatrist who worked for over 30 years in the Health Service Executive in Dublin until his retirement in 2012.
He holds a master's degree in psychotherapy from University College Dublin (1986).
Brion undertook his own experiential training in Tara Rokpa Therapy (TRT) under the guidance of Akong Rinpoche and become part of a core team of Western healthcare professionals who helped developed the method.
Brion started working as a Tara Rokpa therapist in 1991 and thereafter worked closely with Akong Rinpoche and other TRT therapists helping to refine Tara Rokpa Therapy.
Over the decades TRT has attracted participants from many European countries and in Southern Africa.
More recently Brion spent three years in retreat under the guidance of His Eminence Jamgon Tai Situpa Rinpoche.
Lea Wyler:
Bio: Lea Wyler is President and Co-Founder of the humanitarian aid charity Rokpa International, which she started with the late Choje Akong Tulku Rinpoche.
Lea Wyler had actually had other plans. She was a successful actress in Zurich, Switzerland. But the shock caused by her mother’s early death was a significant turning point in her life.
She remembered the words of the high Tibetan Lama, doctor and meditation master, Dr. Akong Tulku Rinpoche. During a trip together through India and Nepal in 1980 he shared his advice: «The best way of helping yourself is to be involved with helping others.»
Encounters with a young blind boy, a beggar crippled by leprosy and an old woman racked with hunger were key experiences that culminated in a split-second awareness of what she wanted to do with the rest of her life. She wanted to offer humanitarian help in Nepal, India, later also in the Tibetan areas of China, and wherever else necessary.
Once back home in Zurich, Lea established ROKPA together with Dr. Akong Tulku Rinpoche and her father, the lawyer Dr. Veit Wyler. The motto of this relief organization is to «Helping where help is needed». Since that time, the commitment by Lea and Dr. Akong Rinpoche has produced ROKPA projects worldwide.
Lea Wyler established a home for former street children in Nepal, and is known there as 'Mummy Lea'. She also initiated projects supporting women. In 1990 she started a Soup Kitchen in Kathmandu. Each winter the Soup Kitchen provides an average of eight hundred meals per day. In the Tibetan area of China, she and Dr. Akong Rinpoche have supported the building of schools, orphanages and clinics. They organized medical training projects, restored a nunnery in a remote location at five thousand meters above sea level and encouraged reforestation projects in the highlands.
Lea Wyler travels to Nepal, South Africa and Zimbabwe every year. Once on site she inspects the projects in progress. Together with local teams and partners, she also assesses opportunities for new projects in line with ROKPA's mission and values. She is supported by a growing team of voluntary helpers, with the result that the administrative costs are kept to a minimum. Since ROKPA's inception in 1980 tens of thousands of children have received an education, hundreds of thousands of people have received medical aid and over a million people in distress have been provided with food.
Robert Barnett:
Title: Quiet Bridge-Builder: Akong Rinpoche and Conflict Resolution.
Description: In this talk, I hope to touch very briefly on the crucial avenues developed and explored by Akong Rinpoche in his quiet, unseen efforts to ease Sino-Tibetan tensions and conflict.
Although very little is known about this aspect of his work, what has come to light suggests a level of subtlety and skill far beyond other known attempts to work on this issue.
Bio: Robert Barnett is a Professorial Research Associate at SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies), University of London and Affiliate Lecturer and Research Affiliate at the Lau China Institute, King's College, London. He is the former Director of the Modern Tibetan Studies Program, where he was Adjunct Professor of Contemporary Tibetan Studies and Senior Research Scholar in modern Tibetan history at the Weatherhead East Asian Institute at Columbia University. He retired from Columbia as of January 2018. He is also referred to as Robbie Barnett by the media.
Robert Barnett founded and directed Columbia's Modern Tibetan Studies Program, the first Western teaching program in the field, until December 2017. His most recent books are Conflicting Memories: Tibetan History under Mao Retold, co-edited with Benno Weiner and Françoise Robin (Brill Publishers, 2020) Tibetan Modernities: Notes from the Field, with Ronald Schwartz (Brill Publishers, 2008) and Lhasa: Streets with Memories (Columbia University Press, 2006). Barnett has also written articles about modern Tibetan history, post-1950 leaders in Tibet, Tibetan cinema and television, women and politics in Tibet, and contemporary exorcism rituals.
At Columbia, he taught courses on Tibetan film and television, contemporary culture, history, oral history, and other subjects. From 2000 to 2006 he ran the annual summer program for foreign students at Tibet University in Lhasa and has taught courses at Princeton and Inalco (Paris).
He is a frequent commentator about Tibet and about nationality issues in China for the BBC, CNN, NPR, CBS, The New York Times, the Washington Post, The New York Review of Books, and other media.
Barnett directed 15 educational projects in Tibet, including training programs in ecotourism and conservation.
Prior to joining the Columbia faculty in 1998, Barnett worked as a researcher and journalist based in the United Kingdom, specializing in Tibetan issues for the BBC, the South China Morning Post, VOA, and other media outlets.
In 1987, Barnett, with Nicholas Howen, co-founded the Tibet Information Network (TIN), an independent London-based research organization covering events in Tibet, of which he was the director until 1998.
An archive recording will be made for the EICSP archive.
NB: There will be no refund if you cancel your booking.
Cost: By Donation:
Contact: Neill Walker, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
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