Sunday Open Meditation + teaching by Acharya Tashi – The King of Aspiration Prayers

Sunday Open Meditation and 

Teaching by Acharya Tashi: The King of Aspiration Prayers

Sundays, January 14, 21, 28, February 4, 11, 25, March 3, 10, 17, 24

10:00 – 11:00 am                    Meditation onsite at Nalanda West

11:00 am – 12:00 pm PT   Teaching by Acharya Tashi

At Nalanda West & on Zoom

The King of Aspiration Prayers, also called The Aspiration of Noble Excellent Conduct, is a prayer familiar to many Buddhist practitioners. It contains the aspirations of all the buddhas and the bodhisattvas. Its power is extraordinary.  It lifts us beyond daily mundane concerns and into the activities of bodhisattvas who seek to alleviate the misery of all sentient beings. Instead of seeing our limitations, we are given a glimpse of our Buddha nature.  As Achaya Tashi will explain in this series, the verses of the prayer describe our potential to become fully enlightened beings. Its recitation offers our lives renewed meaning and purpose.

In this eight week series of teachings, Acharya Tashi Wangchuck will invite us to examine the prayer, verse by verse, to explore its meaning.  The prayer itself is rich in imagery and symbolism that, once explained, can deepen our appreciation and understanding of the verses. Acharya Tashi’s teachings will be translated by Miguel Sawaya.

Recordings of Acharya’s teachings will be posted to the Resource page within 2 days.

Acharya Tashi Wangchuk is the resident teacher at Nalanda West, Nalandabodhi’s center in Seattle. He also serves as the main acharya overseeing all Nalandabodhi centers in North America.

Born and raised in eastern Bhutan, Acharya Tashi moved to Rumtek Monastery in Sikkim, India, at the age of 15. While there, he studied for ten years and graduated from Karma Shri Nalanda Institute, the principal Karma Kagyu monastic college. After his graduation, Acharya Tashi assumed teaching responsibilities for the Karma Kagyu lineage in Hong Kong before returning to Rumtek Monastery to teach at the college from which he graduated.

Following this, Acharya Tashi did editorial work for Nitartha International in Nepal, an educational organization founded by Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche to preserve and digitize endangered Tibetan texts. Acharya Tashi is one of the principal editors working to publish the renowned Eight Great Treatises of the Karma Kagyu lineage. Currently in Seattle, he continues to prepare classical Tibetan texts vital to the Kagyu lineage for publication.

Miguel Sawaya holds a BA in Jazz Performance from UCLA and an MA in Indo-Tibetan Buddhism with Tibetan Language from Naropa University. After completing the year-long Translator Training Program at Rangjung Yeshe Institute, Kathmandu University’s Centre for Buddhist Studies, he worked there for six years as a Tibetan language instructor and interpreter for Buddhist philosophy courses taught by monastic instructors. He translates for the 84000 project under the auspices of the Dharmachakra Translation Committee, interprets for several Tibetan Buddhist teachers in a variety of contexts, and is currently pursuing doctoral studies in Buddhism at the University of Virginia.

If registration appears closed for this date, please click HERE to register for the most current date of Acharya Tashi’s Sunday teaching on the King of Aspiration prayers.