On the 2nd of November 2011, we were blessed by the arrival of our Spiritual Director, Lama Zopa Rinpoche (and not to forget Ven’s Roger, Holly, Sangpo and Khedrup!).

Since Rinpoche’s stroke in April, attempts have been made to encourage him to cut down on public teachings and events. To this end, the main purpose of Rinpoche’s stay was to spend more time on rehabilitation, but as most students of Rinpoche’s will know, wherever Rinpoche sees greater benefit in teaching, he will!

And so in the 2 months of his stay, Rinpoche led Lama Chopa Puja’s (both here and at the amazing Hindu temple in Kangra), Incense Puja’s, hosted many special guests (including Khandro-la, Dagri Rinpoche, Pari Rinpoche, Serkong Tsenshab Rinpoche and Jhado Rinpoche) and conferred a Green Tara initiation. Rinpoche even found time to take Khandro-la and Serkong Tsenshab Rinpoche on a guided tour of Tushita - offices, dining hall and kitchen included!

These activities culminated in the Long Life Puja held in honour of Lama Zopa, here on the 16th of December (pictured left). You can see many photos of these events on our facebook profile photo albums, and expanded features on Rinpoche's stay in our Spring/Summer 2012 Newsletter and Ven Roger Kunsang's "Life on the Road with Rinpoche" blog on the Mandala Magazine site.

Rinpoche left Tushita on the 25th of December 2011 to travel to Bodhgaya where he participated in the Kalachakra Initiation conferred by His Holiness the Dalai Lama. We fervently hope that Rinpoche will come to stay with us again very soon.

Lama Yeshe's Stupa has done well to withstand more than 25 years of all weathers. However, the 2010 Monsoon was particularly heavy and really took its toll on the Stupa. In Autumn 2010, Venerable Robina Courtin, together with a friend who was attending the Green Tara retreat at Tushita, felt moved to initiate a fundraising project to help us restore, repair and make the Stupa more precious/beautiful than ever. The monsoon damage was heart-wrenching. The metal design features were so dilapidated and were all but falling off. The paintwork looked so weathered. The stupa looked in a truly sorry state.

In June 2011, Stage 1 of the restoration commenced. One of Tushita’s resident monks, Ven Jampa, a trained thangka painter, bravely undertook the project and has put many careful hours into the restoration and repainting. At first, he was helped by a team of volunteer students to prepare the stupa (pictured left) and in the later stages by a local painter who helped restore the lower sections and the statue boxes; whilst Ven Jampa completed all the finer, more intricate painting work in truly beautiful fashion. We are eagerly awaiting the roof top metal design work to be installed at the end of December 2011 to fully complete the new statue boxes.

We send billions and billions of thanks to all those who have contributed to this great transformation of such a precious holy relic. It is truly amazing all that has been made possible and all that is still manifesting now. Thanks to the extraordinary fundraising efforts we have already been able to raise almost the full target figure for the project. As of December 2011, we were just 26,460 Indian Rupees short of our goal. If you are interested in making a contribution, please contact director AT tushita.info

On the 26th of October 2011, we had an unexpected visitor pop in to say hello - Jetsun Pema, for 42 years the President of the Tibetan Children's Villages (TCV), and the sister of His Holiness the Dalai Lama!

We were all thrilled that Jetsun Pema-la took the time to stop by, and our Director, Linda, used the opportunity to show her the new throne that we recently had made for His Holiness the Dalai Lama, in the hope that he will come to inaugurate the new Gompa very soon. Jetsun Pema and Linda are pictured left.

As well as being delighted as ever to spend some time with Jetsun Pema, we all hope and pray that her visit marks the start of more family visits in the near future!

Our beloved doggy Jangsem Kalu (more widely known as Kalu before he was renamed Jangsem - "Enlightened Mind" - by Lama Zopa Rinpoche in 2009) very peacefully departed this life on the morning of Sunday the 9th of October 2011.

He was 13 years old and had been sick for about 2 months, having many seizures. During this time he had around-the-clock care; he stayed with us in the administration office during the day and in a volunteer's room at night - to his great delight! For a while his legs were completely paralyzed, but he made a miraculous recovery, walking again to the chai shop and doing kora around the gompa until his last day.

Jangsem Kalu was brought to Tushita when he was a puppy by Venerable David Marks, who found him stray in a local village, and he became an essential element of the Tushita experience for thousands of Dharma students over the years. His gentle, somewhat timid nature meant that he was never the best monkey-guard, but he had an other important job here; keeping the staff and volunteers grounded at stressful times - he definitely deserved his name!

Given that he was born a stray Indian dog, he had an incredibly blessed life, filled with love and friends and snacks. He met and was blessed by many high-level practitioners (pictured right with Lama Zopa Rinpoche), and was constantly surrounded by prayers, pujas, mantras. He was cremated next to Lama Yeshe's stupa.

He is very much missed by all of us here at Tushita (especially his friend Nying-je), the local villagers, and by many loving friends around the world. Any prayers on his behalf are very much appreciated.

We are very happy to publish the first Tushita Newsletter!

Our Director, Linda, writes: "A Tushita newsletter has been in our vision, out there on the horizon for a few years now... In my eyes, the launch of the newsletter symbolises this season at Tushita. Since we opened doors in February, it has been a year of abundance and dedicated effort."

Our goal is to publish a Tushita Newsletter every 6 months. We will post each of them here, available for download on PDF format. You can also Contact Us if you'd like us to send you a paper copy.

In this first issue you'll find: "Everything you wanted to know about Dharma but were afraid to ask..." Q&A with Venerable Robina Courtin on relationships, heirarchy in Buddhism, and finding courage to break through negativity. "Meet Our Sangha" An interview with Old Lama Gyupa. A report on our exciting, long-awaited Retreat Hut Project and "Kalachakra 2012" Andy Wistreich on the importance of the Kalachakra practice, and news of related courses in early 2012. We hope you enjoy!

Students on our August 5 - 11 2011 course had the incredible opportunity to study with the world's first (and so far only) female Geshe!

Venerable Kelsang Wangmo received a Rime Geshe diploma (equivalent to several Ph.D's in Buddhist Philosophy) from the Institute of Buddhist Dialectics (IBD) in April 2011. Until this time, the Geshe title was only given to Monks (men), but His Holiness the Dalai Lama authorized the IBD to award Rime Geshe degrees in 2009 and Geshe Kelsang Wangmo became the first woman to ever receive the title. Before this, she had been studying Buddhist Philosophy and Debate for 16 years here in Dharamsala. You can see photos of the Graduation Ceremony here.

In addition to her obvious scholastic skills, Geshe-la is also a wonderful teacher and we are so very happy that she was able to accept our many, many requests (plea's!) to teach a course here at Tushita. Geshe-la is extremely busy with her own continuing studies and teaching curriculum (details of which you can see here), but we very much hope that she will join us again in the near future.

This course also became our biggest ever - 95 students! Photos from the course can be seen here and an interview with Geshe-la can be heard here.

Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo gave four outstanding talks over 2 days here at Tushita on July 28 & 29, 2011. Jetsunma gave teachings, but also spent almost the same amount of time leading meditations based on Shamatha (Calm Abiding) and the Four Immeasurables of Loving Kindness, Compassion, Empathetic Joy and Equanimity.

Around 200 people attended and we were very touched by the generosity they expressed to both Tushita & Dongyu Gatsal Ling, the Nunnery that Jetsunma founded, close to the town of Palampur, about 3 hours drive from here.

Jetsunma’s teachings at Tushita have become an annual event, and we pray they will continue for many years to come. We have made the audio recordings of these sessions available for download on our website here and photos can be seen here.

Until June 2011, our largest recorded Introduction to Buddhism course happened in May 2010, when Glen Svensson taught a course attended by 85 students. Spring is our peak season, and as we moved into Summer (actually directly into Monsoon!) this year, the May 2010 course remained the biggest ever. There are usually so few people in this area at this time of year that we didn't even hold residential courses in Monsoon until 2009!

Imagine our amazement then as we entered the traditionally low tourist season, and yet broke our largest ever record, with 92 students participating on Glen's June 4 – 13 course. This is almost twice the number of people who took part on a course at the same time last year!

As we moved further into Monsoon, our surprise turned to astonishment as on the next course, June 30 – July 9, we broke the record again, with 94 students going through the check-in procedure in the kind of downpour so very typical of this season. This course is pictured with teacher Glen Svensson & meditation leader Richard Meijers in an unsual rain-free moment, above. The next Monsoon course, with 82 students, also had very high attendance, and the upcoming special 7-day course with Geshe Kelsang Wangmo & Geshe Lhakdor at the time of going to press had a similarly large number of students registered.

100 really is the maximum number of residential students we can both accommodate, and manage without significantly reducing standards. We really are at a loss to explain this surge in student numbers in such unseasonable weather, other than the fact that with our new website, social networking activity, and resultant impact of cyber word-of-mouth, more people than ever are hearing about Tushita, and the incredibly positive experiences that former students have had here. Why Monsoon in particular? Who knows, there certainly are a lot of people around with strong rain karma!

Students on our June 4 - 13 2011 Introduction to Buddhism course were especially fortunate!

As well as having the esteemed Glen Svensson as a teacher throughout the course, Geshe Pema Dorjee was also so kind as to accept our invitation to teach a session. Geshe-la is usually very busy with his own projects (details of which can be seen here: http://www.bodong.org/) so we, and the 92 students on this course, were especially lucky to have had this time with him.

The warmth and good humour he teaches with are plain to see in the photos you can see here.