The Sacred Arts Tour of Gaden Shartse Norling Monastery will be returning to the Folsom and Placerville area January 3rd through the 20th, 2024. Since 2003, Placerville Friends of Tibet has hosted the tour for over 20 years and are pleased to extend the tour to the Folsom area in 2024. Cultivating Compassion is the message for this year’s locally sponsored tour.
Gaden Shartse Monastery and the Tibetan monks, located (in exile) in Southern India, know and love the Sierra Foothills and surrounding communities. The tour is deeply grateful to the founders, organizers, community, and partners that have made this possible over the years.
During the tour, the Monks will share their arts and culture, Tibetan perspectives on the Buddha’s teachings, offering empowerments, astrology readings, healings, and blessings for individuals, families, businesses, pets, and the community at large.
In Folsom: The opening ceremony and Dharma talk explaining this mandala will begin on January 3rd, 6:00 p.m. The public can view the daily progress of the sand mandala from 10 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. The sand mandala creation culminates with a closing mandala dissolution ceremony on Saturday, January 6th @ 4:00 p.m.
In Placerville: The opening ceremony and Dharma talk explaining this mandala will begin on January 9th, 6:00 p.m. The public can view the daily progress of the sand mandala from 10 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. The sand mandala creation culminates with a closing mandala dissolution ceremony on Saturday, January 20th @ 4:00 p.m.Please visit the website and check the schedule placervillefriendsoftibet.org
This event helps support Gaden Shartse Monastic College, which is situated in the remote countryside of southern India. It was founded in 1969 as an effort to re-establish one of the great monastic traditions of Tibet—the Gelug tradition followed by His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama. A small group of elder monks and fifteen young boys, all of whom had managed to escape the destruction in Tibet, settled on land given to them by the Indian government in Mundgod, Karnataka.
Today the college is at the forefront of the revival of Tibetan Monastic education, with more than 1600 resident students, teachers, scholars, and spiritual practitioners. More than 70% of the members are between the ages of 10 and 25 and 80% of these were born in Tibet. To this day, young monks arrive at the Monastery weekly from Tibet, seeking shelter and education. Due to the success of the academic program and the quality of the teachers at the monastery, Gaden Shartse has established a reputation as being the leader in the field of Buddhist and Tibetan studies.
Placerville Friends of Tibet is a group of dedicated volunteers who, since 2003, have committed their time, energy, and resources to sharing the culture of Tibet and Tibetan Buddhism with the communities of El Dorado County, the Sierra Nevada Foothills, and the greater Sacramento region. This group is an incubator partnership with Arts & Culture El Dorado.
This year’s tour is sponsored by: Dignity Health,, The Karuna Center for Mindful Engagement thekarunacenter.org and Arts and Culture El Dorado artsandcultureeldorado.org