Tibetan Buddhist Lama To Visit CWU

November 10, 2004

Contact: Djordje Popovic (509-963-1687/fax 509-963-3561/e-mail: popovicd@cwu.edu)

ELLENSBURG, Wash. - Yangsi Rinpoche, a venerated Tibetan-Buddhist teacher and author, will kick-off CWU's International Education Week. His free, public presentation, "Tibetan Buddhism and the Culture of Happiness," is scheduled for Monday, Nov. 15, at 7 p.m., in Grupe Center on the Ellensburg campus.

"Rinpoche's teaching style is warm, engaging, humorous, and insightful," says Jordan Van Voast, an Ellensburg acupuncturist who has attended teachings by Rinpoche. "Whenever I have had the opportunity to listen to him, I've walked away with a wiser, more compassionate relationship to life."

Rinpoche was born in Kathmandu, Nepal in 1968, he entered Sera Je Monastery in South India at the age of 10. He graduated with the highest degree of Geshe Lharampa in 1995. Three years later, Rinpoche arrived in America at Deer Park Buddhist Center near Madison, Wisc., where he taught for five years. He currently travels extensively to share his teachings and has students throughout the world.

Rinpoche is the author of "Practicing the Path," a commentary on Lamrim Chenmo (the Buddhist treatise on the stages of the path to enlightenment). Although he has the full training of a Tibetan scholar, Rinpoche also uses Western metaphors and demonstrates an appreciation for the Western mind.

For more information about 2004 CWU International Education Week programs, visit www.cwu.edu/~schedule/calendar/novemberevents2004.html#international.

For persons of disability to arrange for reasonable accommodation, call (509) 963-2171, or (for the hearing impaired) TDD (509) 963-2143.