How You Can Help

• Donate items for auctions (tax-deductible)
• Include the Garchen Institute in your estate planning (tax deductible
• Conduct an online fundraising auction on e-Bay
• Help Jacki Elder with fundraising, or suggest and implement your own fundraising ideas and events
• Attend events at the Garchen Institute in Chino Valley
• Sponsor low-income dharma students by contributing to the Garchen Institute Scholarship Fund (tax deductible)

The Garchen Buddhist Institute in Chino Valley has been made possible through extraordinary generosity and blessings. Now built and available for the benefit of all sentient beings, these wonderful facilities require that the institute pay mortgage, insurance, utility, transportation, and ongoing maintenance costs.

Help the Institute and make a pledge now.

Current

New Stupa Construction Project is Complete!

We rejoice in the great generosity of the Sangha! Traga Rinpoche's stupa of prosperity and blessings to the center is overflowing with funds. Thank you! May all beings benefit!

Click to enlarge

Endowment Fund

For the future, we need to think Big Picture, long term, for the financial stability of the Center. If anyone is interested or has experience in developing endowment funds or strategic plans or would like to contribute to the fund, please contact me at elder@theriver.com or at 520-292-6070. This is something that needs exploration and development and I welcome all your help.

www.southwestbuddhafield.org

We are caring as lovingly as we can for Garchen Rinpoche's gift to North America and I am so grateful. May the blessings flow without end!

H.E. Garchen Rinpoche's comments on the Southwest Buddha Field Endowment Fund - (PDF)

To all of you in Garchen Rinpoche's mandala, I have some miraculous news to share with you regarding the Southwest Buddhafield Endowment/Trust Fund. It's really quite an amazing story. In November during the 2006 Vajrakilaya Drubchen, blessings rained down like a summer monsoon. One of the blessings goes like this:

Christina Lundberg, a student of Garchen Rinpoches', proposed we commission a large thangka with White Tara (Garchen Rinpoche) in the center surrounded by 1,000 Taras (the sangha). For each person contributing $1, 000 to the Endowment Fund, he or she would choose which Tara they wished to be on the thangka. I thought this a great idea, as did everyone here at the Center, and Christina was asked to write to the thangka painter she knows in Nepal to see if he could do this. Upon contacting him, he reported he had a thangka just like this already painted in his studio in Katmandu and that it would have taken a year to a year and a half to paint another one. Clearly this was our thangka!

Three sangha members immediately came forth to purchase the thangka, and we were able to present it to Garchen Rinpoche and the sangha on Losar morning. It now hangs in the Garchen Institute Temple next to Lord Jigten Sumgon. The best surprise is that not only is the thangka stunning, the White Tara in the center looks just like Garchen Rinpoche! She has a masculine torso, and her biceps look like she's been working out in the Bodhisattva gym.

For anyone who would like to be a Tara, we would welcome your help. There are four rainbow spheres filled with Taras surrounding the large central Tara, and for anyone who would like to be a "rainbow sphere Tara," we're asking for a $5,000 donation. If every Tara on the thangka is sponsored, we will reach our goal of raising 2 million dollars to seed the Endowment Fund.

To contribute, checks can be made payable to the "Southwest Buddhafield Endowment Fund" and sent to: Will Evans, 79 El Diente Ct., Livermore, CO 80536, or to Jacki Elder, 5210 N. Nina Drive, Tucson, AZ 85704.

Your donations are tax deductible.

Love to all of you,
Jacki Elder
Om Tare Tuttare Ture Svaha

3 year Retreat Support

The 3 year retreatants emerged from the traditional 3 year retreat during the Vajrakilaya Drubchen, November 2008. Thanks to everyone who contributed to supporting their retreat with your donations to prayers.

Both Guru Rinpoche and Milarepa have said that the benefactors of Dharma practitioners receive the same merit as the practitioners they support. This new retreat facility and the tradition of three year retreats at the Garchen Institute will not be possible without your help. May the merit of your generosity ripen into ultimate happiness for each and every living being.

If you would like to support the next group that is planning to enter the traditional 3 year retreat please contract questions@garchen.net

3 Year Retreatants after the Vajrakilaya Drubchen 2008.

Prayer Wheel is Complete

Our new prayer wheel contains contains four mantras: Chenrezig, Achi, Mahakala, and Lord Jigten Sumgon's Guru Yoga. This prayer wheel will have great and manifest blessings. The Center and surrounding area will be transformed and harmony will prevail among the Sangha. Just touching a prayer wheel brings great purification of negative Karma and obscurations and all beings in the area where the prayer wheel is built will be saved from rebirth in lower realms. Thank you to the wonderful sangha that supported this effort.