India 2016

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The 2016 tour to India was my first opportunity to lead a group of 18 students on pilgrimage. It was our capstone after completing my teaching the Four Year Program in Sustainable Happiness and featured refuge, Bodhisattva vows, and teachings on the 37 Practices of the Bodhisattva with Geshe Tenzin Zopa. We travelled from the sacred city of Varanasi on the Ganges, to Sarnath site of Buddha’s first teaching where we read the First Turning of the Wheel text, then on to Bodhgaya where the Buddha gained enlightenment and we meditated under the Bodhi Tree. We also visited the Mahakala caves where prince Siddhartha discovered the middle-way and hiked up to the summit of Vulture Peak where both the Buddha, and Geshe Zopa offered the transmission of the Heart Sutra. — Dr. Miles Neale