TBLC’s Annual Maitreya Festival

The Maitreya Festival is the biggest day of the TBLC annual calendar and will be held this year on Sunday, August 23rd, beginning at 11am. This event includes a traditional Tibetan prayer and juniper offering, a procession, a taped message from His Holiness the Dalai Lama, prayers from the assembled monks, a Maitreya Teaching from Ven. Geshe Yeshe Thabkhe translated into English by Joshua W.C. Cutler, and delicious Festival food. All your friends and family are welcome to attend this auspicious event.

Maitreya Festival Schedule of Events

11:00 am:  Traditional Tibetan Prayer & Juniper Offering
12:30 pm:  Festival Lunch under the tent
1:30 pm:    Procession begins from the TBLC Main Temple, followed by: recorded speech by
His Holiness the Dalai Lama, prayers from assembled Monastic Community, and Dharma Teachings by Ven. Geshe Yeshe Thabkhe

*Please come early to get parked.*
No reservations necessary. All are welcome.

What to bring: the Maitreya Festival is primarily an outdoor event, but happens rain or shine, so please plan accordingly and bring items needed such as sunscreen, sun hats, umbrellas, and picnic blankets. Limited outdoor seating will be available.

Further Information about the Festival Tradition

Who is Maitreya?
The Maitreya Festival is a way of honoring and making a connection with the Protector Maitreya, the Future Buddha. According to Buddhist tradition, Shakyamuni Buddha, our historical Buddha, was the fourth of one thousand Buddhas who will appear and give the Teachings during the current eon. The Protector Maitreya, Shakyamuni Buddha’s disciple and destined to be the fifth Buddha visiting our world, resides in a heaven called Tushita (“Joyous”), where he awaits the precise moment to enter into human history – a time when the Buddhist Teachings will have become extinct. Like Shakyamuni before him, he will “turn the wheel of Dharma” and reestablish the Buddhist Teachings. Festival-goers thus seek to cultivate virtue and thereby create the causes for meeting Maitreya Buddha in that future era in order to receive his teachings and advance spiritually. As his name translates as “Loving Kindness,” the festival also honors and celebrates Maitreya as both the outer manifestation of loving kindness and the loving kindness within our own hearts. The TBLC curriculum is based on the teachings for new Buddhists that were indicated by Maitreya and revealed to the fourth century Indian scholar and meditator Asanga.

History of the TBLC’s Maitreya Festival
Maitreya worship has been a central feature of Buddhist life throughout Asian history and in Asian lands as far-ranging as Burma, China, and Japan, to name but a few. The tradition of holding a Maitreya festival began in India and soon spread with Buddhist culture into surrounding lands, including Tibet and Mongolia, the two cultures in whose traditions TBLC is rooted. Here in the United States, Geshe Ngawang Wangyal, the Center’s founder, began the Maitreya Festival in 1965 in commemoration of his spiritual teacher, Lama Ngawang Losang Dorjieff, a religious assistant to the Thirteenth Dalai Lama. Renowned for promulgating Buddha’s Teachings in Kalmykia, Lama Dorjieff himself had likewise instituted this custom there in 1905.