Vajrapani Institute
P.O. Box 2130
Boulder Creek, CA 95006
(831) 338-6654 

email Public Transport Map Subscribe to our email group
2nd Annual Water Bowl Offerings
A Preliminary Retreat

with Ven. Jangchup Phelgyal
August 21-29

Vajrapani is pleased to offer the popular water bowl retreat again this summer!
The Water Bowl Offering Retreat is a rare experience in which a minimum of 100,000 water bowls are offered. Lama Zopa has said that each retreater gains the merit of the sum of all water bowls filled by all participants! Each participant will thus be able to claim 100,000 water bowls in meeting the requirements of their Preliminary Practice.

Partial attendance is possible with credit given for the days you can attend. People that come just one day can accumulate at least 10,000 water bowls.  

Venerable Jangchup offers delightful encouragement and teachings throughout the practice. Sessions will be interspersed with meditation on what it means to make offerings and gain merit as an expression of guru devotion, a condition essential to quick enlightenment: “We accumulate masses of negative imprints in our minds. The water bowl offering is a symbolic practice to clean those imprints. People reported changes; subtle things happen”, says Venerable Jangchup.

Ordained in 1995, Venerable Jangchup Phelgyal came to live at Vajrapani in 2005 where he teaches and gives a waterbowl retreat each summer: “It was a wonderful opportunity to meet Buddhists and not Buddhists of various levels of practice. In the course of the days during the retreat, we saw how we changed and grew and we celebrated together”, says Venerable Jangchub about his experience in the first Water Bowl Offering Retreat.

Ven Jangchup

"I am so grateful to have Venerable Jangchup as a friend and teacher...I have learned so much from him about myself and the world around me...."

Venerable Jangchup trained and taught at Columbia, Yale, Oxford and Stanford Universities and has three masters degrees and a doctorate in psychology with clinical training.  At thirty, Hawkins Mitchell Ph.D. took his mother's maiden name because he thought it sounded more distinguished.

His name was changed once again when he received full ordination.  His translator wrote out his bikshu name for him on a slip of paper, but failed to explain that he'd spelled it phonetically and written the last name first and  first name last without adding an all-important comma. The result:  his first name (which was in fact his last) is not generally written with a "p" and his last (which is indeed his first) does not exist in Tibetan.

Venerable Jangchup laughs.  "Samsara will get you every time.  Remember, I'm the guy who wanted a distinguished name; and I got it all right.  For years I thought I was introducing myself as, say, John Smith, while in fact it was coming out as "Hello, my name is Snithe Jaboo."


SCHEDULE

August 21: 
3:00pm-5:00pm                Registration
6:00pm                             Dinner
7:30pm                             Introduction session

August 22 to 28:                                               
5:00am-5:30am                 Prostrations to the 35 Buddhas (main gompa)
5:30am-8:30                      First session (stupa)
8:30am-9:30am                Breakfast break
9:30am-12:00pm              Second session (stupa)
12:00pm-3:30pm              Lunch break
3:30pm-6:00pm               Third session (stupa)                     
6:00pm                             Dinner break     

After dinner there will be sharing time (movies, discussions, explanations of the benefits of the water bowl offering…)

The retreat will end on August 29th with lunch.

Fees: (inclusive of accommodation, meals, retreat fees)
  Non-Member Member
    10%
Camping $840.00 $756.00
Main Dormitory $880.00 $792.00
Semi Private Dormitory $920.00 $828.00
     
Private Room (single) $1,200.00 $1,080.00
Private Room (double) $1,080.00 $972.00
Cabin (single) $1,360.00 $1,224.00
Cabin (double) $1,160.00 $1,044.00
     
Scholarship Application deadline 21st July  

No one will be turned away for lack of funds

PEOPLE ARE ENCOURAGED TO BRING
-Warm clothes for mornings and evenings
-A holy personal object to put in the stupa during the sessions

Click here for details regarding financial aid

Click Here for Course and Registration General Info

Cancellation Policy 

A position for Course Manager Scholarship might still be available for this course. Click here for more information.