with Geshe Tenzin Legtsok

Saturday, November 18 – Sunday, November 19, 2023
10:00am – 4:30pm PST (Pacific Standard Time)

His Holiness the Dalai Lama has often said that for people with a modern education who are newly interested in Buddhism, it is good to study the two truths first. This is both because

1. the two truths can be understood solely based on sound reasoning without appeal to scripture or faith in metaphysical ideas, and
2. because Buddha’s explanation of the two truths reveals what a profoundly wise and skillful teacher he was.

As with many Western scientific and philosophical frameworks, the two truths describe how the world does not in fact exist as it ordinarily appears to us. The conventional truth of things appears as deceptively concrete, fixed, and disconnected, while ultimate truth unveils how things actually exist.

What is unique about the two truths though, is that Buddha makes a direct connection between our mistaken apprehension of how we as persons exist, with our exaggerated sense of separateness from others, our inflated ego, and its resultant selfish concern closing our hearts to the wellbeing of others. So, learning about the two truths is not a mere abstract intellectual exercise. It is the deepest foundation for compassion extending to all living beings through seeing how we are all interconnected.

Over one weekend, Geshe Legtsok will succinctly explain the two truths together with guided meditations showing how this understanding can be gradually integrated into our day to day experiences.

Geshe Tenzin Legtsok has recently completed the twenty year Geshe Program of study in classic Indian Buddhist treatise and their Tibetan commentaries in the tradition of ancient Nalanda University at Sera Jey Monastic University in South India. He has been ordained as a Buddhist monk since 2001.

Born in Virginia, USA in 1973, he obtained a Bachelor of Arts from Kenyon College in 1995. The question, “What makes for the most happy and meaningful life,” which compelled him to major in philosophy during college gradually led to his study of meditation and philosophy with teachers among the exiled Tibetan communities in India and Nepal from 1999 until the present.

For the past ten years he has tried to make basic Buddhist teachings accessible to various audiences in India and the US through lectures, essays, and meditation instruction.