Sangha Sponsorship - Support Monks at Sera Jey Monastery

How to Change One Life
Kadampa Center can offer you a wonderful, easy, relatively inexpensive, rewarding way to change the lives of Sangha members in a dramatic way. There are thousands in Sera Jey Monastery in southern India who are impoverished ... quite literally. They don't have enough for basic health care needs or for their studies, to say nothing of any emergency that might arise. You can change that dramatically. For a donation of $260 per year, you can help support monks at Sera Jey Monastic University.

The $260 per year will do several things:

1. $210 of your donation will go to provide supplementary food beyond the basics provided directly by the Monastery and help each monk cover expenses such as robes, shoes, paper, pens, books, soap, toothpaste, postage, and other expenses that the Monastery does not provide.
2. $50 of your donation will go to an Emergency Fund. This fund will be managed by the senior monk, Geshe Gelek and the Kadampa Center Sponsorship Coordinator. The emergency fund is held in reserve in a Kadampa Center money market bank account. This emergency fund will be used when a monk in the Kadampa Center Sponsorship Program has a particular medical or personal need that is beyond an individual monk's ability to cover.

The majority of the monks at Sera Jey are refugees who walked for as much as one month to leave Tibet and come to study/practice/meditate at the Monastery. They left carrying their clothes and food literally on their backs. They have no means of support other than the in-kind support of the Monastery. This in-kind support is the best the Monastery can afford to give but it is not enough to maintain health and mental strength.

The physical living situation for many of the monks is extremely basic - many have no hot water, no screens on the windows, and doors that do not adequately keep out rodents or other animals. Mentally the monks seem peaceful and happy. But, if you saw these living conditions, you would leap to assist them in any way you could.

The bad news is how little they have. The good news is how far $260 will go in India. That is all it takes to change one life dramatically. The monk you are assigned will receive your name and address. You can send photos and letters back and forth.

If you cannot afford the full $260, you can get together with a friend or family member to provide to pool your resources. The donation can be made on an annual, semi-annual, or quarterly basis if that makes it more manageable for you financially.

Your donation is tax-deductible, to the full extent allowed by the law. Please consult with your tax advisor.

There are currently 9 monks available for sponsorship in our program. To support a member of the Sangha at Sera Jey, proceed to the Enrollment page.

 

Kadampa Center, Raleigh, NC, USA -- Affiliated with the Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition