Giving to the Kadampa Center

Why do I give to the Center? There is the mundane reason: I've been blessed with some amount of financial well-being because of generosity in my previous lives. And I feel that it's important to be generous in this life if I can at all.

But there's a much more important reason. I want the Dharma to help others. The Dharma changed my life. Until I met my spiritual teacher I was aimless - without direction and dissatisfied even though I had so much. I had studied the Dharma but it was that spark with my teacher that propelled me like a rocket into the Dharma. So in a way I was "born again!"

Our center has a spiritual teacher like that. We are so incredibly fortunate to have our extremely accomplished and realized Geshe-la.

Our center is one of a handful of FPMT centers (among the 150 of them) with a Resident Teacher who is a Geshe and among an even smaller number among them with an English-speaking one.

So I hope that whatever contribution I can make will bring more people into contact with Geshe-la and have the same life- and mind-changing experience that I had. We don't get that many chances in our lives to find that one thing that will make it all worthwhile. I pray that all who come and will come to the center will get that chance.

Shankha Mitra